For the second time this week, Stephen Colbert found out about some late-breaking news during his Late Show taping and decided he had no choice but to talk about it.
On Tuesday, the host delivered a last-minute riff on the sudden departure of Trump’s chief economics adviser, Gary Cohn, from the White House. On Thursday, it was the bombshell news that the president had agreed to a meeting with Kim Jong Un.
“It literally happened while we were doing the show,” Colbert said after his monologue had ended. “I’m not entirely sure what I’m about to say,” he admitted, as producers scrambled to tell him exactly what happened.
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“Tonight we learned about an official invitation from Kim Jong Un to meet Trump,” Colbert told his audience.
“Wow, this can only mean one thing,” he added. “Dennis Rodman is going to get the Nobel Peace Prize.”
“We don't know all the details yet, but because North Korea is an economically-starved country, the invitation is BYO-everything,” Colbert added. “Nobody knows where this will end up, this is all so fresh. But Trump gave us a hint of his vision for the end of 70 years of hostility on the Korean peninsula when he told a reporter, ‘Hopefully, you will give me credit.’”
“I will happily give you credit,” Colbert told Trump. Then, after flubbing the joke—because he was reading it for the first time—he added, “Now, how about bringing peace to your own country first?”
Still, Colbert is looking forward to the meeting: “We'll finally figure out who has a bigger button.”
Already, however, Trump’s White House seems to be throwing some cold water on the momentous announcement. While a South Korean official said Trump would meet with the North Korean leader by May of this year, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders would only say that the summit would happen “at a place and time to be determined.”
