Stephen Colbert spent a good portion of his monologue Wednesday night tearing into Trump defense attorney Alan Dershowitz for arguing on the Senate floor that the president’s corruption cannot be impeachable because he did it in the “public interest” of getting himself re-elected.
“Sifting through the logical turd Dershowitz just pinched out in the Senate well there, it’s hard to find the largest corn kernel of logical fallacy,” the Late Show host said before zeroing in on the lawyer’s “justification why any quid pro quo with a foreign government to manipulate our elections would be fine.”
In response to Dershowitz saying a president’s election is “in the public interest,” Colbert shot back, “No, it’s not! Only the public gets to decide what’s in the public interest—not the politician. It’s ‘we the people’ not ‘you the douchebag.’”
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“Of course, esteemed counselor tighty-whitey does think that some quid pro quo might be possibly bad,” Colbert said, apparently referring to Dershowitz’s admission that he received a massage at Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion but kept his underwear on.
While Dershowitz said it would be wrong for a “hypothetical” president to get a monetary “kickback” from a foreign leader in exchange for releasing foreign aid, he argued that if that person thinks he’s “the greatest president that ever was” and does whatever he wants to win the election, “that cannot be an impeachable offense.”
“That cannot be an impeachable offense?” Colbert asked in response. “You can do anything if you believe in yourself?” He imagined the inspirational poster in Dershowitz’s office that reads, “Confidence: When you believe you can fly, you’re always above the law.”
