Stephen Colbert Unloads on Trump’s Unhinged 2018 Tweets

Stephen Colbert is back from his long holiday hiatus. And he had plenty to talk about Tuesday night thanks to the particularly disturbing string of tweets President Donald Trump used to ring in the new year.

“This morning, Trump went on a tear, tweeting nine times,” the Late Show host said before reading one of the president’s rants about “Crooked Hillary Clinton’s top aide” Huma Abedin and the “Deep State Justice Department.”

“‘Remember sailors’ pictures on submarine?’” Colbert asked. “I think grandpa’s reminiscing again.”

Colbert took the time to point out that “this is the president of the United States tweeting” that his own Justice Department is part of a “Deep State” entity that is “so corrupt it is unwilling to throw his political opponents in jail.”

“That is a serious charge, and the kind of thing you could never, ever make lightly, and of course you could never take back,” he added, before pausing and adding, “I’m kidding.” That’s because White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders did, in fact, walk back Trump’s comments at a press briefing Tuesday afternoon. “Who got to her?” the host asked. “Could it be… the Deep State?”

Finally, Colbert moved on to another of Trump’s 2018 tweets, in which he “took credit for something he had absolutely nothing to do with”: zero deaths in commercial aviation for the year 2017.

“Trump took credit for no one dying in a plane crash this year,” Colbert said. “That explains his new campaign slogan: ‘Trump 2020: You got to Tulsa, didn’t ya?’”

Of course, Colbert’s latest monologue was taped before what was arguably the president’s most egregious tweet of the new year, in which he bragged about having a “bigger” nuclear button than Kim Jong Un. We will have to wait until tomorrow night to hear what Colbert, and the rest of the late-night hosts, have to say about that.