I hope none of the Late Show writers were too attached to their jokes in the second half of Stephen Colbert’s Tuesday night monologue. Halfway through recording it, he had to stop and rewrite, because news broke that the Justice Department would be suing John Bolton over his reportedly very spicy tell-all White House memoir The Room Where It Happened.
“During the taping of this monologue, the Department of Justice filed a breach of contract suit against ex-National Security Adviser John Bolton,” Colbert said. “Now let me explain what that means: No one knows what that means. Because what’s breach of contract with the government? You can arrest somebody for spreading state secrets, but breach of contract? Breach of contract is, you sue your plumber because he never finished installing your new septic tank, which Trump’s really going to need because this lawsuit is a huge pile of crap.
“Unlike every other leader in the free world, Trump makes his advisors sign non-disclosure agreements,” Colbert went on. “And the lawsuit charges that Bolton has breached his legal obligations embodied in his NDA. Now we’ve all heard about Trump’s NDAs — Stormy Daniels had one, and she got out of it. So Trump should just cut Bolton a check for $130,000 because now, Bolton is going to spank him with this book.”
Before the break, Colbert also had a take on Trump’s police “reform” executive order, which, among other gentle encouragements and more (as in, not less) funding for police, banned chokeholds… unless the cop doing the chokeholding believes his life is in danger.
“That’s a loophole big enough to drive a squad car through,” noted Colbert. “‘All right, all right, everybody: After multiple incidents, hungry tigers will now be banned from this elementary school, unless the tiger finds the children particularly delicious. Class dismissed.”