Deviating from his usual routine of padding around the White House in his slippers and yelling at the teevee, for the past 48 hours or so President Donald Trump has been quite busy tweeting nonsensical bullshit, explaining economics to The Economist, and admitting that the firing of FBI director James Comey was politically motivated in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt.
But that’s not all. As part of his media tour (tentative title: Race To The Bottom 2017), Trump gave an interview to Time magazine—one of his favorites, especially since it put him on the cover—in which he weighed in on Stephen Colbert’s comedic skills. Colbert has been under fire recently for making a joke about Trump that many interpreted as homophobic, leading to a campaign to get Colbert fired that probably isn’t going to go anywhere, to be perfectly honest.
Anyway, Trump—who was elected president despite being caught on tape admitting to grabbing women’s genitalia without consent, because “when you’re a star, they let you do it”—thinks Colbert is vulgar, because the chemicals in self-tanner apparently erode the self-awareness centers in the brain. “There’s nothing funny about what he says,” he said. “And what he says is filthy. And you have kids watching.” Granted, Billy Bush is only a child in spirit, but still.
Trump then pivoted to his favorite subject—the size of his ratings—with his usual blend of braggadocio and defensiveness. “By the way they were going to take him off television, then he started attacking me and he started doing better,” he said, “I’ve done his show. But when I did his show, which by the way was very highly rated. It was high, highest rating. The highest rating he’s ever had.”
Huge ratings, just enormous. And nobody knows late-night comedy like Trump, especially since he’s the butt of so much of it.