CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert is taking aim at “Spygate,” President Trump’s newest moniker for the FBI investigation into possible contacts between members of his campaign and Russia.
In a monologue on “The Late Show” Wednesday night, the comedian lambasted Trump for “stealing” names of other widely reported scandals for his own administration’s battle with the Department of Justice over potential surveillance of the Trump campaign.
“You’re calling it Spygate,” Trump told reporters in a clip Colbert played.
“No we’re not,” Colbert fired back.
“(A) A criminal investigation is not spying. It should be ‘investigate-gate.’ And (B) Spygate has already been used — twice. Once to describe the public identification of Valerie Plame as a CIA officer, and for the New England Patriots’ videotaping of New York Jets coaches’ signals,” Colbert continued.
“Well, as long as we’re just stealing other scandals’ names, from now on, Watergate is the fact that Trump can’t drink one-handed,” he joked.
Colbert also mocked Trump for tweeting about the scandal, which Trump has alleged without evidence was an effort by the Obama administration to plant a spy on his campaign team for the purpose of aiding Hillary Clinton.
In reality, the FBI has admitted that it used an informant to contact several members of Trump’s team in 2016, but there is no evidence to suggest that an FBI source was ever placed on Trump’s campaign.
It has since been reported that Trump referred to the informant as a “spy” in an effort to deliberately discredit the investigation.
“You for one, should not be talking about ‘what goes around, comes around,'” Colbert said, referring to Trump’s tweet about FBI agents being “caught” in the scandal.
“You are living proof that karma does not exist,” he said, to laughs.