Stephen Colbert pandered hard to fans of Ancient Greece during his monologue on Wednesday’s “The Late Show” with an extended riff imagining what the Trojan War would have been like with Donald Trump in charge.
The joke was inspired by Trump’s latest justification for violating the Constitution of the United States by accepting an expensive luxury jet as a personal gift from Qatar.
On Wednesday, Trump said in part, “”I mean, I could be a stupid person saying, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’”
At that, Colbert started riffing in his Donald Trump impression.
“What dummy wouldn’t accept a gift? You know? I’ll give you an example. You know, my friend Priam, great leader of Troy, powerful leader, beautiful city. Okay, so Troy gets this free giant luxury horse from Greece. Okay, they left it right outside the city gates,” Colbert said. “Isn’t that great of the Greeks? Okay? They fight for 10 years. Then ding dong, free, state of the art, wooden pinata. What does Priam do? Is he a dummy? No, he says, ‘Thanks for the horse. Let’s party,’ because he’s no dummy. Lots of whispers and giggles from inside the horse, even the candy is excited, evidently.”
So in case you don’t remember the details of one of the most famous legends in human history, according to literary and mythological tradition the Trojan War was a 10-year-long conflict between the city of Troy on the northwest coast of what is now Turkey, and an invading coalition of Greeks. Unable to breach Troy’s walls, the Greeks built a giant wooden horse which they presented to the Trojans as a peace offering. Troy accepted the offering, brought the horse into the city and threw a giant party to celebrate the end of the war. Then while they were all drunk, a team of Greek warriors hidden inside the horse emerged and slaughtered everyone except the few they took as slaves. Whoops.
Meanwhile, Colbert talked about what he called Qatar’s “bribe” for Trump for a bit longer, first mocking Trump’s apparent insecurity about the size of the current Air Force One compared to other passenger jets (which Colbert of course compared to penis envy). He also noted the huge costs of making the jet suitable, national security-wise, the fact by the time that was done Trump would only have a year left in office, and the fact Trump intends to continue using the jet after he leaves office.
Then he shredded Trump’s attempts to deflect criticism.
“Clearly, all these criticisms are getting under his skin, because at 4 a.m. Middle East time, he reposted a bunch of comments like, ‘what about the Statue of Liberty, which was gifted from France in 1886?’ What about it? The Statue of Liberty is a public monument that millions of people visit every year that honors the founding principles of this nation, given to us by France, who are inspired to have their own Republic by the sacrifices our forefathers made,” Colbert said.
“This Qatari jet, on the other hand, is a personalized bribe mobile that we’re supposed to blow a billion Ameribucks on so when you leave office, you can fly around and go. ‘I feel so much better about my tiny, broken ding dong,’” he added.
There’s more, and you can watch the whole monologue below:
The post Colbert Imagines a Trump Version of the Trojan War After New Excuse for Accepting ‘Bribe Mobile’ Gift Jet | Video appeared first on TheWrap.