The Late Show host delves into the too-cozy relationship with Donald Trump and the embattled New York City mayor, Eric Adams.
Stephen Colbert
It’s a bleak time in the news, Stephen Colbert conceded on Tuesday’s Late Show. “You want to know how messed up things are? The lightest story in the news is a plane crash,” he said, referring to the Delta airlines flight from Minneapolis that landed upside down at Toronto’s Pearson airport, injuring several passengers. “Everyone survived, though – that’s why it’s light,” said Colbert.
“Remember the good old days when it was just doors flying off the thing? I miss that,” he added next to footage of the upside-down plane. “Seeing that plane upside down just feels wrong. It’s like running into your teacher at the grocery store, and they’re upside down and on fire.”
In more local news, four top deputies for Adams resigned on Monday. “He may be mayor, but these are the people who actually administer the city,” Colbert explained, referring to the first deputy mayor, the deputy mayor for health and human services, the deputy mayor for operations and deputy mayor for public safety. “So evidently at this point, the city is being run by the only remaining deputy mayor: 100 rats in a trench coat,” Colbert quipped.
The host reminded that last year, the justice department indicted Adams for secretly soliciting and accepting illegal campaign donations from wealthy foreign donors, such as Turkish Airlines, which he used for flights even when it was inconvenient.
“So Adams was in deep trouble. It did not look good for him,” Colbert summarized. “But then like a flash, it hit him: he wasn’t the only high-profile New York criminal in public office, so he immediately got all cozy with Donald Trump.” After Trump won in November, Adams traveled down to Palm Beach, Florida, to have lunch with him at Mar-a-Lago. Instead of celebrating Martin Luther King Jr Day in New York, Adams left the city in the middle of the night to attend Trump’s inauguration. “Well, he had to leave at midnight, folks, because that’s the only flight from New York to Washington via Istanbul,” Colbert quipped.
Once Trump took office, Adams asked for a pardon. He did not get one, but Trump did use the request for leverage, instructing the US deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, to tell federal prosecutors to drop the charges without prejudice, meaning that they could be brought again in the future. “So now Trump has Adams by the old Turkish delights,” Colbert laughed.
Such a plan required cooperation from New York prosecutors, but the leader of the Manhattan office, Danielle R Sassoon, resigned rather than obey. She was followed out the door by six other prosecutors. Bove was eventually compelled to sign the order himself, along with two Washington prosecutors.
Adams, meanwhile, “is already keeping his side of the bargain” – after meeting with Trump’s border czar, he opened Rikers Island to Ice agents. “Well, that is terrible. Rikers is no place for Ice agents,” said Colbert. “It’s a place for Eric Adams.”
