Stephen Colbert Can’t Believe Trump Trusts Julian Assange More Than American Intelligence

As Stephen Colbert put it Wednesday night, one “little shadow hanging over” this month’s inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump “is the whole ‘Russia chose our president’ thing.”

“Our entire intelligence community says that Russia hacked the Clinton campaign but Trump doesn’t buy it,” the Late Show host told his viewers. And we know this because Trump not-so-subtly revealed that he spent the night before watching Sean Hannity interview WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Fox News.

“The ‘Intelligence’ briefing on so-called ‘Russian hacking’ was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!” Trump tweeted Tuesday.

“Yes, I agree—very strange for the future commander in chief to use sarcastic quotations about the intelligence agencies he will soon rely on,” Colbert said. “Mr. Trump, you know you’re not an outsider anymore shooting spitballs from the sidelines, right? In two weeks you’ll be ‘president’ of the ‘United States,’” he added, putting his own scare quotes around those words.

As Colbert reiterated, the meeting Trump referenced was always scheduled for Friday. “That’s an interesting fact,” he said. “You know where Trump could have learned that? From an intelligence meeting. Instead, Trump has decided to trust intelligence from a more reliable source: WikiLeaks founder and hobo Anderson Cooper, Julian Assange.”

In the early morning hours after Hannity’s latest lovefest with Assange aired on Fox News, Trump tweeted out his favorite quote from the interview: “Julian Assange said ‘a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta.’”

“And that’s not easy,” Colbert added. “Most 14-year-olds surf the internet with just one hand.”

The host went on to point out that Trump follows just 42 other accounts on Twitter, most recently adding one called Emergency Kittens, which tweets out photos of cats cuddling with their owners. (As of just after midnight Thursday, Trump no longer follows that account, though he does have Ann Coulter and Piers Morgan on his short list.)

“That must be strange for Trump to see, I mean, a man being grabbed by a pussy, it’s so unusual,” Colbert joked.