On Saturday, House Speaker Paul Ryan took a page from the president’s book: He tweeted-and-deleted.
The perpetually sad-faced Wisconsinite, who was instrumental in getting the recent Trump tax cuts passed, tweeted, “A secretary at a public high school in Lancaster, PA, said she was pleasantly surprised her pay went up $1.50 a week... she said [that] will more than cover her Costco membership for the year.”
He was immediately pilloried for the out-of-touch statement—bragging about giving a working-class woman a $75 annual tax cut—and, realizing how ridiculous it was, decided to delete it. (Ryan himself is set to save about $19,000 annually from the tax cuts.)
“Cool! Now she’s just one historic tax cut away from a bus pass,” Stephen Colbert said of the tweet.
The Late Show host on Monday pointed out another tweet from Ryan: “These @TaxReform ‘crumbs’ are really starting to add up. After the tax overhaul, Hostess employees will (literally) get a sweet treat.” Ryan then linked to a story about how, once a week, Hostess employees will now be able to take home a “multipack of the product of the week.”
“No that is good news, everybody,” Colbert said to loud boos from the audience, “summed up by middle-class hero Marie Antoinette, who famously said, ‘Let them eat Ding Dong.’”
“It’s interesting that Paul Ryan would boast about somebody making an extra $1.50 a week seeing as how others are bringing home considerably more bacon,” the comedian added.
Colbert then threw to a story about how, 13 days after the tax cuts were passed, billionaire Charles Koch and his wife, Elizabeth, donated almost $500,000 to Ryan’s joint fundraising committee—and another nearly half a million to the NRCC.
To that, Colbert announced: “Oh, I would like to kick him in the Ding Dongs.”
The new tax bill will benefit Koch—and his company Koch Industries—greatly, considering that it reduces the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, saving him millions.