Stephen Colbert: Jeff Sessions Can Recuse Himself, But He Already ‘F*cked Himself’

“Big news today out of the Kremlin,” Stephen Colbert said at the top of his Late Show monologue Thursday night. “I’m sorry, I misread that, uh, White House.”

Of course, Colbert was talking about Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from any potential investigations into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia after it was revealed that he lied under oath when he said he had not had any contact with Russian officials before President Trump took office.

Sessions may have perjured himself during his confirmation hearing, but as Colbert pointed out, his questioner, Sen. Al Franken, did not even ask him if he had contact with the Russians. “Why did you volunteer to lie?” Colbert asked.

“Now Sessions’s office had an explanation. They say that Sessions didn’t lie,” Colbert explained. “They say he wasn’t meeting Kislyak as a surrogate, he met with the Russian ambassador in his capacity as a member of the Armed Services panel.”

The host imagined a cheating man using the same excuse: “‘Honey, I wasn’t having sex with her as your husband. I was humping her in my capacity as a member of the Armed Services panel.’ Totally different.”

But Colbert did not think Sessions recusing himself from Russia-related investigations was good enough. “You called yourself a campaign surrogate. Then, you lied under oath that you never met with the Russians,” he said. “So you don’t have to recuse yourself. You’ve already fucked yourself.”