Stephen Colbert

“For almost three years now I’ve had to read all of Trump’s tweets, all of his staff’s indictments, 127 tell-all books, and none of them told us anything we didn’t already know just by lookin’ at the guy,” said Stephen Colbert on Thursday’s Late Show. Colbert had been hoping to learn something damning from special counsel Robert Mueller’s report – the culmination of his two-year investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, which he submitted to the attorney general, William Barr, two weeks ago.

But that report has yet to be released. Instead, Barr condensed Mueller’s 400-page report into a three-and-a-half-page summary in which he exonerated the president of collusion and concluded that he was not guilty of obstruction of justice. In other words, Colbert said, the summary is “like tuning in to see the new season of Game of Thrones and it’s just Barr holding a sign that says ‘Dragons did some stuff, the end.’”

Which means, of course, that the story of the Mueller report isn’t settled. On Wednesday, the House judiciary committee voted to subpoena the whole report. “You know what that means, folks,” Colbert explained. “It’s time to get our hopes up again.”

And on Thursday, a New York Times reported that members of Mueller’s team are dissatisfied with Barr’s summary, which they say omits details damaging to the president.

“Yeah, that was in the New York Times,” Colbert said. “But it was also the cover story for No Duh magazine.”

Also on Wednesday, the chairman of the House ways and means committee demanded that the IRS commissioner release Trump’s tax returns from the past six years. The news prompted a dance from Colbert, who sang in celebration, “We get to read six years of tax returns / Why am I dancing? / Am I an accountant? / No, I’m not, but this is what two years of Trump has done / to my idea of what is fun.”

Though Trump has openly resisted, the chairman technically has the power to request tax information on any filer. “No one is exempt,” Colbert said. “Mr President, he’s going to grab you by the 1040s. And when you’re a chairman, they let you do it.”

Trevor Noah

On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah also discussed how the summary of Mueller’s report by “Attorney General and very straight Elton John” William Barr skirted potentially damaging details for the president. Democrats in Congress are demanding to see the full report without redactions, “which makes sense, because if Barr redacts too much, then we won’t know what the report means. It will be like the radio edit of a rap song,” said Noah before launching into a heavily redacted Trump rap involving the words “pee tape”, “mistake” and “Putin”.

The Mueller report is kind of like the movie “Roma” – everyone’s talking about it, but no one has actually seen it. pic.twitter.com/dxVU8z3akU — The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) April 5, 2019

“Now if we had more time, we could talk more about how everyone is using this lack of information to push competing narratives when no one actually knows the truth,” Noah concluded. “But we can’t focus on that, because the president has to Whack-a-mole another issue that’s popping up.”

That would be the letter to the IRS, demanding Trump’s last six tax returns, from the chairman of the House ways and means committee. Trump has lambasted this action and claimed that he’s under audit.

“You know, in fairness to Trump, he probably is under audit,” Noah said. “I mean, Trump’s taxes are so dirty, the IRS probably has them in one of those contagion rooms from Outbreak.”

Seth Meyers

Trump has declared himself totally exonerated by the Mueller report, but as Seth Meyers pointed out on Late Night, there is no way he’s actually read the full, 400-page document. “If you locked Trump in a room and told him, ‘Don’t come out until you’ve read the whole report,’” said Meyers, “you’d open the door the next day and see him surrounded by Big Mac wrappers and cans of Red Bull, hair disheveled, bags under his eyes. And you’d say, ‘How far have you gotten?’ And he’d go, ‘So far, ‘written by Robert Mueller’.”

It’s been nearly two weeks since Mueller submitted his findings, and even members of his notoriously tight-lipped team are calling into question the substantiveness of Barr’s summary to Congress. “And the fact that we’re even hearing this really means something because the Mueller team never leaks to the press,” Meyers said. “I mean, look at him – Robert Mueller’s wife still doesn’t know his middle name.

“It’s remarkable that Mueller’s team is suddenly speaking out to reporters after two years of total and complete silence,” he continued. “It’s like when you try to get the Queen’s Guard to flinch, and they’re totally still for an hour, and then you go, ‘Let’s get in line for the tour’ and they say, ‘It’s called a queue’.”

Mueller’s team is reportedly frustrated because Barr eschewed their prepared summaries in favor of writing one himself – a choice Meyers found suspect. “As a general rule,” he said, “I’m always suspicious of anyone who chooses to do more work when they have the option not to.”