On Tuesday, anxious liberals waited as Rachel Maddow slowly, deliberately revealed on her MSNBC show that she had not one, but two pages of Donald Trump’s 2005 tax return, neither of which told us much of anything about the president’s livelihood. While Maddow had good reason for inching her way toward the actual returns—it was important, she rightly contends, for people to understand why we want Trump’s tax returns, other than just to find out how rich he is—she’s taken quite a ribbing for it on Twitter in the days since.
And now the Maddow jokes have spilled over into late night, with Stephen Colbert doing a fairly spot on Maddow in a segment from last night’s Late Show. In the clip, Colbert purports to tell a joke he knows Trump has heard—the old “why did the chicken cross the road” gag—but, true to Maddow’s style, hesitates and delays so much that he never actually gets to the punchline. Regular viewers of The Rachel Maddow Show will recognize Maddow’s characteristic pauses in Colbert’s affect, which seems like it was done with love. Colbert’s glasses-free, v-neck style is a nice touch, too.
Maddow seems to have taken Colbert’s joke well, tweeting, in all caps, “OH MY GOD HOW DOES HE KNOW I HAD A PET CHICKEN.” Hey, who knows? Perhaps Colbert’s has Maddow’s microwave bugged.