As much as he would like you to think that it is not he, but her, who is the puppet, insinuations that Vladimir Putin is controlling his mouth from the inside out has continued to plague Donald Trump. Last night’s episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert took this concept and ran with it, tying it in with the recent shakeup over at the Jim Henson Company in its cold open:
Given that frogs are amphibians and not reptiles, the likes of Donald Trump Jr. and Sean Spicer fail to fully convince in the role (“He’s a frog but he’s not stupid,” the offscreen producer says as Trump Jr. yammers on about emails), and Ben Carson is just too unhinged for a beloved children’s character. Pointedly, it’s Trump himself who ultimately makes for the perfect puppet, shifting from his signature fire-and-brimstone rhetoric to a more hopeful, if out of context, statement.