Stephen Colbert doesn’t usually offer Donald Trump advice. But on Tuesday night, the Late Show host gave the president some of it anyway. In a Truth Social post about Iran, Trump had issued a 48-hour ultimatum demanding that the country fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz. If they refused, Trump said he would obliterate their power plants, starting with the biggest one first.
The White House post that declared the threat on X got 16.8 million views on the platform. It also brought up international legal debate as one user flagged it against 18 U.S. Code §2331’s definition of international terrorism.
But Colbert zeroed in on “someone who’s [been] mentioned in the Epstein files over 38,000 times,” and told his audience that such a person “should not — really, should not — put quotes around the word ‘touched.'” Trump’s post had used the phrase “has not been ‘touched'” in reference to the Strait of Hormuz, though, but as Colbert showed, timing can be everything.
Trump on regime change in Iran: “We want to pick a president that’s not going to be leading their country into a war.”
Stephen Colbert: “When can we pick one of those?” pic.twitter.com/TupikWKkWF
— China in English (@En_chinaNews) March 11, 2026
Jeffrey Epstein‘s shadow has been following Trump for months now. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told Axios that when he searched Trump’s name in the unredacted Epstein files at DOJ headquarters, it returned more than a million results.
He had typed in “Trump,” “Donald,” and “Don” into the database.
Raskin noted he couldn’t verify every mention of Donald Trump as the DOJ’s review tool is “confusing, unreliable, and clunky.” But “it’s all over the place,” he said. One document Raskin flagged, though, was a 2009 email exchange between Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. It records a conversation in which Trump says that Epstein was never a member of Mar-a-Lago, but even as a guest, he was never asked to leave. Yet Trump claims that he personally kicked Epstein out of the club for hitting on a young woman.
DO NOT STOP TALKING ABOUT THE TRUMP-EPSTEIN FILES!!
DO NOT STOP TALKING ABOUT THE TRUMP-EPSTEIN FILES!!
DO NOT STOP TALKING ABOUT THE TRUMP-EPSTEIN FILES!!
DO NOT STOP TALKING ABOUT THE TRUMP-EPSTEIN FILES!!
DO NOT STOP TALKING ABOUT THE TRUMP-EPSTEIN FILES!! pic.twitter.com/ErN7Hxwq8G
— ᗰᗩƳᖇᗩ (@LePapillonBlu2) March 31, 2026
The White House has, on the other hand, pointed to posts from Deputy AG Todd Blanche, wherein he pushed back on similar claims from Rep. Thomas Massie, accusing lawmakers of grandstanding. “DOJ is hiding nothing,” Blanche wrote. Raskin responded that the 3 million documents the administration hasn’t released publicly might be the ones that are worth seeing.
“If they’re duplicative, what’s the problem?” he said. “We’ll be the judge of that.”
Colbert’s joke, then, was a strike at a credibility gap that’s been open for months. While the president is threatening foreign nations with military action, he is closely watching his proximity to one of history’s most notorious sex offenders.
NEXT UP: Stephen Colbert Breaks Silence on Claims Trump Helped Kill The Late Show
