Stephen Colbert deciphers Trump's Arnold Palmer obsession
By Matt Moore
Donald Trump added another topic to his long list of rally talking points when he brought up legendary golfer Arnold Palmer's anatomy. The bizarre moment led to Stephen Colbert attempting to decipher exactly why it came up just weeks before the election.
Over the weekend, Donald Trump held a rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. It happened to be the home of golf icon Arnold Palmer, and apparently that was enough to get the ex-president thinking about locker room stories.
"This is a guy that was all man," Trump said in an unscripted moment. "This man was strong and tough, and I refuse to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, 'Oh my God, that's unbelievable.'"
Stephen Colbert's monologue on Monday night quickly jumped on the latest odd moment. It gave the late-night TV host an easy opportunity to pack as many golf puns and euphemisms into one joke as possible.
Arnold Palmer was swinging a real titanium 3-wood," Colbert said as Trump. "You want to interlock the grip on that thing. This thing could drive a par five from tee to hole and had a wicked dog leg in it."
Colbert went on to admit that "waxing poetic" about someone's anatomy isn't exactly presidential. The Late Show even went so far as to imagine what if Ronald Reagan shouted out Jack Nicklaus during his famous "tear down this wall speech."
As Colbert tried to understand why the topic came up in the first place, he showed clips from the 12-minute lead-up to Trump's controversial comments. The ex-president went away from his teleprompter and rambled about Palmer's time playing golf with Mark McCormack at Wake Forest.
Trump repeated the same sidenote that McCormack founded the entertainment agency IMG multiple times. Colbert suggested that Trump was so distracted by the Palmer story he wanted to share that he couldn't focus on the speech.
Donald Trump's rallies are always unpredictable; it's the main reason Stephen Colbert's monologues have covered so many of them. But it's hard to think of a more unexpected rant than the one Trump delivered about Arnold Palmer's anatomy. With just a couple weeks left of his campaigning career, maybe Trump is saving the best (or worst) for last. Either way, it's a gift for The Late Show.