President Donald Trump has, for months, been the target of Stephen Colbert's pointed jokes and mockery.
But many on social media believe the Late Show host went too far Monday night in making an oral sex joke regarding Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
#FireColbert was trending on Twitter Wednesday morning. There's a new Twitter account called @firecolbert. Its first tweet: "It's time to #FireColbert! It's time he be removed from CBS. Let your voice be heard! #Boycott all of Stephen Colbert's advertisers." There's also a new website, firecolbert.com.
The anger from Trump supporters was over a series of jokes that Colbert unloaded in the last two minutes of his monologue on Monday night in reaction to how the president dealt with CBS News political director John Dickerson.
"You have more people marching against you than cancer."
"You talk like a sign language gorilla who got hit in the head."
And here's the joke that has angered many:
"In fact, the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin's c**k holster."
Trump supporters immediately took to Twitter, saying Colbert's jokes are homophobic. A spokesperson fro CBS's Late Show and Colbert's agent have not responded to requests for comment.
Colbert's monologues have largely focused on Trump, his aides and their gaffes. And his lampooning of the president seems to have paid off.
Just last year, he was trailing far behind Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show. Colbert managed to narrow down Fallon's lead and eventually topped his competition. By late March, Colbert's show was averaging nearly 3 million viewers, about 400,000 more than Fallon's.
As The Washington Post's Callum Borchers wrote, by joking about oral sex, Colbert "rushed the bro-ternity" of Alex Jones, who once said that Rep. Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif., "looks like the archetypal c--sucker," and Jesse Watters, who came under fire for a not-so-subtle joke about Ivanka Trump "speaking into that microphone."
Sitting on a panel on "The Fox News Specialists" on Tuesday, Karl Rove, a former senior adviser in the George W. Bush administration, called the jokes "lewd," "obscene" and "inappropriate."
"They wrote this. This was not a rant that he came up with on the top of this head. They wrote this," Rove said, adding later: "I'm going to continue to do what I do with anything Colbert. I'm going to refuse to watch the SOB."
Colbert began his monologue Monday night by making fun of Trump's comments about the first 100 days in office, which the president called a "ridiculous standard."
"Trump has repeatedly said that this 100 days is totally arbitrary, OK. Totally unimportant. And to prove how unimportant it is, he took out a TV ad, he cut a cake on Air Force One, and he held a rally in Pennsylvania," Colbert said. "The theme of that rally, "Promises Made, Promises Kept." Which is better than the original slogan, "Promises made, never mind, never said it, fake news, watch Fox & Friends."
He then turned to how Trump abruptly ended the interview with Dickerson, after the "Face the Nation" host asked him if he stands by his claims that former president Barack Obama had wiretapped him.
Trump's response to the question was replayed on Colbert's show:
"I don't stand by anything," Trump told Dickerson.
That's when Colbert said: "It's true. He doesn't stand by anything except the dressing room door at Miss USA Pageant ... Who needs a lotion?"
But it was Trump telling Dickerson that he was a purveyor of "fake news" and that he called the show "Disgrace the Nation" that seems to have set Colbert off.
