By Bob Fredericks
New York Post
Open warfare broke out between President Trump and CBS this week, with Trump dismissing one of the network’s reporters from the Oval Office — and late-night host Stephen Colbert firing back with a vulgar, 12-minute rant.
“The only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s c–k holster!” Colbert declared Monday on “The Late Show” during a graphic opening monologue.
“Mr. President, I love your presidency, I call it ‘Disgrace The Nation,’ ” he continued, adding: “You’re the ‘presi-dunce’ but you’re turning into a real ‘pr-ck-tator.’ ”
The bawdy rant came just a day after Trump’s brusque treatment of CBS reporter John Dickerson during a tense White House interview.
The president had the “Face the Nation” host ushered out of the Oval Office after calling it “Deface the Nation” and “fake news” and being pressed about his unsubstantiated charge that former President Barack Obama tapped his phones at Trump Tower.
When Dickerson asked if he stood by the claim, Trump snapped, “I don’t stand by anything,” and stalked away.
Colbert came to Dickerson’s defense — and made it clear he was standing up for a colleague.
“When you insult one member of the CBS family, you insult us all! Bazinga!” Colbert said, quoting the catch phrase from the CBS sitcom “The Big Bang Theory.”
“Donald Trump, John Dickerson is a fair-minded journalist and one of the most competent people who will ever walk into your office, and you treat him like that?” Colbert said.
The former star of Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” — where he frequently used the kind of blue material that he rolled out Monday — then continued to pummel Trump.
“Sir, you attract more skinheads than free Rogaine. You have more people marching against you than cancer. You talk like a sign-language gorilla that got hit in the head.”
Colbert’s anti-Trump antics have proven a ratings winner for “The Late Show,” which has eclipsed Jimmy Fallon’s “The Tonight Show” on NBC for 13 weeks in a row. But he remains neck-and-neck with Fallon, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
For the week of April 24, Colbert averaged 2.74 million viewers — just 2 percent, or 67,000 viewers, more than Fallon — Colbert’s narrowest margin of victory since his streak began.
During the same week, Fallon saw his biggest victory among adults 18 to 49, a demographic which advertisers cherish.
He outperformed Colbert by 50 percent, averaging a 0.66 rating in the key demographic to Colbert’s 0.44, Fallon’s biggest lead in that age group since the year began.
Conservatives and even some gay-rights activists freaked out over Colbert’s tirade.
“The amount of liberals defending Colbert’s homophobia is why I will never trust the Democratic party,” author Dorian Dawes griped on Twitter.
Ari Fleischer, former spokesman for President George W. Bush, was not amused.
“In case you thought the dialogue in our country couldn’t get worse – or more crude. This is awful,” he tweeted.
“As of late Tuesday night, the hashtag #FireColbert was the No. 2 trending topic nationally.
“Imagine if a Conservative Comedian said that about Obama? He would’ve lost his job & his career would’ve been tarnished. #FireColbert,” wrote Twitter user @Pamela_Moore13.
A rep for CBS did not immediately return a request for comment.
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http://nypost.com/2017/05/02/its-open-war-between-trump-and-cbs/