Huh, so a lot of people will watch a weekly news magazine if it features an exclusive interview with a porn actress who allegedly had an affair with the president of the United States! The final tally for Sundays explosive 60 Minutes sit-down with Stormy Daniels was a cool 22 million viewers, notching the best numbers the CBS program has seen since Steve Krofts chat with Barack and Michelle Obama after the 2008 election. (That interview nabbed 24.5 million.)
Predictably, Stephen Colbert was pleased as punch to note that Daniels and Anderson Cooper drew so many eyeballs—and not just because his Late Show also airs on CBS. “They havent had numbers like that since Mike Wallace went undercover as a pole dancer!” he crowed Monday night, accompanying his quip with a doctored image depicting just that.
“That means Stormy Daniels got higher ratings than Donald Trump did right after he was elected president,” he then pointed out. Approval ratings aside, this statement is literally true; the Trump familys post-election 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl drew 20 million viewers in 2016. For a man as obsessed with Nielsen charts as Trump, “thats gotta sting.”
Of course, Colbert found plenty of things about the Daniels interview to poke fun at beyond its massive ratings, including Trumps alleged affinity for being spanked with a magazine (“Hm, couple of spanks and Donald Trump became more appropriate. John Kelly, you know what to do.”) and the “hackneyed mobster dialogue” a Trump associate allegedly used to threaten Daniels when she first tried to share her story. His most pointed jab, however, encompassed the greater gestalt of this strange spectacle:
“The interview covered everything,” Colbert said, before bullet-pointing a few of its most absurd details. (Yes, he mentioned Shark Week.) “Its an insane, salacious tale about a sitting president, and the least surprising story that I have ever heard. Of course, it all felt real. It all felt true. That felt truer than him getting elected.”
Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Full ScreenPhotos:Vanessa Trumps Life as a Model and Socialite, in PhotosHillary BusisHillary Busis is the Hollywood editor at VanityFair.com. Previously, she was an editor at Mashable and at Entertainment Weekly. She lives in Brooklyn, just like everyone else.
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