late, great abraham lincoln, i can be more presidential than any president that's ever held this office. that i can tell you. [ cheers and applause ] ♪ >> announcer: the following is a cnn special report. buckle up, because i'm coming in hot. this is going to be a crazy one. >> every day there's something nuts. >> you're not the potus. you're the blotus. >> wait. how long does this wall have to somebody. >> he's the most mocked man in america. >> that is the problem with the media. >> monopolizing late night. >> it's hard not to feel like you're being redundant. >> kim jong-un is rocket man. >> kim jong-un as rocket man. >> kim jong-un as rocket man. >> dominating snl. >> such a nasty woman.

>> he's like a mime producing raw material. >> he's blowing up scripts. >> that's a really great joke. >> the pace of the news. >> stop it. >> so much faster. >> me first. >> making and breaking careers. >> it's like a little kind of churchill. excuse me. >> would you say you're on a mission to take him down? >> i would like to see him brought down to the ground, preferably in handcuffs. >> you're turning into a real [ bleep ] tator. >> has late night gone too far? >> let's roll! >> tonight, "lathe nige night i age of trump." november 8th, 2016. >> thank you. >> the late show's stephen colbert was hosting a live election night special, a seemingly dream gig for the comedian who believed he'd be documenting history, the dawning of a hillary clinton presidency.

he began the show upbeat. >> you don't need to chant my name. america doesn't have dictators -- yet. >> here you have a guy, a host ready to tell a certain number of jokes that he expects are going to come out in the way he wants. and instead the show starts to turn. >> bill carter is the author of "the war for late night." >> so he's like in between. he doesn't know which way to go. >> when trump wins a state, it will turn bright orange. >> colbert tried to keep the jokes coming as the race got closer and closer. >> this one is a nail-biter, and a passport-grabber. >> then political experts gave colbert some shocking news. trump had taken the lead, winning two key states. >> the momentum shifts, and his energy level drops. all the things about a woman being president, which was probably the theme of the night, has to be rejected and something

else on the fly put in. >> would you care for a cocktail? >> by the time that whiskey ended up on his desk -- >> here's to democracy. >> -- you knew that things were off the rails. >> giovanni russonello is a culture reporter for "the new york times." >> i think he was so incredibly unprepared to greet a donald trump presidency. >> at some point it stopped being funny for him? >> it did stop being funny. >> and got down right uncomfortable when trump went from underdog to front-runner. >> donald trump has taken the state of florida. that's a horrifying prospect. i can't put a happy face on that. and that's my job. >> all of his emotions were on display, and it made for incredibly arresting television, but in some ways disturbing. you're watching a guy have his hopes drain out of him right on the air. i've never seen anything like that before. >> sorry to keep up waiting. complicated business. >> when it was all over and the results were in, colbert,

shell-shocked, left the audience with some dark final thoughts. >> so how did our politics get so poisonous? i think it's because we overdosed, especially this year. we drank too much of the poison. >> i think there was some sort of psychological change that came over colbert. >> we as a nation agree that we should never, ever have another election like this one. do you agree? [ cheers and applause ] >> he became a different host after that. >> it's the late show with stephen colbert! >> colbert's harsh attacks on trump galvanized viewers, catapulting him and the late show to its biggest ratings victory in two decades. >> welcome to the late show. i'm your host stephen colbert. >> it took him months, maybe about a year before he found his traction. and the question was when he ditches the conservative pundit persona that he used throughout the colbert report, is he going

to be able to consistently amuse people and be outrageous? >> you, donald trump, are a horrible, horrible human being. zbl >> by february, colbert edged out long time rival jimmy fallon when he ripped apart trump's press conference. >> to be honest, i inherred a mess. >> no, you inherited a fortune. we elected a mess. >> colbert never let up, growing more vicious as time passed. >> i have the constitutional right to say that donald trump looks like a rotting haystack made of meat, but you cannot. >> trump gave new life to all the late night hosts. >> he's a human what is wrong with this picture. >> trump keeps creating the material. he's like a mime producing raw material. >> he's just going to look them in the camera and say, isis,

stop it. >> have you ever seen anything like this in another presidency? >> there's never been anything like this in a presidency. we've never had this many late night people before, so we've never had teams of 10 or 12 comedy writers all writing jokes about the same guy all the time. >> we went into the weekend worried about kim joung eun starting a war. we came out of it wondering if our president is cutting eye holes out of his bedsheets. >> how many late night hosts are members of the resistance? >> there's at least two overtly. colbert and seth meyers, to me they're like the voices of the resistance. basically their whole shows are about trump. >> i boldly said on this show it was a stunt and he would never really run. >> seth meyers was equally stunned on election night. he offered a mea culpa on late night the next day. >> based on this pattern of me being wrong on every one of my donald trump predictions, he's probably going to be a great [ bleep ] president. >> then he gave the new president a warning. >> we here at late night will be watching you. >> meyers kept that promise,

brutally dissecting trump's every move in his signature "closer look" segment. >> would you call what you're doing now investigative comedy? >> we do try to bring out information that you couldn't get out in a monologue joke. so we try to do a longer piece where we can sort of have a little bit more freedom to explain the story. >> trump is so fully out of his mind, he broke a general. that guy's been in wars. >> it might be explanatory journalism sometimes? >> sure. i think we try very hard. explanatory comedy. again, i'm always -- >> you're afraid of the j word, aren't you? >> i feel like i'm doing a disservice to people who actually practice journalism to say i'm doing it as well. i like doing comedy the most, so that's what i'd like to stick with. >> but experts say in the era of trump, viewers depend on comedians like meyers to make

sense of the constant news. >> it's time for breaking crazy. >> he's going as in depth as he can. the line between late night comedy and news reporting is so thoroughly blurred, people want a kind of a front line style late night show. >> 2016 has been an uncommonly [ bleep ] year. >> what viewers want, they get. and plenty of it. coming up, the daily show descendents. >> were you telling the president about putin. go. >> do you really see a jon stewartization of late night. it was really pushed along by the donald trump presidency. >> american legion trump, respectful and strong. >> we have to get going. >> i don't want to go. >> and later, the ever expanding landscape of late night. >> you're the president of the united states. let's go. does waiting around trying to protect your house from a lighting strike give me the same rush as being golfball-sized hail?

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♪ i'm jimmy, this is my definition of fresh since 1983. ♪ ♪ january 10th, 2017. >> we have a lot of people who are sort of tasked with watching things as they happen. >> from 30 rockefeller plaza in new york -- >> one hour before seth meyers taped late-night, there was big breaking news. >> breaking news. >> russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about mr. trump. >> that night, kellyanne conway, trump's incoming white house

kons counselor was scheduled to appear on his show. >> i had the cnn printout of that story. i made sure i understood the details of it because obviously it wasn't my expertise. >> he started things out light. >> he is my president. >> good for you. >> he's my president so much it's keeping me up at night. >> then he got serious, probing conway about the big news of the day. >> i believe it said they did brief him on it. >> he has said that he is not aware of that. >> okay. that concerns me. >> he was incredibly prepared. unlike even some news people interviewing her, he would not let her get away with anything. >> i sometimes fear that the president-elect has no curiosity as to the amount they tried -- >> that is completely false. he has enormous curiosity. i'm there every day with him. he has a number of different meetings every day, briefings and otherwise. he was curious enough to figure out america. he knew america when many other republicans did not -- >> that's a pivot right there,

kellyanne. >> he did not let her slip away. i thought it was very effective. it was one of the best interviews he's done. >> in general you always walk away from interviews with politicians wishing you'd pushed a little harder. >> have the hosts stopped being funny and started getting too serious? >> it's become a new brand of comedy, i think, that's both informative, and i think pretty funny. >> giovanni russonello was hired by "the new york times" to do a daily roundup column called "best of late night." >> we realized he was redefining the landscape of late-night tv. >> do you think someone would find themselves changing their political views? >> no. i think that the way these shows work is they tune into a certain decibel level, a certain level of outrage, a certain angle of critique. >> the president was griping about the size of the crowd and wondering how his pink tie played with the audience.

>> who would you say is the toughest on trump? >> colbert has been the most savage in his attacks. >> i'm the most unpopular president in modern history. i've deepened america's racial divide. we are on the brink of thermonuclear conflict. it's got to be the pink tie, right? >> other hosts are making equally if not more substantive critiques of the president. >> trump's trust in breitbart actually goes way back. >> every time we see john oliver once a week, they've spent a full week preparing what are essentially investigative reports. >> holding up a breitbart article does not make you seem more credible. >> oliver, a daily show vet, has earned the rep of being one of the sharpest political satirists on late night. he devotes a huge chunk of hbo's last week tonight to fact finding. >> the press is going to be a key element in helping us sort

fact from fiction. and they are under attack. >> do you remember he hires a bunch of singing dancers to inform trump about putin? >> pageantry for him is activism and i think that's part of our new reality. he's essentially being a town crier and an advocate as well as a new fangled tv comedian. >> donald trump is acting moodier and more erratic. >> james corden is a more broad approach guy. but he's done some pretty tough things about trump. >> recently confided in one white house aide telling him, i hate everyone in the white house. is this guy the president of the united states or a cast member on big brother? i hate everyone in the house. >> corden and oliver have a way of looking at the american experience like, are you kidding me? this is what you people do? >> i'm sharing news from the white house. >> the clever bits kept coming. but with so many late-night stars, how do hosts stand apart? >> do you ever worry about saying the same thing every other show is saying?

>> yeah. i mean we think about it a little bit, but it happens less often than you would think. >> steve bowdow is the executive producer of the daily show with trevor noah. [ speaking spanish ] >> we said trump was an african dictator. >> trevor has a certain point of view and a certain style, so even if stephen's show observed the same thing on a given night, it's still going to come out differently. >> trump does not [ bleep ] around eh? >> he delivers these punches against donald trump that doesn't have the nastiness other hosts do. >> special like important? or special like the guy i made fun of? which one? >> he struggled to find his voice when he took over jon stewart's chair. >> this is "the daily show with trevor noah." >> but nearly two years later, noah and the daily show were flying high. then there was that one epic week in may. >> comey is fired. >> if he's gone, who's going to

investigate russia's ties to -- ooooh. >> it comes out that trump maybe linked information to the russians in the oval office. >> this is trap, no? no, it has to be. no, it can't be this easy. come on, come on. >> mueller is appointed. >> probably saying to himself i'm glad i'm not part of this anymore. i'm just like, la la la, hello? >> each night we were rewriting the show almost on the fly when that happened. i was very proud of that. >> trump and those bombshells notched trevor noah his best week ever. >> comey reminds me of every black mother. i brought you into this world, and, child, i can take you out of it. >> is donald trump the best thing that's ever happened to late-night tv? >> there's certainly days where it seems that way. >> next, too much trump? >> he refers to kim jong-un as rocket man, which beats the

other nickname he gave him, little kim. >> maybe don't make it sound like he's an action packed new movie franchise. just call him lil' kim. >> then there are also times where it's hard to feel like you're not being redundant. pre-shaken sodas. peoe having their seat kicked on an airplane. being rammed by a shopping cart. sitting in gum. and walking into a glass door. but for everyone else, there's directv. for #1 rated customer satisfaction over cable, switch to directv and get a $200 reward card. call 1-800-directv.

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here's johnny. >> there was only one real king of late-night. >> we've got a real humdinger of a show tonight. >> johnny carson held court for 30 years. but when it came to politics, he chose punchlines over political attacks. razzing presidents like ronald reagan. >> did you see the picture of reagan riding his horse on the ranch with george bush riding behind with a pooper scooper? >> he was looking for the joke of it. he would look for the silliness of it. he wasn't a member of the resistance, let's put it that way. >> well, i don't know, brian. >> my fellow americans. >> you just remember those things, you know. >> former "snl" cast member joe piscopo took his own jabs at president reagan. >> if you vote for me again in 1984, you'll receive this

handsome set of ginsu steak knives. >> piscopo said back then, late night hosts did not attack. >> johnny carson, he would always joke about nixon. >> you're not going to lend me your makeup man, are you? >> he would joke about gerald karif, b kari ford. >> the tonight show jay leno kept it light. >> a lot of people think -- because of the kiss at the convention. >> leno, was, you can't tell how i vote. you have no idea how i vote from listening to me. >> even david letterman, the master of stinging insults, held back. >> does it bother you i'm always yakking about stuff? >> no. i'm glad you're saying my name. >> if you press david, what do i know? i don't know anything, i'm an idiot who tells jokes.

>> then in 1999, jon stewart, a new late night host burst onto the scene. >> this whole trial is sexy. >> and the slant radically changed. >> there may be a woman candidate who will be elected president watching this evening. >> no, not on comedy central, sir. >> vaughn stewart really changed it. vaughn stewart brought big-time point of view to late night, consistent point of view. he wasn't always liberal, but he was extremely committed to certain issues. >> we are, as we speak, live from our election center studios in new york city's abandoned prostitute district. >> it was the 2000 presidential campaign when the show went from being mostly about pop culture to really focusing on the election. >> steve bowdow was the executive producer on the daily show. >> by then the show was a political show, and it pretty much has been ever since. >> good news for mitt romney, he has won tonight. we can announce this right now. most of the confederacy.

>> giovanni russonello writes the best of late night column for "the new york times." >> mulling over certain compact news story and teasing out all the ironies of it has become the sort of the rubric for almost everybody in late night. >> responding to trump's tweets can be a full-time job. and i know because it's my full-time job. >> late-night now had a blueprint. new shows were spawning new talent. >> vaughn stewart is the jumping off point for stephen colbert. >> mr. trevor noah. >> trevor noah. >> welcome to "the daily show." >> and john oliver. >> the late-night lineup exploded even more with trump, all of them covering politics and the president 24/7. >> how has he changed the landscape? >> just crazily changed. basically just learn more about trump now. it's really not topical humor. it's trump humor. >> are there nights where it

feels like too much trump or it's overkill? >> yeah. i think there are most nights where it feels that way. >> kim jong-un as rocket man. >> kim jong-un, rocket man. >> kim jong-un as rocket man. >> that's not a dis. that's a cool nickname. >> with so much trump news -- >> which beats the other nickname he gave him, lil' kim. >> hosts have no choice but to riff on the same material. >> the pace of the news is so much faster. >> trevor noah. >> what's going on, folks? >> steve bowdow now runs the daily show with trevor noah who took over for jon stewart as host in 2015. >> fire ants are coming together to save each other. >> in a way, i admire these ants. >> they invited us in for a sneak peek behind the creative curtain of their shows. >> we watch video clips. we throw jokes around the room. >> i like that better than, we take maybe an hour and a half to rewrite the show, tape it at 6:30, and get to go home. that's the normal way.

it doesn't happen very much anymore. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> in the age of trump, shows are sometimes turned upside down. >> i now just got a piece of information in my ear that scaramucci has just resigned. >> at the 11th hour -- >> when is the last time you had to blow up the scripts? >> yesterday. the mooch couldn't make it to day 11. >> the guy got fired before the job began. >> being able to plan ahead has become virtually impossible. >> and now the president tweets again. >> you can't make this up. i'm loving every minute of it. >> five minutes after 9:00 with piscopo in the morning. >> joe piscopo doesn't mind the rapid pace of trump news. >> it's a gift from heaven. it's a gift from god. everybody's so upset. oh, the vitriol, the hate, the divide. i am loving it. ♪ it's time for you >> the former snl comic now hosts a conservative radio talk show. >> i campaigned in florida. i spoke at a trump/pence rally.

>> i've known donald 25 years. >> as someone who voted for trump, you don't get angry at all the attacks from late night comics? >> no. does it go too far? it does go far. is it disrespectful of the office of the presidency of the united states? i think so. >> let me read this presidential briefing. >> next, how far is too far? late night goes off the rails. >> you're the presidunce. but you're turning into a real [ bleep ] tator. ♪ i'm jimmy, this is my definition of fresh since 1983. ♪

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♪ good evening. from hofstra university, i'm lester holt. >> it's debate night on snl. october 2016. this was alec baldwin's debut as donald trump. >> our jobs are fleeing this country. they're going to mexico. they're going to china. [ laughter ] if hillary knew how, she would have done it already, period, end of story, i won the debate, i stayed calm just like i promised, and it is over. good night, hofstra. >> baldwin was winging it. later he told the late show's stephen colbert that the first time he tried out trump was

during his snl dress rehearsal. >> it's totally a caricature. you pick a few things. i'm sitting in the room, left eyebrow up, right eyebrow down, shove your face like you're trying to suck the chrome off the fender of a car. >> mr. trump, two more minutes. >> the thing about the blacks -- [ laughter ] >> as he sparred with kate mckinnon's hilarious hillary clinton, viewers ate it up. >> this man is clearly unfit to be commander in chief. >> wrong. >> he is a bully. >> shut up. >> he started the birther movement. >> you did. [ laughter ] >> after that night, baldwin's rendition of trump was forever cemented in america's psyche. >> and number four. >> "saturday night live" now has a permanent character. they always had presidents, but this is now this iconic "saturday night live" character.

>> send in steve bannon. >> members of trump's team gave "snl" even more red meat. ♪ [ phone buzzing ] >> kate mckinnon stole the show as trump's overworked campaign manager kellyanne conway. >> do you want a drink? >> jesus. >> and post-election kate's impersonation of an unhinged conway, trying to win over cnn's jake tapper. >> i'm not going to be ignored, jake. >> gave snl's version of fatal attraction another hit. >> i'm here to swallow gum, and i'm here to take names. >> comedienne melissa mccarthy struck gold as press secretary sean spicy spicer. >> and our president will not be deterred. >> driving his podium into the press. >> are you kidding me? [ laughter ]

>> a lot of it is just funny. and, again, all credit goes to trump for that. he sets that up. >> it's "saturday night live." >> trump gave "snl" a record-shattering season. >> come over to daddy. >> and brought baldwin back for another round. >> the president of the united states. >> snl has historically always gone after presidents. >> hey, hold on, harry. why so tense? >> arguably no one did a better ronald reagan than comic joe piscopo. >> i think alec baldwin is absolutely brilliant. folks get upset when they see them portray trump but you don't cut funny. you've got to have a sense of humor about it. >> so trump should embrace these caricatures. >> absolutely. donald trump should invite alex baldwin to the white house. >> but so far, trump's not laughing. after baldwin's debut, the president hate tweeted his disdain. just tried watching "snl,"

unwatchable, totally biased, not funny, and the baldwin impersonation, just can't get any worse. sad. >> i do miss my old life. >> we all, do, sir. [ laughter ] >> as the trump jokes escalated, the president's distaste for late night intensified. >> you attract more skin heads than free rogaine. >> in may "the late show's" stephen colbert found himself in hot water when he blasted trump in an over the top profanity-laden meltdown. >> the only thing your mouth is good for is being vladimir putin's [ bleep ] holster. >> his tirade sparked a firestorm in the press and fueled a #firecolbert campaign on twitter. trump did not respond right away. >> trump was obviously restrained for about the first six months of his presidency. >> but days after the attack, the president surfaced, condemning colbert in a "time" magazine interview saying, quote, you see a no-talent guy like colbert.

there's nothing funny about what he says. >> he was probably watching these shows and probably feeling offended every night. at that moment, we realized that he couldn't take it anymore. >> the only thing smaller than your hands is your tax returns. >> trump went on slamming colbert over his improved ratings. the guy was dying, by the way, they were going take him off television. then he started attacking me and he started doing better. [ cheers and applause ] colbert's response was, to say the least, e fusz -- effusive. >> the president of the united states has personally come after me and my show. and there's only one thing to say. [ laughs ] yay! [ cheers and applause ] >> i think when trump tweets about one of these shows, they probably have a party. they must love that because that means they're scoring points. >> months later, trump took aim at late night again tweeting,

"late night hosts are dealing with the democrats for their very unfunny and repetitive material. always anti-trump. should we get equal time?" it did not take long for a late night retort. jimmy kimmel tweeted, excellent repor point, mr. president. you should quit that boring job. i'll let you have my show all to yourself. coming up, crossing the line from satire to activism. >> if your baby is going to die and it doesn't have to, it shouldn't matter how much money you make. to their breeding grounds. except for these two fellows. this time next year, we're gonna be sitting on an egg. i think we're getting close! make a u-turn... u-turn? recalculating... man, we are never gonna breed. just give it a second. you will arrive in 92 days. nah, nuh-uh. nope, nope, nope.

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♪ i have something to say here. donald trump, if you're watching, first of all, you're a bad president, please resign. second of all -- [ cheers & applause ] >> in the trump era, the "late show's" stephen colbert's satirical voice cracked the code. but colbert's method of madness is in sharp contrast to what not long ago was a winning formula on nbc's "the tonight show."

>> wow, i look fantastic. [ cheers and applause ] >> the thing about jimmy is he does an impression of trump, a very good impression of trump. >> all right, me, we've got a big interview with jimmy fallon coming up. let's be honest. fallon is a lightweight. no way he deserves to interview me. the only one qualified to interview me is me. [ laughter ] >> bill carter is the author of the late shift. >> he doesn't want to be in the mix of this is my point of view and i'm pounding away at the president. he knows it's not his strength. he doesn't want to do it. >> i hope they're going to understand. >> just months before the election, jimmy fallon was vilified for being too soft on trump. his ratings suffered. [ cheers ] >> yes! ♪ >> was interviewing trump and playing with him a big deal? >> giovanni russonello is a

culture reporter for "the new york times." >> i think he's acknowledged since then that, yes, it was a huge deal and he was surprised by the kind of blowback that he got, but he has to reckon with it. >> today, trump says he believes in torturing prisoners, which is bad news for melania, and -- >> like fallon, jimmy kimmel stuck to a more traditional show on abc. >> he's sort of like your all-american 1950s guy. he's not especially progressive in his social views. i don't think of him out there to bash conservatives. >> that persona changed last may, when kimmel, through tears, revealed a health scare involving his newborn son. >> it's a terrifying thing. i'm -- you know, my wife is back in the recovery room. she has no idea what's going on. >> kimmel's emotional story became a call to action on health care. >> if your baby is going to die and it doesn't have to, it shouldn't matter how much money you make. i think that's something that whether you're a republican or a

democrat or something else, we all agree on that, right? i mean we do. [ applause ] >> he puts himself out there in the middle of the health care discussion. i think he really zeroed in on that, and it's kind of made him a heroic figure for some people. >> then kimmel was fully immersed in the political fray when he had on the louisiana senator who was making a last-ditch effort to pass a new health reform bill. >> the jimmy kimmel test, i think, should be no family should be denied medical care, emergency or otherwise, because they can't afford it. can that be the jimmy kimmel test? [ cheers and applause ] >> is that oversimplifying it? >> hey, man, you're on the right track. now, we've got to be able to pay for it, and that's the challenge. >> i can think of a way to pay for it is don't give a huge tax cut to millionaires like me and instead leave it how it is. that would be one way. >> months later in september,

kimmel went on a three-night tirade, announcing that cassidy's proposed jimmy kimmel test failed. >> this guy, bill cassidy, just lied right tow my face. >> they continued to duke it out when the senator said kimmel didn't understand the bill. >> could it be, senator cassidy, that the problem is that i do understand, and you got caught with your gopenis out? is that possible? >> kimmel didn't let up. >> i don't want to turn this into a kanye and taylor swift-type situation. >> this time calling out trump. >> there's no way president trump read this bill. the democrats should just rename it ivankacare. guaranteed he gets onboard. >> kimmel is not a political actor by nature, but the entire sphere of late night has become so politicized that it's almost within my job description now. >> as trump's wild ride continued, jimmy fallon was pulled in too. it was the horrible events in charlottesville, virginia, that provoked him. >> even though "the tonight show" isn't a political show, it's my responsibility to stand

up against intolerance and extremism as a human being. what happened over the weekend in charlottesville, virginia, was just disgusting. the fact that it took the president two days to come out and clearly denounce racists and white supremacists is shameful. >> it was a moment when the gloves came off. i think even fallon siaid this s no way for a president to act and he needs to apologize. >> do you think he was reluctant to do this? >> i felt like his mode of delivery was strange. it just made me think, oh, he's just telling this like he tells his jokes. >> ignoring it is just as bad as supporting it. >> so kimmel is still mining that divide between am i all the all-american guy, or am i the critic? it's one that fallon has decisively sort of abdicated that choice. he said, i'm not going to even budge. >> fallon ditched the hair-messing but continued the trump mocking.

>> buckle up because i'm coming in hot. this is going to be a crazy one. daddy came to play. >> i think when you look at the 11:30 shows, they're different kinds of television shows. some people want to turn on late night shows and they want to see hard takes on politics, and other people use it for escapism. i think it's important that those shows still exist. and i think jimmy does that better than anybody. >> coming up, the new faces of late night. >> i won't deport you. let's roll! off. and we covered it, july first, twenty-fifteen. talk to farmers.

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♪ i'm jimmy, this is my definition of fresh since 1983. ♪

♪ . >> ready? i hold my breath for a very long time. >> the ritual is labor of love for comedian anthony attemny. he's transforming into president trump. >> let's roll! >> atamanuik is the break out star of a show unlike anything else on tv. comedy central's the president's show, imagines donald trump hosting his own late night series. >> i turn the oval office into a classic late night set. >> anthony channels a darker version of trump. >> who is the person you hate? >> it's me. >> what did you figure out early on about playing him t? >> he has sort of like an animal thing with his jaw, where he

pushes his jaw forward and does this mussolini sort of turn. >> anthony got his start at new york improv clubs. >> we would never plagiarize michelle obama. >> which is where he realized he did a pretty good trump. >> you're performing at ucb and then you pitch this at comedy central. >> the pitch was he's bored at the white house but always wanted a tv show. i think it's important to show who's being nice and who's being not nice. >> the president show was born. >> i'm the president. can you believe it? >> airing once a week it looks like a real late night talk show. with celebrity guests and banter with trump's sidekick, vp mike pence. >> you know what? get out of here. get him out. i don't want to talk to you

either. get him out of here. >> what we tried to do is turn them into a dark version of abbot and costello. >> like art imitating life, others in anthony's administration have had short runs. like chief strategist steve bannon. >> who put that door in the doorway? >> you guys heard me in the front, though, right? >> and his infamous white house communications director. >> i'm so good with it being short, do the mooch. >> played by sex in the city actor mario canton. >> snap out of it. >> the real fun begins when potis leaves the studio for improvis improvised sketches. >> this is really terrible. >> what are we off-roading? >> in one popular segment

anthony's trump visits his childhood home in queens new york. >> it's a beautiful neighborhood. >> what an awful block. >> what did you decide to bring your character here in. >> i always wanted to do the roots of trump. my version of him is like sort of petulant and always rejecting his past. >> this is where donald trump is born. >> okay, i don't need my own biography, mike. >> the formula worked. the show vaulted to the top of comedy central ratings. this demand for trump humor brought another comic to an unexpected place. >> i would never think to watch a late night show on netflix on a daily basis because that's not what it does. but it's interesting that you landed there. >> chelsea handler landed netflix's first ever talk show "chelsea." >> donald trump, monkeys. >> viewers binged her outrageous

rants. >> a little place i like to call mungy business. >> about her least favorite perso person. >> how much has your show changed v changed as a result of the trump presidency? >> a lot. the symptoms are exhibit a, patchy hair loss, exhibit b, vichu vision problems and squinting. >> would you say you're taking him down? >> i would like to see him brought down to the ground. i want him to be in prison. i think a lot of people want him to be in prison. >> she used her hour long show to delve into issues like daca. >> 99% of them have no criminal record. that means they've never obstructed justice, colluded with russia, defrauded people through a fake university, bragged about sexual assault or

partnered with a racist maniac. >> in the hand handler chose politics over late night. after a rocky two seasons. >> don't you know when to stop filming? >> the comedian said she was ending her netflix show to focus on activism. >> it's important for me to use my platform for good. this is serious stuff. so we don't have a choice to opt out. >> has trump been good for the chelsea handlers of the world? >> i mean in terms of comedy, like, oh, god, you must have so much material. like you can take the material. i don't want this kind of comedy. no. >> same goes for anthony atamanuik. >> we're going to take people who are illegal immigrants and ship them to other countries. what do you think of that? >> no. >> what do you think of the day trump becomes president? i'll probably put some stones in

my pocket and walk out into the ocean. >> i think it's more like good cop, insane president. >> there's no way anyone who comes after will ever take up as much ink on this show than we've already spilled on president trump. >> that is going to be a bas fastinating thing to watch if it happens in four years or whenever it happens. they're going to be like addicts that have to completely go cold turkey. >> i'm sorry, have you seen donald trump? if there's one thing he's never going to get, it's a clean bill of health. >> there's never going to be somebody like trump again. >> i even thought maybe we won't talk about donald trump much tonight, and then he opened his mouth and all manner of stupid came out. >> this is one of a kind situation both for the country and for the comedians. >> i have the power to destroy

any country on earth, but i promise you it'll be america first. see you next week. bye-bye. the following is a cnn special report.