In the real world, first lady Melania Trump has released just one short statement about Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury through her spokesperson, pushing back on the notion that she didn’t want her husband to win the 2016 election and saying the book belongs in the “bargain fiction section.”
She had a lot more to say—in the form of Laura Benanti’s uncanny impression—on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Wednesday night.
Appearing via satellite from the White House with a spoon in her hand that she swore was not being used for “digging,” the first lady began by calling Wolff’s reporting “pure fiction,” calling it a “fake book” and saying, “every single word in it is lie.”
“So you didn’t cry on Election Night?” Colbert asked. In the book, Wolff quotes Donald Trump Jr., who allegedly told a friend that Melania was “in tears—and not of joy.”
“No, that was true,” Melania told Colbert. “But they were tears of happiness. You know, like you do at your wedding or every morning in the mirror.” But she doesn’t always “cry tears of joy” in her role as first lady. “Sometimes, I have the dead-eyed stare of contentment,” she added.
“Now, is it true, as the book claims, that everybody who knows Trump calls him an ‘idiot’?” the host asked.
“Not everybody,” Melania replied, before delivering her punchline. “One of the grandchildren can’t even talk yet!”