Stephen Colbert Brutally Mocks Melania Trump’s Naked ‘Courage’

“Trump’s struggling campaign needs all the help it can get to stay on message these days,” Stephen Colbert said during his Late Show monologue Wednesday night. “And thankfully,” he added, Melania Trump is here to do her part.

Ahead of her big memoir release next month, the former first lady put out a video on Wednesday in which she addressed her history of posing nude on magazine covers for the first time. “Why do I stand proudly behind my nude modeling work?” she asked, before presenting a “more pressing question”: “Why has the media chosen to scrutinize my celebration of the human form in a fashion photo shoot?”

“I’m sorry, what’s happening?” a comically scandalized Colbert replied. “Why would you ask that?! No one—absolutely no one—is asking about your nude modeling.”

In response to Melania Trump’s second question, the host said, “Ah yes, the thing the media is definitely scrutinizing: the 24 year old naked photoshoot of Melania on Trump’s plane.”

Then, after joking about her famous White House initiative “Be Breast,” Colbert commended “Melania’s courage to bring up her old nudes, when absolutely no one was talking about them.”

While it remains unclear why Melania Trump decided to take on this issue, it may have been in response to The View host Ana Navarro, who earlier in the summer posted a nude photo of the former first lady as a way to push back against “vile sexual remarks” about Kamala Harris. “You wanna go low?” Navarro asked. “I’ll happily go 20,000 leagues under the sea.”