President Trump is insisting that the diplomats and world leaders gathered in New York for the United Nations General Assembly were laughing with him, not at him, when he used his global platform to claim he had accomplished more than any previous U.S. president. "What did you experience, as someone in the room?" Stephen Colbert asked New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Wednesday's Late Show. "Are you trying to create a diplomatic incident here, right now?" she asked, laughing. "Maybe I'm going to defuse one right now," Colbert replied.
The first laugh was "a spontaneous murmur amongst some people," Ardern said carefully, but after Trump said he hadn't expected that "little" laugh, "then people laughed with him." "That is very diplomatically stated," Colbert said. "No war between the United States and New Zealand, then." They went on to talk about how Ardern's partner nearly caused his own international incident while she was discussing steel tariffs with Trump, Colbert's obsession with Lord of the Rings, and the sometimes-awkward accessibility of New Zealand's head of government.
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