Exactly two months ago, after President Donald Trump responded to his election loss by declaring victory, Stephen Colbert choked tears during his monologue he said to the viewers, “We all knew he would do this. What I didn’t know is it would hurt so much. “
He hadn’t seen anything yet. But this time Colbert wasn’t sad, he was furious.
The Late show host threw the jokes away again Wednesday night and went live on CBS to share his shocked reaction to the violent uprising earlier in the day, sparked by the president’s election wings.
“I really want to do the show we’re going to do,” Colbert began. “And I really don’t want to do the show. Because lord have mercy, there are some dark topics we talk about every now and then during the show, but I’ve rarely been more upset than tonight. “
Speaking directly to Republican members of Congress who support Trump, the host asked, ‘Have you had enough? After five years of coddling this president’s fascist rhetoric, guess whose followers want to burn down the Reichstag? “
“Who could have seen this coming?” Colbert asked. “Everyone! Even dummies like me. This is the most shocking, most tragic, least surprising I’ve ever seen. For years people have been telling you cowards that if you let the president lie about our democracy over and over and then you join him. adds that lie and says he’s right when you’re sure he’s not, there’s a terrible price to pay. But you just never thought you’d pay it too. “
From there, he singled out Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), who was caught in front of the camera “ raising your stupid fist to the crowd outside the Capitol. ” In the first line of the night that could be considered a joke, Colbert said, “It’s like Black Power, but the opposite. There really should be a name for that. And of course he has to keep his fist closed because if he opened it you’d see all the blood on his hands. ”
Then the host took over Fox News. “Do you think maybe years of peddling his conspiracy theories had anything to do with this?” Colbert asked, mocking the network for claiming that his “news” and “opinion” sides are different. Like the “lubricated catheters” they sell during ad breaks, he said, “You know where to put your excuses and you can skip the lubrication.”
Colbert’s monologue, which was even longer than usual, lasted another 10 minutes when he attacked President Trump for claiming to support “law and order” while encouraging his followers to overtake the Capitol building by force. “To be clear, if I said that, I would be arrested for inciting a riot,” he said. “But of course you can’t arrest the president … for another 15 days.”
“Now I have said before, violence is the last refuge of the incompetents,” Colbert said later. “And if the past four years have taught us anything, it’s that there are a lot of incompetent people in our leadership.”
Looking ahead to 2022, “when all those Republicans who, make no mistake, are responsible for what happened today and run for re-election,” he said, “let’s not forget them who they showed up for today: cynical cowards who believe that the voters should not choose who rules this country. Let’s hope the voters prove them all wrong. “
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