A solemn Stephen Colbert took the stage at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York on Monday evening and told his Late Show audience, “I come to you tonight a broken man.”
The host said he was “shocked” to find out—along with the rest of the country—that earlier in the day his favorite new White House official, Anthony Scaramucci, will no longer be serving as President Trump’s communications director.
“Yes, The Mooch is toast,” Colbert announced. “The front-stabber has been backstabbed. He said he was going to fire everybody and I’ve got to admit, he delivered.”
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Of Scaramucci’s whopping 10 days on the job, Colbert said, “That’s not even a whole pay period.” He suggested they serve “what’s left of his welcome cake” at his going away party. “They can change ‘congratulations’ to ‘congratu-later!’”
The Late Show host recounted how he was getting dressed for tonight’s show in his dressing room when he saw the news breaking in the lower third on CNN behind him in the mirror. “That can’t be what it says,” he thought to himself.
Scaramucci has Trump’s new chief of staff, General John Kelly—who replaced Reince Priebus—to thank for his ouster. “Kelly is the polar opposite of Reince Priebus,” Colbert remarked. While Kelly is a military man from Boston, Priebus is a “Washington insider” from Wisconsin. And while John Kelly has “two first names,” Reince Priebus “has no recognizable names at all.”
Kelly reportedly let Scaramucci go because he wanted “more structure, less of Game of Thrones,” Colbert said.
“That’s not a fair comparison,” he added. “With Game of Thrones, you have to wait a whole week for a new beheading.”
Later in his monologue, Colbert crooned the "sad part" of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." Moving on from the iconic "Scaramouche! Scaramouche!" lyrics, the host sang, "Mama, I just got canned. Barely got to the White House, said some dumb stuff now I'm out. Mama, my job had just begun. And now I've gone and thrown it all away."
