Barely an hour after President Donald Trump left his podium in the House chamber Tuesday night, Stephen Colbert delivered a nearly 20-minute rebuke of his State of the Union address.
The Late Show host hit on everything from Nancy Pelosi’s measured response—she “didn’t stick out her tongue once”—to Trump’s boasts about overseeing the “hottest economy anywhere in the world,” or as Colbert put it, “If it wasn’t my economy, perhaps I’d be dating it.”
But the high point came when Colbert highlighted two deeply contradictory quotes from the president’s speech. At one point, Trump claimed, “Working-class Americans are left to pay the price for mass illegal immigration: reduced jobs.” And then later, he said, “More people are working now than at any time in the history of our country.”
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“Both of those things are true, if you don’t think about it too hard,” Colbert said as Trump. “I don’t. I don’t think about it at all.”
And on the president’s assertion that “tolerance for illegal immigration” is “actually very cruel,” the host shot back, “I mean, not kids in cages cruel, but, still pretty bad.” He added, “And this is my point ultimately: tolerance is cruelty, war is peace, freedom is slavery and I weigh 239 pounds.”
Colbert ended his monologue with a play on one of Trump’s closing lines: “I’m asking you to choose greatness, no matter the trials we face.”
“Well, in that case, sir, I choose you face a trial,” he replied, “because that will be great.”
