Stephen Colbert went live after the one and only vice presidential debate Wednesday night. And he had some help from the man who played Mike Pence in Kamala Harris’ prep sessions, Pete Buttigieg.
After last week’s “flaming turd pile” of a debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, Colbert said he spent this one “in the middle” of his seat. “The vice president got a couple of good licks in,” Colbert said. “And Senator Harris picked up a broken pool cue and beat Pence over the head with the Trump administration’s failures. All night, Pence wouldn’t give one straight answer, which is kind of weird, because normally he likes everything straight.”
The only thing that really stood out to the Late Show host was the moment that “everyone’s buzzing” about.
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“Now, Senator Harris landed some blows, and Mike Pence dodged and parried,” Colbert said, “but ultimately it’s a vice presidential debate and there’s a limit to just how interesting—oh my god, look at his hair! He’s so full of crap, he’s attracting flies!”
“All jokes aside, thoughts and prayers to that fly’s family,” Colbert joked. “It’s got to quarantine for two weeks now. We’ve got to get that fly to Walter Reed.”
“It stayed there for over two minutes!” he added. “Two minutes. Meaning that fly has a longer attention span than the president of the United States. That’s a long time for a fly. It made a life there.”
Just when it seemed that Colbert may have moved on, he joked that Pence answered a question about Trump’s refusal to condemn white supremacism with, “I want to point out that I have a Black friend...by which I mean this fly on my head.”
When Buttigieg joined Colbert, he made a point to tell the host that he was seated far enough back in the debate hall that he “didn’t see the fly.”
“You missed one of the most exciting moments of the evening, actually,” Colbert told him. “That’s a fly I’m sure could have gotten out of a spider web faster. I don’t know how much hairspray Pence has in there, but he really looked like he was glued to the spot.”
Later, when the host asked, “Who played the fly in the mock debates?” Buttigieg replied, “You know, I have to say the fly was the only thing that we didn’t think about or contemplate. That and just how often Pence would interrupt the moderator, that was the other thing that took me by surprise.” But other than that, he said the vice president was “pretty predictable.”
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