Even as the FBI has begun making sweeping arrests of the seditionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol last week, Stephen Colbert asked, “You know who’s not taking alt-right terrorism seriously at all? The president.”
During his Late Show monologue Tuesday night, the host zeroed in on a new report that President Trump laid blame for the riot on “antifa people” in a call with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy this week.
“What the hell are you talking about?!” Colbert exclaimed. “You invited those rioters to your rally in Washington. They were wearing your shirts, your hats, waving your flag! And they cheered when you told them to go march on the Capitol. From now on, neurologists are going to hold up pictures like this to stroke victims and say, ‘Can you tell me whose supporters these are?’ And if they don’t say, ‘They’re MAGA people’ you know it’s time to take away their car keys.”
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The “antifa excuse” was “so ridiculous,” the host said, that “even the normally spine-free zone of Kevin McCarthy” pushed back against the president. “Finding out this late in the game that Kevin McCarthy has the ability to name reality in the face of the president’s lies is like finding out that Tom Hanks in Castaway had a boat the whole time!”
As for what comes next, Colbert did not hold out much hope that enough Republicans would be willing to vote for Trump’s removal from office in his final week. “Republican lawmakers desperately need the president’s supporters to like them,” he said. “I mean, their hands are tied—almost literally.”
And in response to the Republicans who are now calling for “unity” after supporting the effort to overturn the election results, he did not hold back. “OK, let’s unify in punishing all the insurrectionists and their political leaders who legitimized their homicidal fantasies,” he said. “There can be no healing until the sickness is identified and removed and you can do it now! The tumor lost his Twitter feed!”
Now that Democrats are taking action to “stop this from happening again by getting rid of the guy who caused it,” Colbert asked Republicans, “What are you willing to do to help? Because, so far, you have done nothing!”
“They were simply certifying a free and fair election—an election that you knew was free and fair—but you lied about it anyway,” he continued. “Because you wanted the campaign cash and the eyeballs and you were afraid to make your boss and his MAGA monster mad!”
“Your lies legitimized the fantasies of a violent, anti-democratic mob that nearly got you and your colleagues killed, and did get a policeman murdered!” Colbert declared. “Now you want to use your hollow calls for unity to sweep it all under the rug? Well, good luck with that, brother, because the rioters also pooped on your rugs.”
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