Stephen Colbert took the opportunity to rib Trump’s defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, who has faced a wave of misconduct allegations this past week, including a report Tuesday where multiple Fox News employees shared their concerns about the Fox & Friends host’s alleged alcoholism.
In his monologue Wednesday, Colbert showed an NBC News report detailing how Hegseth’s colleagues reported “more than a dozen occasions” where “they smelled alcohol on [Hegseth] before he went on air.”
“But come on,” Colbert joked, “It’s a show that starts at 6 a.m. on the weekend. I’m sure a lot of morning hosts are still feeling it from the night before. I mean, for Pete’s sake, this CBS Sunday morning logo does look hungover.”
Colbert added, “In Hegseth’s defense, none of the sources could recall an instance when Hegseth missed a scheduled appearance because he’d been drinking.”
“And that’s great,” he joked, “Because you know what everyone says when the drunk guy shows up at work: ‘Oh good, you’re here.‘”
The Late Night host continued, “Today, Hegseth forswore on-the-job drinking, saying, ‘This is the biggest deployment of my life and there won’t be a drop of alcohol on my lips while I’m doing it.‘”
Colbert described the announcement as “a bold pledge that can mean only one thing: he’s gonna butt-chug.”
Colbert acknowledged a Newsweek report noting that some of Hegseth’s colleagues claim he was always sober while on air, but joked that this didn’t help Hegseth’s case much:
“It means he was sober when he did this,” Colbert said, showing a 2015 clip of Hegseth throwing an axe on a public street and nearly injuring a nearby drummer.
Colbert also addressed the rumors that Donald Trump may be replacing Hegseth with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“While DeSantis actually has some defense qualifications, the replacement isn’t as good, because ‘Some in Trump’s orbit strongly dislike DeSantis,‘” said Colbert, quoting a report from The Wall Street Journal.
“Wow,” Colbert replied. “That is a weird way to find out I’m in Trump’s orbit.”
