When comedian Robert Smigel appeared on The Last Laugh podcast early this summer, he revealed that his greatest creation, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, would almost certainly be entering the 2020 election fray—despite a deadly pandemic that had moved much of the campaign off the trail.
On Wednesday night, he made good on that promise by delivering a hilarious focus group full of very real Trump supporters on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
“The Trump presidency has been four years of him making shocking and hate-filled remarks,” Colbert said at the top. “I’ve often wondered, is there any message, is there anything he could do, anything he could say, anything he could put out that would cause him to lose his most loyal supporters?”
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To answer that question, the host turned to Triumph, who explained, “Despite the travesties of his coronavirus response, the failed economy, and California’s exploding trees, President Trump’s loyal followers have stuck with him through the good times and the end times.”
“One wonders if anything the president says or does could cost him their ‘herd mentality,’” he continued. “So we brought these actual Trump supporters to this actual focus group research center, where this actual moderator showed them a series of actual fake Trump campaign ads.”
Throughout the sketch, Triumph stayed uncharacteristically quiet behind the one-way mirror, sipping bleach out of a martini glass, as the Trump fans managed to roast themselves by barely batting an eye as the moderator showed them increasingly absurd ads for the president’s re-election campaign.
With the help of voice actor Jeff Bergman, who brings Trump to life on the Colbert-produced Our Cartoon President, Smigel and his team somehow managed to get this group of MAGA fanatics to defend electrified Confederate statues, a new “best of three” election plan, and child labor to replace essential workers since, as Trump puts it in one ad, kids are “immune to the Hong Kong fluey virus.”
When the Trump supporters heard fake “leaked” audio of Trump asking his medical experts if they have “tried putting a person in the microwave” to cure COVID-19, they accused the moderator of selective editing. “Maybe there’s a sliver of, like, well, maybe microwaving would do something to help,” one woman offered hopefully.
Only one man objected, saying, “If you admit to that, that you would possibly think about using an immigrant in a microwave, like, that crossed your mind? Take an old person, that’s done nothing wrong, and microwaving him? Nobody’s going to go for that.” Then he added, “I mean, I would still vote for him, but that was stupid.”
“There you have it. The people have spoken, occasionally in coherent sentences,” Triumph concluded at the end of the segment. “And in the end, no matter whom you support, we can all agree, America is blessed with an informed electorate, and the future is brighter than ever…for me to poop on.”
For more, listen to Triumph the Insult Comic Dog creator Robert Smigel on The Last Laugh podcast.
