Stephen Colbert came out swinging for House Republicans in his opening monologue Tuesday night, setting his sights on the absurd weeks-long debacle that has unfolded since Kevin McCarthy’s unprecedented ouster.
“For the last three weeks, the House GOP has repeatedly humiliated itself,” Colbert began, “with its inability to do even the simplest legislative function: pick a speaker of the House — proving themselves to be not so much a legislative body, but a flaming bag of poop left on the capitol’s doorstep.”
“But today was the piece d’restupid,” Colbert continued. “Because after multiple rounds of voting starting this morning, the GOP narrowed their choices from eight candidates down to one nominee, Minnesota Congressman Tom Emmer.”
On Tuesday, Emmer secured the GOP nomination, just hours before he withdrew his candidacy.
“Emmer is the House Majority Whip. He sits on the Financial Services Committee and perhaps most notably, he got two DUIs then sponsored legislation to lower the legal penalties that face accused drunk drivers,” Colbert recapped. “OK, so a little self-serving.”
Then Colbert really flipped — quite literally in this case. The late night host turned his attention to Emmers’ “most enduring legacy,” aka, that time he earned headlines for accidentally Zoom-ing in upside-down during a remote appearance in a House Financial Services Committee hearing.
“He’s the guy from this COVID-era Zoom meeting in this house committee,” Colbert set up before playing the video, and returned with a flipped-camera impersonation of Emmer.
“So maybe not the perfect candidate, but at least the Republicans were this close to having a functioning government — which is, of course, Donald Trump’s mortal enemy.” Colbert joked before bringing the story home with a tried-and-true Trump impression, reading out quotes from the former president’s recent Truth Social posts.
“I have many wonderful friends wanting to be speaker of the House, and some are truly great warriors RINO Tom Emmer, who I do not know well, is not one of them,” Trump wrote, using the acronym for “Republican in Name Only.”
As of posting, the current Republican nomination is Republican Conference Vice Chair Mike Johnson (R-La.) — who was previously defeated on an internal ballot by… Tom Emmer. So no doubt, the late night hosts will have plenty of fresh material to work with again tonight.
Watch Colbert’s monologue in the video above.
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