President Trump’s address to the nation on Wednesday night preempted “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” so, to kick off his monologue, the CBS host explained why he wasn’t doing his show live to cover the speech. The answer was simple: he didn’t want to.
Colbert kicked off his monologue by explaining what had happened, noting that “every network agreed to air old Grandpa Ramblepants’ Sundown Jamboree.” The late night host admitted that he and his team tossed around the idea of doing the show live, so they could dig in on whatever Trump said, but ultimately decided not to.
“Just to give you a little peek behind the showbiz curtain, we would had to have watched it, and I don’t want to do that no more,” Colbert said bluntly.
Colbert immediately roasted the president for randomly announcing the address on Tuesday afternoon, via a social media post. In it, Trump wrote that “It has been a great year for our country, and the best is yet to come.”
“Kind of a mixed signal to announce an emergency national address, because everything’s going great,” Colbert said. “It’s like your mom calling and saying, ‘Hey, honey, I know you’ve got work, but is there any way you could fly down here tomorrow? Because your dad…….is doing great.”
The late night host also pointed out that he wasn’t the only major CBS program to get preempted by Trump’s speech. The “Survivor” finale was also airing at the same time, and Trump’s speech fell right in the middle of it.
“Wait, unless that’s the final challenge,” Colbert joked. “‘Survivors, you’ve endured starvation, extreme heat and poisonous snakes. But for your final challenge, you must listen to a bitter old man talk about a ballroom.’”
You can watch Stephen Colbert’s full monologue in the video above.
