Stephen Colbert began his first “The Late Show” of 2024 with some mirth, joking 2024 is here despite warnings from scientists. And, Colbert continued, because we failed to heed those warnings, “we’re having the same presidential election with the same 2 old men as last time. Only older and samer!”
He was of course talking about Joe Biden and Donald Trump. But Colbert used that as a way to talk about the upcoming Republican primary elections and specifically candidate Nikki Haley.
Haley recently embarrassed herself when, while asked what caused the U.S. Civil War, she appeared to try as hard as possible to avoid taking a stand that might offend certain conservatives and instead only said it had to do with a debate about “how government was gonna run. The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.”
Colbert noted how pretty much everyone dunked on Haley for not noting the actual cause (slavery) and then played a clip of her attempt to address the error later on. After that, he juxtaposed Haley’s remarks to criticism she received from Donald Trump, who at a recent speech said “I’d say slavery, sort of the obvious answer. Yes.”
“Slavery is the obvious answer to what caused the Civil War. Just like Donald Trump is the obvious answer to what caused Civil War 2,” Colbert joked.
From there, Colbert zoomed in on subsequent comments Trump made about the Civil War, particularly when, while describing how much of an interest he has in the topic, Trump said, “I just find it, I’m so attracted to seeing it really.”
Colbert then ran a clip that parodied the Ken Burns documentary about the war, in which a soldier writing home talks about the battlefield in essentially pornographic terms.
After some more jokes along these lines, Colbert highlighted how Trump criticized Haley as, “a globalist. You know, she likes the globe.”
“This isn’t good. She likes the globe,” Colbert said, doing his Trump impersonation. “Not me. I’m a misogynist, because I love a good massage.”
There’s a lot more of course, and you can watch the entire monologue at the top of the page now.
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