A day after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race, the host behind “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” spent part of his Monday night episode’s opening monologue recounting Biden’s accomplishments in office.
“I believe he has been a great president,” Colbert told his audience. “He steered this country out of a horrific pandemic. He saved countless lives by encouraging people to get vaccinated. He brought the economy back. He rallied our allies, he reasserted America’s place in the world stage, and most inspiring of all, at no time was he Donald Trump. Inspiring.”
Colbert said he was going to miss Biden — and noted that “on this very program right over there on September 10, 2015, I encouraged then-Vice President Biden to run. He ignored me for five years, and then he did it!”
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Colbert then announced that he has retired his pair of Biden-style aviator sunglasses, which will now reside on his set’s backdrop, “in a place of honor next to Captain America’s shield.”
The host added, “Those aviators did the hardest job of all. They made it seem like I had a Joe Biden impression.”
Colbert noted that he doesn’t have an impression for Vice President Kamala Harris — who will now serve as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. So instead, he donned a new pair of aviators. “‘Hey everybody, I’m Kamala Harris,'” he said in impression that was, tongue-in-cheek, still more Biden-esque. “‘I’m gonna be you’re new president, Jack!’ We’re still working on it.”
Those aviators weren’t the only thing that Colbert joked that he would end.
“I am officially retiring all of my ‘Joe Biden is old’ jokes,” he said. “They were starting to get tired anyway. Just like Joe Biden. That was the last one, I swear! Now, I’m going to un-retire them and to use on Donald Trump.” With that, he took a binder labeled “Joe Biden Old,” and flipped it to read, “Donald Trump Old.”
Colbert opened his monologue by saluting Biden “for the selfless act of stepping aside from being the most powerful person in the world for the greater good. I believe that this act puts Joe Biden in league with history’s most selfless leaders: Roman general Cincinnatus; the father of our country, George Washington; and Kim Cattrall, who has stepped down as Samantha after Pelosi showed her the polls.
“Biden made this historic announcement in a letter that said ‘it has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President.’ Adding, ‘I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term,'” he noted. “There it is. courage, grace. You don’t see that every day. Courage, grace, humility, true patriotism. I will tell you one thing, that guy would make a great president.”
Colbert noted the irony that Biden made his announcement on Twitter, “the social media site owned by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who has pledged $45 million a month to a new super PAC backing Trump. I understand, he kind of had to. But it just gave Elon more clicks. It’d be like Greta Thunberg announcing her latest climate proposal on Gas Station TV.”
The host noted the immediate change in his mood: “What is this strange feeling? It’s like my blood is flowing again. For the for the first time in months, I don’t want to build a little pillow fort and crawl in there with a hoagie and a tub of frosting. Is this is this excitement? Is this is this hope? Is there any way to physically embody this feeling?”
Colbert’s Monday night episode (11:35 p.m. ET on CBS) also includes guest Keanu Reeves, who joins Colbert on the ground in the “Big Questions with Even Bigger Stars” segment. And musician Charles Wesley Godwin additionally performs on the episode.
Oh, and Colbert is getting into the Charli XCX of it all, just as Harris’ campaign also embraces being a part of Charli XCX’s ‘Brat’ summer:
Watch this part of Colbert’s monologue here, courtesy CBS/The Late Show:
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