Monday, Late Show In his opening monologue, Stephen Colbert (CBS) addressed seven CBS staffers who were filming in the Longworth House Office Building after-hours. After making light of “first degree puppetry”, he blamed Capitol Police’s insensitivity on “Putin’s puppet” for the January 6 riots.
Colbert explained that after two full days of filming in congressional office buildings, “After they’d finished their interviews, [my staffers]Capitol Police approached Triumph, my people and took them into custody. Fox News reports that the team of Fox News reporters had been “escorted away from the Jan. 6 Committee hearing earlier in the morning because they were not authorized to press.” He declined to address the issue.
But he did mock Fox News this way: “The Capitol Police are much more cautious than they were, say, 18 months ago, and for a very good reason. If you don’t know what that reason is, I know what news network you watch.” They roared, laughed, and cheered.
“The Capitol Police were simply doing their job. My staff was doing their work, everybody was very professional, every one was calm,” said the host. “My staff members were held, detained and processed before being released. It was a horrible experience for me and my staff. A lot of paperwork for the Capitol police but a fairly simple story… until the next night when a couple of the TV people started claiming that my puppet squad had quote, ‘committed insurrection’ at the U.S. Capitol building.”
Colbert gave a New York Times headline, but didn’t explain why Tucker Carlson was quoted in the Times. He then huffed that he was shocked that he has to “explain the difference, but an insurrection involves disrupting the lawful actions of Congress and howling for the blood of elected leaders – all to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.” He did not grasp that January 6, many were imprisoned for being unauthorised in the Capitol.
The moral preening followed.
Now, it’s predictable why these TV talkers are talking like this on the TV. They want to talk about something other than the January 6 hearings on the actual seditionist insurrection that led to the deaths of multiple people, and the injury of over 140 police officers. However drawing any equivalence between rioters storming our Capitol to prevent the counting of electoral ballots and a cigar-chomping toy dog, is a shameful and grotesque insult to the memory of everyone who died, and obscenely trivializes the service and the courage the Capitol Police showed on that terrible day. But who knows.? Maybe there was a vast conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States with a rubber Rottweiler.
Colbert closed his show with jokes about Fraggles rioting.
In this case, our puppet was just a puppet doing puppet stuff. It also includes, sad to say, so much has changed in Washington that the Capitol Police do have to stay at high alert at all times because of the attack on January 6. And as the hearings prove more clearly every day, the blame for that actual insurrection all lies with Putin’s puppet.
Starbucks brought Colbert’s humorous discussion about his staff being detained to your attention in part.