Stephen Colbert opened Monday’s inauguration day edition of CBS’ “The Late Show” by giving us permission to live by “airport rules” for the next four years: “Calories don’t count, and it’s perfectly reasonable to have a vodka tonic at 8 a.m.”
But the truth of the matter is, it’s still stunning that a convicted felon who also encouraged his followers to storm the Capitol and try to overthrow the government is now once again in the Oval Office.
“How do you make sense of today? How did we get here? Well, Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld had these famous axioms,” Colbert began his explainer. “He had three of them: There was ‘known knowns,’ things that you know that you know. There are ‘known unknowns,’ things that you know that you don’t know. And then there are ‘unknown unknowns,’ things that you don’t know, that you don’t know. He said that that last group was the most dangerous. But he never completed the quartet of the possible combinations. The most dangerous one is the ‘unknown knowns’ — things that we know, but we choose to unknow for some reason. There may be a perfectly understandable reason the American people have decided to unknow what they definitely knew about Donald Trump.”
Colbert teased Trump for moving his ceremony indoors: “Oh is the big, strong gweatest pwesident ever feeling a little chilly? You want some hot cocoa with marshy-mellows? You weather cuck!”
He also noted that because the ceremony was moved to the Capitol rotunda, which can only hold approximately 700 people, that “means Trump’s inauguration crowd can now be officially called the smallest of all time.”
When Trump was sworn in by Chief Justice Roberts, he did not place his hand on the Bible for the oath of office. “When the ceremony was going to be outside, he was going to put his hand on the Bible when they moved it inside, the fire marshal wouldn’t allow it,” Colbert quipped. “Safety first. Here’s the thing, if he doesn’t touch the Bible, is he really president? I mean, who did touch the Bible? Melania. Is she president?”
Colbert noted that most of Trump’s speech was “pure darkness,” and “some of it was just plain weird.” And then there were the odd executive orders, like changing the name of Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. He also threatened once again to invade Panama. And then he once again called the 2020 election “rigged.”
Colbert pointed out TikTok’s “pathetic, transparent ploy to suck up to Trump this weekend… that completely worked.
“The wildest part of all this is that even though he’s saving the app now, during his first term as president, Trump led the effort to ban TikTok. So why would he reverse course? Well, the explanation is pretty complicated. He has no sincerely held beliefs.”
Then there’s Trump’s recent announcemenet that John Voight, Mel Gibson and Sylvester, Stallone would serve as “my special ambassadors to a great but very troubled place, Hollywood, California.”
Said Colbert: “That cannot feel good for other aging Hollywood right[wing actors. Kevin Sorbo, your reaction?”
Colbert ended his monologue with this note: “We don’t know exactly what the next four years will be like, except, of course, we completely do. Because before even becoming president, over the weekend, Trump launched the griftiest grift he has ever grifted: A Trump brand crypto meme coin. Trump isn’t the first one to try to pull this kind of scam. His personal meme coin follows in the footsteps of the Hawk Tua Girl.”