“The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert devoted his entire opening monologue to the crisis in Afghanistan, where the U.S. troop pullout led to a rapid takeover by Taliban hard-liners.
And he tried to cut through the partisan finger-pointing to show how both parties bear the blame for the result ― including President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump.
Colbert played a clip of Biden last month calling a Taliban takeover “highly unlikely.”
“Wow,” said Colbert. “That is the most inaccurate prediction from a president since Abe Lincoln said, ‘See you after the play.’”
“Too soon,” interjected bandleader Jon Batiste. “Too soon.”
Colbert noted that Trump is calling on Biden to resign ― but then played a clip of the former guy boasting in June that he started the withdrawal and Biden “couldn’t stop” the process.
“They wanted to but it was very tough to stop the process,” Trump claimed.
‘‘They wanted to but they couldn’t stop the process’ is also how he describes the birth of Eric,” Colbert said, then broke out his impression of Eric Trump: “Dad, it’s your little quagmire. Too late to withdraw from me.”
Colbert also laid out all the ways Trump’s decisions led to this moment, from his negotiations with the Taliban to his pressure on the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners.
“You can’t put all the blame for a debacle you helped set the stage for,” he said. “That’s like Andrew Lloyd Webber calling ‘Cats’ a terrible movie. You wrote a musical with no plot! How did you think this was gonna end?”
See his full monologue below: