Stephen Colbert goes live to recap Biden’s first State of the Union

Now, nobody’s saying that late-night hosts don’t work hard. After all, it can’t be easy to feign interest in some of the projects and people marching through the talk show promo revolving door. But the whole “late-night” thing traditionally refers to broadcast time, and not the time hosts like Stephen Colbert actually pre-tape their shows, with most hosts being tucked in for sleepy-time after the local news.

Not so for The Late Show’s Colbert on Tuesday, as the occasion of President Joe Biden’s first-ever State of the Union speech was all the motivation Colbert needed to pound some coffee and make his writers come up with on-the-fly zingers for a live, post-SOTU monologue. Pointing to the “Late Show Live” logo in the bottom-right corner of the TV screen, Colbert noted that, legally, that meant he was, indeed, up past his bedtime.

As for Biden’s speech, Colbert hyped the SOTU as a “roller coaster ride of rip-roarin’-reasonableness.” That might sound like a dig, if not for the fact that the last four years’ worth of such speeches were delivered by a former reality show steak peddler and accused sexual predator and Russian asset playing to the dregs of MAGA-hatted humanity. Addressing the former POTUS with a good old switcheroo, Colbert touted the current President’s calm leadership in particularly difficult circumstances, noting, “There is a dictator who thinks he can violently conquer a sovereign democracy—but Joe Biden beat him in the last election.”

Take that, presumptive frontrunner for the 2024 nomination from a political party currently racing to out-racist Donald Trump to the bottom in pursuit of the voters Trump lured out of their hate-holes with the promise of a Russia-style white supremacist kleptocracy! Showing a clip of lawmakers standing to applaud Biden-invited Ukrainian Ambassador Oksana Markarova, Colbert himself applauded the alacrity with which Republican attendees showed their respect, noting that the last time they stood so quickly in was when they, too, “were the ones fleeing a fascist invasion.”

Colbert went on like that, his lighter tone in recapping the annual event perhaps a reflection of not having to choke back Trump-related soul-vomit. For example, it has to be sort of refreshing to talk about a sitting president offering up a very public happy birthday to a 13-year-old activist (Joshua Davis, who advocates for children with diabetes, was adorably embarrassed), rather than attacking a teenaged climate activist because she actually won Time’s person of the year cover. (Instead of printing out a fake one to pathetically display in his tacky golf resorts.)

Interestingly, Colbert didn’t make any mention of what’s become the feel-bad story of the SOTU. That being the signature childish assholery of Republican congresspeople and classless nutcases Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA), who continued their campaign to be crowned worst people in the world by loudly heckling Biden throughout. In a come-from-behind victory, Boebert edged out recent honored guest of actual Nazis Green by yelling some nonsense while Biden was talking about the death of his soldier son Beau, scoring the all-important “mocking a deceased service member” points right at the buzzer.

One can only assume that Colbert didn’t want to give the two most tetchy Republican toddlers the attention they so gleefully were seeking, which is a strategy parents everywhere have tried out since time immemorial. Maybe the GOP conspiracy clowns, like Colbert after his live late-night monologue, just need a little nap.