Stephen Colbert Opens Up About the President: Donald Trump Is An Act of Cruelty
Stephen Colbert Opens Up About the President: ‘Donald Trump Is An Act of Cruelty’
The ‘Late Show’ host explained his deepest and darkest thoughts on President Trump in conversation with Frank Rich at Vulture Fest.
Amy Zimmerman
05.21.17 11:17 AM ET
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After the election, Colbert gave his staff time to cope and readjust—thirty minutes, to be exact. Attempting to explain why they only took half an hour the day after the election before getting back to work, the comedian concludes, “We don’t do this job because we had happy childhoods. And we click back in to our old survival mechanism, which is to make jokes about terrible things.”
Still, it wasn’t exactly business as usual. Colbert recalls approaching his staff after election night and offering them this silver lining: “Well if you’ve ever wondered if your work has purpose, don’t worry anymore. It does. Because this is terrible, and your job is to make people feel better about it every day. We’re an emotional release valve.” These days, Colbert has a new metric for success, one that combines humor and emotional honesty: “The question that we ask ourselves now when we go to rewrite the monologue every night is, ‘Am I expressing how I feel?’”
While proud of his work and his creative aims, Colbert is quick to admit that the Trump administration has thrown its own, never-ending series of obstacles at the Late Show staff. He explains that on four separate occasions over the past two weeks, he’s had to add material to the show when news broke in the middle of filming. One of those instances was the fateful day when James Comey was fired—in the middle of the monologue, no less. “We actually gave the writers ten minutes to come up with at least three jokes,” Colbert laughs. “I think they came up with four.”
“It’s sort of hackney to say ‘I wish for the old boring days,’” Colbert admits. “But boring is stability. We don’t know what’s going on with Donald Trump, that’s the scariest thing. It’s not that I disagree with him, it’s that I don’t know what the fuck he thinks.” Still, he notes, “If you can put aside your concern for the country, as a performer it’s great.”
The entire nation is, more or less, engrossed in the news, meaning that Colbert can spend less time explaining his source material and go straight for the punchline. And that far-reaching humor is at the heart of Colbert’s entertainment ethos: “Fear is the mind-killer. And he got elected on anger and fear. And you cannot laugh and be afraid at the same time. So let’s go make people laugh, and then they’ll be able to think. That’s the value of what we do.”
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Turning the conversation towards a true state of the union, Colbert shares his semi-optimistic predictions for the very near future. “It seems like the best thing you could hope for is just sort of this grinding, innervating status quo that gets you to the 2018 midterm elections,” he posits, “And then if the Democrats have just two saltine crackers in their skull to rub together, and they can get control of either house of Congress, then you can have a serious investigation that is public…there needs to be a public coming to Jesus on what Trump means, and what we are willing to accept as governance, what we’re willing to accept as our standards. Because what’s in that pile, that fire that I’m dancing next to? It’s really our norms and our standards and our principles. Are we willing to burn everything for a golden calf who is Donald Trump? Just for vindictiveness’ sake? You know, our politics have become these pure acts of vindictiveness… People who felt like they were being treated cruelly decided to respond with an act of cruelty themselves. Donald Trump is an act of cruelty. But there needs to be a reckoning.”
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/05/21/stephen-colbert-opens-up-about-the-president-donald-trump-is-an-act-of-cruelty
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