Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show kicked off its live coverage of the Republican National Convention with a somber and powerful message on Monday night. The host opened the episode with a prerecorded statement addressing the recent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
“The United States came close to a great tragedy on Saturday when at a political rally in Pennsylvania, a 20-year-old gunman shot and nearly killed a former president and the man who today became the 2024 Republican nominee,” Colbert began. “My immediate reaction was horror at what was unfolding, relief that Donald Trump had lived, and grief for my beautiful country — followed by fresh horror as we learned that attendees had also been shot, one of whom died at the rally.”
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Colbert explained that while his show was scheduled to air live this week, he felt compelled to address the nation from his desk in a prerecorded segment. “I could just as easily start the show moaning on the floor,” he remarked, “because how many times do we need to learn the lesson that violence has no role in our politics, that the entire objective of a democracy is to fight out our differences with — as the saying goes — a ballot, not a bullet.”
Reflecting on his personal connection to political violence, Colbert shared a poignant memory. “One of my earliest memories is sitting in a dark room with my sister, watching my parents’ little black-and-white TV, and seeing Bobby Kennedy’s coffin on that slow train from New York down to Washington. Whether the result of extremist politics or mental illness, that violence is with us still — from the shooting at a GOP baseball practice that seriously injured Steve Scalise, to the plot to kidnap and kill Governor Gretchen Whitmer, to the hammer attack that nearly killed Paul Pelosi, to the horrors of January 6, to this most recent attack.”
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The Late Show will continue to cover the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month. Colbert highlighted the importance of these events, stating, “These conventions will be about the candidates who are nominated, but they’re really about the ideas that these two candidates represent and the future America they want to lead us to.”
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He ended on a hopeful note, urging a change in how Americans see, treat, and talk to each other. “In the wake of this attack on Saturday, many Americans on both sides of the aisle, from President Biden to Speaker Johnson, are calling on all of us to change how we see each other, how we treat each other, how we talk to each other. That may or may not happen, but those conflicting ideas will remain the same. So this week, we’re going to do our best to talk about those ideas, the people who represent those ideas, and many other things, with guests and who knows, if we’re lucky, maybe some fart jokes.”
