Stephen Colbert opened his show on Wednesday with a heartfelt message for his viewers following the shocking victory by Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
Clearly dejected, his cold open remarks because with the acknowledgement that “If you watch the show regularly, I’m guessing you’re not doing great. Yeah. Me neither.”
“You know today, some people said to me, sorry, I have to do a show tonight, which is nice of them to say, but I don’t have to do a show. I get to do a show tonight,” he continued. “I’m so grateful to be with all of these talented people, those people over here, those people that you’ll never see with the audience, and the Ed Sullivan with you, people at home.”
“Because especially at times like this, what do we most want? To be not alone,” Colbert went on. “So thanks for being here. We’re going to do a comedy show. It’s comedy show. We’ll do some jokes just a minute, because that’s what we do. And I’ll let you in on a little secret. No one gets into this business because everything in their life worked out great. So we’re built for rough roads. You guys ready?”
This was followed by a supercut of TV news reports about the world reaction to the election results, and then an imaginative joke about how several countries specifically acted in their most stereotypical way. For instance, Canada was represented by an angry hockey player, while the U.K. was represented by Harry Potter explaining he’s about to go back into his closet and pretend he doesn’t exist.
Watch the whole cold open below:
