\n<\/p>\n
Before Trump, generations of presidents grinned and bore their late-night teasing\u2014which sometimes even happened to their faces, as when Colbert brutally roasted<\/a> George W. Bush over his deathly low approval rating and the energy crisis (sound familiar?) at the 2006 White House Correspondents\u2019Dinner. And it wasn\u2019t just Republican leaders. In July 2024, Colbert joked about then president Joe Biden\u2019s debate performance: \u201cI think Biden debated as well as Abraham Lincoln if you dug him up right now.\u201d In fact, Democrats were the butt<\/a> of most late-night jokes when Barack Obama was in power, and Bill Clinton was Jay Leno\u2019s favorite target<\/a>.<\/p>\n But when Colbert first materialized on the late-night scene, he wasn\u2019t really a talk show host in the Carson or Letterman tradition. On The Daily Show,<\/em> he parodied a conservative pundit, raging Bill O\u2019Reilly\u2013style against all things liberal. In 2005 he spun off this performance art piece into The Colbert Report,<\/em> where he coined the term truthiness<\/em> in his very first episode. \u201cAnybody who knows me knows I\u2019m no fan of dictionaries or reference books,\u201d his character declared. \u201cThey\u2019re elitist, constantly telling us what is or isn\u2019t true or what did or didn\u2019t happen.\u201d His preference was to rely on his gut rather than knowledge.<\/p>\n Colbert put his finger on the emerging embrace of alternative truths and conspiracy theories, a pick-your-facts hostility to experts and professionals of every kind. Not for nothing did Trump name his social media network Truth Social and call its posts \u201ctruths.\u201d Late last year, after CBS announced the cancellation of The Late Show,<\/em> Trump continued to unleash<\/a> \u201ctruths\u201d on Colbert. After taunting him about \u201chis nonexistent ratings\u201d (Late Show<\/em> was actually the most watched show<\/a> in its time slot), the president continued: \u201cStephen is running on hatred and fumes ~ A dead man walking! CBS should, \u2018put him to sleep,\u2019 NOW, it is the humanitarian thing to do!\u201d<\/p>\n As host of The Late Show,<\/em> Colbert synthesized the sharp political commentary of his old show; the wacky hijinks of predecessor David Letterman; and his own much more empathetic and sincere personality. This was often evident in his sensitive interviews with guests, which were never of the \u201cgotcha\u201d variety. (Comedian Tig Notaro, who was one of many celebrity cameos in the final episode, recently told VF<\/em><\/a> about the night Colbert\u2019s deep kindness reduced her to tears.) He saved the gotchas for the politicians and hypocrites of all stripes.<\/p>\n That continued into his last weeks on the air. In his final set of shows, Colbert mocked the moving target that is the Iran peace plan by creating a commercial for the \u201cDonald Trump Desktop End-of-the-Iran-War-a-Day\u201d calendar, complete with the president\u2019s daily contradictory statements. He featured a montage of Trump negotiating with himself over the lawsuit he settled that resulted in the $1.8 billion slush fund, also working in references to Jeffrey Epstein whenever possible.<\/p>\n Some episodes in his final week felt a bit forlorn. Colbert\u2019s \u201cWorst of The Late Show<\/em>\u201d bit had a bitter, fuck-you vibe\u2014presented \u201cas if ratings didn\u2019t even matter anymore.\u201d What\u2019s the point of gathering the best of 1,800 shows, he asked. \u201cY\u2019all got YouTube, you do it!\u201d Instead, the episode, full of in-jokes, served as a salute to his staff, who made up the whole audience that night. He revealed graphics they\u2019d ditched (RIP to that \u201cHillary Rodham Clinton 45th President of the United States\u201d image) and a production number about fish, sung to the tune of \u201cIt\u2019s Raining Men,\u201d that understandably never made it to air. After running a long, unfunny video of a nostalgic visit to Chicago with his longtime collaborator Paul Dinello, Colbert said, \u201cI can see why we didn\u2019t run that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n