Stephen Colbert kicked off Wednesday night’s live taping of The Late Show the only way he could: by celebrating the inauguration of President Joe Biden.
“You did it!” he said to viewers. “You survived the last four years. And your reward? A shiny new old president. Good old Joe.”
He reminisced about watching the ceremony earlier in the day with his wife, Evelyn McGee-Colbert, who joined him in the studio for the live taping. “The inauguration was a joyful occasion. Like I do with most happy things, I cried a lot,” he confessed, turning to Evelyn and nodding. “It’s true.”
“Watching the inauguration today, I recognized just how worried I’ve been for my country. But we’ve all been too deep in it,” he remarked. “It’s like we’ve been on a ship that’s been in a storm for four years, and we just stepped onto dry land. I want to kiss the ground, but, you know, COVID. So I’m just gonna fist-bump it.”
The host then rehashed the ceremony, making little quips about everything from Lady Gaga’s flouncy inauguration look to the ancient-looking Bible on which Biden was sworn in (“director’s cut, extended edition”) to that viral image of Bernie Sanders sitting alone, wearing a thick pair of mittens. (“The Vermont is strong with this one.”) Colbert also analyzed Biden’s speech, plucking out the new president’s promise to put his “whole soul” into the work ahead of him.
“It is so nice to have a president with a soul again,” Colbert said. “The previous one sold his to the devil and didn’t even get Georgia out of the deal.”
Colbert closed out his commentary by focusing on the poem read by 22-year-old Amanda Gorman, homing in on her line about repairing America’s past.
“How do you repair the past? Have we tried unplugging the past and plugging it back in again? Because that works on everything else,” he joked. He then turned his focus to the president and newly minted vice president, Kamala Harris: “You have our prayers, our best wishes, and our every confidence.”
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