In a special live edition of “The Late Show” Wednesday night, Stephen Colbert talked about what has to be the only thing you or anyone else cares about at the moment — the violence that amounts to an attempted coup by Trump supporters, egged on by Trump himself, in an effort to stop Joe Biden from becoming president.
The horrifying spectacle, Colbert said, was “Charlottesville come home to roost on Capitol Hill.”
So what happened, of course is that Wednesday afternoon Trump incited the riot during an appearance at the so-called “Save America” rally in Washington protesting Joe Biden’s overwhelming victory in November. Trump told attendees “we will never concede,” advanced falsehoods about election fraud and urged his supporters not to “take it.” Trump then told them to march to the Capitol, which they did, eventually breaking past police barriers — there is evidence Capitol Police simply let them in — to storm the building. Law enforcement officials say some even brought explosive devices, and members of Congress were forced to evacuate.
The rioters occupied the building until just before 5:00 p.m. ET.
“Who could have seen this coming? Everyone. Even dummies like me. This is the most shocking, most tragic, least surprising thing I’ve ever seen” Colbert said during his monologue.
He then called out by name Sen Josh Hawley, who, he said, had blood on his hands for cheering the Trump supporters on just before they rioted. He also called out Fox News for what he says is the network’s role in advancing Trump’s increasingly dangerous behavior.
And then, describing the riot and occupation of the capitol, he said: “It’s a horrifying day that will go down in U.S. history — however much longer that is.”
Colbert walked viewers through the whole sorry thing, giving particular attention to Trump’s remarks to the crowd where he actively incited them to riot.
“For the record, if I said that I would be arrested for inciting a riot,” Colbert said, condemning what he called “Republican-generated chaos.”
“This was never a peaceful protest, this was Charlottesville come home to roost on Capitol Hill,” Colbert continued, referencing the white supremacist uprising in 2017 in which various racist groups, including literal Nazis, rioted and one of their number murdered a counter protester. Colbert then showed now-infamous footage from inside the Capitol of one of the rioters, a white man, chasing a security guard who is black.
“Look at these thugs,” he said. “A guy in a QAnon t-shirt chasing a Capitol security officer up flight after flight of stairs. Nothing to see here folks, just a crowd of angry white people chasing a black man. Remind me: Are we great again yet?”
There’s a lot more, and you can watch it in full above.