Stephen Colbert said he talked about Donald Trump within “30 seconds” of taking over CBS’s “Late Show,” but guest and fellow Comedy Central alum John Oliver will do anything to avoid mentioning the Republican frontrunner.
“I couldn’t give less of a f–k. It’s physically impossible. It’s the 2016 election and it’s 2015 right now, I don’t care until we are in the same year as the thing I am supposed to care about,” the “Last Week Tonight” host bluntly told Colbert on Wednesday.
Also as a U.K. citizen, Oliver can’t even vote, so it would be “sensation without representation,” he quipped. “You got all pissy about it when we did it. Where’s my vote? I’ll throw your coffee into the river,” he said, referring to the American Revolution.
“As we’re on for half an hour every week, we don’t have to talk about the election,” Oliver explained, in fact, he would rather talk about “anything not election related. There are plenty of problems in the world.”
The pair of “Daily Show” alums went on to gush about how much they miss former boss Jon Stewart and praised incoming host Trevor Noah.
Colbert thought he “crushed it,” while Oliver warned that he is “taking on the impossible. You can’t replace the irreplaceable.”
As for the 30-minute format of Oliver’s HBO show, “Less is more, we’re like heroin,” the British host said. “We are for a disciplined heroin user, half an hour of riding the ‘H’ train.”
When asked about the risk of picking a single subject to focus on, the British comedian admitted that if “you said what the subject was of our show to someone it would sound terrible.
“If you said, ‘Do you want to spend 20 minutes on the contracts that chicken farmers had to sign?’ The answer would be ‘no.’”
“It’s what sounds interesting … but shows fall apart, we’re on the precipice of disaster every week.”
“The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” airs week nights at 11:35 p.m. ET on CBS.