With no World Cup action taking place until the third-place game on Saturday, the biggest show on Thursday was FBI agent Peter Strzok’s appearance in front of the House Judiciary Committee. And so Stephen Colbert, in a rare move, devoted his entire monologue on “The Late Show” Thursday night to the occasion.
Colbert rarely spends his entire monologue on a single topic, but this was a special occasion and one that required all of his stage talents to handle, as you’ll discover in a moment.
“It was a parliamentary smackdown. The Capitol dome became the Thunderdome,” Colbert said as he started getting revved up. “And it’s all during the testimony of FBI agent and man thinking about Cold Stone Creamery, Peter Strzok. Back in 2016, Strzok was part of the FBI’s investigations into both Hillary Clinton and the Trump campaign. and since then it’s come out that he exchanged anti-Trump text messages with his mistress, an FBI lawyer, saying things like: ‘God Hillary should win. 100,000,000-0’; ‘Trump is a f—ing idiot’; and ‘WHAT THE F— HAPPENED TO OUR COUNTRY??!?!’ I don’t know, but hopefully Robert Mueller will tell us soon.
“Now, Republicans see these texts as proof of a vast conspiracy within the FBI to stop Donald Trump from being elected president. And here’s how devious, how deep they went in order to keep it a secret: they let him get elected president.”
Then Colbert moved into the actual hearing, noting that, “right from his opening statement, Strzok came out swinging.”
“The Late Show” then played a clip of Strzok condemning that the hearing was even happening. “I have the utmost respect for Congress’ oversight role, but I strongly believe today’s hearing is just another victory notch in Putin’s belt.”
“After the last two years, I’m not sure Putin has any belt left,” Colbert joked. “It’s all notch at this point. Then the grilling began, starting with questions from South Carolina congressman and Supercuts vampire Trey Gowdy. No matter how you feel about Strzok’s texts, you have to agree it was fun to hear Trey Gowdy read them out loud.”
Next, “The Late Show” played a pair of clips in which Gowdy read two of Strzok’s texts: “Trump is a disaster,” and “Oh em gee, this is effing terrifying.”
Colbert: “You went on to say, “WTF bae, this guy’s thirsty af, it’s lit fidget spinner, hashtag Ken Bone.’ ”
The highlight of the monologue came midway through when Colbert did his own interpretation of a big blow-up between the committee chair, Republican Bob Goodlatte and Democrat Jerrold Nadler. It’s a scene that’s difficult for me to recap since I don’t know what a “point of order” is, and so instead I’ll just refer you to the video of Colbert’s monologue above and his one-man show version of the whole thing below, which Colbert kicked off after the show played the clip of their verbal conflict.
With Colbert playing both roles, whenever he switched he would look into a different camera. And the sequence went like this:
“Uh, uh, point of order.”
“The point of order is not well taken.”
“Point of order, and you must take my point of order and you must take it well.”
“Subsequent point of order not taken!”
“Point of order pursuant to the previous point of order regarding the wellness of its taken-i-tude.”
“The gentlemen will yield all of his points and all of his orders!”
“I appeal the pointed-ness of that order unto the objection, which I am holding in contempt of previous orders and points!”
“I appeal your appeal. Everything you appeal bounces off me and appeals onto you!
“New point of order: the chair will recognize that you’re a big dumb stupid-head!”
“The chair will not recognize your point, because this is what you look like: durr!”
“Point of order: f— you!”
“Point of order: no, f— you!”
At the end of the frantic bit, the crowd erupted in cheers and began chanting “Stephen! Stephen! Stephen!” while Colbert tried to catch his breath.
Anyway, you can watch this whole thing and the rest of Colbert’s 12-minute monologue on Thursday’s episode of “The Late Show” in the video embedded at the top of this post.