During his monologue on Monday’s episode of “The Late Show,” Stephen Colbert ran down the crazy events of the last few days, culminating in a delightful conspiracy theory explaining what’s actually going on with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
Late last week, intelligence experts told CNN that Kim is gravely ill following some kind of surgery. At one point a CNN reporter erroneously tweeted that Kim was brain dead. The leader hasn’t been seen in public since April 11 and as of this writing, no one, not even South Korean intelligence experts, knows precisely what his status is.
On “The Late Show,” after running down current events — including a long time spent on Trump’s suggestion that people could possibly inject disinfectant to fight coronavirus. (They can’t. Please don’t do that.) — Colbert brought up the weird, unknown situation with Kim. Colbert explained all the known-unknowns so far, like competing claims about his health, including that he might have undergone heart surgery. “What? But he’s so young and vibrant,” Colbert joked before showing a photo of Kim in some kind of factory, “Laughing with his best friend, ‘vat of lube.’”
“Of course, nobody knows what’s really going on, and it would be irresponsible to speculate,” Colbert continued, “that Kim Jong Un is alive, or dead, or, after a tragic accident at the lube factory now just a head in a jar. Which, I should not speculate, in a grotesque experiment, has been stitched to the body of a bear which now roams the forest searching for more lube, neither man nor beast, yearning for a love he will never feel.”
“That’s not just true,” Colbert continued. “Or is it? It’s not. But it could be. He’s probably fine.”
Watch the whole opening monologue above right now. The Kim Jong Un bit kicks in at the 8:30 mark.