Like many, Stephen Colbert was blown away by Kamala Harris’ debate performance against Donald Trump on Tuesday night — but he was more impressed by moderators David Muir and Lindsey Davis. In fact, following the debate, Colbert asked point blank: “Can a moderator win a debate?”
The CBS host went live after the debate, much like he did at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, delighting in Harris’ performance. To kick things off, he noted that she needed to “rattle Trump’s cage” but ended up doing far more than that in the end.
“They are still looking for pieces of his cage in low orbit,” he joked. “She’s gonna be picking his cage out of her poop!”
But Colbert was quick to also highlight the performance of ABC moderators David Muir and Lindsey Davis — specifically, how they fact-checked Trump.
At one point, when Trump tried to once again claim that abortions happen after nine months, Davis corrected him with the reminder that “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.”
“Follow-up question: can a moderator win a debate?” Colbert asked.
One of the other major fact-checks of the night came when Trump tried to say that immigrants are quite literally eating pets. David Muir was the one to check Trump on that, noting that “there had been no credible reports” of that, prompting Trump to say he’d seen claims of it on television.
“I saw on television, no, I saw on television, it’s crazy what they’re doing!” Colbert mimicked in his Trump voice. “On television, there’s this one town where they make the dogs do all the work. They are the police, the fire department, everything! Little puppies! They got these little puppies folks — no I saw it, they call them the Paw Patrol and their boss is a little boy!”
According to an executive producer at MSNBC, the Trump campaign was upset about that specific fact-check from Muir, which Colbert wasn’t surprised by.
“Well, yeah, I can imagine,” Colbert said. “I can imagine. I can imagine that his campaign is pretty upset, because while migrants may not be eating dogs, with his debate performance tonight, Trump did eat a Philly turd-steak.”
You can watch Stephen Colbert’s full monologue in the video above.