On Wednesday’s “The Late Show,” Stephen Colbert talked about the Iowa caucuses that Donald Trump ended up winning.
But during his monologue, Colbert poured cold water on Trump’s victory, joking that the turnout was so low, the victory by the multiply indicted ex-president was “less the will of the people and more the will of Carl.”
You can watch the whole monologue above.
“Donald Trump won the Iowa caucuses with 51% of the vote,” the CBS host said as he kicked off the topic. “Iowa, apparently short for ‘Iowanna live in a democracy anymore.’”
“Now, Trump’s victory was so decisive that the Associated Press declared him the winner before many Iowans had even cast their votes, which feels a tad premature. You don’t see this at the Super Bowl,” he said, cueing up a parody clip where a Super Bowl victory is declared after the coin toss.
“It’s worth noting that this caucus was decided by 14% of the state’s registered Republicans,” Colbert continued. “So Trump won 51% of 14% of about a quarter of the population of one state out of 50. So the results are less the will of the people and more of the will of Carl.”
After that, Colbert spent much of the rest of his monologue skewering the GOP primary race, mocking not only Trump and the weird (and rude) thing he said about Jimmy Carter on the campaign trail, but also the rest of the Republicans trying (and failing) to beat him in the primary.
One highlight was when he discussed Vivek Ramaswamy, who dropped out of the primary, endorsed Trump, then appeared at a Trump rally where he and Trump hugged for a long time. At that, Colbert led his audience in a chant of “stop the hug,” a parody of the MAGA go-to line “stop the steal.”
As we said, watch the whole monologue above now.