Kicking off Thursday’s episode of “The Late Show” was a cold open mocking new Republican speaker of the House Mike Johnson — by reimagining him as a prudish, authoritarian version of Channing Tatum’s “Magic Mike.” Thanks for the image, Stephen Colbert.
The idea came courtesy of disgraced ex-President Donald Trump, who this week celebrated Johnson’s election as speaker by calling him “MAGA Mike” in posts on his social media site, Truth Social. And so it is that the “Late Show” cold open, after the traditional use of news clips to summarize the matter, ran with that idea.
“From the people who didn’t see ‘Magic Mike’ because they thought it would turn them gay comes a brand new Johnson, that just became… fully elect,” a voice-over narrator said over alternating clips of “Magic Mike” and Mike Johnson.
“The country demands strong leadership of this body,” Johnson said in one such clip.
“This fall,” the narrator continued, “you won’t believe the size of his spending package. He will bang all night long.” This of course being a reference to the speaker’s gavel.
“And he wants to strip… away your rights,” the narrator continues, referring to Johnson’s well-documented hard right views and his belief — we mean this literally — that the U.S. government should be a fundamentalist Christian theocracy.
“Starring Speaker Mike Johnson as MAGA Mike: XX Election Denier,” the narrator concluded. This is of course a reference to the fact that Johnson was one of Trump’s top behind-the-scenes allies in his attempted coup after the 2020 election.
Watch the clip at the top of the page now.
