Stephen Colbert joked during his monologue on Monday that he doesn’t know if Joe Biden pardoning his son, Hunter, was “the right thing to do, but you certainly earned that world’s greatest dad mug.”
Colbert was of course referring to the announcement made on Sunday that Biden has given his son a full pardon for any crimes — including “offenses against the United States” (uhhh) — committed between Jan. 1, 2014 and Dec. 1, 2024.
“Technically he snuck Hunter’s pardon in last week while he was doing the turkeys. I think this pardon proves that with less than two months to go, Joe is officially out of malarkeys. And by malarkeys, I mean f—s,” Colbert said. “I say he should go full bucket list. Just pardon everybody. Just load up those pardons into a nerf machine gun and go pop pop pop pop pop pop.”
“Just hit them all. Pardon all the Jan. 6 people before Trump could do it, that would really burn him up. Or, you know what, you know, what would be really funny. This would be really funny if Joe pardoned, like, every late night host, and just because I think it would be a funny bit, I would accept that pardon.” Colbert continued.
Then Colbert covered the details of Hunter’s pardon — including that it pretty unmistakably breaks a promise Biden previously made.
“Now this pardon doesn’t [just] cover the charges Hunter is currently facing, but also ‘offenses against the United States which he has committed, or may have committed, or taken part in during the period from January 1 2014 through December 1 2024.” Colbert explained. “Coincidentally, that’s also the window of time for the Comcast guy to arrive.”
“The language so broad that experts say we haven’t seen a pardon as sweeping as Hunter Biden’s in generations. So it’s less of a blanket pardon and more of a tarp,” he added.
“Now, one reason some people are upset is that Biden reversed his long standing pledge not to use his presidential powers to protect his son. And I get why they’d be angry,” Colbert continued. Does Biden’s word mean nothing? Can we trust anything he says when he goes, ‘I’m serious, folks. I’m not kidding around, No joke,?’ Was he in fact, kidding around, yes joke?”
Watch the full monologue below:
had some tough talk for Donald Trump’s insanely corrupt pick to head up the FBI when he takes office in January — and then promptly made sure that his rival late night hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon would end up blamed for it.
For context, on Monday Trump announced he’ll fire FBI director Christopher Wray, the lifelong Republican Trump himself appointed back in 2017, and replace him with Kash Patel, a former federal prosecutor. Patel is also a hard right wing conspiracy theorist and election denier who has, quite literally, threatened to bring the power of the state against anyone Trump perceives as an enemy, including journalists.
“Folks are worried Patel is going to investigate Trump’s political enemies, considering last year, Patel said this,” Colbert explained before playing a clip in which Patel said, verbatim: “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media, whether it’s criminal or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But, yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.”
“Oh, really,” Colbert said with exaggerated bravado. “You see me shake, Kash? Let me help you remember me, okay? I’m the middle aged, brown haired, white guy with an 11:30 network show, and I will never bow down to authoritarians. Or my name isn’t Jimmy Something.”
There’s plenty more to Colbert’s monologue, and you can watch the whole thing below:
This isn’t the first time Colbert has playfully used one of his media competitors/peers as a virtual human shield for a joke, of course. For instance, back in 2022, after discussing how the leader of the neofascist group the Proud Boys doesn’t like him, Colbert pretended his name is Joe Scarborough.