'This took a year off my life,' Colbert said during the opening monologue of his Monday night show
Pro-Biden Colbert roasts president over disaster debate
CBS late night host Stephen Colbert spent the entire opening monologue of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" trashing President Biden’s debate performance last month and the damage control that he’s handlers have been trying to do since.
CBS late night host Stephen Colbert spent the entire opening monologue of "The Late Show" trashing President Biden’s debate performance last month and the damage control that his handlers have been trying to do since.
Colbert, a diehard Biden supporter who had been on hiatus since late last month, came back with a deluge of Biden material to skewer, including the debate, and the president’s attempts to convince the Democratic Party and voters he can still win.
"This took a year off my life," Colbert lamented to his CBS audience on Monday night, blasting Biden’s recent insistence that his debate performance was a "bad episode."
CBS late night host Stephen Colbert ripped President Biden for his debate performance last month.
At the outset of his eleven-minute roast of Biden, the host addressed the increasing calls among the party for the president to step down, saying he is in no position to give his opinion on the matter.
This teed up one of his first digs at the U.S. leader: "Should he stay? Should he go? Who am I to recommend? I don’t know what’s going on in Joe Biden’s mind, something I apparently have in common with Joe Biden."
The host noted it’s a "shame" that everyone is fixated on the president’s debate performance because he "is a great president."
Still, he couldn’t refrain from hammering Biden over his failure to handle former President Trump on the debate stage. "Going into it, all Joe had to do was allay people’s fears that he was too old. But instead, Biden’s shakiness allowed Trump to get away with 90 minutes of lies, racism, and weird golf brags, which is why a lot of people are saying this was the worst debate performance of all time."
This led to one of Colbert’s sharpest barbs against the president that night. He continued, "But I don’t think that’s fair. I think that Biden debated as well as Abraham Lincoln, if you dug him up right now."
The late night comic then went into rebuking the Biden team’s excuses for the president’s debate fiasco, stating, "Now after the debate, Biden’s team tried to put out the fire with a bucket of gasoline, telling reporters that the president’s weak performance was because he had a cold."
Colbert then quipped, "Ugh, I hate those summer colds where your voice gets hoarse, and your brain explodes."
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President Biden and former President Trump squared off in their high-stakes 2024 election debate rematch in late June. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images, left, )
Later, he grilled how Biden defended himself in his July 5 interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos.
In response to a clip of Biden telling the anchor his debate performance was merely "a bad episode," Colbert replied, "Wrong. When ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ did a musical, that was a bad episode, OK? This took a year off my life."
His frustration over the debate later showed when he interviewed CNN's Abby Phillip. When she agreed that the debate should have happened despite the blowback to Biden, he fired back, "Why?"
"You know [Trump's] going to lie, and the other guy is President of the United States who should not be dignifying this criminal who tried to overthrow democracy," Colbert said.
Colbert has gone beyond being just a late-night lackey for the president. He recently moderated a campaign fundraiser in New York City that included Biden and former Presidents Obama and Clinton that hauled in around $26 million.
The Biden campaign and White House did not immediately reply to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
Gabriel Hays is an associate editor for Fox News Digital.
