Colbert praises Obama in late-night interview: ‘I just want to take a moment to drink you in’

Obama made the appearance to promote his new memoir, A Promised Land, but he spent much of the wide-ranging interview taking shots at the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and expressing hope for the future with President-elect Joe Biden.

Although the former president acknowledged handling the pandemic would be “hard for anyone,” Obama told Colbert that President Trump failed by “undermining the leading epidemiologist in the country and saying he’s an idiot, [not] being consistent in terms of masks and social distancing … suggesting that this is some act of oppression, [instead of] a common sense thing to prevent people from getting sick.”

“Had we just taken those steps, there is no doubt that we would have saved some lives, and, ironically, the economy would be better because we would not be swinging back and forth the way we have, and people would have more confidence about making day-to-day decisions about shopping,” he said.

Asked by Colbert if he worried after Trump’s 2016 election victory that he might abuse the “dignity of the office,” Obama said he had that concern and that it was “borne out” over Trump’s time in office.

But he also expressed his hope that Biden would put the country on a better path.

“They are going to have big challenges ahead,” Obama said of Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

“The fact that he won is indicative of the message he sent of wanting to unify the country,” he continued. “I do think people are exhausted of just this constant cage match. People want to feel like a day passes without it being dominated by something crazy coming out of the White House.”

The episode featuring Obama resulted in The Late Show’s largest audience in over a year with 3.49 million viewers on CBS, according to Nielsen.