Stephen Colbert, host of “The Late Show” on CBS, said he believes President Trump is confusing voters and distorting reality.
In an interview with the New York Times, the 55-year-old comedian spoke about his show and how it deals with politics and news of the day. Colbert, who focuses much of his attention on Trump during the show, was asked about a “Trump bump” and whether the president has helped catapult him to the highest-rated show in late-night TV.
“It’s almost as if the president is trying to cast a spell to confuse people so they cannot know the true nature of reality, and what we do is pick apart the way in which the [expletive] was sold to you,” Colbert said. “I think that’s why it’s going well. Our job is to identify the [expletive], and there’s never been more.”
Colbert, who said his show offers a “explicative deconstruction of the day’s news,” thinks the heavy mockery of Trump comes as an obligation, given the around-the-clock news coverage of the president.
“Trump consumes the news cycle, and our mandate, as we’ve established for ourselves, is that I want to inform the audience of my opinion about what they’ve been thinking about all day,” he said.
Before moving to CBS in 2015, Colbert was the host of Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” which was a parody of opinion news shows. He played a satirical version of a right-wing pundit.
