“Resistance” leader of late-night television, CBS’s Stephen Colbert, doesn’t even pretend that his Late Show is only catered to the country’s most die-hard liberals at this point. On his January 15 show, he invited Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on as his guest, to basically parrot what he does every night on his show: mock Trump and slam the right as racists who only care about the wealthy.
Colbert began by asking Schumer about the fallout between him and “his friend” the President, after the infamous “Chuck and Nancy meeting” that the media obsessed over. “This was a while ago. He would start out by flattering me. That didn't work, so he tried to call me names. Neither works,” Schumer snarked.
He then attacked conservatives and Trump as holding values that were un-American, unlike the Democrats who were on the same side as America’s values. “We stick by our values. They're very far away from where Donald Trump's values are and frankly where most of America's values are and we're standing strong and we're the check on Donald Trump,” Schumer said to rousing applause from the liberal audience.
Colbert then gave Schumer a softball, asking him to call President Trump a racist: “Many people look at this and what the president has said and just said, okay, well, Donald Trump is a racist. Do you think that Donald Trump is a racist?” Schumer answered skeptically: “Look, his comments over and over and over again can be described as nothing but racist and obnoxious. He says he's not a racist.”
The Democrat leader then demanded that the litmus test for President Trump to “prove” he was not a racist was for him to support the Democrats’ plan for DACA: “If you want to just begin the long road back to proving you're not racist or bigoted, support the bipartisan compromise three Democrats and three Republicans put on the floor, everyone gave, and get the dreamers safety here in America. That's what he should do.”
But Colbert wondered if the “farthest right” would cause Trump to cave on giving Democrats what they want. “Do you think he's just being pressured by the farthest right on immigration policy in his own party?” the CBS host invited the Democrat to bash his political opponents, which he happily obliged.
“If you're going to listen to the farthest right, we will never have an immigration policy. They’re not where America is,” Schumer bashed. He called conservatives wanting a stronger immigration policy “extremists,” claiming they were not representative of the majority of Americans or even the GOP: “They’re not even where the Republican Party is. You can’t let a small group on the extreme govern, it’s a formula for failure.”
As if Colbert hadn’t already given Schumer enough easy questions, he asked the Democrat what his opinion on Democratic Senator Dick Durbin was, since Durbin was the only who leaked Trump’s alleged “s***hole” comment last week. Schumer admitted that he had a decades-long close friendship with Durbin, and he has “never known him to lie.”
With that kind of biased admission, you would think that Colbert would push back, but he didn’t, and the audience ate up Schumer’s answer:
COLBERT: Do you have any doubts that Senator Durbin is telling the truth when he says that the president said repeatedly why do we need people from these shithole countries?
SCHUMER: I have no doubt. First, Donald Trump has lied so many times it's hard to believe him on anything let alone this, but second, I've known dick Durbin for 35 years. He was my roommate for 20 years. We shared a little row house. He's one of the most honorable people I've ever met. I never have known him to prevaricate, to lie.
Despite the fact that Republican Tom Cotton and others have pointed out how Dick Durbin lied in 2013, claiming that a GOP House leader made a derogatory comment to President Obama, which even the White House acknowledged Durbin had fabricated, Schumer claimed that most Americans believed the “honorable” Democrat. “I totally believe Dick Durbin and I think most Americans do, too,” he added, to audience applause.
The whole interview was nauseatingly partisan, with Colbert inviting Schumer to bash the right repeatedly as against the American people. After being asked what the Democratic Party “stood for,” Schumer responded that they were a “strong check against Trump,” but they also “have average folks” on their side, “while Trump is on the side of the wealthy and powerful interests.”
