Stephen Colbert has been one of Donald Trump’s harshest critics since well before he was elected, who — along with fellow late night hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers — isn’t afraid to ruffle feathers when calling out the president. Such was the case during a special guest appearance alongside Michael Moore at his one-man Broadway play, The Terms of My Surrender on Wednesday, when the usual nice guy Colbert let his feelings be known in no uncertain terms.
According to the New York Times, the Late Show host sat next to Moore on stage in armchairs with a large American flag illuminated in the background. While discussing how Colbert manages to deal with this unconventional (to put it gently) presidency, the documentary filmmaker asked him, “How do you carry on now?”
Mr. Moore added, “Your ability to use satire and humor to say the emperor has no clothes is profound every single night.”
Laugh through the fear, Mr. Colbert replied.
“Trump keeps summoning monsters of abstraction — things that aren’t real — they’re extensions of the ordinary, fears that you have that he plays on,” Mr. Colbert said.
“He wants to brush people into a corner where he can shine his feeble, fucking anemic firefly of a soul,” Mr. Colbert continued, inching his two pointer fingers close together.
Later in the 20 minute conversation, Colbert elaborated on “laughing through the fear” to provide sobering words to those afraid in Trump’s America. “When you’re laughing, you’re not afraid, and if you’re not afraid you can think,” he said. “We felt our way into this thing, and we have to think our way out of it.”
(Via the New York Times)