Stephen Colbert shocked by Trump’s 9/11 first responder comment

Stephen Colbert couldn’t quite believe his ears after President Donald Trump spoke at the First Responders Bill ceremony.

Stephen Colbert should really know better by now not to be surprised by anything President Donald Trump says. Colbert has been covering the president on The Late Show for years at this point. Still, Trump’s comments to a group of New York City firefighters and police officers shocked Colbert.

Colbert has become the expert in late night when it comes to mining Trump’s words for comedy. It is typically the president’s Twitter account that provides the most content for Late Show monologues.

However, Trump can be at his best (worst?) when speaking in front of a crowd with the cameras rolling. He rarely sticks to the script and whenever he tries to improvise, Colbert is ready to point out any mispronunciation or outlandish claim.

The Late Show  host got both those things while Trump was speaking at a ceremony celebrating the passing of the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund bill. Trump couldn’t help painting himself out to be a hero too:

First off, the fund should be celebrated for what it provides to those who were affected, and still are, by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As Colbert notes, his friend Jon Stewart helped lead the charge on authorizing additional funding for the program. It was finally passed by Congress and signed by Trump in what Colbert called “a good thing done by a terrible person.”

President Trump may have squandered any good will he got by signing the bill by his comments during the ceremony. Suggesting that he was near ground zero helping the first responders is a bizarre claim. It is especially bizarre since he previously made a similar statement and was immediately questioned, criticized, and denounced.

For Colbert, the response to the terrorist attacks should be too sensitive of a subject for Trump to insert himself in the event. There have been plenty of other examples where Trump exaggerated his accomplishments or how he helped do something. Colbert, and hopefully everyone else, thinks 9/11 should be left alone yet here we have Trump once again putting himself in the middle of it.

These comments from President Donald Trump aren’t even the biggest controversy he has going on right now. They were still enough to surprise Stephen Colbert, something that fans would think is harder and harder to do these days.