Stephen Colbert’s top five Trump takedowns of 2019
By Matt Moore
2. Trump distances himself from racist chant
One of the biggest stories from 2019 was President Donald Trump vs. “The Squad.” The group of congresswomen including Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib received attention for standing against many of President Trump’s policies on immigration.
Things reached a fever pitch during a July rally in which supporters chanted “send her back” in reference to Representative Omar, who was born in Somalia. The chant was labeled as racist and rightly so. But when President Trump tried to distance himself from the ugly event, Stephen Colbert wasn’t buying it.
We’ve seen Colbert shocked and we’ve seen him amused but here we see him close to anger in responding to President Trump’s excuse. The President had tried to argue that he never said “send her back” but his rhetoric and Twitter feed prior to the rally did little to discourage anything like the chant heard at the rally.
In this monologue, Colbert focused on Trump’s claim that he started speaking very quickly to get the crowd to stop. The rally was filmed so this is something that was easily fact-checked. According to the official Late Show stopwatch, it took President 12 seconds to begin talking again.
So not only was Colbert angry that President Trump indirectly encouraged the behavior of his supporters but the attempt to distance himself from it only infuriated Colbert more. The rally incident was just another example of why Colbert considers Donald Trump a terrible president. And for more on that…