Even as he heads into the final stretch of his late-night run, Stephen Colbert is still finding new ways to be surprised by Donald Trump. The latest example came as the Late Show host tried to wrap his head around the president's Oval Office event to promote fitness.
On Tuesday night, that disbelief centered on a White House event that seemed straightforward enough. President Trump announced the return of the Presidential Fitness Test to a group of schoolchildren. But as Colbert quickly pointed out, the moment took a turn that felt almost impossible to script.
Instead of sticking to push-ups and mile times, President Trump veered into a discussion of the stakes of the conflict with Iran. Apparently, the commander-in-chief couldn't resist talking about nuclear weapons while addressing the kids gathered in the Oval Office.
Of course, Colbert jumped at the opening. He played up the sheer absurdity of delivering such grim warnings in a setting meant for children, framing it as the kind of unpredictability that has defined much of the Trump era. And even in his final days as host of The Late Show, it still manages to catch Colbert off guard.
Colbert imagined what it might sound like if President Trump tried to translate those heavy themes into something kid-friendly. The result was a mock reading of Green Eggs and Ham with an unsettling twist where the green eggs were the result of radioactive fallout.
Colbert joking that the children wouldn’t need to worry about eating the eggs at all, because in this exaggerated version of events, they wouldn’t survive. The punchline landed with a mix of laughter and unease, highlighting just how strange the real-life scenario already was.
The late-night host kept circling back to the same question: why was any of this being said in front of kids who were there for a fitness initiative? For Colbert, the issue wasn’t just the content of Trump’s remarks, but the fact they came at an event designed to promote youth health. Suddenly, it was doubling as a platform for apocalyptic warnings about global conflict.
As Colbert winds down his time in late-night, it seems the material isn’t slowing down. The "credit" (if that's the right word) belongs in part to President Trump. Head-scratching moments like the one in the Oval Office seem to be coming more frequently than ever.
While they make for good late-night TV fodder, they also serve as a reminder of how time is running out on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The surprising, ridiculous moments won't stop after May 21. Instead, late-night TV fans will just have to look elsewhere for a host who is willing to try to make sense of it all.
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