“How was your weekend? I certainly had an interesting one because some of my employees had a memorable one.”
So Stephen Colbert opened his monologue on Monday after members of his Late Show production team were arrested last week at the US Capitol.
“It was a first-degree doll,” Colbert said.
Colbert explained that members of his staff, including “Triumph the Insult Comic Dog,” a puppet voiced by comedian Robert Smigel, went to film a comedy segment related to the Jan. 6 hearing for two days last week at congressional offices against the Capitol. .
The host said the staff had gone through a security check and had been invited to the offices of the representatives they interviewed – which is important to note because Triumph “works according to Dracula’s rules”, according to Colbert. On the second day of filming, staff were detained by U.S. Capitol police.
“Which isn’t really that surprising. The Capitol police are much more cautious than they were, say, 18 months ago, and for a very good reason,” Colbert said. “If you don’t know the reason, I know which news network you’re watching.
On Friday, U.S. Capitol police said in a statement that officers “watched seven people, unaccompanied and without congressional credentials, in a sixth-floor hallway” in the Longworth House office building on Capitol Hill.
Capitol police added that these individuals have been charged with illegal entry. CBS said in a statement Friday that its production team’s interviews with members of Congress were “authorized and pre-arranged.”
Colbert went on to say Monday that U.S. Capitol police were just doing their job, as were his staff, and that everyone was “very professional” and “very calm.”
“It’s a pretty simple story until the next night, when several of the TV people started claiming that my puppet squad had carried out an uprising in the US Capitol building,” he said. “First … what? Second … eh?”
The presenter explained that there were big differences between the riot and what his staff had done, which he described as “slandering with the intent to deceive”.
“It’s predictable why these TV speakers talk like that on TV. “They want to talk about something different from the January 6 hearings about the actual insurgency that led to the deaths of many people,” Colbert said. “But to make some kind of equivalence between the rebels storming our Capitol to prevent the counting of ballots and the toy dog chopping cigars is a shameful and grotesque insult to the memory of all those killed.
Colbert ended his account of the incident with a satirical history lesson on “puppet lawlessness.”
“The Muppets’ Great Capers, the Fragel riots of the 1980s … How do you think King Friday came to power in the Undercover Quarter?” He said. “In this case, our puppet was just a doll making dolls, and it’s sad to say that so much has changed in Washington that Capitol police must be constantly on the lookout for the January 6 attack. And as hearings become clearer every day, Putin’s puppet is to blame for this real uprising. “
CNN’s Oliver Darcy contributed to this report
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