Stephen Colbert joked that fellow late-night host Jon Stewart missed a televised reunion to annoy President Donald Trump.
Speaking on a special episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that reunited the Strike Force Five podcast, the host noted that The Daily Show frontman was absent.
“The five of us being here right now, obviously, it’s dangerous because we represent so much of late night. Jon Stewart is the designated survivor tonight,” he said to laughs from the crowd.
“Someone has to survive for the president to be mad at,” Colbert quipped. In reality, Stewart was busy with his own show.
Colbert’s panel featured fellow Trump-rattling hosts Jimmy Kimmel, John Oliver, Seth Meyers, and Jimmy Fallon. The gaggle of entertainers briefly hosted a podcast during the Hollywood writers’ strike of 2023 to help support their own writers.
They assembled again Monday night to see off their colleague, Colbert, whose show is in its final two weeks.
Elsewhere in the special, Oliver revealed how Kimmel reacted to first lady Melania Trump calling him out.
Trump called Kimmel’s eponymous late-night show “hateful and violent” after he said she “had the glow of an expectant widow” just days before a gunman attempted to storm the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner with apparent designs on killing President Donald Trump and his Cabinet.
Oliver said Kimmel messaged a group chat of his fellow comics with the words “Oh, boy.”
“It’s an amazing thing to get a text from Jimmy saying ‘Oh, boy,’ and then a picture of Melania mad at him. What a way to start the day!” Oliver joked.
Jimmy Fallon then added, “And then I sent a text to you guys, and I said, ‘Hey, don’t be mad at me, but I liked it.’ I think she’s got a point.”
Colbert’s show was canceled by Trump-friendly CBS three days after he criticized its parent company, Paramount Global, for settling a lawsuit with the president for $16 million, setting the tone for the administration to crack down on dissenting late-night hosts.
