Stephen Colbert Has Solution for Donald Trump’s ‘Authoritarian Power Grab’
Colbert has an idea about how to protect American citizens from Trump’s “El Salvador hell pit.”
Stephen Colbert may have raised the alarm over President Donald Trump’s latest “dictator” move, but he says he has a possible fix.
In his monologue Tuesday, Colbert discussed the case of a wrongly deported Maryland man who grabbed headlines after the Trump administration defied a court order to facilitate his return from an El Salvador megaprison.
Colbert told viewers that even if they don’t somehow care about Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s situation, they should still be deeply concerned.
“If you’re telling yourself, ‘Well, what happened to this guy doesn’t apply to me,’ try adding the word ‘yet,’” Colbert argued.
He explained, “Because for the last week, Trump has been publicly mulling the idea of sending American citizens to rot in the El Salvador hell pit.”
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“Trump wants to arrest people without due process in defiance of the Supreme Court, and also wants to include American citizens,” Colbert said. “We’re not ‘on our way’ to a dictatorship. We’re on the ship with old Tater Dick.”
But, Colbert added, there may be a solution.
He continued, “But there must be something we can do. The founders must have built in some sort of ‘Break glass if Constitution stops working’ mechanism, right?”
Quoting from a Brennan Center for Justice article, Colbert explained, “When somebody refuses to comply with a court order, ‘it is the primary role and mission of the United States Marshals Service to obey, execute, and enforce all orders of the federal courts.’”
“And you do not want to mess with Marshals,” Colbert joked. “You know their slogan, ‘Marshalls: you will beg for the logic of a TJ Maxx.”
Colbert’s argument for the Marshals to enforce the Supreme Court’s orders was only suggested after he detailed how little the second Trump administration has seemed to care about the courts so far.
“[The Supreme Court] ordered Trump to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia from El Salvador, but so far Donald Trump is defying the Supreme Court,” Colbert said. “And there is your constitutional crisis. It’s a failure of checks and balances.”
Colbert concluded, “The Supreme Court has to have more power than the bathroom sign that says ‘Employees must wash hands.’ Because you know Trump ignores that sign.”
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