NEW YORK — Stephen Colbert grabbed a slug from his drinking glass for his first monologue after President Joe Biden’s disastrous performance during his debate with Donald Trump. This was going to be difficult.
But then the CBS “Late Show” host dove straight into jokes that would be impossible for any political satirist to resist.
“I think Biden is as good a debater as Abraham Lincoln – if you dig him up now,” Colbert said this week.
He had company. Jon Stewart, Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon have all found fodder in Biden’s stumbling, lackluster performance and in the Democrats’ internal debate over whether the president should abandon his campaign for a second term.
Late-night comics have been making trouble for Biden’s Republican opponent, Donald Trump, for years. Some have made no secret of the fact that their feelings were not merely professional: Colbert moderated a panel discussion between Biden and former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at a Manhattan fundraiser in March, and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel held court last month at a Biden Hollywood event.
But it was naive to think they would have ignored Biden’s problems, said Robert Thompson, a scholar of television and its history.
“The idea that late night comedy is a mouthpiece for the Democratic party is simply not true, because comedy can’t afford to be,” said Thompson, director of Syracuse University’s Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture. “The job is to fool the people in power.”
Although Stewart hosted a live version of “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central immediately after the June 27 debate, most of the comedic responses this week came due to holiday schedules.
In his first monologue Monday, Colbert made clear that he believed Biden has been a great president. Referring to his performance at the fundraiser, he said Biden seemed “old but convincing” that night. When Colbert showed a news report that said Biden had told fellow Democrats he was doing well, it was “just my brain,” and the camera cut to a shot of the comic lying on the ground.
“Who am I to recommend” what Biden should do? Colbert asked rhetorically. “I don’t know what’s going on in Joe Biden’s brain – something I apparently have in common with Joe Biden.”
He rejected the early statement that Biden had had a “bad episode” during the debate. “When ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ did a musical, it was a bad episode,” he said. “This has cost a year of my life.”
Although Colbert didn’t land a hard punch, “it looked like he was in pain when he had to do it,” said Bill Carter, author of “The Late Shift” and writer for LateNighter.com.
The closest Colbert came to giving advice was when he said Biden seemed caught between two virtues: perseverance and self-sacrifice.
“Self-sacrifice takes a certain kind of courage,” he said. “That is a courage that I believe Joe Biden is capable of. I believe he is a good enough man. He is a good enough president to put the needs of the country above the needs of his ego. And as painful as that may be, it’s possible that handing over leadership to a younger generation is the right thing to do for the greater good.”
A heartfelt statement – with a zinger at the end. The last word is a reference to a gaffe in Biden’s interview with George Stephanopoulos.
Kimmel, who has been the subject of bitter attacks from Trump and returned them promptly, is out this summer. He has not criticized Biden on his X account.
“I imagine he’s happy to be on vacation,” Carter said.
No doubt the change in tone is liked by Trump, who faced a “drumbeat of ridicule” on late-night television, Carter said. His feud with Kimmel and acidic comments on “Saturday Night Live” show a thin skin. “SNL,” like Kimmel, is off for the summer.
Stewart has taken issue with how some Biden supporters have complained that more attention should have been paid to the things Trump said during the debate. He pointed out on “The Daily Show” that Trump has been criticized by comics “every night for 10 years.”
“We expected him to be crazy,” Stewart said. “But Biden’s performance and sometimes inability to articulate was stunning. I couldn’t believe what I saw.”
He said Thursday on his podcast “The Weekly Show” that Biden’s team has been dishonest about the president’s condition. Earlier on ‘The Daily Show’ he called for a more open conversation.
“Do you understand the opportunity here?” said Stewart. “Do you have any idea how thirsty Americans are for some form of inspiration or leadership and for redemption from this choice of a megalomaniac and a suffocating gerontocracy?”
On his NBC show, Meyers said that when he watched the debate, “I tried to turn on the closed captioning, but that just made it worse.” He also mocked Biden’s promise to get more rest.
“Your plan to calm fears about his age is an earlier bedtime?” said Meijers. “Are you hoping we’ll forget he’s 81 if you treat him like he’s 5½?”
Late-night comics may not have the television audiences they used to, but they arguably still have a disproportionate influence in public discourse, says Syracuse’s Thompson. In the case of the Biden jokes, he says, they are “influential because it’s the last place you might have expected to see them.”
Especially for a younger generation, what the presenters say is more likely to be experienced the next day through video clips found online or shared on social media. That was the case this week on “Morning Joe,” which reprized a Jimmy Fallon routine on the “Tonight” show that referenced an interview with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on “Morning Joe” the day before.
Fallon has kept his jokes largely light, as he did Thursday night: “Biden,” he said, “hasn’t seen this many people jump ship since he vacationed on the Titanic.”
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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him up http://twitter.com/dbauder.
