The Late Show host Stephen Colbert has turned President Donald Trump’s favorite insult against him, slamming the historically low ratings of his Kennedy Center honors speech.
The outgoing Colbert had a smile plastered across his face for much of Tuesday’s monologue, as he shone a light on the abysmal ratings of Trump’s rambling address.
The president had preemptively bragged he would get “rave reviews,” dubbing the ceremony in December “the greatest evening in the history of the Kennedy Center—not even a contest,” before it was even over.
“Trump’s invasion of Venezuela on Saturday threw off my plans for what I really wanted to talk about this week,” Colbert said, referring to Trump’s operation to depose the country’s dictator Nicolás Maduro. “Which of course is how this year’s Kennedy Center Honors drew an all-time low viewership on CBS with host Donald Trump,” he continued, to loud applause.
“Nobody saw that coming. I’m sorry, I read that wrong. Nobody saw that,” he quipped, before turning Trump’s go-to insult for liberal TV hosts back on him and firing with both barrels.
“The president managed to draw only 3 million viewers on CBS. It is beneath me to gloat, but if it weren’t beneath me, I’d call him no-talent, low-rated Donald Trump.
The crowd erupted, and chants of “Stephen, Stephen” filled the studio.
Trump‘s use of the phrase dates back to the last decade, calling Colbert “a no-talent guy” during an interview with Time magazine in 2017, and has since used it against other hosts, including Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel, and Jimmy Fallon.
“I see why he says that,” Colbert continued, circling around for another pass. “That felt good. But, maybe we should cut the guy some slack. After all, it was his first year hosting. As a former Kennedy Center host myself, I know it can take a while to build an audience. What were my ratings my first year? 9.25 million viewers!” he said with feigned shock to more applause.
“What! 9.25 million viewers! Wow! What do you know? Three times as many? And I didn’t even name the building after myself.”
Pretending to talk to someone off stage, he said, “You’re telling me I actually knew that? Because I asked research to get me that information this morning so I could do this thing and pretend like I didn’t know?! Well, you learn something new every day! Trump’s terrible numbers hurt more when you remember that he predicted it would be ‘the highest-rated show they’ve ever done.’ Well, that’s about as far off as a prediction can possibly be, him next to Amelia Earhart’s famous words, ‘one thing’s for sure, I ain’t gettin lost.’”
Earhart went missing over the Pacific Ocean in July 1937.
Trump’s unorthodox presentation at the annual honors was the first ever by a sitting president, and despite lasting 12 minutes, was cut down to just 2 minutes by CBS, Mediaite reports.
In all, 3.01 million people tuned in to watch the show, down by more than one million from 4.1 million the year before.
Colbert has adopted a policy of firing from the hip when it comes to Trump, after it was announced that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is due to end in May, much to the president’s delight.
“I absolutely love that Colbert was fired,” he said on Truth Social in July.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
