Stephen Colbert calls his Late Show "the joy machine," he told John Dickerson on CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday, because "unless you do it with joy, it's just a machine." And if he could interview Pope Francis, he would ask him "where he finds his joy" and how he got "into the shoes of the fisherman without becoming dogmatically so rigid that there's no joy left in him." Joy is especially important in a sad, dark year like 2015, Colbert said, because physiologically "you can't laugh and be afraid at the same time."
The discussion of joy and comedy came at the end of a 13-minute interview focused mostly on politics, a subject Colbert claimed he knows nothing about. On Donald Trump, Colbert said he respects his populist upending of the political parties and his willingness to give certain voters what they want, even though he may "disagree with anything that he's saying and think that his proposals are a little — well, more than a little shocking." He added: "I'm not the first person to say this, but I completely agree that he's my old character with $10 billion. He's completely playing on an emotional level, and so beautifully, I mean, it's one of the reasons why I just can't do that old character anymore, because he's doing it better than I ever could, because he's willing to drink his own Kool-Aid — and manufacture it and distribute it."
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