Stephen Colbert started out Thursday night with a preview of the first Clinton-Trump presidential debate in September, noting that The Late Show will go on live after each debate and that Hillary Clinton is having trouble finding someone to play Donald Trump in debate prep. "I don't see what the problem is — just put a jack-o-lantern on a drunken bear, and you're done," Colbert joked. Then he turned to Trump, starting with his Wednesday rally in Mississippi with British Brexit leader Nigel Farage — "Now, I don't what the folks in the Deep South have in common with angry white people who want to leave a union, but evidently, they liked him" — and a recap of Trump's line that Clinton is a "bigot."
But Colbert spent most of the monologue on Trump's evolving immigration policy. On Thursday night, Trump had been scheduled to give a major speech on immigration, but instead he was at a fundraiser in Aspen — "though to be fair," Colbert said, "a lot of people visiting Colorado immediately forget what they were supposed to do." Still, the GOP presidential candidate has been clear on one thing: "Trump has repeatedly sworn, from the beginning of his campaign, from Day 1, if elected he'll deport 11 million undocumented immigrants," Colbert said. "And if you disagree with him on that, well, now he does, too."
That was a reference to "the softening" in Trump's town hall Wednesday night with Sean Hannity. "This is crazy," Colbert said. "The one thing we thought we knew about Donald Trump was how he felt about immigrants. Whenever he spoke on the subject he was practically coherent." This new language "is like Smokey the Bear saying, 'I'm softening my position on forest fires — matches are cool,'" Colbert said, and he was baffled by Trump's focus-group polling of the audience to figure out his own immigration stance. Then it hit him. "Now, based on that town hall last night, I think I know what his decision will be: letting the American people decide which immigrants are allowed to stay, in a new reality show called So You Think You're One of the Good Ones. Let's play right now." He did. Juan won. Watch below. Peter Weber
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