Stephen Colbert gawks at Donald Trump's brazen pitch to terminally ill voters

Stephen Colbert mocks Donald Trump appealing to the terminally ill
(Image credit: Late Show)

Stephen Colbert started off Thursday's Late Show by talking about Donald Trump, acknowledging wryly that "there is other news out there, one imagines," but Trump visited an elementary school classroom in Nevada, and the kids said the darndest things. "When Trump was done frightening small children, he asked for a favor from an unlikely group, the terminally ill," Colbert said, playing a clip of Trump telling people to vote for him even if it was literally the last thing they do. "Yeah, just go into that booth, pull that lever out of spite," he said, imitating a terminally ill Trump voter. "'If I gotta go, I'm taking y'all with me!' I really think Trump has finally found his core demographic: people who will not be alive for his administration."

Next, Colbert used Trump's comments about strong soldiers and PTSD to bring up Trump's own military (non-) record and diagnose Trump with a new disorder: PreTSD. He also cringed over a Samsung phone that exploded in a man's pocket on a Southwest flight, and ended on the newly resurfaced theory by two tech billionaires, including Elon Musk, that we all live in a Matrix-like computer simulation. "If Elon Musk is right, and he's right a lot, the universe is just a giant video game," Colbert marveled. "And I gotta say, I think there's room for improvement." For his very gamer-centric philosophical musings on life, watch below. Peter Weber

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.