Stephen Colbert kicked off Wednesday's Late Show on a sober note, with some thoughts on the shooting Wednesday morning of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) and four others during a GOP congressional baseball practice. "Once again, we are all shocked in mind and soul by a mass shooting, this time, apparently, targeting Republican congressmen, and I pray to God that everybody pulls through," he said. "Violence of any kind is never justified, and is the last refuge of the incompetent."
"Even in the horror of this day, there was reason to take heart," he said, playing some bipartisan words of unity. "So I just want to say thank you to the congressional leadership and to the president for responding to this act of terror in a way that gives us hope that whatever our differences, we will always be the United States of America."
"Now let's try some comedy," he said, starting with the 71st birthday present to President Trump from a group of some 200 Democrats, then turning to the "Senate Intelligence Committee's all-you-can-stonewall buffet," starring Attorney General Jeff Sessions. "Wow, he's really good at providing absolutely no information," Colbert said, after playing all the ways Sessions said he couldn't discuss his conversations with Trump. "I think we've found the replacement for Sean Spicer!"
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Colbert returned to the shooting in his interview with Daily Show host Trevor Noah, asking Noah for his thoughts. "It was great to see people from both sides seeing this and uniting under the banner of human and American before anything else," he said. He mentioned that Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Sessions were friends, though they did not advertise the fact. "I think that's something that's lacking in American politics, is politicians showing, from both sides of the aisles, that they are friends," Noah said. "It's almost become like wrestling, where the fans don't realize that those people get along. Those people fight every single day, but like Paul Ryan said today, like Nancy Pelosi said, they said: We fight tooth and nail, but we don't forget that we are people, we are friends, we are families, we are colleagues. And I feel like they could do a better job of saying that to Americans, going like: Hey, we fight, you can fight, but don't forget that at your core, you are Americans." Watch. Peter Weber
