Stephen Colbert manages to insult both Trump and Cincinnati's chili at the same time

(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/The Late Show with Stephen Colbert)

published 2 August 2019

With President Trump in Cincinnati for a rally on Thursday night, Stephen Colbert declared that "for once, chili on spaghetti was not the most disgusting thing in town."

The Late Show taped before Trump appeared at the rally, but Colbert did have a chance to watch Trump answer questions from reporters as he prepared to leave for Ohio. They centered on his last rally in North Carolina, where audience members started chanting, "Send her back!" about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who came to the U.S. from Somalia as a child. "Fun fact," Colbert said. "She's still here."

A reporter asked Trump if he was prepared to tell Thursday's crowd to stop if they started "chanting something problematic," and Trump gave a non-answer. "I don't know what's going to happen," he said. "I can tell you this, I'm going to Cincinnati. The arena's a very large one, we've sold it out, we could sell it probably 10 times from what I hear." When pressed, Trump added, "If they do chant, we'll have to see what happens. I don't know that you can stop people."

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Putting on his best fake Trump voice, Colbert responded, "What am I gong to do, tell my whole audience to go back where they came from? That's not what America's about, folks." As it turns out, the audience did not chant "Send her back!" CNN reports that Trump did, however, insult California, a state he lost in 2016 by 30 percentage points, calling it a "disgrace to our country," and accused Democrats of caring more about undocumented immigrants than U.S. citizens. "The rage-filled Democrat Party is trying to tear America apart," he said. Catherine Garcia

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.