Stephen Colbert catches up on Trump's COVID confession, climate denial, Chris Evans' photo oops

Stephen Colbert was on break for two weeks, and his opening jokes on Monday's Late Show involved the news that Captain America actor Chris Evans shared a NSFW photo on Instagram. After a sackful of jokes, he turned to "the worst wildfires in California history," with some Biblical undertones: "Okay, 2020, pestilence, pillars of fire — if you're going full Old Testament, where's the river of blood? Because we could use it to put out the flaming tornadoes!"

Scientists, California's governor, and the U.S. government blamed the worsening wildfires on climate change, but President Trump dismissed that consensus and offered another explanation en route to survey the damage — bad forest management on the West Coast. The federal government owns 58 percent of California's forestlands, while California owns 3 percent, Colbert noted. "It's basically like complaining your neighbor is doing a terrible job mowing your lawn." Trump also boldly predicted that it will get colder.

"Now it shouldn't be a surprise that Trump is downplaying the devastating fires out West — he spent the last six months ignoring a pandemic," Colbert said. And thanks to the new book by Bob Woodward, "we now know that Trump wasn't just misinformed or stupid, he was lying."

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"Of course, Donald Trump doesn't care if people die — case in point, he's gone back to holding rallies," Colbert said, including two in violation of Nevada state regulations. "You know your rally is a bad idea when it's deemed too stupid for Reno. That's where you go when Vegas is like, 'Hey, take it easy, man, you're scaring our sex workers.'" And his indoor rally outside Vegas was deemed by one doctor to be "negligent homicide," he noted.

The Late Show made up some other revelations from Woodward's book, and you can watch those below. Peter Weber