having enthusiastically cheered the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s late-night show, Media Research Center returned to whining that Colbert has guests who won’t parrot its preferred right-wing narratives., Comedy cop Alex Christy did that duty in a July 31 post:
CBS’s Stephen Colbert’s Wednesday interview with Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin hit all of the usual The Late Show beats: puffball questions, Democrat strategizing, and questions from the left. More specifically, the duo would discuss hot dogs, the far-left’s alleged “alpha energy,” and Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
Colbert began, “But, before we get into it, I learned something interesting: that your family’s farm was responsible for the Ball Park Franks recipe… So, I have to ask, you’re an expert, is a hot dog a sandwich?”
For her part, Slotlkin was emphatic that “it’s not a damn sandwich.”
Moving on to more solemn topics, Colbert recalled, “In November you were one of four Democratic senators to win states that also voted for Trump, and you say Democrats have to get what you call alpha energy.”
While gushing over a trio of far-left politicians, Colbert wondered, “What do you mean by alpha energy? Do you mean like macho or just—because people who have alpha energy. Like Bernie’s got alpha energy, and AOC’s got alpha energy. I think you’ve got some alpha energy, but—I don’t know, we’ll see—see how you answer this question. Mamdani has alpha energy. I think that’s mostly—they’re just being honest about what they think and what they feel, and how can you inculcate more of that in the Democratic Party?”
Christy served up more complaints about a different Colbert interview the following day:
The last time CBS’s Stephen Colbert welcomed former Vice President Kamala Harris to The Late Show, the two had a grand old time drinking beers and looking forward to her presidency. On Thursday, the mood was very different. Harris is now a failed presidential candidate, and Colbert is an outgoing host, but for the next ten months, he is still the host of Late Night DNC, and therefore he invited Harris to promote her new book and say “I told you so” about the “absolute barbarian” that supposedly is President Trump.
Colbert simultaneously gushed and mourned over Harris’s diagnosis of the current reality, “I have to say as someone who is very qualified for the presidency, a senator, attorney general of California, a vice president of the United States, and then a very hopeful and dynamic presidential candidate for the 107 days you had to run, to hear you say that it’s broken, to hear you say that our systems aren’t strong enough is harrowing.”
According to Harris, such a description is obvious, “Well, but it’s also evident, isn’t it?” Colbert agreed, “I mean, there’s almost no curse word bad enough.”
[…]This is the kind of interview Colbert routinely does with his Democratic guests, which occurs at a rate above his fellow late night hosts. Democracy will survive without The Late Show just as it has survived Harris’s defeat.
Tim Graham whined about the interview in his Aug. 1 podcast:
Kamala Harris coming on for her eighth appearance on “The Late Show” on CBS is part of a dreary routine, the Stephen Colbert Democratic Precinct Hall. But when you actually watch the interview and break it down, you can’t help but think: a 12-year-old might ask tougher questions.
They could start with: “Um, there seems to be a lot of Democrats who don’t want you to run again.” Unlike the lack of a primary in 2024, there should be a very competitive primary as Trump is term-limited. He cannot run again.
But the first nitpick is this. Throughout the interview, in three segments, lasting 23 minutes, he kept calling her Vice President Kamala Harris. Not former Vice President. Like he can’t accept there’s a new vice president. The promotional concept was weird. She’s selling a book that was just announced, and it’s not coming out for another seven weeks. But it was the typical toe-kiss.
Graham failed to mention his own fit of toe-kissing he and Curtis Houck did in a 2022 interview of former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, so his complaint here are more than a little hypocritical (as are Christy’s, who has never called out Graham’s softballs to McEnany).
Christy returned in an Aug. 2 post to whine some more about the Colbert-Harris interview:
New York Times columnist and the allegedly conservative half of Friday’s PBS News Hour’s weekly news recap, David Brooks, praised former Vice President Kamala Harris’s recent interview with Stephen Colbert and agreed with her that “civic capitulation” to President Trump is “a real thing.” Meanwhile, MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart explained he quit his job at The Washington Post because he could not see the value in “talking about the positive things happening in the country.”
Following a clip of the Harris-Colbert interview, host Amna Nawaz asked Brooks, “David, it’s a system she described as broken. What do you make of that response?”
Again, Christy was silent on all the softball interviews his employer does with its favored right-wingers.