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President Obama staged a hostile takeover of the Colbert Report last night:
Obama strode on stage and ordered Colbert out of his chair, explaining that "you’ve been taking a lot of shots at my job. I’m going to go ahead and take a shot at yours." Colbert, still in character, stammered that he was "just about to do The Word, sir!" to which the President responded that he would handle it instead. "How hard could it be?"
Not hard at all, it seems — though the president renamed the segment "The Decree" on the grounds that it was "a little more presidential."
"I, Stephen Colbert," Obama began, "have never cared for our president. The guy is so arrogant, I bet he talks about himself in the third person."
He then delivered a 5-minute monologue that largely praised Obamacare but still lampooned some of its failures. ("Remember the original healthcare.gov website? I think that's where Disney got the idea for Frozen.")
Other jokes gently targeted the president himself. "Colbert" mused that he couldn't see Obama ever going on a comedy show, even if that was the best way to get the message of Obamacare out to young Americans, because that would be "beneath his dignity." ("But above his approval rating," remarked the text appearing alongside him.) He also took a shot as some of his critics in the press, stating that "Young people don't watch real news shows like this one," as the following chyron appeared:
Further reading: Obama sounded very skeptical about the Keystone XL pipeline in his interview with Colbert.
