Stephen Colbert responds to Donald Trump’s transgender military ruling

There are few late-night hosts who get under the skin of Donald Trump quite like Stephen Colbert. Since he became President, he’s the one he has singled out. Colbert referred to that as a victory, but today, there really are no victories with the announcement that was made.

We won’t get too political here in the text of this article, mostly because the video below via Colbert really speaks for itself and we have a specific angle we want to look at this. Stephen goes after Trump in his latest episode tonight (see the sneak peek below), first mocking the way in which he revealed that transgender soldiers are no longer allowed to be in the military. Then, there was of course plenty of mocking of the actual announcement itself via Twitter. He also uses a swear word that we cannot repeat here, which is fine because the show also censors it out.

What is very interesting to us at this point is just how different and politically-slanted the late-night TV community has become over the past two years. Previously, you got the sense that the goal was to be inclusive to everyone on these shows, but because of recent headlines and the divisive culture of America, that’s become incredibly hard. If you are someone like Colbert, who is a smart, funny, and caring man who has causes he firmly believes in, do you really expect him to go on stage and joke about New York City weather? He’s going to stand up for what makes sense for him, and do that in the way that he best sees fit. The same goes for Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and many others.

We don’t think that any of these hosts got into late-night comedy in the hopes of spending their shows ridiculing and joking about their President, but there’s no escape from it. It’s everywhere. If you ignore it, it looks like you’re doing so purposefully and you are criticized for that. If you touch on it, then you’re being “biased” and you lose the Republican viewers. There’s no real winning in late-night now, so you may as well take a stand for what you believe in and appeal to that base. This is a strategy that has worked very well for Colbert, given that since he began to focus his show more on politically-based topics, his ratings have increased and he’s battling Jimmy Fallon far more consistently.

Note that while there is a business advantage for him to go down this road, we don’t think that’s why Stephen is doing this. He has all the money he’ll ever need already. This is personal, and the more Trump hates it, the more likely he will continue.

What do you think about Stephen’s stance both on the transgender military ruling, and really everything else right now in general? Share in the comments. (Photo: CBS.)