Stephen Colbert gets emotional on his show in earnest condemnation of ‘fascist’ Trump and his 'devastating' press conference that 'hurt so much'

  • Colbert gave an impassioned monologue about Trump on the Late Show  
  • Host criticized the 'lies' spoken by Trump at a press conference on Thursday
  • Colbert called the President a 'fascist' and asked GOP to speak up against him
  • He said his behavior is 'predictable' but he didn't know it would 'hurt so much'

Stephen Colbert became emotional on his show last night in an earnest condemnation of President Trump, who he called a 'fascist'. 

On the Late Show With Stephen Colbert, he called Trump's press conference - in which he cast doubt over the entire presidential election - 'devastating', adding that it 'hurt so much' seeing the President trying to 'kill' democracy.  

In his first TV appearance since election day last night, Trump claimed the election was rigged against him from start to finish by a vast conspiracy involving big donors, big tech, social media, the media in general, pollsters and Democrats. 

Colbert, his words sticking in his throat, said that 'we all knew [Trump] would do this... What I didn't know was that it would hurt so much.'  

Stephen Colbert during his speech criticizing comments made by the president during a press conference last night

Stephen Colbert during his speech criticizing comments made by the president during a press conference last night 

Colbert becomes visibly emotional, pausing for a while before continuing his speech on the Late Show last night

Colbert becomes visibly emotional, pausing for a while before continuing his speech on the Late Show last night 

Colbert added that he dressed in black as though going to a funeral because the president had 'tried really hard to kill something'. He added that the President had 'lied' to the American people. 

He also suggested that Trump's speech showed the president was afraid that Biden was approaching 270 electoral college votes. 

He called Trump's behavior 'predictable' and said that 'we all knew he would do this'.   

'What I didn't know is that it would hurt so much,' Colbert said after pausing to gather himself.  

'I didn't expect this to break my heart. For him to cast a dark shadow on our most sacred right from the briefing room in the White House, our house. Not his. That is devastating.'

Colbert called on Republicans to take a stand against the President's baseless comments, adding that 'for evil to succeed all that is necessary is for good men to do nothing'.   

'Donald Trump is a fascist and when it comes to democracy versus fascism, I'm sorry there are not fine people on both sides so you need to choose: Donald Trump or the American people,' he said. 

'This is the time to get off the Trump train because he told you where the train is going and it's not a passenger train and he'll load you on it someday too.'  

Maryland's Republican Gov. Larry Hogan and GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger were among the first batch of GOP members to slam the President's comments. 

'There is no defense for the President's comments tonight undermining our Democratic process,' Hogan tweeted. 

'America is counting the votes, and we must respect the results as we always have before. No election or person is more important than our Democracy.'   

A handful of Republicans came out quickly and condemned remarks President Donald Trump said Thursday night from the White House podium, where he alleged a conspiracy of voter fraud that is robbing him from an electoral victory, as Democrat Joe Biden is ahead

A handful of Republicans came out quickly and condemned remarks President Donald Trump said Thursday night from the White House podium, where he alleged a conspiracy of voter fraud that is robbing him from an electoral victory, as Democrat Joe Biden is ahead 

Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger
Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan

Republicans Rep. Adam Kinzinger (left) and Gov. Larry Hogan (right) were among the first group of Republicans to come out and criticize Trump's appearance Thursday night in the Whtie House briefing room where he spoke about widespread fraud without offering evidence

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois, tweeted that it's 'getting insane' for Trump to spread 'debunked misinformation,' as he put it

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois, tweeted that it's 'getting insane' for Trump to spread 'debunked misinformation,' as he put it 

Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, echoed the sentiment.       

'We want every vote counted, yes every legal vote (of course). But, if you have legit concerns about fraud present EVIDENCE and take it to court. STOP Spreading debunked misinformation...,' Kinzinger tweeted. 'This is getting insane.' 

Hollywood actor Mark Ruffalo rallied behind Colbert in the aftermath of his monologue, thanking him for his emotional plea.  

'Damn. I never thought I would see Colbert break down. Wow. I get it,' Ruffalo tweeted.      

On Thursday night, Trump claimed that if all 'legal votes' were counted he would win the election as he charged Democrats with trying to steal the contest 'corruptly' through mail-in ballots in a suddenly-announced White House address delivered as his tiny voting leads in Pennsylvania and Georgia slipped further.

All three broadcast networks - ABC, CBS and NBC - cut away from the press conference before it finished, warning their viewers that Trump had made 'a number of false statements' that needed clarifying.

MSNBC was the first to cut away, as anchor Brian Williams warned 'here we go again', but Fox News and CNN covered it in full.

In a series of tweets sent at 2.30am Washington time, Trump continued his tirade - attacking social media regulation, making baseless claims of fraud, casting doubt over several close Senate races, and calling on the Supreme Court to intervene.

Read Trump's 17-minute White House statement attacking US democracy and the 'conspiracies' against him

Thank you very much. Good evening. 

I'd like to update the American people with our efforts to protect the election. 

If you count the legal vote, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us. If you count the votes that came in late, we're looking at them very strongly. 

A lot of votes came in late. 

I've already won many critical states, including Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio.  

We've won -- election interference. 

As everybody saw, we won by historic numbers. And they got it knowingly wrong. It's so ridiculous and everybody knew it at the time. 

There is no blue wave that they predicted. They thought there was going to be a big blue wave. That was false. Instead, there was a big red wave and it's been properly acknowledged by the media. 

I think they were very impressed, but that was after the fact. That doesn't do us any good. 

We kept the senate, despite having twice as many seats to protect as Democrats. And really, and much more competitive states, we did a fantastic job with the senate. I think we're very proud of what's happened there. 

They spent more on senate races in South Carolina and Kentucky alone, two races and hundreds -- races and hundreds of millions of dollars against us. 

Opponents and major donors were wall street bankers and special interests. 

Our major donors were police officers, farmers, and everyday citizens. 

For the first time ever, we lost zero races in the House. 

I was talking to Kevin McCarthy today. He said he couldn't believe it. We won new seats, with many more on the way.

This is also the year of the Republican woman. More Republican women were elected to congress than ever before. That's a great achievement. I won the largest share of non-white voters of any republican, including historic numbers of Latino, African-American, Asian American, and Native American voters, the largest ever in our history. 

We grew our party by 4 million voters, the greatest turnout in Republican party history. 

Democrats are the party of the big donors, the big media, the big tech it seems, and Republicans have become the party of the American worker, and that's what happened. And we're also the party of inclusion. A

s everybody recognizes, media polling was election interference in the truest sense of that word, by powerful special interests. These really phony polls -- I have to call them phony polls, fake polls, designed to create the illusion of momentum for Mr. Biden and diminish Republicans ability to raise funds. 

They were what's called suppression polls. Everyone knows that now. 

To highlight just a few examples, the day before the election, Quinnipiac, which was wrong on every occasion that I know of, had Joe Biden up by five points in Florida. And they were off by 8.4 points and I won Florida easily, easily. I ended up winning Florida by a lot. Other than that, they were very accurate. 

They had him up four points in Ohio, and they were up by 12.2 points. And they also won Ohio, the great state of Ohio, there easily. They had Joe Biden up 17 points in Wisconsin, and it was basically even. They were off by about 17 point. And they knew that. They were not stupid people. They knew that, suppression. 

There are states yet to be decided in the presidential race. The voting apparatus of this state are run, in all cases, by Democrats. We were winning in all the key locations by a lot, actually, and then our numbers started miraculously getting whittled away, in secret, and they wouldn't allow, legally permissible observers. 

We went to court in a couple of instances and we were able to get the observers put in. They wanted them 60, 70 feet away, 100 feet away, to observe. 

There is lots of litigation. There is tremendous amount of litigation because of how unfair this process was. And I predicted that. 

I talked about mail-in voting for a long time. It's really destroyed our system. It's a corrupt system. And it's made as corrupt, even if we are not corrupt by nature. It's too easy. They wait and wait and you see that on election night.

We were ahead in North Carolina by a lot, tremendous number of votes. And we're still ahead by a lot, but not as many because they're finding ballots all of a sudden.

It's amazing how these mail-in ballots are all one-sided. I know it's supposed to be to the advantage of the Democrats. But in all cases, they are one-sided. 

We were up by 700,000 votes in Pennsylvania. I won Pennsylvania by a lot. And that gets whittled down to, now we're up by 90,000 votes.

 They will keep coming and coming and coming and they don't want us to have observers, although we won a court case. And they're appealing. Actually, they're appealing. We won a case we want people to watch, and they're appealing. That's interesting. I wonder why they're appealing. 

Likewise in Georgia, I won by a lot, a lot, with a lead getting close to 300,000 votes on election night in Georgia -- and by the way, got whittled down, and now it's getting to be to a point where I'll be winning by a lot by perhaps even being down a little bit. 

In Georgia, a pipe burst, totally unrelated to the location, and they stopped counting and a lot of things happened. The election apparatus in Georgia is run by Democrats. 

We've had margins of 300,000. Michigan, we won the state. In Wisconsin, we did likewise, fantastically well. And that got whittled down. In every case, they got whittled down. We're on track to win Arizona. We only need to carry 55% of the remaining vote, 55% margins, and that's a margin that we've significantly exceeded, so we'll see what happens with that. 

Our goal is to defend the integrity of the election. We will not allow the corruption to steal such an important election, or any election for that matter, and we can't allow silence of anybody to silence our voters and manufacture results. 

I've been doing a lot of public things for a long time. I've never had anything that's been as inspirational by people calling, talking, sending things to us. 

I've never seen such love and such affection and such spirit as I've seen for this. People know what happening and they've seen what's happening. 

There are many instances, which will be reported very shortly. There is tremendous litigation going on. And this is a case where they are trying to steal an election. They are trying to rig an election. We can't let that happen. 

They cannot be responsible for engineering the outcome of the presidential race. 

In Pennsylvania, Democrats have gone to the state supreme court to try to ban our election observers very strongly. We won the case, but they're going forward. They don't want anybody watching them as they count the ballots. And I can't imagine why. There is no legitimate reason why they would not want to have people watching this process. 

Because if it's straight, they should be proud of it. Instead, they are trying obviously to commit fraud. There's no question about that. 

In Philadelphia, observers are kept far away, very far away. So far, that people are using binocular's. 

There's been tremendous problems caused, paper on all of the windows so you can't see in, and the people that are banned are very unhappy and have become somewhat violent.   

The 11th circuit ruled that in Georgia, the votes have been in by election day, that they should be in by election day, and they weren't. Votes are coming in after election day. And they had a ruling already that you have to have the votes in by election day. To the best of my knowledge, votes should be in by election day. 

Democrats never believed they could win this election honestly. I really believed that. Tremendous corruption and fraud going on. That's why they mailed out tens of millions of unsolicited ballots without any verification measures whatsoever. 

And I told everybody that these things would happen. Because I've seen it happen. 

I've watched a lot of different elections before they decided to go with this big massive election with tens of millions of ballots going out to everybody, in many cases totally unsolicited.

 This was unprecedented in American history. This was by design despite years of claiming to care about election security. 

They refuse to require signatures, identities, or to make sure they are eligible or ineligible to vote. People are walking in, they have no idea. They are writing down things, doing a lot of bad things.We have a lot of information coming that you'll see, will shake even you people up. 

The officials overseeing the counting in Pennsylvania, all part of a corrupt Democrat machine that you've written about for a long time. You've been writing about a corrupt democrat machine. 

I went to school there. It hasn't changed. It's gotten worse. 

In Pennsylvania, partisan democrats have allowed the ballots to be received three days after the election, and we think much more than that. And they are counting those without any identification whatsoever. So you don't have postmarks, you don't have identification. 

There have been a number of disturbing irregularities across the nation. 

Our campaign has been denied access to observe any counting in Detroit. Detroit is another place. And I wouldn't say the best reputation for election integrity. 

Poll workers in Michigan were duplicating ballots. When our observers attempted to challenge the activity, they jumped in front of the volunteers to block their view so they couldn't see what they were doing. And it became a little bit dangerous. 

One major hub for counting ballots in they covered up the windows with large pieces of cardboard. So they wanted to protect and block the counting area the final batch did not arrive until 4:00 in the morning. So they brought it in. And the batches came in and nobody knew where they came from. We've been denied access. 

Counting was halted for hours and hours on election night with results with held from major democrat-run locations only to appear later and they all had the name Biden on them or just about all, which is a little strange.

I challenge Joe and Democrats to clarify that they only want legal votes. I think they should use legal votes. 

We want every legal vote counted. We want openness and transparency. No secret count rooms. No mystery ballots, no illegal votes after election day. 

You have election day and the laws are very strong on that. You have an election day. We want an honest election and an honest count. We want people working back there because it's a very important job. 

That's the way this country will win. 

We think there's going to be a lot of litigation because we have so much evidence and so much proof, but we think there will be a lot of litigation because we can't have an election stolen like this.

I tell you, I've been talking about this for many months with all of you. 

I've said strongly that mail-in ballots are going to be a disaster, small very easy elections were disastrous. 

This is a large scale version and it's getting worse and worse every day. 

We're hearing stories that are absolute horror stories. And we can't let that happen to the united states. 

It's not a question of who wins, Republican, Democrats, Joe, myself. 

We can't let that happen to our country. 

We can't be disgraced by having something like this happen. So it will be hopefully cleared up, maybe soon. I hope soon. But it will probably go through a process, a legal process. 

As you know I've claimed certain states. He's claiming states. So we can both claim the states. 

But ultimately, I have a feeling that the judges will have to rule. 

There have been a lot of shenanigans and we can't stand for that in the country. 

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Stephen Colbert condemns 'fascist' Trump in emotional speech on show

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