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Donald Trump just broke Stephen Colbert’s heart.
The president addressed the nation from the White House briefing room on Thursday night. While legitimate and legal ballots were still continuing to be counted across the country, the president falsely claimed that “if you count the legal votes, I easily win,” and accused the Democratic Party of “fraud” and trying to “steal” the election, without providing any evidence of either.
In fact, there is none. The votes still being counted are legal and legitimate mail-in ballots submitted before deadline on Election Day, which some states could not begin counting until after the polls closed on Tuesday.
Broadcast and cable networks including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNBC and MSNBC cut away from the president’s briefing, with many fact-checking the commander-in-chief’s most misleading remarks about the ongoing election process. CNN and Fox News continued to air the full address.
More 2020 election coverage: Biden pulls ahead of Trump in Georgia and Pennsylvania
And among the most notable critiques of the president’s most baseless remarks on Thursday was “Late Show” host Colbert, whose emotional reaction went viral on Twitter TWTR, -1.46% afterward.
Colbert gave a monologue dressed in dark, somber clothing, noting he was dressed for a funeral because “Donald Trump tried really hard to kill something tonight.”
“ “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.” ”
“The president came out into the White House briefing room and lied for 15 minutes,” Colbert said. He described Trump’s remarks as “just nonsensical stuff about illegal vote dumps and corrupt election officials and secret Democratic counting cabals, and I don’t know, longform birth certificates, probably. It’s all the same.“
But Colbert became emotional when remarking how predictable the president’s response to the still too-close-to-call presidential race has been, similar to how Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders also predicted how the election would play out two weeks ago.
“[Trump] said this stuff back in 2016 … so we all knew he would do this,” Colbert said. He then choked up and went silent for a few moments, looking down at the floor, before continuing. “What I didn’t know is that it would hurt so much. I didn’t expect this to break my heart,” Colbert said. “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 ended by calling on every single Republican to speak up. “You only survived this up until now because a lot of voters didn’t want to believe everything that was obvious to so many of us: that Donald Trump is a fascist,” he said. “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?”
Watch it here:
Some Republicans did take to social media after Trump’s Thursday night speech to ask the president to stop undermining the integrity of the election, and to plead for patience.
“This is getting insane,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) tweeted, adding “stop spreading debunked misinformation.” Retiring Republican Will Hurd (R-Texas) tweeted that Trump’s behavior was “dangerous & wrong,” adding that, “every American should have his or her vote counted.”
Former presidential candidate and Republican Sen. Mitt Romney tweeted that Trump is “wrong to say that the election was rigged, corrupt and stolen” on Friday, stating that “doing so damages the cause of freedom here and around the world, weakens the institutions that lie at the foundation of the Republic, and recklessly inflames destructive and dangerous passions.”
Read:‘Chill Donald, chill!’ Greta Thunberg’s revenge tweet uses Trump’s own words against him
Cable and broadcast news anchors also condemned the president’s false remarks undermining the American democratic process. MSNBC cut away first on Thursday, with Brian Williams saying, “Okay, here we are again in the unusual position of not only interrupting the president of the United States but correcting the president of the United States. There are no illegal votes that we know of. There has been no Trump victory that we know of.”
“NBC Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt interrupted roughly five minutes into Trump’s remarks, saying, “the president made a number of false statements including the notion that there’s been fraudulent voting. There has been no evidence of that allegation by his campaign.”
Read: Here’s what we know about the 5 states whose Electoral College votes haven’t been called
MSNBC reporter Hayes Brown tweeted that Twitter also ended the live feed of Trump’s speech in its app early, and removed the “watch live” option. Twitter also flagged several of the president’s tweets about the incoming election results on Thursday as “potentially misleading.”
While CNN kept Trump’s address on the air, Anderson Cooper didn’t pull any punches afterward. “That is the president of the United States,” Cooper said. “That is the most powerful person in the world, and we see him like an obese turtle on his back, flailing in the hot sun, realizing his time is over.”
“ “That is the most powerful person in the world, and we see him like an obese turtle on his back, flailing in the hot sun, realizing his time is over.” ”
CNN reporter Daniel Dale tweeted: “I’ve read or watched all of Trump’s speeches since 2016. This is the most dishonest speech he has ever given.”
Fox News was less critical in its response, but still agreed that the president and his lawyers need to present evidence of any fraud.
The New York Times called the president’s Thursday night statement “filled with egregious lies and smirks about the election process” in an Instagram post.
Opinion: Why Trump’s false claims about election fraud resonate so strongly with his supporters
As of Friday morning, Biden was leading Trump in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Nevada by slim margins, while Trump continued to remain ahead in North Carolina.
