Stephen Colbert on the inauguration: 'Today we were reality-boarded'

After a safe, peaceful swearing-in ceremony for Joe Biden, a deep cleaning of the White House and a celebrityfilled virtual celebration, Stephen Colbert felt “enormous relief” for the US, he said on a live Late Show following inauguration day. “It’s like we’ve been on a ship that’s been in a storm for four years and we just stepped on to dry land.”

Biden’s inauguration, replete with a stirring performance by the youth poet laureate, Amanda Gorman, and a presidential address grounded in facts, represented a “return to normalcy”, Colbert continued, although one marked by the still-surreal calamity of the pandemic. But “even though it was abnormal, at least we understood why it was abnormal”, he said.

A year to the day after the first US patient was hospitalized with Covid, the incoming administration structured the day around clear Covid safety protocols. “So many times during the last four years, we were all like, ‘What the hell is happening? Why is this happening?’” Colbert said of the prior administration. “And they wouldn’t tell us. They wouldn’t tell us the real reasons, because everything was a sales job. And the weirdest feeling in the world is when something is clearly abnormal and someone tries to tell you that it’s not.

“What we saw today was the opposite of gaslighting,” he added. “Today we were reality-boarded, and I am here for it.”

Colbert also celebrated the historic inauguration of America’s first female vice-president, Kamala Harris. “It’s a moment that future generations will look back on and say, ‘wow, that took a long time,’” he said. Harris becomes not only the first female, first black and first south Asian American VP, but also “the first vice-president in four years who doesn’t think yogurt is too spicy”, he joked.

Trevor Noah

“Despite the pandemic, this inauguration had it all,” said Trevor Noah on the Daily Show. Highlights included: