Stephen Colbert compares Mar-a-Lago raid to Christmas

"It’s right up there with 'we put cheese inside the crust,'" Colbert said on Tuesday

By Kelly McClure

Nights & Weekends Editor

Published August 10, 2022 9:09PM (EDT)

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (Scott Kowalchyk/CBS)
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (Scott Kowalchyk/CBS)

During a segment of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" on Tuesday, Colbert celebrated the FBI's recent raid of Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence and referred to the event as being as "big as Christmas." 

The incident that Colbert is referring to took place on Monday when the FBI performed an unannounced search of former President Trump's Florida home to look for documents that Trump may have illegally taken from the White House at the end of his presidency. The raid was conducted under a search warrant which, as Salon points out in earlier coverage of the raid, had to have been signed by a federal prosecutor after showing probable cause.

Greeting his audience during the show's opening monologue, Colbert joked that "It may be hot outside, but in here it's Christmas; because yesterday we got the present we wanted."

From here the screen flashes to an NPR headline reading "FBI agents raided Mar-a-Lago," causing the audience to erupt into cheers and applause.


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"That is the most beautiful sentence America has ever produced," Colbert said in response to NPR's headline. "It's right up there with 'we put cheese inside the crust."

Offering a brief run-down of what took place during the raid, Colbert joked that he felt sorry for the agents conducting it; riffing as though one of those agents saying "Sir, I finished searching the empty cabinet full of empty chicken buckets, where should I go next?"

"We know the raid happened, but we still don't know why the raid happened, because we don't yet know what was in the search warrant" said Colbert as the segment went further into speculation on the justifiable cause behind the search warrant being issued. "Think about that. We're talking about the former President of the United States of America. The FBI raids his home and all we can think is 'hmmm, I wonder which of his crimes they're investigating.'"

Watch the rest of the segment here:


By Kelly McClure

Kelly McClure is Salon's Nights and Weekends Editor covering daily news, politics and culture. Her work has been featured in Vulture, The A.V. Club, Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan, Nylon, Vice, and elsewhere. She is the author of Something is Always Happening Somewhere.

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