On “The Late Show” Thursday, Stephen Colbert spent some time mocking the weirdness of modern-day Republican ads. If you’ve seen any, you know: extreme gun paganism; Violence both implicit and direct; cooked enmity; strange music.
And then he showed what it would be like if one of the Republican Party’s most famous political advertisements of all time—the most famous one made for Republicans—was made in 2022 instead of 1984.
For his monologue, Colbert focused on an ad produced by right-wing Congressman Marjorie Taylor Green, whose new reelection commercial features some pretty weird stuff. It begins with a shotgun caressing itself against a gloomy backdrop—with the gunshot being struck by lightning. All set for some very typical hard rock music.
“Man. ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ looks awful,” Colbert quipped.
Then he ran more ads. Greene mentions a number of problems she falsely accuses Democrats of, and then says, “Democrats are not the only ones destroying farmers’ ability to put food on the table,” as we see her in a helicopter. Sitting and watching the rifle load.
“We have wild boars destroying farmers’ fields. So we decided to go hog hunting. “And he did. We next see him sitting in the passenger seat of the copter holding a rifle, followed by him shooting a hog in slow motion. Really not.
“F- you, hog!” Colbert joked in an exaggerated country tone as he mimicked playing a guitar while the band “The Late Show” played the rock song from the commercial.
“So, to illustrate his argument, the Democrats are hurting farmers, so he would own the works by shooting wild boars out of a helicopter,” Colbert continued. “This ad is like reading a Mad Lib filled out by someone who’s on bath salts.”
“The Democrats are taking away your rights, and you know what we’re going to do? Fish,” Colbert slipped. “Register today to help me at Machine Fun Socialist Trout.”
“It may seem like Green is looking for an excuse to kill the stuff, but it’s part of the rich tradition of American politics. Who can forget Ronald Reagan’s classic campaign ad?” Colbert said he then ran his own remixed version of Ronald Reagan’s hugely influential “Morning Again in America” campaign from 1984.
It started out the same way as the original. “It’s morning again in America,” one Reagan impersonator says of the footage from that ad. “Let’s throw a grenade at a petting zoo!”
We see this happen, and when the explosion occurs, a rock singer shouts “Sheep are nerds!”
“I am Ronald Reagan, and I accept this message,” the voice-over says as an image of Reagan suddenly being bitten by a chicken leg.
During the monologue, Colbert spent a lot of time mocking the struggling Pennsylvania Republican nominee for governor Doug Mastroiano, some weird storm coverage and the Brett Favre scandal—during which, he joked about an ex-NFL player who is being investigated. “Every picture of Brett Favre is a dick picture.”
You can watch the full monologue above. And you can watch the original “Morning Again” ad below: