“The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert on Monday addressed police detaining the show’s production team for unlawful entry into the U.S. Capitol on Thursday.
Colbert said the team was filming for Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, a segment voiced by comedian Robert Smigel, which featured interviews with people at the Capitol.
“A very unpleasant experience for my staff, a lot of paperwork for the Capitol Police, but a fairly simple story — until the next night, when a couple of ‘the TV people’ started claiming that my puppet squad had ‘committed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building,’” Colbert said in a monologue on Monday.
“Everyone was very professional,” Colbert said about the four arrests that day, per USA Today. “Everyone was very calm.”
A puppet show
“This was first-degree puppetry,” Colbert joked, pausing for laughs before striking a serious tone.
“It’s predictable why these TV talkers are talking like this. They want to talk about something other than the Jan. 6 hearings, the actual seditionist insurrection that led to the deaths of multiple people and the injury of over 140 police officers,” he said.
“Drawing any equivalence between rioters storming our Capitol to prevent the counting of electoral ballots and a cigar-chomping toy dog is a shameful and grotesque insult to the memory of everyone who died and trivializes the service and the courage the Capitol police showed on that terrible day,” said Colbert, according to The New York Times.
So, what exactly happened?
The host explained that his team went through security clearances while shooting all day Wednesday and Thursday.
Later, the crew was invited back “into the offices of the congresspeople they were interviewing,” Colbert said. “That’s very important.
“After they finished their interviews, they were doing some last-minute puppetry and jokey make-’em-ups in a hallway, when Triumph and my folks were approached and detained,” Colbert said.
“The Capitol Police are much more cautious than they were, say, 18 months ago, and for a very good reason,” Colbert said.
“If you don’t know what that reason is, I know what news network you watch,” he jokingly added, taking a dig at Fox News and its decision to downplay the Capitol riots.
What happened to the arrested staffers?
The arrested crew from “The Late Show” was released from custody soon after, while the detainment left the Capitol police with “a lot of paperwork,” per The Guardian.
He added: “The Capitol Police were just doing their job, (and) my staff was just doing their job.”