transcript

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
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Speaker 3:
[01:01] Welcome, friends and neighbors to The Late Show. I'm your host, Stephen Colbert. How are you guys?

Speaker 2:
[01:08] Good?

Speaker 3:
[01:09] Good to see you. Folks, I try to remember not to be in Washington, DC as often as possible, but there is certainly no time I am there less than the weekend of the White House Correspondents Dinner, which is why this Saturday, I will again not be. But, but, and it's a big but, but for reasons that are not clear to me, many others will. If you're not familiar with the White House Correspondents Dinner, it is traditionally a lighthearted night when the press and politicians get together and in my personal experience, stare in dead-eyed silence at the performer, while the president mentally orders a hit by CLTN 6. And this Saturday's dinner will be historic because this is for the first time as president, Donald Trump is attending and reportedly, in his remarks, he's planning to attack the press and target publications. He is accused of writing negatively about his administration. No, all you reporters are enemies of the people. I hate you all. And if you call me, I will pick up every time. Seriously, anytime, night or day.

Speaker 4:
[02:32] I will do that.

Speaker 3:
[02:33] I will. If I'm anywhere, if I'm on the toilet, if I'm having dinner, if I'm having dinner on the toilet, okay? That's a real time saver, folks. The word is, after he rips the Press Corps a new one, Trump is going to immediately leave, so he will miss the annual presentation of the press awards. I'm not going to understand why he's going to dip, because one of these awards, and this is true, is going to the Wall Street Journal for its scoop about a certain birthday pub doodle for Jeffrey Epstein, as well as another award for the photo journalist who took this picture of that time a man had a medical emergency right there in the Oval Office, and Trump just stood there like he was waiting for a bus. It's so crazy that he didn't help, especially now that we know that he is a doctor. He's right there. That was right. So generous. Contrary to tradition, this year no one will be roasting Trump because instead of a comedian, the White House Correspondents Association hired mentalist Ose Perlman seen here foreseeing that you are not going to like it when he honks your boob. Today, Perlman hinted that Trump won't just be watching, but participating in his act saying, reading Donald Trump's mind is arguably the most impressive thing you could ever do. Really? Really, reading his mind, when is he not immediately just blurted out whatever's rattling around in his skull? I bet you can't read my mind. What number am I thinking of, three? Turning, reading his mind, okay. Okay. Turning to the war with Iran, we have breaking news. That there is no breaking news. In fact, there's nothing going, there are no negotiations currently ongoing. And Iran says it is impossible to reopen the Strait of Hormuz amid flagrant ceasefire breaches. And Trump has doubled down by also closing the Strait of Hormuz, posting, we have total control over the state of Hormuz. No ship can enter or leave without the approval of the United States Navy. It is sealed up tight until such time as Iran is able to make a deal. He's saying the exact thing that they are. They're both saying the same thing. I'm rubber and you're rubber. We've got two rubbers. Whatever bounces off me, then bounces off you, then bounces off me again, and it goes back and forth like that for a while. And I'm sure you're asking, shouldn't there also be glue in this metaphor? No, because I sniffed it all. Isaacite. Despite closing the Strait himself, Trump is trying to clear out Iranian mines that are out there. And also, the Iranians are putting boats out there to lay some more mines, and Trump has said, I have ordered the United States Navy to shoot and kill any boat. Yes, he said, kill. Sounds strange, but it was the plot every week on the hit mystery series, Murder She Boat. So good. Lansbury, amazing. In a phone call, it was the Fox News? In a phone call with Fox News, Trump said about the war, People say I want to get it over because of the midterms. Not true. No time frame, no rush. Yeah. What's the rush? It's like General Sherman famously said, War is chill. Take your time. Take your time. You know who would like some kind of time frame for the end of the war? Everyone else. Because thanks to Trump's blunder, the world's biggest airlines are canceling flights as they face jet fuel shortages and rising prices. One carrier really, really affected by high fuel costs is Spirit Airlines. You know their slogan, Spirit Airlines, you are allowed one carry-on to use as the bathroom. Yeah, because you're not going to want to go in there. Spirit is on the verge of liquidation, but reportedly they're in talks with the White House for a bailout and if it goes through, the US could end up owning 90% of the struggling budget airline, which led one analyst to say, I guess it would be the Amtrak of the skies. Someone say Amtrak? Hey. Hey, what's up, Barack? It's a good guy. Good guy. Somebody say Amtrak? Because I am back, Am Jack. There's already an Amtrak in the sky. It's called Heaven. I'll be in the dining car with Jesus Christ, Jimmy Carter and one of the Catching Jammer kids. Come on, train. Jill. Oh no. Jill. Barack. There's an update. There is. There's an update. There's an update about Health Secretary RFK Jr. This week, Bobby has been testifying before Congress about slashing HHS's new budget. But before I talk about that, I gotta tell you that according to a new book about him, he once sliced off a dead raccoon's penis while his wife and kids waited in the minivan. He took the generals so he could quote, study them later. Ah, yes, day 20 of observing the raccoon penis. It appears that it is still impossible to understand why I did this. Anyway, old Secretary Weenie Slicer is in charge of your health. And yesterday, the Senate Finance Committee grilled him about his role in recent measles outbreaks.

Speaker 2:
[10:08] I'm not anti-vax.

Speaker 3:
[10:09] I've never been anti-vax. I've always said for 20 years, I'm not anti-vaccine. Now, that statement right there is what scientists call a lie, because in the past, you can check the record. Did we check?

Speaker 1:
[10:23] We did.

Speaker 3:
[10:24] In the past, he's falsely claimed that the measles vaccine does not appear to provide maternal immunity, includes aborted fetus debris, and that protection from the vaccine wanes very quickly. So he's claiming he's pro-vaccine is a major U-turn, which is also what Bobby does whenever he sees a raccoon penis in the road. Get that minivan, jackknife that minivan.

Speaker 1:
[10:56] We're here!

Speaker 3:
[11:01] Somebody beat me to it. Obviously, he's trying to appear reasonable in front of Congress just there, which is a big ask for a man who looks like he has a disease called the teriyaki madness. But the weirdest part of RFK Jr.'s hearing wasn't what he said, it's what he breathed. Listen to the Health Secretary on the mic while being questioned.

Speaker 1:
[11:25] The most significant things that you have done, among the many that you've described in your testimony. In that context.

Speaker 3:
[11:41] Is that a good sign when your health secretary breathes like a walrus snorting lobster bisque? If he sounds like a bear getting autoerotic asphyxiated? Like he's the first person in history to need to see pap while awake? Longtime viewers of The Late Show know that sound means we have news about fish doing drugs. Because in a new study, salmon exposed to cocaine traveled almost two times farther per week than the control group and they were three times more likely to start a band. Here's the scientific way they got the fish cranked on the powder. Researchers took 105 wild Atlantic salmon, exposed them to cocaine, then tracked their movements. And I believe, I'm told, we have a statement from the leading scientist. Say hello to my little fish. We got a great show for you tonight.

Speaker 4:
[12:53] Coming up, Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Speaker 3:
[13:05] Welcome back, friends. Ladies and gentlemen, my first guest tonight is the senior senator from Massachusetts. Please welcome back to The Late Show Senator Elizabeth Warren. Senator, it's good to see you again.

Speaker 4:
[13:25] Good to see you.

Speaker 3:
[13:25] We've had some really good conversations over the last 20 years. You came on The Old Show a couple times, too. Listen, it's no secret that Trump ran for president. One of his promises was no foreign wars.

Speaker 4:
[13:43] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[13:43] Certainly no regime change wars. Here we are in one that doesn't seem to have an exit strategy.

Speaker 4:
[13:51] Right.

Speaker 3:
[13:51] Not much of an entrance strategy either.

Speaker 4:
[13:54] Right.

Speaker 3:
[13:55] Last year when you were here, you said that your GOP colleagues in the hallways of the Senate, quote, don't make eye contact anymore because they know he's wrong. What's the, how's the eye contact these days?

Speaker 4:
[14:06] Oh, man. Those guys, their eyes are just glued to the floor all the time because they truly do understand. The president and his team cannot explain why we went to war, what the strategy is in this war, what will constitute winning this war, how to get out of this war, and the number one thing they cannot explain is how this war is helping one single person in the United States of America. It is time for those Republicans to help the Democrats and put an end to this war right now.

Speaker 3:
[14:43] So what? Okay.

Speaker 4:
[14:46] It's true.

Speaker 3:
[14:53] At the very, at the very least, the troops who actually go prosecute this war on behalf of a commander in chief deserve the rationale.

Speaker 4:
[15:00] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[15:01] They understand why they're doing what they're doing. How can Congress do anything? How can the Republicans help the Democrats in the center of the house do anything right now? Because the president doesn't seem to be asking for any approval. What could you do?

Speaker 4:
[15:14] It doesn't matter. We actually already have laws in a place called the War Powers Act, where Congress can simply say you have to put a stop to this until Congress has a chance to come in and vote. Congress, according to the Constitution, is the only one that can declare war.

Speaker 3:
[15:33] But what can you do? I mean, hasn't he already broken that rule?

Speaker 4:
[15:37] Well, yes, there is that. But Congress does have the power to say stop. And we have now, the Democrats have now put on the table, there's a law that's, I think of it kind of like, in case you have a president who has violated the Constitution, it's like the emergency break in a car that has lost its brakes otherwise. And that's what we have voted on to get the Republicans to come in and say, cut it off, cut off their funding, tell them to shut the whole thing down. And the Republicans have voted against that, that is, they have voted to continue this war one, two, three, four, five times so far.

Speaker 3:
[16:20] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[16:20] And we're just going to stay after them. We're just going to keep putting this bill forward and making them vote on it until finally somebody on that side grows a spine and does it.

Speaker 3:
[16:32] I read, I read you sent a letter to Secretary Hegseth.

Speaker 4:
[16:36] I did.

Speaker 3:
[16:36] About the war in Iran and saying, quote, his chaos and incompetence are a danger to both civilians and our troops. You asked him a series of questions. Have you heard anything back?

Speaker 4:
[16:45] No.

Speaker 3:
[16:46] No. Just silence.

Speaker 4:
[16:47] Just silence from him.

Speaker 3:
[16:49] Have you talked to him before?

Speaker 4:
[16:51] No.

Speaker 3:
[16:52] You've never spoken to the Secretary of Defense?

Speaker 4:
[16:54] Only in the hearing.

Speaker 3:
[16:55] Oh, in the hearing. Okay.

Speaker 4:
[16:55] In the hearing, because I sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee. So he's only lied to me in that context. I mean, he's directed.

Speaker 3:
[17:02] Not personally, just professionally.

Speaker 4:
[17:04] That's right. It's always been professional on that. But that really is the point that our whole country, Donald Trump and Pete Hexeth are out there bombing halfway around the world in our names. It's not only that we've lost 13 American service members or spending a billion dollars a day overseas, but we are also killing people for nothing that we can explain about what we're trying to accomplish. I know that they don't have a good rationale here, and here's how I know it. Because what you hear in the morning from Donald Trump is not what you hear from Donald Trump in the afternoon. What you hear from Donald Trump in the morning doesn't match what you hear from Pete Hexeth in the middle of the morning who then tries to readjust to get in line with Donald Trump. It is chaos, but it's worse than chaos because it is costly to us, and it is costly not just in money, not just in lives, it is costly to the reputation of the United States all around the world.

Speaker 3:
[18:24] Huge financial implications around the world as well. I want to turn to the Fed for a second here. You went, you got some attention this week for an exchange you had with the Fed Chair nominee. What is his name? Kevin Warsh is his name, okay. Trump said that interest rates will drop if Warsh is in there, which sounds like the fix is in. And some people, that would sound great. Why wouldn't that be great, Senator?

Speaker 4:
[18:53] So, look, I want to see prices go down.

Speaker 3:
[18:55] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[18:56] We can make prices go down. If Donald Trump would stop his tariff craziness, that is driving up prices on everything. If Donald Trump would change his energy policy, because he's driving up his utility costs, if Donald Trump would stop this war halfway around the world, oh, and if Donald Trump would restore health care for 15 million Americans. All of those things would bring down costs for Americans. That gets inflation going the right way. We could lower interest rates.

Speaker 3:
[19:35] You know what might help with that health care for everybody? A billion dollars a day.

Speaker 2:
[19:39] That might be useful for that.

Speaker 3:
[19:43] I want to ask you something here. You were questioning his independence from Donald Trump. The Fed needs to be an independent agency. How is it an independent agency? It's both governmental and it's freelance?

Speaker 4:
[19:53] No. Here's the point. We set up the Fed long ago. People set up the Fed and the idea was you'd hire a bunch of people who will make decisions based on the numbers. They'll look at how much employment there is, they'll look at the direction inflation is going, they'll look at the impact of tariffs all around the world, and then they'll do their best to set monetary policy in the right place, like what the interest rate is going to be. That's what's called an independent Fed. Why does it matter to you? Because it means they're making the decisions on the numbers. You might agree, you might disagree, but they're not doing crazy things. What Donald Trump wants to do is make it a political Fed completely controlled by Donald Trump. And the risk here is we're running six months into an election in which Donald Trump is in real trouble on the economy. And so his last card to try to play is, can he get the Fed in here, get him to do something crazy, get him to blow things up and then say the problem is over there and hope he can skate on through the election.

Speaker 3:
[21:01] But wouldn't he have to say the problem is over there with the guy I just appointed?

Speaker 4:
[21:05] He doesn't have to worry about that. The point for Donald Trump is to get control over the Fed. That's the difference that we're talking about. And what I'm concerned about is that the guy he has nominated, he has said, I will only name somebody who will do exactly what I want. In other words, he will only name a sock puppet to run the Fed. So we had this hearing on Tuesday, and I asked this guy, show me that you are independent. Because he said, this is what he said to me. He said in a meeting with me, I said, how am I going to know you're going to be independent? Because the president said he's not going to name anyone who will be independent. He said, I'm a tough guy. That's literally his words. I'm a tough guy. I can stand up to Donald Trump. So I said, okay, let's test that. And so I said to him in the hearing, you said you could stand up to Donald Trump. Just look at me right now in front of all these people. Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?

Speaker 3:
[22:19] Anne, what did he say?

Speaker 4:
[22:20] Mr. Tough Guy didn't have anything to say. Wow. So I went to another one. I said, tell me just one little time that you disagreed with Donald Trump. Tell me just a little thing, maybe that he was wrong on, like whether or not tariffs are never paid for by American consumers. Just tell me one little thing. And again, can't say anything. So I gotta say, I had said going into this, I'm very concerned that he's going to be a sock puppet. I listened to his answers and if the sock fits.

Speaker 3:
[22:57] We gotta go here in a second. One of the things, one of the ways you made your name, one of the things I really like about you is that you're always sniffing out fraud. And there's a lot of fragrant fraud these days. You recently started looking to Trump's Presidential Library. And I'm just curious what you found, because I'm guessing it ate books.

Speaker 4:
[23:19] Yeah. So what I found actually ties to you.

Speaker 3:
[23:25] What?

Speaker 4:
[23:27] So you may remember, roll back in your head when you were going to do this show forever, that... Uh-huh.

Speaker 3:
[23:37] Uh-huh. So that's... All right. Twelve more now.

Speaker 4:
[23:45] All right. There were settlements of lawsuits. Remember how Donald Trump sued different outfits?

Speaker 3:
[23:55] ABC and CBS cut checks.

Speaker 4:
[23:57] He sued, that's right, Paramount's parent, right? He sued X, he sued Metta. Yeah. And the way all of those were settled was that they wrote big checks to the Trump presidential library.

Speaker 3:
[24:13] Yeah. CBS did a $16 million.

Speaker 4:
[24:14] That's right. And I think you actually had a legal term for that. You called it...

Speaker 3:
[24:18] I said, I believe it's called a big fat bribe.

Speaker 4:
[24:20] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[24:22] I don't know if that's true. I'm not a lawyer. I just said that I believe that was the case.

Speaker 4:
[24:26] Right. And three days later, your show is canceled.

Speaker 3:
[24:31] Something like that.

Speaker 4:
[24:32] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[24:33] I can't remember at this point.

Speaker 4:
[24:34] And then the business that was in front of Trump, that is things he had to approve, all got approved, a merger goes through. Right. So I saw something a couple of weeks ago that said the presidential library fund had been dissolved. So what happened to the $62 million that got poured in there in those four settlements? So I did the reasonable thing. I wrote to the CEOs of the four companies and said, where's the money that you put into that presidential library? Where did it end up? And their answers were that no one could quite explain.

Speaker 3:
[25:25] They don't know.

Speaker 4:
[25:26] They didn't say they didn't know. They just couldn't seem to tell where the money is. So I'm kind of like you are. Maybe that money ended up where it would end up if it were a big fat bribe, but then again, maybe not.

Speaker 3:
[25:43] Wow. Is there any way to find out as a private organization? Because the Presidential Libraries are private, right?

Speaker 4:
[25:50] So here's the nice thing. We've got six months until the midterms. And in the midterms, if the Republicans, let's just say, lose a bunch of seats and that. The Democrats actually will get to conduct some investigations, including investigations into fraud. So, for me, over the next six months, all I gotta say on this is, look, I put $400,000 of my campaign money into all of the state parties to try to build infrastructure so we can win a bunch of these races. We've got some terrific people lined up. I focus on the Senate. We got Graham Platner up in Maine, who is ready to go. We've got Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota, who is ready to rock and roll. Mallory McMurrow in Michigan, ready to go. Zach Walls in Iowa. We've got people who are ready to come into the United States Senate and ready to fight. They are ready to hold Donald Trump accountable. We've got six months, and we can get this done. So I'm in the fight all the way.

Speaker 3:
[27:14] What do you see as the future of your party? Because the Democrats have an opportunity here to redefine themselves in the eyes of the American people, because I think even many people who voted for the President have had their eyes open that perhaps he does not always stick to the highest standards of truth. And you have urged your party thusly. Here's in the New York Times, with Democrats at a crossroads, Elizabeth Warren urges a left turn, okay? So, you know, conventional wisdom is America is a very centrist country. How, why is the left turn the right thing to do?

Speaker 4:
[27:54] So look, I think of it this way, whatever you want to call it, now is the time in America for everybody to have access to healthcare they can afford. It's time for them to have it, it's just time. Now is the moment in America when it is time to have universal child care. We can do this. Now is the time in America when we need to make the investment so that everyone has an opportunity to go to college or get a technical degree without going into debt. And I'll do one more. And now is the time in America where we need to make the investments so that everyone can afford a home or an apartment, a safe, clean place to live and a place they own. For me, that's what it's all about, is it's time to make government work, not just for a handful of billionaires, they've been doing fine long enough. It is time to make government work for working people, and I believe that is the calling right now of the Democratic Party.

Speaker 3:
[29:06] Lovely to see you again. Senator Elizabeth Warren, everybody. Thank you for listening to The Late Show Pod Show with Stephen Colbert. Just one more thing, if you want to see more of me, come to The Late Show YouTube channel for more clips and exclusives.

Speaker 5:
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