Stephen Colbert is back on air after his break — with a new beard and a fresh take on the Brett Kavanaugh hearings for Supreme Court Justice, which kicked off on Tuesday in the U.S. Senate.
The Late Show host Colbert, who jokingly described nominee Kavanaugh as “a man who is too white to wear after Labor Day,” noted that the White House had released reams of information about Kavanaugh’s judicial record just the previous night after withholding over 100,000 pages of his record from the George W. Bush presidency.
“Oh come on, they did this on the night of Labor Day?” Colbert complained. “No one’s going to read 42,000 pages of legal documents during the last precious hours of summer. They’re going to drink a bunch of Mount Gay rum to stave off a panic attack about going back to work… I am told.”
His sentiment was seconded by Sen. Kamala Harris of California, who barely let the Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley start his introduction to the hearings before interrupting. “Things went pretty smoothly for the first… three seconds,” Colbert said. Her attempt to remind Grassley just how little time was allowed for review of the documents was followed up by Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont.
“The notion that anyone here has properly viewed them or even seen them at all is laughable. It doesn’t pass the giggle test,” Leahy said of the documents.
“Senator Leahy, if your office is still making people pass the giggle test, see HR immediately,” Colbert joked in response.
Looks like Colbert is back on TV just in time to satirize all the news out of Washington.
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Write to Raisa Bruner at raisa.bruner@time.com