Climate of Violence: Stephen Colbert Depicts Stephen Miller’s Head on a Spike

CBS

by Jerome Hudson

From Stephen Colbert’s Game of Thrones parody that put White House advisor Stephen Miller’s head on a spike to Conan O’Brien’s Nazi-themed jokes about the President’s chief strategist Steve Bannon, ratings-seeking late-night talk show hosts have apparently gone scorched-earth against President Donald Trump’s administration.

Miller’s TV profile rose over the weekend as he defended the Trump administration’s various policies on several Sunday talk shows. Miller told George Stephanopoulos that he would go on “any show, anywhere, anytime, and repeat it, and say the president of the United States is correct, 100 percent.”
To that, Colbert responded, “If you don’t show up, I’m gonna call you a liar. And if you do show up, I’m gonna call you a liar to your face,” and placed Miller in a minute-long parody video that featured various television characters violently attacking him.



As it were, going full-fledged anti-Trump has worked well for Colbert’s ratings. Having never topped his late-night competitor Jimmy Fallon, the CBS funnyman has bested The Tonight Show host in total viewers for two straight weeks, according to ratings released on Tuesday.
Indeed, it was more of the same across the late-night spectrum on Monday night.
TBS joker Conan O’Brien cracked a pun in which he made Bannon out to be a Nazi sympathizer.
“Crazy story: At an international tennis match, U.S. officials accidentally played the Nazi national anthem. Yeah, White House adviser Steve Bannon was outraged, and said, ‘We’re not rolling that out till August. C’mon, supposed to be a surprise!'” O’Brien joked.
Elsewhere, Jimmy Fallon lampooned Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as dim-witted and dense after her department’s official Twitter account posted a tweet that misspelled the name of W. E. B. DuBois.
 “Colbert has been experiencing a bit of a surge as of late, and like Saturday Night Live’s resurgence, he has President Trump to thank for that,” vice president and director of programming research at Amplifi US Billie Gold told Variety. “While Fallon will likely take the reign back in future weeks and win the season in all viewer metrics, in this politically-charged climate, Colbert’s numbers will definitely be recharged.”