Sarah Palin is back and Stephen Colbert could not be any happier. Following the former Alaska governor turned VP candidate turned failed reality star’s big endorsement of Donald Trump, the Late Show host stared lovingly into her eyes and said, “God, I have missed you.”
“It’s like a magical eagle made a wish on a flag pin and it came to life,” Colbert said of Palin’s reappearance. “Which is great, for me,” he continued, “because while Trump, admittedly, has given me so much material to make jokes about, nobody compares to the original material girl.”
Colbert played some of Palin’s “greatest hits” for his audience, all of which made its way into this week’s speech from “community organizer” Obama to “drill, baby, drill” along with new bangers like “we’re gonna kick ISIS’s ass!”
“Sarah Palin just guaranteed Donald Trump the evangelical vote, because I think she was speaking in tongues!” a fired-up Colbert exclaimed before tasing the part of his brain that “understands sentence structure.”
Then, just for fun, the host imagined what it would be like if Palin endorsed every candidate in the 2016 race, including Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and even Hillary Clinton.
Palin was a frequent target of the comedian’s during the 10-year run of his Colbert Report show on Comedy Central. In one instance, when Sarah Palin defended Rush Limbaugh’s use of the word “retard” as “satire,” Colbert turned the tables, declaring, “Sarah Palin is a fucking retard.” On another, he faithfully re-created her bizarre interpretation of Paul Revere’s famous ride.
Thankfully, even as the “real” Stephen Colbert, he managed to hit Palin just as hard as ever.