On Monday's episode of The Late Show, both Stephen Colbert and Anthony Scaramucci, his guest, criticized Trump's response to this weekend's violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. The president has been widely critiqued for his failure to condemn white nationalism in his immediately speech following the Charlottesville tragedy, which involved a horrendous attack on counter-protestors who were standing up against a white nationalist rally.
Colbert dedicated much of his opening monologue to criticizing the president for his woefully insufficient response to the Charlottesville violence. Many people, including Colbert, took particular issue with the president's initial speech, in which he stated, "We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides — on many sides."
Colbert replayed a clip of the president's speech during his monologue and appeared aghast after watching the replay. The late night host then addressed the president, saying,
This is terrorism, not your order at KFC [with many sides]. How can you possibly say you condemn this in the strongest possible terms when you don't even name the groups responsible ... or say what they did?... I have seen angrier Yelp reviews.
Scaramucci, the former White House communications director, agreed that Trump needed to be more stern in his denouncement of white supremacists and neo-Nazis. When Colbert pressed Scaramucci for his thoughts on the issue, the former White House staffer stated that,
He [Trump} should have been way harsher on that...he should have condemned white supremacism and neo-Nazis and all of that hate stuff.
Colbert's show is not the first time Scaramucci has spoken out about Trump's response to the Charlottesville tragedy. In an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC over the weekend, the Mooch expressed similar critiques for the president. He also conveyed praise for Trump's national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who immediately denounced the violence as stemming from terror, saying,
I think he [Trump] needed to be much harsher as it related to the white supremacists and the nature of that ... I applaud Gen. McMaster for calling it out for what it is. It's actually terrorism. Whether it's domestic or international terrorism, with the moral authority of the presidency, you have to call that stuff out.
Though he was certainly critical of the president's response to Charlottseville, both on the Colbert show and during the Stephanopoulos interview, on Colbert's show Scaramucci did attempt to defend the president's remarks as being misguided ands stemming from a desire to be contrarian, not from a lack of compassion.
Nonetheless, Colbert and Scaramucci did fundamentally agree that the president's remarks were not acceptable in the wake of the Charlottesville tragedy. Their concurrence on this issue certainly seems to align with the bipartisan agreement that's Trump's failure to denounce white nationalism post-Charlottesville was wrong — something that the president learned too late.
