Couch or one of your coat pockets, or some place you dont even know, because if you knew where they were, you would find them. laughter airpods pro pick some up today. Where are they . I must have dropped them. Why did we shoot this in a white room everyone, look on the floor watch where youre stepping bloody hell airpods pro. Theyre small, theyre white, and theyre expensive. And, son of a bitch, where are they its the late show with Stephen Colbert. Tonight pro quid pro quo plus, stephen welcomes Robert ReedusCynthia Erivo and musical guets Miranda Lambert featuring jon batiste and stay human. And now, live on tape from the ed sullivan theater in new york city, its Stephen Colbert cheers and applause stephen hi yeah, come on stephen beautiful, beautiful welcome, ladies and gentlemen, one and all, children of all ages, mr. And mrs. America and all the ships at see. Welcome to the late show. Im your host, Stephen Colbert. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No matter how much the republicans dont want it, the impeachment inquiry is not going away. It is here to stay. It has cheers and applause jon yes stephen it has this relationship is getting serioust its toothbrush in that little cup above the sink. The g. O. P. Is like, where is this relationship going . Straight to the white house. laughter in fact, tomorrow is a really big day, when the house of representatives votes to set up the procedures for the impeachments, how everything will be done in public. And my guest tomorrow night will be nancy pelosi. cheers and applause this is im being told im telling you. Jon wow stephen and im being told is this true . A little bird just whispered in my ear a little while ago, this is exclusive, this is the only place shes coming after the vote tomorrow. So general cheers and applause and it makes sense, jon. It just makes sense. You know, you make history, the next step, obviously, sit right over there, talk to me about whatever her new movie or whatever streaming show shes got on crackle, or whatever it is. The investigation keeps chugging along. Ill tell you the latest in tonights installment of don and the giant impeach thats just the way i talk to the president of ukraine. cheers and applause . Stephen its our job, chris. Yesterday, the impeachment inquiry heard testimony from its first witness who was actually on trumps infamous ukraine phone call, director of European Affairs at the National Security council and bunsen honeydew stunt double, Lieutenant Colonel alexander vindman. Took me by surprise a little bit. Vindmans testimony lasted more than 10 hours. That is way to go for it to be for a good reason. You never want your spouse say, honey, i think we should talk for 10 hours. Vindman dropped a bombshell the official white house transcript of trumps ukraine call omitted crucial words and phrases. This is huge the white house intentionally left things out. Its like the infamous 18. 5minute gap on nixons watergate tapes, if nixon left in all the bad stuff. laughter per petes sake, how do you edit the transcript and leave in, id like you to do us a favor, though. Its like cheers and applause its not hello anybody home . Its like a mobster wacking a guy and going, dont worry. The cops got nothin. We got rid of some of his body. laughter what im sayin is a large portion of tony sleeps with the fishes. laughter now, vindmans testimony directly contradicts what trump has said about the transcript i released a transcript of my conversation, an exact transcript. The transcript is a perfect transcript. We have a very, very wordforword report of what i said. This is an exact wordforword transcript of the conversation. I had a transcript done by very, very talented people. Word for word. Comma for comma. Stephen as trump it was word for word, comma for comma, quid for quo, military aid for dirt on biden. Did i say that out loud . Somebody write that down. Comma for comma. laughter two major points were reportedly omitted from the official transcript an explicit mention by ukraines president of burisma holdings, the Energy Company whose board employed bidens son hunter, and trumps assertion that there were recordings of biden discussing ukraine corruption. Come on, you dont have to go all the way to ukraine to get embarrassing tape of joe biden. Turn on a camera. laughter he delivers. According to vindman, these omitted points fit into the transcript where ellipses indicated dropped words. Wait. The ellipses is trumps favorite punctuation, which makes this the ultimate betrayal. as trump et tu, dotdotdot . laughter dotdot. Dotdo the. Very close. I dont know. Now, one of the lowlights of the day was when a shouting match erupted after democrats accused republicans of trying to out the whistleblower. Of course, with the average age in congress, they could have just been shouting because they couldnt hear each other. What . What . trump wanted dirt on poseidon from mark twain . Speak up, you rapscallion speak up jon rapscallion Stephen North carolina congressman mark meadows denied the charge, explaining, how can we out someone when we dont know who he is . Adding, tell me who he is please im desperate here. Have you seen how much evidence they have . Were screwed according to insiders, as many as five possible names for the whistleblower have circulated in political circles. Hmmm. Okay, okay, five possible names. It has to be someone with direct knowledge of the phone call who says things that are incredibly damaging to the president. Could it possibly be this guy . laughter applause now i can blow a whistle. I can blow a whistle. Republicans have been desperate to come up with excuses to get trump out of this mess. Last week, we got the desperateest of all excuse from the wall street journal Editorial Board. If youre not familiar with the journals Editorial Board, imagine a retirement home inside a country club inside a gated community in the afterlife, full of ghosts who are scared of immigrants. Now that they will unionize. The Editorial Board responded to mounting evidence that trump wanted a quidproquo arrangement with ukraine. Clearly but they rolled out a novel argument for why he shouldnt be impeached it may turn out that while mr. Trump wanted a quidproquo policy ultimatum toward ukraine, he was too inept to execute it. laughter remember, remember applause these guys jon thats his team thats his people. Stephen yeah, those were his people. Those were his people, jon. These guys are on trumps side. as lawyer your honor, my client couldnt have committed the murder. He wanted to, but hes just too damn dumb. Look at him. And hes got his penis caught in a threeholepunch again. laughter naturally, when trump caught wind of the too dumb to crime argument, he wasnt pleased. According to white house insiders, the president mentioned he had seen it, and then he started saying things like, what are they talking about . If i wanted to do quid pro quo, i wouldve done the damn quid pro quo. laughter yes, people people would be calling me up and saying sir, wow, that was a perfect quid pro quo. ive never seen a quid quite so quod. Uhoh ive got my penis caught in a threehole punch. There you go there you go thats how it fits thats how it fits applause up til now, the g. O. P. Has focused their defense on how the hearings are secret. Ploas announcement vote tomorrow changes that, but the president s not concerned tweeting republicans are very unified and energized in our fight on the impeachment hoax with the donothing democrats, and now are starting to go after the substance even more than the very infair process. laughter the infair process . What are you, unsane . laughter applause cheers he went on he went on, just a casual reading of the transcript leads everybody to see that dotdotdot, dotdotdot, dotdotdotdot the call with the ukrainian president was a totally appropriate one. As he said, no pressure. this impeachment nonsense is just a continuation of the witchhunt hoax, which has been going on since before i even got elected. Rupublicans, go with substance and close it out. Of course, of course, trump trump is referring applause of course, trump is referring to the stars of the vh1 hit, rupublicans drag race. laughter cheers and applause yes. That was a nice graphic. Mike pence was eliminated immediately because hes not even allowed to be alone in a room with men dressed as women. What elsohm today, the impeachmt inquiry heard from two Career State Department diplomats and experts on ukraine, Catherine Croft and a guy named christopher anderson. Anderson described a meeting with former National Security adviser and man using peace sign to poke out your eyes, john bolton. Bolton wanted the united states. To be more supportive of ukraine, but he cautioned that Rudy Giuliani was a key voice with the president on ukraine which could be an obstacle to increased white house engagement. Yeah, giuliani is all over this thing. In fact, pelosi is drafting the articles of impeachment of donald j. Trump feat. Rudy giuliani and pitbull. Pitt ball is always in there. Hes always nches mr. Worldwide. Stephen hes mr. Worldwide. We may soon hear it straight from the man himself, because this afternoon, impeachment investigators invited john bolton to testify. Yeah, yeah. Hes going next week, next week, evidently. Were going to hear it straight from the horses mus laughter remember, bolton is a guy with a gigabtsic ego who have my say ie course. Oh, and if bolton is as vindictive as his reputation, trump could be in deep due due course. Layoff laugh weve got a great show for you tonight. cheers and applause Norman Reedus is here. But when we return, big news about joe biden. Stick around yeah, thats half the fun of a new house. Seeing what people left behind in the attic. Well, saving on Homeowners Insurance with geicos help was pretty fun too. Ahhhh, its a tiny dancer. They left a ton of stuff up here. Welp, enjoy your house. Nope. No thank you. Geico could help you save on homeowners and renters insurance. Burrito. Raw kitfo. Fried shiso. French fry. Iced chai. Tasty. Pad thai. Baked pie. Half stack. Taco pack. Lobster mac. Baby back. Pork chop. Soda pop. Kebab. Soursop. Hot pot. Im hungry now. Noodle soup. Cantaloupe. Ice cream scoop. Whipped cream bloop. Dumpling. Chicken wing. Peking. And those crispy onion rings. We are americas kitchen. One of me looking off. N rings. How is she there and were here . Condoms. True. Dont hatelike their trip, book yours with hotels. Com and get rewarded basically everywhere. Hotels. Com. Be there. Do that. Get rewarded. Can match the power of energizer. Because energizer ultimate lithium is the longest lasting aa battery in the world. [confetti cannon popping] energizer. Backed by science. Matched by no one. Performance comes in lots of flavors. dramatic orchestra theres the ampedup, overtuned, feedingfrenzyof sheetmetalkind. And then theres performance that just leaves you feeling better as a result. Thats the kind lincolns about. cheers and applause Stephen Jon Batiste and the stay Human Experience cheers and applause thank you, jon. Jon yeah stephen thank you for keeping it human again tonight. Jon, in just a moment we have our old friend Robert Reedus coming out here from walking dead. Do you enjoy charlie wachtel, jon, have you seen that show . Jon ive seen ads for the show you. Stephen get the idea. You get the idea. There are zombies and they kill them. Jon theyre Walking Around dead. Stephen the dead the dead are Walking Around. And you kind of feel bad for them. The dead didnt want to be walking dead. They just wanted to be dead or alive while walking but not walking while theyre dead. Jon thats right, thats right. Stephen its not fair. Jon thats life. Stephen its also death, actually. Yeah, yeah, there it is, there it is. Before we go any further, i just want to say that all of us here not just here, but all of us on the east coast are thinking about the people on the west coast in california suffering through these fires right now. applause it seems like its happening every year now. Its getting worse and worse. I know there are high winds. I know there are dry conditions. I know that the fires are not well contained. We are sending out all of our thoughts and prayers and all of our well wishes to all the fire people there fighting whats going on in the hills, the spread of those fires. Youre youre applause youre heroes to be doing this work, and i hope everybody out there is staying as safe as they possibly can. Now, over there a little bit earlier i was talking about how we could get trump out of office. But i want to switch gears now and talk about a different way we could get trump out of office in tonights doin it donkey style. History will remember our silence. Stephen despite his best efforts, the frontrunner remains former Vice President and man thinking about spitting into elizabeth warrens cocoa, joe biden. Yesterday, the Vice President got on a big social media trend nationalcatday. I celebrated the way i always i celebrated the way i always do i invited a few friends over. Then, the second they arrived, i ran into my room and under the bed, then later peed in the luggage. Biden celebrated National Cat Day in the most obvious way by posting this picture of himself with a dog. laughter applause yes. Just for good measure, he also threw up this pic of himself at a pizza parlor for tacotuesday. We made one of those up. Now, to be fair, the Vice President knew what he was doing. Biden captioned his dog photo with some americans celebrate National Cat Day, some celebrate national dog day. President trump celebrates neither. It says a lot. Its time we put a pet back in the white house. cheers and applause boom hell, yeah hell, yeah jon who let the dogs out, who . Stephen to which trump replied as trump hey, i do have a pet. Stephen miller, come over here do you guys want to pet him . Hes really soft. He just shed his skin. laughter applause the dog the dog in the photo is bidens german sheppard, major. Right after that picture was taken, major barked for 20 minutes about how close he is with bo obama. laughter applause of course, bidens friendship bidens famous friendship with obama is one of the reasons hes polling so well. Mates presidrtinosest running rened tw. , some asking y obama has not officially endorsed biden some, like 60 minutes norah odonnell. Some have asked, why hasnt president obama endorsed you . You guys served together for eight years. Did he offer to endorse you . No, we didnt even get there. I asked him not to. He said, okay. Stephen i dont think okay is the answer joe was hoping for. Its like your wife saying, honey, lets not get each other anything for our anniversary. And you say, okay. laughter you better get something. laughter next up on kicking it donkey style, if were talking about the 2020 president ial election, we have to talk about pop sensation lizzo, because lizzo just dropped her good as hell remix with ariana grande. That headline brought to you by operation confuse all dads. You know their motto is this another concert im going to have to wait in the car for . Now, to tease the release, on friday, grande tweeted, baby, how you feeling . To which Bernie Sanders tweetsponded as bernie ready to fight for medicare for all. laughter applause always. Well, now that bernie is plugged into the music scene, i look forward to his next pop collaboration i just took a d. N. A. Test, it turns out im 99 stephen well be right back with Norman Reedus im not picking it up ill pick it up theyre clean raps cuz my hineys clean. Oh yeah im charmin clean. Charmin ultra strong just cleans better. Enjoy the go with charmin. Oh, come on. Flo dont worry. Youre covered. dsic and youre saving money, because you bundled home and auto. Sarah, get in the house. Were all here for you. All all day, all night. dramatic music great job speaking calmly and clearly everyone. Thats how you put a customer at ease. Hey, did anyone else hear weird voices while they were in the corn . No. No. Me either. Whispering voice jamie. What . The roomba i7 with cleanng base automatic dirt disposal and allergenlock™ bags that trap 99 of allergens, so they dont escape back into the air. If its not from irobot, its not a roomba™ the holidays are here. Welc audience cheering ight. I love your material. So warm and cozy. And festive. What material are you talking about . And were out of time go mad for plaid with up to fifty percent off storewide. Thats up to fifty percent off. At old navy. E trade core portfolios is an easy, automated way to get invested. Well save you time by building, monitoring and managing a portfolio for you and provide all handson deck support when you need it helping you become top dog. band playing cheers and applause stephen hey, everybody welcome back it doesnt say welcome back. But ill welcome back back. Folks, for 10 seasons, youve known my first guest as the crossbowwielding star of the hit series, the walking dead. Stop. Why . Its one of the borders. Theyre walkers. We can still get the deer. Its too late. Why are we still respecting borders we never agreed to when alpha isnt even here . Can we just forget about them already . Its too late. sighs a deer could have fed 200 people. Stephen please welcome back to the late show, Robert Reedus. applause s tha for h s you again. Been too long, 22 years since you were here . Has it really, wow you. Stephen cant hold out on us. We need some reedus. Thank you for dressing up. Thank you very much. How i do look . Stephen thats a very fine, almost coward roy. You look like the poetry prefer who is definitely going to sleep with one of his students. Diane dressed me, so i might get lucky. Stephen another good, good. First of all, 10 seasons. Yeah, crazy. Stephen of walking dead. Unbelievable. What do you guys think of that whole fear of the walking dead thing . Because thats really your turf, right . Do you ive call those guys up and go, obviously fear walking dead. Its not hug the walking deadli