cheers and applause band playing stephen hey thank you so much have a seat, everybody youre very kind. Thank you so much. Well, folks, welcome to the late show. Im your host, stephen colbert. cheers and applause piano playing in background im excited about our guest tonight. Our first guest tonight is our good friend, John Dickerson from face the nation, the nation face himself, will be out here in just a minute to talk about the news of the week. cheers and applause levelheaded, fair. applause well, before we begin tonight, i want to take a moment to send our thoughts to the people of barcelona, spain, who suffered a horrific attack today. A vehicle drove into a crowd in that city, killing at least 12 people and injuring dozens more. This is a heartbreaking reminder that evil is real and that the United States is not alone in fighting it. I also want to note that, today, this afternoon, President Trump said the right thing, tweeting the United States condemns the terror attack in barcelona, spain, and will do whatever is necessary to help. Be tough and strong, we love you thank you, sir. Simple. Dignified. President ial. applause thats what you want. Thats what you hope for. Thats all you can ask. Hes right, we love you, spain. And i was sincerely happy to see that kind of moral leadership from our president. For about 45 minutes. laughter because laughter then he tweeted study what general pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. There was no more radical islamic terror for 35 years laughter what, what the laughter who the huh . What . See, this whats going on . Well, theres a story about general pershing, American General who fought muslim insurgents in the philippines about a century ago. Trump likes telling this story about how pershing executed muslim prisoners of war. He took 50 bullets, and he dipped them in pigs blood. And they shot 49 of those people, and the 50th person, he said, you go back to your people, and you tell them what happened. And for 25 years, there wasnt a problem. Stephen that is a dark story. No wonder his kids turned out the way they did. laughter and then the big bad wolf slaughtered two of the three little pigs, and he told the third one, you, piggy, you go back to the sty and you tell your buddies, no more brick houses. laughter huhuh. No more. Dont do it. Jon dont do it. Stay away. piano riff stephen good night, eric. laughter any one of em. Any one of em. Trumps point is, we got to be tough, like we used to. But heres one problem with that the story is not true. Its been called, a poorly sourced yarn. Poorly sourced yarn, by the way, also what ivanka uses in her clothing line. laughter cheers and applause jon hey stephen i think, right . Jon hey stephen youre very nice. One historian said, this story is a fabrication and has long been discredited. I am amazed it is still making the rounds. If it wasnt for our president , a lot of things wouldnt be making the rounds. Okay, all, right, listen up this is how general patton stopped the nazis at the battle of miami, okay . So, there at miami beach Fabulous Hotels he sneaks into hitlers cabana, dressed as a babysitter. Named brenda, i think. laughter then, he told them okay, they said to him, dont forget to put the turkey in the microwave. When they come home, the turkey is in the bassinet. Eva braun freaks out. Hitler shoots himself in the bunker. True story. laughter so we check him out . Is that a true story . Okay, so well factcheck that. laughter so, this story is complete nonsense. However, one thing about general pershing that is true is this quote of his a competent leader can get Efficient Service from poor troops, while on the contrary, an incapable leader can demoralize the best of troops. Did he say anything . cheers and applause piano riff yay yeah. cheers and applause huge. We always have a lot of general pershing fans in the audience. laughter and, trump has had a lot of problems with history this week. Mainly, how hell be remembered by it, but also, with defending the confederacy. And this morning, he doubled down, tweeting, sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You, dotdotdot. Dotdotdot, cant change history, but you can learn from it. Robert e. Lee, Stonewall Jackson whos next, washington, jefferson . So foolish also, dotdotdot. Dotdotdot, the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced never. Never to be replaced. Jon never. Stephen kind of like respect for the presidency. Its gone. cheers and applause jon oh oh piano riff stephen but the president has a point a dumb point, but a point. We cant lose the beauty of things like this actual statue of confederate general and k. K. K. Grand wizard Nathan Bedford forest apparently, the klan was founded by skirtwearing nutcrackers riding wet lizards. laughter and look where the general is pointing the gun. Now we know why the south lost. Come on with me, men bang, bang, bang bang, bang who shot you . Who shot you . Damn you yankees damn you charge cheers and applause laughter this shows like watching a ken burns documentary. laughter now, obviously trump is a fan of these statues because hes a civil war buff. He even has a plaque by a water hazard on one of his virginia golf courses with an inscription reading, many Great American soldiers, both of the north and south, died at this spot. The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as the river of blood. by the way, the river of blood is also how Steven Bannon commutes to work. laughter cheers and applause just, a guy poles him. playing row, row, row your boat laughter he gives the boatman the coins from his eyes first and then he takes him across. laughter but when asked about this famous battle, the river of blood battle, okay . The executive director of the local Historical Preservation group said, no. Uhuh, no way. Nothing like that ever happened there. laughter not yet. laughter give trump some time. But it does prove that trump likes civil war monuments so much, he doesnt even care if theyre real on this spot in 1960. 1800 whatever, Abraham Lincoln karatechopped his way into fort sumter, where he was shot by ted cruzs dad. Very sad. There was violence the point is, there was violence on many sides, many sides. Thats breaking and entering. Ted cruzs dad was right, stand your ground. Stand your ground, abe. And comparing robert e. Lee to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson is just willful dummyness. No one is denying that those president s had slaves. Washington and jefferson have monuments, not because of the slaves, but because they fought the british, founded the country and wrote the declaration of independence. We have statues of robert e. Lee because he chose to secede and fight for slavery. Thats all you know about general lee. That and the fact that he had the dukes of hazzard car named after him. laughter or, was he named after the car . laughter we may never know, because weve erased our heritage. laughter jon oh, wow, yeah. Heritage all the way gone. cheers and applause piano riff stephen so, removing confederate statutes isnt about denying that slavery happened. Its about not celebrating the people who fought to keep it going. Thats why we remember the titanic, but we dont erect a monument to the iceberg. laughter and applause jon yeah yeah you dont need that stephen although, thanks to donald trump pulling out of the paris climate accords, soon all icebergs will need a memorial. laughter so, to the detriment of his own agenda, trump is leaning in to his defense of these White Supremacists. Why . Well, according to one white house advisor, trump would rather have people calling him racist than say he backed down the minute he was wrong. Oh, oh, then let me help. Youre a racist. cheers and applause thats what he wanted thats what he wanted im giving the man im helping, jon im trying to help jon give em what he wants give the man what he wants support him, tell him what he needs to know stephen support him cheers and applause and you back down when you are wrong. laughter naturally, people are asking what happened to that new chief of staff that was going to keep him in line, fourstar general and guy watching the interrogation from behind the mirror, john kelly. laughter some people think its already over for john kelly. According to one white house adviser, the kelly era was a bright, shining interlude between failed attempts to right the trump presidency, and it has now come to a close after a short but glorious run. What . How can the john kelly era already be over . Give me this, okay . The Time Magazine with his face on it is still on our Office Coffee table laughter see . Look, it says trumps last best hope, dated august 21, 2017 applause piano riff thats august thats thats four days from now thats four days from now, and hes gone cheers and applause piano riff kellys time ended before it began. Hes some sort of time traveler. laughter now he just needs to get back into his delorean and go back to a happier time for him, like when he was fighting in iraq. laughter so, since it is the end, let us take a moment now, and take a fond look back at the john kelly era. After weeks of turmoil, general kelly helps to bring discipline to the west wing. Anthony scaramucci is out. That white house is a real dump. Trump hitting his lowest approval rating. Taking to twitter to slam congress. The president begins his 17day vacation. I think john kelly has made an impact. You can look at the number of tweets, theyve dropped dramatically. Any hopes that recent white house shakeups might tame President Trumps use of twitter are being proved false. The president threatens north korea. Fire and fury. Donald trumps newest political target is mitch mcconnell. President trump tonight praising vladimir putin. I want to thank him because were trying to cut down on payroll. Military solutions locked and loaded. Many sides. I think the president needs to call it for what it is. Its evil. Racism is evil. Finally there is blame on both sides. Wow, that was something else. General kelly, brought in as chief of staff to right the ship. How is that going so far . George washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner . So will George Washington hello darkness my old friend cheers and applause stephen weve got a great show for you tonight. John dickerson is here stick around cheers and applause band playing hello moto. Its time to reimagine the smartphone. Snap on a speaker. A projector. A camera that actually zooms. Get excited world. The new moto z with moto mods. Get a moto z play for only 10 a month. No tradein required. 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Marco. polo fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more. Polo band playing cheers and applause Stephen Jon Batiste and stay human, everybody give it up for the band there thank you cheers and applause jon, happy thursday. Happy thursday, jon. Jon happy thursday. Stephen everybody having a happy thursday out there . cheers and applause good for you. Me, too, because my first guest tonight is cbs chief washington correspondent and the anchor of face the nation. Please welcome John Dickerson. cheers and applause band playing good to see you. Stephen all right. Hey hi. Stephen nice to see you again. Its good to be back. Stephen what a sad and strange week this has been, hasnt it . Yeah. Stephen truly unnerving at times. Destabilizing. I mean, it was destabilizing in charlottesville on saturday, and then the more we learned on sunday, and now, in the reaction to the president s remarks, youve had more of that destabilization. Stephen lets talk about tuesday. The president s impromptu press conference in the lobby of trump tower, was there to talk about infrastructure but it quickly fell into talking about, equivocating between the resisters to the fascist elements and the people who were marching under the nazi flag. Right. Stephen which was shocking for a lot of people. Youve studied the president s. Youre a student of history, youve covered politics for a long time, have you ever seen anything like that before . No. And because, heres the difference. Normally, president s come into these moments and they lift the country up. They are the release valve for the pressure. They do a moral stacking. They take these disturbing events, and they explain to the country whats happened, and they give some comfort. In this case, the president was there, and it was clear he wanted to fight out these issues. One was that there were left wing protesters, which there were. But that wasnt the key point. The key point is that the protesters there, the neonazis are antithetical to everything america stands for, and hes the leader of america. So his fixation on the question of the leftwing protesters overshadowed that, and that led to conflict and fights and people speaking out afterwards. When his role really as president is to release that pressure, it created more. Stephen well, the reports are that he felt good after that press conference. He might be the only person, other than david duke, other than his buddy david duke, who actually felt good after that. laughter why do you think do you believe those reports . Are those credible reports . Well, i dont know. Its always you dont ever want to try to get into somebody elses head, i think, and theres a lot of that. But i think you can imagine because you know a couple of things. One, he doesnt like to think hes forced into doing something. He believes what he believes in, and he doesnt want to be told to do, fulfill a certain role. Stephen so on saturday when he emphasized, many sides, many sides, and then monday, he came out there and gave that rote statement which, reports are that it was prepared for him, that was armtwisting on behalf of his staff . I think he felt that hed done the work he needed to do on saturday. That he had condemned these groups, and that also he had pointed out what he wanted to, the adlib was that there were others contributing to this violence. And that was clearly something that was on his mind, and he repeated it again on tuesday. He had a point to make, and it was sticking in his craw. You could see by the emotion that he had. He, he called out the racists, but the thrust of his remarks was that he was passionate about making this point, the left wing was still involved. Thats a smaller point. Stephen but more than saying the left wing was still involved, he also said that there were good people protesting the night before. And when you look at those photos, its people with torches, people with nazi insignia. And i think one of the things most shocking to everybody is that a president of the United States would say anyone who would march under a nazi banner, whoever they are, whatever your intention is, once you get to the event and you know its organized by neonazis, why do you stay . As Newt Gingrich said, good people dont march with nazis. They also were chanting jews will not replace us. applause stephen by the way, good people do not march with nazis is the easiest clap line in the world. laughter why didnt trump use it . He loves people to applaud for him. This is one other extraordinary thing about both saturday and tuesday. This is the easiest thing in the world for a president to do, which is to denounce stephen its a layup. Theres not a Sports Metaphor to capture how easy this is. laughter because stephen its teeing off from inside the cup. But this laughter applause but this is important, obviously, because these ideas are directly in opposition to the country that he leads. But secondarily, he obviously has some political difficulty here. People have associated him with these groups, david duke is saying they are marching in his name. So he could have looked into the camera and said, i not only denounce what you believe in, but anybody out there who is going to vote for me because you think i believe in these things, i dont want your vote, i dont want anything that you represent, and i think that you should go back to where you came from. cheers and applause stephen didnt bob dole do that . You, youre exactly right. There is a tradition in the Republican Party. Bob dole did it, George Herbert walker bush did it, Ronald Reagan did it. Where they said this explicit thing, not in response to an event, but just in the hint or chance that somebody would sign up for their campaigns who had these views. And bob dole said it in 1996, and he said, theres the exit, i dont want your votes, i dont want anything to do with you. And they did this unprompted, as opposed to, after an event like this when the nation turns to a president and seeks some kind of guidance, particularly on this moral plane. I mean, thats the job you sign up for. It has that moral component. As f. D. R. Said, its primarily a job of moral leadership. Stephen thats the job of the statesman president. That is the dignity that makes receiving a medal from this man, or the honor of being with him, is captured with that behavior, he has to manifest that. Right, you have to tend those fires, as a president. Its part of the