Colbert Finale: Joe Biden & Hillary Clinton Praise ‘Late Show’ Host’s Decade Long CBS Run; Ex-POTUS Says “America Could Always Count On A Laugh”
Donald Trump has unsurprisingly promised to chime in later on long time foe Stephen Colbert‘s late night departure tonight, but two of the ex-Apprentice host’s political rivals Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton have already had their say on the Late Show finale.
There aren’t many who can make people think and laugh at the same time,” Biden said Thursday online as fans, guests (we still don’t know who) and press gathered in and around NYC’s Ed Sullivan Theater for Colbert’s 1,800th and last show.
“For years, Stephen brought wit, heart, and honesty to late night television. America could always count on a laugh — and sometimes a needed reality check,” the one-term Democrat added, who beat Trump like a drum (Biden’s words, not mine but still true) in 2020.
While Biden never showed up on the Late Show during his 2021 – 2025 Presidential term, he did appear on the CBS series on six occasions in total over its 2015 starting run.
The fist time was during the inaugural week of Colbert’s late night reign in September 2015. That appearance saw the then VP sit down for what quickly became a moving meditation on the May 2015 death of Biden’s son and ex-Delaware AG Beau Biden. Though Colbert hosted a big bucks Radio City fundraiser in 2024 for then re-election seeking President Biden, along with Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, the last time Joe Biden was on the Late Show was as President-elect on December 17, 2020 with future First Lady Dr. Jill Biden.
Today Biden praised Colbert in the most straightforward of ways: “Congrats on an incredible run, my friend.”
Three-time Late Show guest Hillary Clinton didn’t hold back her appreciation of her fellow Trump basher today either.
“Alongside his great wit, Stephen brought deep thoughtfulness, empathy, and humility to the late-night stage,” the 2016 Presidential candidate, ex-Secretary of State, NY Senator, First Lady and 2015, 2017 and 2024 guest declared.
“Here’s to a next chapter as brilliant as the last,” Clinton concluded.
Barack Obama, who posted his own praise of Colbert earlier this month, was on the Late Show six times. The 44th POTUS first showed up in the Sullivan Theater in 2016 and sat down with Colbert on May 13, 2026 for a cameo in the Late Show’s The Colbert Questionert segment. To make it clearly how tight the two have become, just a week before Obama and Colbert chatted on-air in Chicago ahead of the opening of Obama Presidential Center next month.
Trump showed up on the Late Show only once, back on September 22, 2015. Colbert’s constant barbs and critiques of the MAGA overlord is widely seen as the real reason the pre-David Ellison run Paramount pink slipped the host — though they said it was to save money.
Filming as already started in NYC on the final and slightly longer Late Night show, but would have been fun to see Colbert extend an invite over and over to the thinned skin man in the White House — as a certain loud mouth advocated today
