Stephen Colbert traveled to Philadelphia on election eve Late show interview with Tim Walz, in which the high school football coach turned vice presidential candidate gave one last pep talk to America before Tuesday.
“Governor Walz couldn't come to the Ed Sullivan Theater because this building is not a swing state,” Colbert joked Monday night, before the show switched to a pre-recorded interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, filmed at Johnson Hall coffee house in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
To begin the interview, Colbert asked Walz what his ups and downs were during the campaign: when the vice presidential candidate said there were no downs, the Late show the host asked “not even sharing the stage with J.D. Vance?”
“OK, it wasn't great,” Walz admitted.
(The highs? “Seeing my former students,” Walz said. “A lot of them come back… I'll see them at events everywhere.”)
Walz's 10-minute softball interview covered the story of how he met his wife, Gwen, his affinity for Diet Mountain Dew and the best Midwestern insults: “I'm not mad at you, I'm mad at your behavior” . The two also played a game of paper football.
When asked if he was surprised by the tie in election polls, Walz said no. “It disappoints me, because I think the choice is so hard,” he said. “But no wonder, the country is really divided.”
He went on to explain, at Colbert's request, the concept of an opportunity economy through the language of car repair.
“So your car is running a little bad, it still works but there are things you could do,” Walz said. “And now, if it's an older vehicle, you can clean its carburetor. You can invest the money in a really important piece, let's say the carburetor, being middle class. You invested a little in that carburetor. The entire vehicle runs better. This brings oxygen into the entire system. So invest in the middle class… the middle class makes everything else work.”
The segment concluded with Walz's pep talk. “We know we're in the last two minutes of this game,” he said. “We will give 110%, we know that we have to leave it on the pitch because, look, democracy is at stake here.”
Last week tonight host John Oliver joined Colbert after Walz, where the two comedians talked about their experiences covering Donald Trump for nearly a decade.
“2016 came and never went away,” Oliver said. “We've been in the 2016 news cycle for eight years now.”
Colbert also played a 2015 Late show clip of Oliver saying he “didn't care” about Donald Trump announcing his first run for president. “Wouldn't it be great to go back to a time like that?” Oliver said Monday: “I just want to be in the situation where I don't have to worry about it anymore. So I go back to my original state, which is: This guy means nothing. So that's what I want to happen so badly.
Elsewhere in the interview, Colbert asked Oliver about Elon Musk's one-sided feud with the Last Week Tonight comedian.
“I think one of the things is he clearly loves comedy,” Oliver said of the Trump-supporting billionaire. “So it's meant to be funny. And unfortunately, money can't buy you this – so, basically, it's never going to be funny, and this has to eat it alive, because it's trying so hard to be funny. And every time he tries, he has to make her seem further away from him, that laugh he always chases but will never reach. And this will remain a void in the center of his soul for a long time.”