Talk about burying the lede! This clip from The Late Show With Stephen Colbert is billed as “We Need Supreme Court Justices Who Live Forever,” which seems like it will deliver chuckles at best. Indeed, Colbert’s monologue starts out with a hacky bit about appointing immortals like “Ruth Bader Ginsborg” to the Supreme Court to outwit Republicans unwilling to fill vacancies. And his follow-up, about Donald Trump’s testicles, has just as little to recommend it. But at 4:16, things take a turn for the excellent, as Colbert turns his attention to this International Business Times story, with the apparently-much-less-interesting-than-the-Supreme-Court headline “Secret Nazi Military Base Used ny Hitler Discovered Near North Pole.” Again: Secret Nazi Military Base Used by Hitler Discovered Near North Pole. How is that story getting pushed to the back when page A1 is, once again, “Republicans Continue to Do Terrible Things?”
The story, about a military weather station on Alexandra Land code-named Schatzgräber (“treasure hunter”) doesn’t seem to be entirely new—the base’s existence wasn’t a secret, and the discovery was made in August—but Schatzgräber’s proximity to the North Pole raises troubling questions that only Colbert was brave enough to follow up on. In an exclusive interview, he gives local resident Santa Claus a chance to respond to the swirling rumors of his possible Nazi sympathies. Rumors, it must be said, that Colbert himself swirled up out of nowhere only seconds before—but when Bill Maher is booking Obama, it’s understandable that Colbert is doing what he has to in order to get equally impressive guests. Impressive but not media trained: Kringle is ill-prepared to discuss his possible Nazi ties, and some parts of his story are pretty suspicious. Could this be the most disastrous late-night–show appearance since Crispin Glover kicked Letterman?
