Late Show host Stephen Colbert mocked Steve Bannon and likened him to a “street fighter”in the classic video game during his monologue Thursday night, ahead of the former White House chief strategist and Breitbart News executive chairman’s anticipated interview on 60 Minutes Sunday.
The late-night host and professional Trump critic repeatedly took shots at Bannon’s appearance, just days after he falsely claimed during another monologue that the president had not met with any survivors of Hurricane Harvey during his visits to Texas last week.
“This Sunday, Bannon’s making his first post-White House TV appearance, right here on CBS, and surprisingly, it is not as a corpse on NCIS,” Colbert fired.
Colbert also mocked Bannon for saying in his interview with 60 Minutes‘ Charlie Rose that the media’s description of him as a “street fighter” was largely accurate.
“You look like a street fighter, have you ever thought about fighting back,” the host joked. “In fact, Bannon is such a street fighter, he’s actually in the video game.”
The show then ran a clip of Bannon superimposed into the classic Street Fighter video game — except instead of Ryu shouting “Hadouken!” when sending balls of fire toward his enemies, it was Bannon, shouting “Nazi-ouken!” while shooting little Breitbart logos.
“You win! Deep state destroyed,” reads the after-game credit.
Colbert has been a frequent critic of Bannon during his nearly year-long tenure as perhaps the most anti-Trump personality in late-night television. The former Comedy Central star has repeatedly likened Trump and his policies to Nazism, depicted violence against members of the administration, and caused a firestorm this year when he referred to the president’s mouth as Vladimir Putin’s “c*ck holster,” a remark for which CBS escaped FCC punishment.
During Tuesday night’s monologue, Colbert read from a report in Politico about Trump’s visits to Texas, which claimed that the president hadn’t met with any survivors of the devastating Hurricane Harvey. But the report was taken from Trump’s first visit to the region, when he visited Corpus Christi, to as to avoid impeding relief efforts in Houston.
Trump later visited Houston, helped to serve meals in the NRG Stadium relief center, and met and took photographs with families and children, along with First Lady Melania Trump.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum