During a recent Fox News interview, White House Chief Of Staff John Kelly was asked about the issue of Civil War monuments in the South. In the interview, the former military general said that taking "what today is right and wrong" and applying it to the events of 200-300 years ago is "inconceivable." As expected, Stephen Colbert noticed this and poked fun at Kelly just after doing his nightly Trump takedown.
A lot of people thought slavery was wrong back then
In a segment after his nightly monologue, Colbert took time to talk about Kelly's recent statements about Confederate monuments.
When Kelly said that thought what is happening now is inconceivable, the Late Show host pointed out that a lot of people already thought slavery was already wrong back then... "namely black people."
Colbert then talked about several facts regarding slavery. He pointed out the fact that by 1850, there were roughly 3.2 million slaves in the United States. "I think their Yelp review would have been pretty bad," Colbert joked. He then added "Service was terrible and we had to do it. 1 Star, only because I can't give it zero stars."
On John Kelly's historical scholarship
During his Fox News interview, John Kelly also talked about the root causes of the Civil War. According to the former military general, it was the "inability to compromise" that led to the United States falling into Civil War.
In response, Colbert joked that when John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln, he told the president that "Can't we just talk about this."
The host then blasted Kelly by asking "What do you mean there was a lack of compromise?" "The Late Show" host then pointed out that "the Civil War happened because of compromise." He then named a few examples such as the Missouri compromise and the 3/5 compromise.
"You're a general and you don't know why the civil war happened," said Colbert as he blasted the White House Chief of staff. Colbert then joked that World War II was caused by a zoning issue.
Afterwards, Colbert then presented a (fake) letter from a "Confederate Soldier." In that joke letter, it said that the North doesn't want to compromise and that the South only wanted to have slaves every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, or even every other weekend.
The letter also jested that because the North didn't want compromise on slavery, they were becoming "total N*zis about this." But in the end, Colbert theorized that maybe Kelly actually knows better and is just being willfully ignorant. "As the Chief of Staff, he's now forced to defend the positions of an idiot," Colbert said.
