Stephen Colbert and John Oliver teamed up for a benefit at the Montclair Film Festival over the weekend called Wow, That Was Weird: A Post-Election Evening With Stephen Colbert and John Oliver, where they reflected on Donald Trump’s presidential election win and what they’ve learned from covering the election on their late night shows on CBS and HBO. Now that Trump is the president-elect, Colbert said that “the story has teeth on a level that it didn’t have before,†and Oliver added: “Someone who’s always acted like the most powerful man in the world has now actually become the most powerful man in the world.†Looking back on his Trump coverage on Last Week Tonight, Oliver said: “You try and take things of substance and then put some sugar on it to make it palatable. But there was so little of substance, this whole campaign, it’s just like a diabetes-inducing amount of sugar. Your job kind of flips on its head.†Here’s another excerpt from the talk where Oliver and Colbert respond to the recent coverage of “fake news†sites:
Discussing the apparent rise of websites that traffic in bogus news stories, Mr. Colbert objected to this content being described as “fake news.†Referring to his and Mr. Oliver’s time at The Daily Show, he said: “What we did was fake news. We got on TV and we said: ‘This is all going to be fake. We’re going to make fun of news.’†Mr. Colbert added, “The fact that they call this stuff fake news upsets me, because this is just lying.â€
Read a full recap of the event over at The New York Times.