Overview
- On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert highlighted the clash between official guidance avoiding the word “war” and President Trump’s own remarks calling the Iran fighting a war.
- Colbert cited a White House memo to congressional Republicans instructing allies to correct reporters and use the phrase “targeted major combat operations.”
- He played a clip of Trump using the word “war” three times in about a minute, joking that the president had undercut his team’s message.
- Colbert mocked Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s defense that the Iran strikes were based on the president’s “feeling based on a fact” about an imminent threat.
- He also noted Congress has not declared war and ribbed House Speaker Mike Johnson’s “not our war” framing related to Iranian counterattacks on U.S. embassies.