Like pretty much everyone, Stephen Colbert was impressed by Rihanna’s Super Bowl 2023 halftime performance, and like pretty much every late night TV host, he had some decent jokes about it.
But he also had some good jokes about about all the objects the U.S. military has recently shot out of the sky, a topic he introduced in his monologue Monday as “America’s other national pastime, being terrified of giant balloons.”
“Last week, a Chinese spy balloon soared across America before finally being shot down by a stealth fighter. Just a reminder: We spent almost $800 billion a year on defense, and we used it to pop balloons,” Colbert quipped.
“You could do that with a thumb tack and a straw,” Colbert added.
“Balloon doesn’t really do it justice,” Colbert noted. “It was two or three school buses in size, 200 feet across, and the debris was found to contain an antenna meant to pinpoint the locations of communication devices and was capable of intercepting calls made on those devices.”
“What? What? We can’t have Chinese balloons monitoring our cell phones. That’s what TikTok is for,” Colbert joked.
“We thought the whole thing had blown over,” Colbert continued, laughing at his pun. “But just this week the militaryb shot down three unidentified flying objects. Now I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking ‘Steve, you can’t possibly be suggesting these are aliens.”
“Well let me be clear about this ladies and gentlemen. I am not suggesting that, I am declaring that,” Colbert said as he began to quote a recent article about it. “Because, and this is important, according to a senior Air Force general, the military was unable to immediately determine the means by which any of the three latest objects were kept aloft or where they were coming from, adidng ‘I haven’t ruled anything out.’”
“Yeah, nothing’s off the table. It could be aliens, it could be balloons, or it could be alien balloons,” Colbert said as photo of a parade float of Grogu, aka “Baby Yoda” from “The Mandalorian” appeared onscreen.
Colbert then ran down some of the other objects shot down, include one that was flying in the direction of the North Pole. “Santa, you will be missed,” Colbert joked.
There’s plenty more: Colbert spent most of the monologue talking about this topic. And you can watch the whole thing above now.
