Stephen Colbert Praises The Parkland Student Activists: “This Country Belongs to Them”

Returning from hiatus on Tuesday night, the late-night hosts all addressed last week’s school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas school in Parkland, Florida. In particular, Stephen Colbert delivered a somber, thoughtful monologue that took a particular moment to praise the surviving Parkland teenagers who have been advocating — loudly — for gun control legislation to prevent the next school massacre.

“These students saw their leaders doing nothing and said, ‘Hold my root beer,'” Colbert said. He cracked a joke about changing the voting laws so no one over 18 could vote and also about how the only reason he ever walked out of class was to go out behind the school “…and study.”

Colbert then talked about the busloads of kids who went to Tallahassee, only to see the state government vote down a possible gun-control law. “I hope these kids don’t give up,” Colbert said, “Because this is their lives and their future. Someone else may be in power, but this country belongs to them. There is reason for hope.”

Colbert summed it up with a kind of call to action: “This is an election year. If you want to see change, you have to go to the polls and tell the people who will not protect you that their time is up.”

Colbert wasn’t the only one addressing the Parkland teens on Tuesday night. Jordan Klepper had two of the protesting students, Carly Novell and Delaney Tarr, on to The Opposition to state their case. “We want people to stop getting shot, we want children to stop dying at the hands of AR-15s and semi-automatic rifles,” Tarr said.

“I’ve seen this before,” Klepper said about mass-shooting incidents, leaning into his know-it-all persona. “What Americans do is we think, we pray, and we move on. Wiser and … well, at least wiser.”

“Well, as we discovered,” Tarr replied, “thoughts and prayers generally don’t protect you from gunfire.”

Where to stream The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

Where to stream The Opposition with Jordan Klepper