Sad and surprising news for Stephen Colbert and the Colbert Nation. But I know there will be many more years of Stephen’s entertaining and educating us. God’s not finished with him yet.

The United States came close to a great tragedy on Saturday when at a political rally down in Pennsylvania, a 20-year-old gunman shot and nearly killed a former president and the man who today became the 2024 Republican nominee,” Colbert said.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert guests Woody Harrelson & Justin Theroux during Tuesday’s April 18, 2023 show. Photo: Scott Kowalchyk/CBS ©2023 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

“My immediate reaction when I saw this on Saturday was horror at what was unfolding, relief that Donald Trump had lived and, frankly, grief for my beautiful country — and then fresh horror, as we learned that attendees had also been shot, one of whom died at the rally.”

Colbert offered this context as reason for starting his show, scheduled to be live this week, in a prerecorded segment from his desk, but also said, “I could just as easily start the show moaning on the floor, because how many times do we need to learn the lesson that violence has no role in our politics,

that the entire objective of a democracy is to fight out our differences with — as the saying goes — a ballot, not a bullet.”