On The Late Show and Late Night, the Designated Survivor cast compares improbable White Houses

Sure, maybe ABC’s Designated Survivor—where Kiefer Sutherland’s low-level cabinet member Tom Kirkman is stuck with the job of president only after literally every other qualified human being preceding him in the line of succession gets blown up—operates on a level of improbable melodrama. But, as Stephen Colbert put it to Sutherland on Tuesday’s Late Show, perhaps the concept of a person “entirely unqualified to be president” suddenly being in charge of the country isn’t as outlandish as it used to be. Sutherland—whose briefly referenced life as a struggling actor rooming with Robert Downey Jr., Sarah Jessica Parker, and Billy Zane deserves a series of its own—could only laugh, admitting, “It’s a challenge to write a political show at this precise moment.” “I am aware,” deadpanned Colbert in return, adding that, these days, “reality tends to leapfrog you.” For example, see just one of today’s stories from the bafflingly not-fictional White House where Donald Trump senior advisor—and son-in-law—Jared Kushner had his security clearance downgraded for, among other things, repeatedly lying on his security clearance forms. “How will he fix the Middle East now?,” joked Colbert in his monologue, “He was so close to starting.”