Colbert says good-bye to Mitch McConnell as Senate Minority Leader

Yesterday's news that the Supreme Court decided to hear Trump's immunity appeal was not good news. That was almost balanced out by the good news the same day of Mitch McConnell announcing he was stepping down as Senate Minority Leader in November. Watch The Late Show with Stephen Colbert's cold open, Mitch McConnell Steps Down.

The Late Show shares exclusive footage of Senator Mitch McConnell stepping down as the Senate's Republican leader.

Poor turtle, and I don't mean McConnell. I hope his shell protected him down the stairs.

Now for the monologue, McConnell Walks Away | Trump’s Creepy Putin Infatuation | House GOP’s Russian Spy Scandal.

Stephen puts aside politics to acknowledge Mitch McConnell’s big announcement, the former PM of Australia confirmed that Trump is obsessed with Vladimir Putin, and the star witness in the House GOP’s impeachment case against President Biden took bogus intelligence from Russian spies and was arrested for lying to the FBI.

I guess Stephen decided that if he couldn't say anything nice about McConnell, he shouldn't say anything at all, even if it meant getting poked with a broomstick for a punchline and transition.

Speaking of transitions, file the rest of the described part of the monologue under Trump and Putin's bad bromance. That's now become a relationship between the GOP and Russia. Watch Chris Hayes: The GOP Would Like Putin’s Help Again In The 2024 Election, the second half of the interview I shared yesterday.*

The host of “All In with Chris Hayes” offers a reminder of how Russia helped Donald Trump win the presidency in 2016 and warns that the former president’s GOP allies remain cozy with Russia as the 2024 election nears.

Chris Hayes is right about why we're almost certain to get a rematch between Biden and Trump as far as he goes. I'm adding what I wrote in 'Trump' brags about his cognitive abilities as 'SNL' returns after winning 2 Emmy Awards.

The likely rematch between Biden and Trump reminds me of what I first wrote last February.

A fellow guest at a party I attended in the summer of 2016 asked me how we got TFG and Hillary Clinton as nominees. I told him that the parties got the nominees they deserved. The Republicans got TFG because the party was too weak and the Democrats got Hillary Clinton because the party was too strong. He laughed ruefully and asked if the American people deserved the nominees. I told him that was another matter entirely.

I elaborated on that last month, writing "That's still true and is why we're almost certainly going to get a rematch between TFG and Joe Biden next year" — now this year.

As for the reversal of the Republican Party's position on Russia, I'm also going back to 2016, when I wrote in a comment on a friend's Facebook timeline that the Democrats will be the anti-Russian party for the next decade based on Russian assistance to Trump's campaign. I revisited that a few years later when I expressed surprise that the GOP would become the pro-Russian party at least partly in response. That's only become more so since.

Enough current events. Stay tuned for World Wildlife Day followed by a highlights post of tonight's Saturday Night Live.

*The part of the monologue not mentioned in the description is about the Michigan Primary. I knew about all of it except Marianne Williamson unsuspending her campaign. I guess that counts as learning something new, making today a good day.