Hillary Clinton was offered a spot on Stephen Colbert’s first Late Show, but she reportedly opted to do the Tonight show instead, as Jimmy Fallon “offers a friendlier foil to would-be guests.” Since then Colbert’s approach to interviewing politicians has been unpredictable. He had an emotional and incredibly candid conversation with Joe Biden, prodded Jeb Bush to explain how he’d be different from his brother, politely took apart Ted Cruz’s arguments, and subtly attempted to eviscerate Trump.
But it turns out Clinton’s fears were unfounded. Her appearance on Tuesday night’s show was oddly fluffy for Colbert, featuring many questions that sounded like they could have been submitted by her campaign team. In keeping with her new emphasis on fun, the interview began with a discussion of what Clinton did to celebrate her 68th birthday on Monday. Basically, Netflix and chill: “I just sort of hung around. Bill and I just watched bad TV … a little binge-watching, here and there.” (Favorites include House of Cards, Madam Secretary, and The Good Wife.)
The conversation briefly took a serious turn when she made her toughest statement yet on how Wall Street would be treated in a second Clinton administration. “If you’re president and the banks are failing, do we let [the banks] fail?” Colbert asked. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” Clinton said, breaking with President Obama. “First of all, under Dodd-Frank, that is what will happen because we now have stress tests and I’m going to impose a risk fee on the big bank if they engage in risky behavior, but they have to know, their shareholders have to know that yes, they will fail … Then under my plan, and others that have been proposed, they may have to be broken up.”
Then it was back to humanizing banter. Clinton went through her campaign’s suggested Hillary Halloween costumes, from College Hillary in her infamous striped pants to White House Hillary in Donna Karan’s “Cold Shoulder” dress. Colbert suggested another Benghazi-hearing-themed outfit: “People can just go to the party dressed up any way they want, but they have to stay for 11 hours.”