Well, that was a little awkward.

At the beginning of his opening monologue during last night’s broadcast of The Late Show, host Stephen Colbert informed his audience of the shocking news that FBI Director James Comey had been fired by President Donald Trump. (Apparently, the story had broken just minutes ahead of the taping.)

Colbert seemed taken aback when upon the announcement of the bombshell, his audience broke out into applause, likely believing this was something of a setback for the Trump administration. (It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Colbert’s core audience is largely anti-Trump.)

Noticing the confusing reaction from the crowd, Colbert immediately joked about it.

“Oh well, huge, huge Donald Trump fans here tonight,” the late-night host said.

Colbert would then go on to continue with the rest of his set, which included some snipes at Trump for firing the man who many Democrats have blamed — including Hillary Clinton herself — for costing Clinton the election in November.

And that is likely where the narrative confusion had set in for the audience last night. They’ve been primed to despise Comey because of the perception that he handed the presidency to Trump with his late-October letter about Hillary’s emails.

However, until yesterday, he was in charge of the FBI’s investigation into potential collusion between Trump associates and Russian operatives, which has caused many Democrats now to highly criticize the termination, labeling it a “constitutional crisis” and a “coverup.”

Watch the monologue above, via CBS.

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Justin Baragona on Twitter: @justinbaragona

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