But Thursday night represented a milestone. Colbert’s show reaches roughly 2 to 3 million people; its ratings fall behind those of late-night star Jimmy Fallon, but its reach is a heck of a lot longer than C-SPAN’s. And Colbert as a host offers something different to his political guests, of whom he has had many at CBS. He does not play a right-wing caricature like he did on The Colbert Report, but he still retains some of his smart-guy snark and brings a depth of political knowledge to conversations that a guy like Fallon does not.

Johnson and Weld, both former Republican governors of blue states, joined an ever-growing list of politicos to appear on the show, including Hillary Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, House Speaker Paul Ryan, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, and the handful of presidential candidates who stopped by in the program’s early weeks last year.

Much of Thursday night’s interview focused on exactly what Johnson and Weld stand for. Johnson framed his philosophy as “always [coming] down on the side of choice,” in a reference to Libertarians’ emphasis on self-determination. “I like to say that I want the government out of your pocketbook and out of your bedroom,” Weld said, explaining those locations as Democratic and Republican interests, respectively.

Johnson and Weld are trying to draw voters from across the political spectrum, though Weld specifically noted the potential for Republican converts. “There’s a lot of Rs out there that haven’t signed on with [Donald] Trump yet,” he said. “We’ve gotta be what they’re waiting for.” In an interview after the taping, Johnson explained that a series of recent events in the race have emboldened his candidacy: Trump becoming the presumptive Republican nominee; announcing Weld, who governed Massachusetts in the 1990s, as his running mate; and the tapering-off of Bernie Sanders’s campaign. In the Colbert interview, he jokingly embraced Trump’s characterization of him and Weld as “fringe candidates,” noting that he and Weld have long supported social policies that are now growing in popularity. “By ‘fringe,’ I think what he’s saying is the majority of Americans are fringe, and that’s just not the case,” Johnson said.

Johnson, who appeared on Colbert’s Comedy Central show multiple times, was frank with the host about his goals: getting a “Colbert bump” from the appearance and getting on the debate stage with Trump and Clinton. But he still has a lot of work to do. He and Weld aren’t top billing in the presidential race, and they weren’t top billing Thursday night, either. Their interview was the last of the evening, after two other guests—actor Patrick Wilson and CBS anchor Gayle King—had already had their fun with Colbert.