Sen. Mark Kelly

Summary

The Late Show Pod Show with Stephen Colbert

Guest: Senator Mark Kelly
Date: September 27, 2025

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Episode Overview

Stephen Colbert hosts Senator Mark Kelly—former Navy aviator, astronaut, and current senior U.S. Senator from Arizona—for a candid conversation on the current state of American democracy, political division, health care, political violence, and even a lighthearted exploration of UFOs. This episode is marked by the Senator’s honest reflections on constitutional norms, bipartisan tension, and personal tragedy, all seasoned with characteristic Late Show wit.

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Major Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Erosion of Constitutional Norms (02:30–06:31)

• Colbert asks about the President’s public targeting of political enemies, specifically via the Justice Department.

• Kelly condemns the norm-breaking behavior:

  “It's to all of the Constitution. Presidents don't get to pick and choose.”
  — Sen. Mark Kelly, (03:07)

• On unprecedented behavior:

  “We've never had a president that has spent his time thinking about how he's going to use the Department of Justice to go after political enemies.”
  — Sen. Mark Kelly, (03:20)

• Colbert highlights Republican rationalizations:

  “[One Republican] said, hey, it's all out in the open. It's not nefarious. He's saying it out in the open. It can't be bad.”
  — Stephen Colbert, (03:46)

• Kelly rebuts, stressing the danger:

  “It's really bad. And I think it's fair to say it's shameful that we currently have a president that at every opportunity seems to look for ways to further divide us as a nation.”
  — Sen. Mark Kelly, (03:56)

• Importance of the DOJ’s independence:

  “When you put people in those jobs that serve a person and not the Constitution, that's where we start to get into trouble.”
  — Sen. Mark Kelly, (04:28)

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2. Bipartisan Relationships and Private Concerns (04:43–06:26)

• Colbert probes if Republicans privately express concern.

• Sen. Kelly confirms:

  “They do. And I've had many conversations with my Republican colleagues about this president, how he conducts himself. I wish every day I show up in Washington and I wish today is the day that somebody's going to grow a spine and do something publicly.”
  — Sen. Mark Kelly, (05:10)

• On the hope things will just pass:

  “We just got to get through these three and a half years ... But that's not the right answer because the amount of damage that can be done in that period of time is significant.”
  — Sen. Mark Kelly, (05:43)

• Colbert notes the tendency for presidents to retain power:

  “Presidents rarely give back power that was achieved by the previous president.”
  — Stephen Colbert, (06:26)

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3. Looming Government Shutdown & Health Care Crisis (06:31–08:57)

• Colbert discusses the potential shutdown and asks for clarity on the main conflict.

• Kelly makes it clear:

  “This is a fight over the cost of your health care. That's all this is about. The president says no. He says he would prefer a government shutdown.”
  — Sen. Mark Kelly, (07:10)

• On Democrats' demands:

  “There are some premium help that we could provide to the American people. That's what we are asking for. And the President said, no, I took away that help to those premiums when I passed that legislation.”
  — Sen. Mark Kelly, (07:58)

• Stakes for vulnerable communities:

  “Does your rural hospital stay open or not? ... Or does somebody's grandmother get pushed to the curb when she was in the nursing home?”
  — Sen. Mark Kelly, (08:31)

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4. The Cost of Political Violence (08:57–12:59)

• Colbert brings up the personal impact of violence—Gabby Giffords, Kelly’s wife, and the recent tragedy involving Charlie Kirk.

• Sen. Kelly shares a deeply personal response:

  “I got a call … Gabby's been shot. ... She'd been shot in the head. And later that day ... through the media they pronounced her dead. ... About 10 days ago, I went right back to that day thinking about Erica Kirk, Charlie Kirk's wife.”
  — Sen. Mark Kelly, (09:35)

• On the right to disagree:

  “I didn't agree with Charlie Kirk on much, but ... he had freedom of speech rights. And I would, you know, I would go to war to defend that.”
  — Sen. Mark Kelly, (10:46)

• The corrosive effects of social media:

  “If we're trying to make this better ... put down their phone, don't look at social media. It just makes this worse.”
  — Sen. Mark Kelly, (11:34)

• Comparison to 2011:

  “In 2011, it existed, but it wasn't what it is today … The hatred didn't really show up on places like Twitter and Facebook and TikTok and Instagram.”
  — Sen. Mark Kelly, (12:01)

• Worries about polarization:

  “When you reinforce those biases, you separate us further as a Nation… I’m not so sure if we go too far, we're not going to be able to get back from it.”
  — Sen. Mark Kelly, (12:18)

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5. UFOs & Congressional Investigations (12:59–14:30)

• Colbert revisits a previous discussion on UFOs, following recent government videos and testimony.

• Lighthearted banter:

  “They hit it with a Hellfire missile. It bounced off like a BB off a battleship and just kept on going.”
  — Stephen Colbert, (13:48)

  “Bigger missile we need against the alien ships.”
  — Sen. Mark Kelly, joking, (14:00)

• Colbert presses for evidence:

  “So there are alien ships is what you’re saying.”
  — Stephen Colbert, (14:04)

  “The first thing they said was, ‘Take me to your leader.’”
  — Sen. Mark Kelly, (14:16)

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6. Political Outlook & Future Plans (14:33–15:19)

• Colbert asks about Kelly’s political future, noting his 2028 re-election aligns with the presidential cycle.

  “What I'm going to do right now is make sure Jon Ossoff gets reelected in Georgia. … That's the first order of business.”
  — Sen. Mark Kelly, (14:53)

  “I'm focused on 2026. We've got a lot of opportunities … North Carolina, Ohio, Maine.”
  — Sen. Mark Kelly, (15:06)

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Notable Quotes

• On dangerous presidential precedent:

  “When you put people in those jobs that serve a person and not the Constitution, that's where we start to get into trouble.”
  — Sen. Mark Kelly, (04:28)

• On political courage:

  “I wish today is the day that somebody's going to grow a spine and do something publicly.”
  — Sen. Mark Kelly, (05:15)

• On political violence:

  “Nobody deserves this. … He had every right to be there to debate people about the issues, issues that he cared about.”
  — Sen. Mark Kelly, (10:22)

• On social media’s divisiveness:

  “If folks can just put down the social media, try to disconnect and try to have, like, real conversations with real people over these issues, we'd get to a much better place.”
  — Sen. Mark Kelly, (12:42)

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Key Timestamps

• 02:10 – Introduction of Senator Mark Kelly
• 02:30–06:31 – Discussion on the abuse of presidential power and constitutional norms
• 06:31–08:57 – Government shutdown and health care stakes
• 08:57–12:59 – Political violence, personal impact, and the role of social media
• 12:59–14:30 – UFO investigations and congressional curiosity
• 14:33–15:19 – Kelly’s political future and 2028 plans

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Tone & Style

The conversation mixes Colbert’s signature humor and satire with Senator Kelly’s forthrightness and at times, vulnerability. While heavy topics are discussed—abuse of political power, violence, and national division—the show manages to integrate levity, especially when turning briefly to UFOs and campaign intrigue.

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This episode is a must-listen for anyone wanting an unfiltered look at the present and possible future of American democracy—delivered with intelligence, candor, and wit.

Transcript

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[Stephen Colbert]

Welcome back everybody. Hey. My next guest is a former Navy aviator, former astronaut, and currently serves as the senior Senator from Arizona. Please welcome Senator Mark Kelly. Sir, nice to have you back on.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Great to be here.

[Stephen Colbert]

Over the weekend, the President posted to Pam Bondi basically, here are my enemies. Attorney General. Go get em. Okay Baldly. Okay. As Someone who served our country in the Navy for 25 years, in peacetime and in combat, who took an oath to the Constitution. What does it feel like to see such a flagrant disregard for not just the norms, but for the laws of the United States, that you cannot have the Attorney General of the United States be your personal pit bull to go after your enemies?

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Yes. So thank you. You know, thank you for making that point in that oath to the Constitution. It's to all of the Constitution. Presidents don't get to pick and choose. And you mentioned the norms. We've never had a president that has spent his time thinking about how he's going to use the Department of Justice to go after political enemies. We've never seen this in our country's history. Now, I guess you could debate whether that was intended for everybody or was that like a dm? I think some people thought.

[Stephen Colbert]

But what difference? What difference?

[Senator Mark Kelly]

It doesn't make any difference.

[Stephen Colbert]

What difference does it make? I think one of your Republican colleagues said, hey, it's all out in the open. It's not nefarious. He's saying it out in the open. It can't be bad.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

It's really bad. And I think it's fair to say it's shameful that we currently have a president that at every opportunity seems to look for ways to further divide us as a nation. And when you use those levers of power, and as we can see with this presidency, presidents have enormous power to do things. And if they want to, they can easily go outside the bounds of the law. That's why we have a Department of Justice. But when you put people in those jobs that serve a person and not the Constitution, that's where we start to get into trouble. And that's where we are today.

[Stephen Colbert]

Well, I'm just curious. I'm just curious. You're a reasonable fella. You're not, you know, a bomb throwing crazy here. I assume that you have friends and colleagues across the aisle, as well you should. That's, you know, the Senate's supposed to be a very collegial organization. Publicly, they don't say much. Privately, do they express any concern to you?

[Senator Mark Kelly]

They do. And I've had many conversations with my Republican colleagues about this president, how he conducts himself. I wish every day I show up in Washington and I wish today is the day that somebody's going to grow a spine and do something publicly.

[Stephen Colbert]

But do they think, I mean, not to make you answer for them, but do they think that ultimately it's going to be okay, that this is all terrible, or this or that is terrible.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

But.

[Stephen Colbert]

But it's all ultimately going to be okay because he'll be gone someday.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Yeah, I do hear that. To be fair, I hear we just got to get through these three and a half years and then it'll be three years, two years, one year. But that's not the right answer because the amount of damage that can be done in that period of time is significant.

[Stephen Colbert]

We're only eight months in now.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

We're eight months in and I worry, where are we going to be? Are we going to be more divided than we are today? What happens to these institutions that have been so important to our democracy for nearly two hundred and fifty years now that are, that are weakened? And then you've got to worry about who the next president is going to be and is it somebody that's going to double down on what President Trump has done?

[Stephen Colbert]

Well, presidents rarely give back power that was achieved by the previous president.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

That is true. I think if we get the right person in the White House, I think we will find somebody that will absolutely do that. I am confident. But I also think there's a chance we wind up in a situation where, you know, one of his folks winds up in the White House and then tries to take this to the next whatever the next step is.

[Stephen Colbert]

Well, the people complain of the government being broken, and it certainly feels that way. It might shut down on October 1st. What's going on with the possibility of government shutdown? What is being asked for on the Republican side? And what are the Democrats fighting for in return in exchange for their votes to stop the shutdown?

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Well, let me make this perfectly, perfectly clear to everybody. This is a fight over the cost of your health care. That's all this is about. The president says no. He says he would prefer a government shutdown. Democrats no to what?

[Stephen Colbert]

Like no.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

No to fixing the problem with the cost of premiums if you buy your health care on the exchange, that's the fight right now. So it's not a fight about whether we should keep the government open or not. There are many of us that want to reduce the cost of your health care that this president, when he passed that big bill, made a lot worse. And people are going to start seeing these health care premiums go up substantially. They're already getting letters and it's unaffordable for people.

[Stephen Colbert]

So this is, what would this do? What would the Democrats be asking to do to the Affordable Care act to.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Actually, so there are some premium help that we could provide to the American people. That's what we are asking for. And the President said, no, I took away that help to those premiums when I passed that legislation. So I'm just saying, no, we're not going to do this and would prefer to shut the government down. So this becomes a question about the cost of your health care. But what it also means is, does your rural hospital stay open or not? If you live in a rural area, or when we get further down the road here, does somebody's grandmother get pushed to the curb when she was in the nursing home? So those are the things we are fighting for. And right now, to all of that stuff, the President says no. He also doesn't want to talk about it. Now, he's going to have a meeting with, with Jeffries and Chuck Schumer here this, I think, this week. But for a while, he didn't even want to discuss it.

[Stephen Colbert]

Senator, political violence is a deeply personal and painful issue for you. Your wife, as a sitting congresswoman, Gabby Giffords, survived an assassination attempt on her life in 2011. And, you know, since the tragic murder of Charlie Kirk, you've been speaking a lot, not just only as a politician, but as a family member and as a husband, talking about where this leads us. And I'm curious, what do you want people to know about how to come back from this brink and what happens if we don't?

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Well, let me start by saying I know something about this. As you outlined in 2011, I got a call. I was in Houston, Texas. Gabby was in Tucson meeting with her constituents. And I got a call from Gabby's chief of staff, who just very simply says to me, gabby's been shot. Didn't have a lot of information. We hung up from that call. A little while later, I get another call from her, and she gave me really devastating news that she'd been shot in the head. And later that day, on an airplane from Houston to Tucson, I found out through the media they pronounced her dead. And that lasted for about 30 minutes. I remember I was there with my kids and my mom. And I got up, went into the bathroom, and I was just crushed. And about 10 days ago, I went right back to that day thinking about Erica Kirk, Charlie Kirk's wife, and the devastating news that she received and how this is such a. A punch in the gut. Now, to some extent, I was able to recover from it. Gabby was alive and her husband died. Their kids will never know their father. They're so, so young. So this is, you know, really, really challenging for these people. Nobody deserves this. And I didn't agree with Charlie Kirk on much, but one thing I agreed with is he had every right to be there to debate people about the issues, issues that he cared about. I was on the other side of a lot of those issues. But one thing I did agree is that he had freedom of speech rights. And I would, you know, I would go to war to defend that. And we're in a challenging time here. I mean, I think one thing we could do is if we're trying to make this better, there's one thing I can think for everybody to do is put down their phone, don't look at social media. It just makes this worse.

[Stephen Colbert]

In 2011, that's interesting, because in 2011, we all know what sort of a carbonated, acidic a lot of social media can be. In 2011, it existed, but it wasn't what it is today.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Wasn't the same. And the hatred didn't really show up on places like Twitter and Facebook and TikTok and Instagram and all those.

[Stephen Colbert]

It showed up a commodified hatred. There's money to be made in engagement. And also, I think, I often think that our country is under psychological attack.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

And to reinforce biases in people. And when you reinforce those biases, you separate us further as a Nation. Back in 2011, I mean, we would get. Gabby's office would get phone calls, and they were quite horrible, but it was a phone call, and other people didn't see this. Now you've got this reinforcement in this bias that is just separating our nation to the point where I'm not so sure if we go too far, we're not going to be able to get back from it. So if folks can just put down the social media, try to disconnect and try to have, like, real conversations with real people over these issues, we'd get to a much better place.

[Stephen Colbert]

We're going to take a quick break. And we're back with Senator Mark Kelly, everybody. Now, this isn't the first time you've been here. The last time you were here, I asked you whether aliens were real because. Because at the time, I believe the Navy had put out a bunch of videos and they'd had hearings, and it had been pretty exciting. And it occurred to me that really, if it was real, there's nothing we should ever talk about again except that. And you said, I'll do some work on it.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

And I did.

[Stephen Colbert]

Okay. So what's your book report? You saw the footage recently. They had the testimony. They showed the footage of the thing flying off the coast of Yemen. They didn't know what it was. They hit it with a Hellfire missile. It bounced off like a BB off a battleship and just kept on going. The little bits kept going with it.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Bigger missile we need against the alien ships.

[Stephen Colbert]

So there are alien ships is what you're saying.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

But you.

[Stephen Colbert]

Come on, you saw that problem solving. You saw that cockpit footage.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

So I did some research. We did find some.

[Stephen Colbert]

Yes.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

But here's the problem.

[Stephen Colbert]

Yes.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

The first thing they said was, take me to your leader.

[Stephen Colbert]

They're aliens. They're real. That tells me they're real.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

I agree.

[Commercial Narrator]

All right.

[Stephen Colbert]

Okay. Your re election coming up for senator from Arizona is in 28.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

28.

[Stephen Colbert]

28 happens to also be a presidential election year. I'm just curious if you're going to run for something else.

[Commercial Narrator]

I.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

What I'm going to do right now is make sure Jon Ossoff gets reelected in Georgia.

[Stephen Colbert]

Okay.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

That's the first order of business.

[Stephen Colbert]

And then he'll owe you to help you in your campaign for.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

We'll see. I'm focused on 2026.

[Stephen Colbert]

Are you focused on 2026?

[Senator Mark Kelly]

We've got a lot of opportunities.

[Stephen Colbert]

Me, too.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

I'm focused on North Carolina, Ohio, Maine.

[Stephen Colbert]

Me too. Me, too. Senator, thank you so much for being here.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Thank you. Thank you.

[Stephen Colbert]

Senator Mark Kelly, everybody. Thank you for listening to the Late show pod show with Stephen Colbert. Just one more thing. If you want to see more of me, come to The Late Show YouTube channel for more clips and excl.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Now streaming on Paramount plus it's smurfing time.

[Paramount Plus Promoter]

Hefty.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

Can you even lift, bro? Grouchy, I hate the radio. Quiet.

[Paramount Plus Promoter]

I have something important to do. I have no idea what he just said. And Smurfette.

[Senator Mark Kelly]

That's how it's done, boys.

[Paramount Plus Promoter]

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