Stephen Colbert reveals his mother dated a dictator — and he has the guy's pants
Stephen Colbert let it drop that his mom once dated a former Nicaraguan dictator before marrying his father.
Five late-night hosts joined together for a podcast to help raise money for the striking writers and actors who haven't worked since the first week of May. Colbert joined with Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers and John Oliver for the "Strike Force Five" podcast, and the group got into some unique conversations.
The tale began with a humble brag from Kimmel that years ago he purchased Gary Coleman's pants off of eBay for $500. They were sweatpants and he was annoyed that the inseam was normal length. He had them hemmed and hung them in the studio.
POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?
It prompted Colbert to blurt out, "I have a weird pair of pants story. I have Anastasio Somoza [Debayle's] pants. Do you know who he was? The brutal dictator of Nicaragua, who was deposed by the Sandinista in the late '70s."
The Sandinista National Liberation Front is a left-wing political party named after Augusto César Sandino, who helped lead the resistance against the U.S. occupation in the 1930s. The Sandinistas overthrew Debayle in the 1979 revolution.
"Do you know who I'm talking about here?" asked Colbert.
"Yes. Tell this story slowly. Don't leave anything out," Oliver said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
"No one outbid you on this?" asked Fallon.
"I didn't have to — my mom had them," Colbert explained. "My mom had Anastasio Somoza's pants."
"Slower," Oliver said. "Go slower. You're already going faster than I want you to do."
Colbert explained that when Debayle was deposed he was a kid, watching the Today Show before going to school. He watched Debayle fleeing to Miami and the news carrying the live feed from Miami as he was taken to get medical treatment for a heart condition.
"What pants was he wearing?" asked Fallon.
"Well, he's carrying his own suitcases," explained Colbert. "And the newscasters are speculating, 'Well those are filled with gold bullion,' or something like that. That's why he's carrying his own suitcases. He won't let anyone touch where the money is. And I was like, huh, look at that. And my mom, who's standing behind me, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel goes, 'Poor Tacheo.' And I said, 'What do you mean Tacheo?' And she said, 'Well, that's what we used to call him.' I said, 'who's we?!' She said, 'Oh, your uncle Ed.'"
Colbert recall his mother explaining, "Well, we dated for a while."
"You dated the brutal dictator of Nicaragua?" Colbert asked her.
"He wasn't the brutal dictator of Nicaragua when I was dating him. That was his father," his mother explained.
It turns out Colbert's uncle went to La Salle Military Academy on Long Island in the 1930s and early '40s and Tacheo, also a student, would come home with his uncle to stay with his family because he couldn't fly all the way back to Nicarague for the holidays. Colbert's mother went on a few dates with him. One of the last years he went back before they graduated, Debayle left his clothes at Colbert's grandparents' house.
"So I have Anastasio Somoza's pants," Colbert explained.
"My mom drinks her coffee out of Ferdinand Marcos' skull," quipped Meyers.
"My mom gave Castro a h--djob once in like 1975," Kimmel said.
The podcast with the five men is called "Strike Force Five" and can be heard at Spotify.