Colbert also dropped his persona when he interviewed Assange. He asked his usual O'Reilly-style "doesn't this hurt America" questions, but you could hear his tone was serious, not sarcastic.

Colbert sold out harder than Stewart. His persona allowed for more radical dunking on power at the time, but he has essentially said "i t w a s a c o m e d y s h o w" since. Stewart at least said "this is too much work/pressure, I'm not actually changing anything".