Don't underestimate Stephen Colbert!
The Comedy Central host's political action committee has raised $1.02 million, according to Federal Election Committee filings Tuesday. (Thanks to Supreme Court rulings last year, corporations, unions and other groups and wealthy individuals can set up super PACs that have the ability to raise unlimited campaign contributions to sway voters ahead of the 2012 elections.)
"I'm rolling seven digits deep!" he said in a letter to the FEC. "I got 99 problems but a non-connected independent-expenditure only committee ain't one!"
So just how did Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow raise that kind of cash?
Colbert Report viewers opened up their wallets. "We raised it on my show and used it to materially influence the elections—in full accordance with the law," he said in a press release. "It's the way our founding fathers would have wanted it, if they had founded corporations instead of just a country."
Colbert previously toyed with the idea of running for "President of the United States of South Carolina." He then legally transferred control of his PAC to The Daily Show's Jon Stewart. On Monday's Colbert Report, however, Colbert chased down Stewart—all over NYC—to regain his PAC presidency.
"The way I see it, the Supreme Court said that money is speech, and Jon Stewart was hogging all my speech," Colbert said in a press release. "Now I've taken that speech from Jon, making him like that movie The Artist: French."