On a recent episode of “The Late Show,” Stephen Colbert did something unusual for late-night television. He played a clip of Donald Trump speaking several years ago — and then he played it again.

The first airing prompted laughter and scattered gasps from the studio audience. The second shifted the mood. Colbert slowed the footage, pausing at key moments, allowing the former president’s words to linger. The segment, which might have passed as a routine comedic jab, became something closer to an evidentiary exercise.

Late-night hosts frequently showcase archival footage of politicians misspeaking or contradicting themselves. Such moments are often consumed as entertainment, folded into a news cycle that moves on within hours. What distinguished this segment was not merely the content of the clip but the insistence on repetition. “Let’s watch that again,” Colbert said, before replaying the footage in full view of the audience.

The clip in question showed Mr. Trump discussing matters he has since described differently in more recent public statements. The contradiction was not subtle. But as with many political moments, it was easy to miss in real time — a few seconds of tape among countless hours of speeches and interviews.

By replaying the footage, Colbert reframed the exchange. The second viewing removed ambiguity and, in his telling, eliminated the possibility that the audience had misunderstood what they had heard. The laughter faded. The room grew quieter. What began as comedy took on the tone of cross-examination.

Colbert did not dwell on commentary. Instead, he posed a question to viewers: How does one deny something that exists on video?

Within hours, Mr. Trump responded on social media. He accused Colbert of dishonesty and suggested that the footage had been manipulated. He characterized the segment as an example of media distortion and demanded accountability from the network.

The exchange quickly migrated beyond the confines of late-night television. News outlets replayed both the original clip and Mr. Trump’s reaction. Commentators debated not only the substance of the contradiction but the broader implications of denying recorded evidence. In effect, the reaction ensured that far more people saw the footage than would have otherwise tuned in to a single late-night episode.

For media observers, the episode illustrated a familiar pattern in Mr. Trump’s political career: confrontation followed by categorical denial. Supporters often view such responses as strength, a refusal to concede ground to critics. Detractors see them as an erosion of shared factual standards.

Colbert appeared to anticipate that dynamic. By replaying the clip, he created a moment in which the evidence and the denial could be evaluated side by side. The segment functioned less as satire and more as a test case in the politics of memory: What happens when documented statements collide with claims that they were never made?

The answer, in this instance, was amplification. Mr. Trump’s denunciations drove additional attention to the segment. Searches for the clip spiked online. Viewers who might have missed the original broadcast encountered it through reposts, commentary and news analysis. The denial became inseparable from the footage itself.

The exchange underscored a paradox of the digital age. Never before has so much of public life been recorded, archived and instantly retrievable. Speeches, interviews and off-the-cuff remarks can be summoned within seconds. Yet the existence of video evidence has not eliminated disputes over what was said or meant. Instead, such evidence often becomes another battleground.

In this context, Colbert’s decision to replay the clip took on symbolic weight. It suggested that repetition — a staple of political messaging — can also be used to reinforce accountability. By slowing down the footage and isolating key phrases, he invited viewers to scrutinize the record rather than absorb it passively.

Critics of late-night satire argue that it contributes to polarization, reducing complex issues to punchlines. Supporters counter that it serves as a form of civic engagement, particularly for younger audiences who consume news through entertainment platforms. The segment straddled that divide. It retained the trappings of comedy — an audience, a host, a stage — but operated with the mechanics of documentation.

Ultimately, the episode was less about a single contradiction than about the contest over reality itself. Mr. Trump’s response, forceful and dismissive, reflected a longstanding strategy: challenge the premise, question the source and rely on supporters to accept his version of events. Colbert’s approach was the inverse: present the record, replay it and allow viewers to draw conclusions.

Whether the exchange will have lasting political consequences is uncertain. Late-night segments rarely alter electoral outcomes. But they can shape narratives, particularly when they crystallize broader anxieties about truth and accountability.

By the end of the week, the clip and the reaction had become inseparable artifacts of the same story. The footage documented what was said. The response documented how it was handled. Together, they offered a snapshot of a political era in which evidence is abundant, agreement on its meaning is scarce, and the struggle over interpretation plays out not only in courtrooms and campaign rallies, but also under studio lights.