Last year, Joe Biden made an emotional appearance on the newly-launched Late Show With Stephen Colbert shortly after his son Beau died, getting into a poignant, funny, and vulnerable conversation about loss and grief. The two renewed their rapport last night when Biden returned to give the nation a family pep talk about the coming Trump presidency: "It happens to every family, but I’m telling ya: This terrible feeling you’re having right now, it’s not permanent," Biden said. "It’ll be over in four years, maybe eight."

In the longer interview segment, Colbert pressed Biden on whether he regretted not jumping into the 2016 presidential ring when he had the chance: "I know I made the right decision for my family. I know I made the right decision. I'm not sure I would have been able to put my whole heart into it," Biden said, referring to the death of his son Beau. "What I regret is the circumstance that led me to not be able to run...Do I think I was best prepared, at this moment, to lead the country? I did. The issues of greatest concern were in my wheelhouse, things I've dealt with my whole career. So in that sense, I'm disappointed...But I don't regret the actual decision."

As for reports of him saying he was open to running in 2020, Biden walked back his comments, and then played coy: "I don't plan on running again, but to say you know it's going to happen in four years I just think is not rational," he said. "I can't see the circumstance in which I'd run, but what I learned a long, long time ago, Stephen, is to never say never. You don't know what's going to happen. Hell, Donald Trump's going to be 74, I'll be 77, and in better shape. I mean, what the hell?"

In the second half of the interview, they talked about a congressional bill, named for Beau Biden, that will fund a massive effort to advance cancer research ("The Cancer Moonshot").

And in his opening monologue, Colbert riffed on Al Gore's climate change talk with Trump yesterday, and the member of the Electoral College who announced he wouldn't vote for Trump. "This makes [him] what's called a 'faithless elector,'" Colbert said, "Also the name of a Lifetime movie about a wife who discovers her husband is having an affair with a voting machine."