Jimmy Kimmel
Late-night hosts were on edge on Wednesday afternoon, as Russia was poised to invade Ukraine. Hours after their tapings, they did – Putin ordered a “special military operation” in Ukraine and the Russian military began shelling various targets beyond the two eastern Russian-controlled territories they had previously claimed as independent.
In the run-up to one of the worst international crises since the second world war, though, Jimmy Kimmel trained his focus on Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has been supportive of Russia’s military build-up along its border with Ukraine and especially of leader Vladimir Putin.
“What is this really about?” Carlson said on his primetime show this week, in typical nonsense question style. “Why do I hate Putin so much? Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? Has he shipped every middle class job in my town to Russia? Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked my business and kept me indoors for two years? Is he teaching my children to embrace racial discrimination? Is he making fentanyl? Is he trying to snuff out Christianity? Does he eat dogs? These are fair questions, and the answer to all of them is no.”
“I see, so in order for you to despise a man who murders his rivals, who murders and poisons people and who’s actively trying to destabilize our country, he has to do something to you personally,” Kimmel responded. “He has to eat your dog.”
“I want to see the tape Putin has of him, because it has to be something special,” he added. “I mean seriously, how did we go from being a country that hated communism since well before I was born, how did we go from the country that made Red Dawn and Rocky IV to this? It boggles the mind.
“Can you imagine Ronald Reagan turning on Fox News and hearing this?” he joked.
Carlson, Kimmel acknowledged, “knows what he’s doing. He knows this is garbage he’s feeding these people who watch him. Between Tucker Carlson and Pam & Tommy, this really is the golden age of talking dicks on television.”
Stephen Colbert
“Tonight, you really get a vibe right now that the borscht is about to hit the fan,” said Stephen Colbert on the Late Show, as US intelligence pointed to an imminent full-scale invasion (which turned out to be correct within the evening).
“Their first clue? The 190,000 troops with the bang-bang sticks and the all-steel shoot mobiles. That warning courtesy of the US state duh-partment,” he quipped.
“No one doesn’t see what’s coming,” he continued, though the Kremlin has claimed that rebel leaders in eastern Ukraine have asked Russia with military help to fend off Ukrainian aggression. “Yes, they say Ukraine is the aggressor just like Tokyo is asking for it by taunting Godzilla,” Colbert said.
In response to Russian aggression, the Ukrainian government declared a 30-day state of emergency that will, among other things, allow ordinary citizens to carry firearms. “That’s right, this situation is so dire, Ukraine has become Texas,” Colbert noted.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden has imposed sanctions on Russia’s two largest banks and on the sons of two of Putin’s closest officials. “If he’s going after children of Putin’s cronies, can I suggest a couple?” Colbert said over a photo of Donald Trump’s sons Don Jr and Eric.
Seth Meyers
“The entire world is aghast and horrified,” Seth Meyers said of an imminent Russian invasion on Late Night. “The only people who could possibly think this is a good move are those unemployed fringe weirdos who go on small-time radio shows.
“You know, like this guy,” he continued, referring to Donald Trump’s appearance on a radio show in which he called Putin’s baseless recognition of two eastern Ukrainian regions as independent “genius”.
“How smart is that?” Trump said of Putin’s unilateral decision. “You gotta say, that’s pretty savvy.”
“No, you don’t ‘gotta say’ that,” Meyers retorted. “I mean, maybe you gotta say that so someone will pick you up at the Moscow airport when you flee our jurisdiction.
“It’s just insane that Trump is still so desperate to praise a bloodthirsty tyrant like Putin every chance he gets,” he added.
As for “all those war-mongers like Mike Pompeo and Newt Gingrich and the House Republicans” who have gone on to Fox News and declared Biden’s response “weak” – “your dude is the one who just called Putin savvy and praised his genius. Do you guys even pay attention to what Trump is saying anymore or do you just assume like most of us that he got lost wandering around the 18th hole of one of his golf courses and now he just lives in a sand trap with a bunch of pigeons.”
