Stephen Colbert
On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert recapped fallout from Joe Biden’s Ukraine visit in Russia, after Vladimir Putin delivered his State of the Union speech. “Russia’s State of the Union speech is a lot like our State of the Union speech, except the special guests in the balcony plunge to their deaths,” he joked.
Putin’s speech was “an opportunity for him to put the best possible spin on his disastrous invasion”, the host explained. A year ago, Putin invaded Ukraine on the assumption that the country would fall within days, “but clearly he made a miscalculation in the ratio of fuck around to find out”.
In a grievance-filled address, Putin announced that Russia will no longer participate in the New Start nuclear arms control treaty, the last major remaining nuclear arms control treaty with the US, although the US state department had already determined that it wasn’t complying.
“So now, they’re going to officially begin to stop doing what they’ve previously only been pretending not to do,” Colbert explained. “It’s like a kid on his 21st birthday saying to his parents, ‘And now I get to finally try this, what do you call it?’”
In domestic news, a new filing by Dominion Voting Systems in their $1.6bn defamation lawsuit against Fox News for falsely claiming election fraud included a text chain between Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity in which they repeatedly insulted and mocked Trump’s advisers, including Rudy Giuliani. “Even Fox thinks he’s a joke,” Colbert laughed.
“That is the most embarrassing news about Rudy to leak since Rudy leaked,” he joked over a photo of Giuliani with a trickle of hair dye running down his face.
The Dominion filing also included a nonsense-filled memo from former Trump lawyer and election conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell which said she gains insights from experiencing something “like time travel in a semi-conscious state”.
“She can time travel?” Colbert marveled. “Maybe she can fix all of this by going back in time to stop baby Rudy Giuliani from trying merlot.”
Jimmy Kimmel
Jimmy Kimmel returned from a Presidents’ Day break on Tuesday evening with reactions to Biden’s surprise visit to Ukraine. “While typically surprises and 80-year-olds aren’t a great combination, this one worked out,” he said of the president’s previously unannounced meeting with the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in Kyiv.
“It was pretty badass,” Kimmel added. “I mean, if Trump had done this, Tucker Carlson would be humping Hannity’s leg right now.”
But of course, Trump and fellow Republicans found reasons to condemn Biden’s visit. Trump boasted: “Putin never, ever would have gone into Ukraine if I were president … I actually had a very good relationship.”
“Yes, you had the kind of very good relationship that a ventriloquist has with his dummy,” Kimmel responded.
And far-right representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on Twitter that Biden’s trip was “incredibly insulting” because he “chose Ukraine over America … I can not express how much Americans hate Joe Biden.”
“To be fair, you cannot express anything really,” Kimmel retorted.
Trump also posted something on Truth Social about wanting a test to prove someone mentally and physically capable to be president. “I really hope they do,” said Kimmel. “I would pay 50 grand to watch him try to do a sit-up, I really would.”
