Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert checked in on the crisis over Ukraine on Wednesday evening, a day after Russia claimed to be withdrawing some of its 150,000 troops from the border. Nato promptly disputed that claim, “and if you’re feeling confused, that’s on purpose”, said the Late Show host. “Because according to the experts, the US and Russia are waging a signaling war to avert an actual war.”
“Yes, a signaling war, just like in that famous movie: Semaphoring Private Ryan,” Colbert quipped.
In other Russia news, one of its elite figure skaters, 15-year-old Kamila Valieva, tested positive for a banned substance before the Winter Olympics in Beijing. “Fifteen-year-olds on drugs should not be in the Olympics. They should be on Euphoria,” said Colbert.
Facing international outrage, Valieva claimed the drug got in her system via a mix-up with her grandfather’s heart medication. “Yes, come on, you know how it goes! You’re in the kitchen and all of a sudden you trip and fall on to your grandpa’s day-of-the-week pill case,” Colbert mocked. “Now all of a sudden you’re skating around high on a cocktail of Centrum, Lipitor and Viagra.”
Because she is 15, Valieva is protected from certain sanctions, allowing her to still compete in the individual figure skating competition. “They didn’t have a choice! If they didn’t allow her to skate, Putin would’ve just rolled her out there on a tank,” Colbert joked.
On Thursday, after Colbert’s taping, Valieva faltered in her free skate program, dashing her hopes for a medal. But if she had finished in the top three, no medal ceremony would have been held for the event. “They’ll just ship the medals out to whoever won them later,” Colbert explained, “because every athlete trains their entire life for that magic moment when they can stand at attention on their stoop waiting for the UPS guy. Maybe ask the driver to honk the national anthem.”
Trevor Noah
Nelson Mandela’s old house is now a luxury hotel. Let's be thankful they didn’t turn it into a CVS? pic.twitter.com/K0pcOssput
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) February 17, 2022
On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah reacted to news from the host’s home country of South Africa: that Nelson Mandela’s home in Johannesburg would become a luxury hotel known as “Sanctuary Mandela”, with rooms ranging from $250 to as much as $1,000 a night.
“I guess this is just the fate of every historic building now, right?” said Noah. “Because if you think about it, half of the old buildings around the world are now either a bank, an Apple store, or a CVS. That’s it. I wouldn’t be shocked if in a hundred years the White House is going to be turned into Jeff Bezos’s dog’s weekend place.
“Some people think that it doesn’t make sense for the home of the man who fought inequality to be turned into a luxury hotel,” he continued. “But it does, it actually does. And it really does if you remember one of Mandela’s most famous quotes, when he said: ‘Do not judge me by the color of my skin, but rather judge me by the thread count of these Egyptian cotton sheets.’”
The controversial hotel “is going to come with its pros and its cons”, Noah added, “and I guess it will be good for the people who work there and maybe some of the community, but you’ve gotta admit, man, at the same time, it does feel a little disrespectful for everything that Nelson Mandela went through, you know? You’re just going to pay some money, and you can sleep in his house? You know what he had to do to get to that house?”
Noah proposed a compromise: “They should say that for every night that you stay in the hotel, you should also have to spend a night in an apartheid prison. Now you’re getting the full experience.”
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel responded to Trump’s response to his former accountancy firm, Mazars, which severed ties with the former president amid ongoing criminal and civil investigations into whether he illegally inflated the worth of his assets.
In a furious four-page statement, Trump countered: “We have a great company with fantastic assets that are unique, extremely valuable and, in many cases, far more valuable than what was listed in our Financial Statements.”
“Only Donald Trump would defend himself against charges that he overvalued his assets by re-overvaluing his assets,” said Kimmel.
Trump also blasted the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who is Black, and called for “this political and racist attack” to stop. “Now that’s a good one,” Kimmel said. “Rich white guy claiming racism? I mean, you almost have to hand it to him. That’s like Hawaii claiming tourism. That’s ridiculous.”
Joe Biden, meanwhile, ordered the release of Trump’s White House visitor logs “once they fish them out of the White House septic tank”, Kimmel joked.
“Trump’s been trying to block the House committee from trying to see this list, claiming executive privilege,” he added. “I feel like the only thing we’re going to learn from the list is how often he ordered Arby’s on Uber Eats or something.”
