Stephen Colbert
“There’s no denying it: it’s a dark day,” said Stephen Colbert on Thursday evening, hours after Russia invaded Ukraine. “Over the last five years we’ve seen democracy repeatedly undermined, tragic unprecedented firestorms, a global pandemic. Well this morning, Vladimir Putin looked at all that and said, ‘hold my vodka.’”
In less than a day, Putin’s “special military operation” – an unprovoked attack on its neighbor – left Ukrainian cities in chaos, highways clogged with civilians fleeing west, subway stations turned into bomb shelters.
And the Russian leader “had a pretty lame excuse to justify it”, said the Late Show host. In a propaganda-laden speech Thursday morning, Putin claimed the attack was intended to “de-nazify” the Ukrainian government. (A false characterization of Ukraine’s democratically elected leadership.)
“De-nazify? That’s hard to do when you’re acting like de-Nazis,” said Colbert.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump “has been out there pushing a pro-Putin agenda forever, and he was still out there last night in a speech at Mar-a-Gulago.”
On Wednesday evening, Trump addressed a fundraising dinner and praised Putin’s unilateral declaration that two eastern provinces of Ukraine were independent. “Listen, he’s taking over a country, really a vast, vast location,” said Trump, “a great piece of land with a lot of people, and just walking right in.”
“Everything is a real estate deal with this guy!” Colbert marveled. “It’s the biggest attack on a European country since World War II! When Hitler invaded Poland, FDR didn’t say ‘well, it would make a good golf course.’”
Jimmy Kimmel
In Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel also mocked Trump’s praise of Putin and his ability to make the invasion of Russia about himself. “While bombs were falling on a country that did nothing to provoke an invasion,” Kimmel said, “Trump called into Fox to say ‘never would’ve happened if I was in charge.’”
“It takes a special kind of son of a bitch to see innocent people fleeing their homes and think ‘how can I make this about me?’” he added. “But nobody does that better than Donald Trump.”
The former president told Fox News that the invasion “all happened because of a rigged election” before proceeding into a typical rambling rant about immigration and inflation.
“Can you blame something real on something fake?” Kimmel wondered of the big election lie. “That’s like blaming the chickenpox on the tooth fairy. It doesn’t make sense.”
Trump has continued to defend his “KGBFF” Putin, Kimmel continued, “which is embarrassing. He’s never gonna date you, dude. Give it up!”
“There’s nothing good you could say about Vladimir Putin,” Kimmel added. “I mean, really, he’s terrible person, but Trump went ahead and did it again last night” with his comments at Mar-a-Lago.
“Can you imagine if any other president behaved this way?” Kimmel wondered. “This would be like if during World War II, Hoover came out and said ‘atta boy, Adolf! Sweet mustache, I love what you’re doing there.’”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers also criticized the former US president’s nonchalant response to the crisis in Ukraine. “No one, aside from Putin and his cronies, wants this reckless and illegal war,” Meyers said. “Certainly not the innocent Ukrainians targeted by it, not the rest of the world watching it, and not the hundreds of ordinary Russians who took to the streets to protest despite a total ban on such demonstrations.
“So if you were like most people, you were shocked and horrified,” he continued. “But if you were Donald Trump, apparently you were at Mar-a-Lago, watching it with a bunch of Palm Beach plastic surgeons and their third wives and thinking, ‘you really got to hand it to Vladimir Putin.’”
As Trump told a dinner crowd at his Florida resort: “He’s taking over a country for two dollars’ worth of sanctions, I’d say that’s pretty smart.”
Meyers offered several rebukes. “First of all, stop talking about everything like it’s a fucking real estate deal!” he said. “It’s an illegal war against a sovereign nation, not an empty lot in Atlantic City.”
Second, “if you ever find yourself at a fancy high-dollar fundraiser clinking champagne glasses while the keynote speaker applauds a catastrophic war that will cause mass suffering and destabilize an entire continent, maybe take a moment to text your therapist and ask: ‘Am I a bad person?’”
Meyers also blasted Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who called Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s plea to Russian people, in Russian, to oppose the invasion a “pathetic display”.
“What do you think is more pathetic,” Meyers mused, “trying to stave off a Russian invasion that would cause mass suffering and death by speaking in a second language, or having to explain to a former president live on television that it was Russia and not America who was reportedly launching a secret amphibious assault in Ukraine.
“I’d ask these people how they sleep at night,” he concluded, “but I’m guessing they own a My Pillow, which means they don’t sleep at all.”
