Stephen Colbert
“If you’ve been paying attention to the news this week, I’m so sorry,” said Stephen Colbert on Wednesday’s Late Show, “because there is now a mountain of evidence that Russia has engaged in a series of brutal war crimes”.
In response to reports of Russia targeting civilians and blocking humanitarian access, the US announced on Wednesday new sanctions on Russian financial institutions and individuals. “Good. I hope it makes a difference,” said Colbert. “But at this point, there are so many sanctions on Russia we might run out of places to put them. We’ll have to start sanctioning them in the multiverse. They’re going to have to block transactions with Russian banks that are in the dimension where Spider-Man is still Tobey Maguire.”
The latest sanctions package will, among other things, ban all new investments in Russia. “Well, you’ve got to, otherwise their soaring economy is an irresistible cash magnet,” Colbert deadpanned.
Colbert also mocked the billionaire Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, who “after years of tweeting silly memes and bad takes while at the same time constantly criticizing Twitter’s business practices”, bought a 9.2% stake in the company for $2.9bn, making him the largest single shareholder.
“Wait a second! So if he doesn’t like how a corporation operates, he just buys it?” Colbert said. “How much more evidence do we need that he’s turning into a supervillain?”
One of Musk’s first tweets post-sale was a poll asking: “do you want an edit button?”
“Sure! I mean, I’d rather you cancel the accounts of all the Nazis, but an edit button would be nice,” Colbert responded.
Seth Meyers
On Late Night Seth Meyers tore into the congressional campaign of the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. “I think Palin is in for a rude awakening if she thinks she’s still on the vanguard of wild and crazy Republicans,” said Meyers.
“Palin showing up in Congress now would be like me telling a bunch of high school kids about my wild days of sneaking out and drinking wine coolers in the woods, and then realizing I was talking to the kids from Euphoria,” he continued. “They’d be like, ‘cool, man, I put molly on my oatmeal.’
“As if to prove that Sarah Palin would somehow not be the craziest Republican in Congress if she won,” the Florida congressman Matt Gaetz “leveled a bunch of unhinged conspiracies” at the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, on Tuesday. Gaetz, who is under federal investigation for sex trafficking, claimed the military cares more about critical race theory and “woke-ism” than national defense and wondered if the pullout from Afghanistan last year would have gone better “if the national defense university actually worked a little more on strategy and a little less on woke-ism”.
“What is wrong with these people?” Meyers wondered. “In their fever swamp brains, do they genuinely believe our soldiers no longer know how to fire a rifle because they are buried from homework in pronoun class? Does he think they arrive on the battlefield and the sergeant barks out ‘all right Bravo team, go around the left flank and tell the enemy they’re beautiful just the way you are!’
“I have no problem with tough questioning of our national security officials, and I’m all for cutting the defense budget,” Meyers added. “It’s massively inflated and we could absolutely spend it better elsewhere, but that’s not even what the scam artists like Gaetz are asking for. They just want to whine about woke-ism and critical race theory. They don’t actually want to cut defense spending.”
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel recapped the saga of an aggressive rabid fox at the Capitol, which bit several people on Tuesday. Representative Ami Bera, among the bitten, said the loose fox marked “one of the most unusual days on the Hill in 10 years”.
“Yeah, with the exception of all those nutjobs trying to hang Mike Pence, but this was a solid number two,” Kimmel joked.
Kimmel also remarked on a new round of sanctions on Russia. “I’m surprised they have any sanctions left,” he said. The new rounds target Russian banks and two of Putin’s adult children. “Wouldn’t it be something if what finally got Putin to stop this is his daughter going, ‘Dad! They cut off my credit card, you’ve got to do something!’” Kimmel said.
“Can you imagine Vladimir as a dad-imir?” he added. “It seems like he would be a very strict father. When his kids misbehave, instead of their rooms they get sent to Siberia.”
