4 days ago
10
Late-night hosts mocked the Trump administration’s bullish rhetoric on Greenland after the surprise takeover of Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela.
Seth Meyers
“If you were wondering how the rest of the world feels about Trump claiming he has unilateral power to attack a sovereign nation and kidnap its leader, it turns out they’re not exactly thrilled,” said Seth Meyers on Wednesday’s Late Night, five days after the Trump administration deposed Maduro and brought the Venezuelan president and his wife to New York to face federal drug-trafficking charges.
Top UN officials warned that the shock military intervention most likely violated international law and constituted a dangerous precedent.
“So there’s deep concern within the international community over Trump’s claim that the US now runs Venezuela,” Meyers explained. “This a fraught moment that requires sophisticated diplomacy from a seasoned and experienced statesman. Mr President, you have the floor. This is your chance to put the world at ease.”
Instead, during an address to congressional Republicans, Trump mocked transgender athletes and praised Franklin Delano Roosevelt as “elegant” in the US atomic bombing of Japan. “If Trump knew anything about America’s postwar history, he would know that the US spent decades carefully constructing an elaborate, rules-based international order,” Meyers explained. “Instead, he and his Maga allies have decided to junk that system of international laws and cooperation in favor of a very different, much less elegant philosophy.”
That philosophy basically amounts to the idea that “international law” is “fake”. “There is no such thing as international law,” said one Fox News anchor. “What rules the world and has ruled humanity is the law of the jungle. We are the jungle. We are the lion.”
“I’m sorry, but these guys are the lamest fucking dorks on the planet,” said Meyers. “The only place they should be talking like that is on their Call of Duty headsets.”
“You’re grown-ass men, and you’re talking like the bad guys in Zootopia 2,” he added. “Don’t you feel a little embarrassed to say words like ‘we are the lion, we are the predator’ out loud on national television?
“The conservative movement used to pretend it would be about ideas like duty and virtue,” he concluded, “and now they’re going full Roman empire and claiming they’re allowed to take whatever they want, by force if necessary.”
Jimmy Kimmel
On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host opened with an acknowledgement of it being exactly a year since the deadly wildfires in Los Angeles. “We remain grateful to the first responders who risked their lives to protect us, especially the firefighters who got out there,” he said. “We also are grateful to the real hero: our president, Donald Trump, who turned on that giant spigot to allow all the beautiful water to flow bigly and freely from his imagination to save us from the fires only two weeks after they went out. Thank you, Mr President. Maybe next, you can turn that spigot to release the Epstein files?”
Trump was busy, however, “now on day five of his side job of running Venezuela”. And “in case you were worried that this was some kind of a brazen money grab”, Kimmel noted, “Chevron Don” wrote on Truth Social that the “Interim Authorities in Venezuela” would “be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America. This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me.
“Oh good, don’t worry, the oil money will be controlled by him, that way we know it will be spent honestly,” Kimmel laughed. “And I’m sure this has nothing to do with the fact that oil companies spent over half a billion dollars to get him elected. I’m sure if the windmill people had just asked, he would’ve invaded Holland instead.”
Stephen Colbert
On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert opened with Trump refusing to rule out using the military to acquire Greenland.
“Fun fact, Greenland is a Nato ally, because it’s part of Denmark. And Article 5 of the Nato charter clearly states that an attack against one Nato member shall be considered an attack against them all,” he said. “So if we attack Greenland, we’ll have to fight all of Nato, and you know who else is in Nato? The United States. And we don’t want to fight them – they’re insane.”
Asked about potential military action in Greenland, Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, demurred, saying: “I don’t think that’s appropriate.”
“It’s not ‘appropriate’?!” Colbert exclaimed. “We’re talking about attacking an ally, not wearing jeans to a wedding.”
In a closed-door meeting this week, Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, assured lawmakers that the administration’s recent threats about Greenland didn’t signal an imminent invasion, and that the goal was to purchase the landmass from Denmark. “That does not sound better,” said Colbert. “It actually sounds weirder because – and I don’t know if you knew this – people don’t buy and sell countries any more.
“Apparently our foreign policy is from the 19th century. So is our vaccine schedule.”
The Daily Show
“For those Venezuelans looking for advice on how to get rid of Donald Trump: we have no idea,” said Ronny Chieng on The Daily Show. “But I can tell you one thing that doesn’t work: satire. Doesn’t do shiiiiiiiit. But if you’re in a country in the area and this sounds like a good deal – well, good news! You’re next.”
Chieng played a clip of a Republican lawmaker detailing his wish list for US intervention in Latin American counties with oppressive regimes: Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia. “Look, the world is a messed-up place,” said Chieng. “If an oil rampage is what it takes to spread democracy, maybe that’s what it takes, OK? Stop being such babies. So which of these tyrannical dictators are we targeting next?”
That would be Greenland, an independent Arctic territory controlled by US ally Denmark. “That’s right, Greenland, because the only thing we hate more than a brutal authoritarian regime is whatever the complete opposite of that is,” Chieng joked.
“The point is: we need Greenland. Why? For their freedom, or their oil, or for national defense – look, I don’t remember what excuse we’re using,” he said, before rolling a clip of yet another Republican lawmaker, who argued that “it’s important that we have a stake in Greenland. We are the dominant predator, quite frankly, force in the western hemisphere.”
“Yes, Trump is the dominant predator in the western hemisphere – at least, now that Jeffrey Epstein is dead,” Chieng quipped.
