Life moves pretty fast. Last night’s late-night Ukraine material was made obsolete before broadcast, as Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, putting aside his daily routine of killing dissidents and cyber-attacking American democracy, straight-up invaded democratic Ukraine while late-night shows’ pre-taped monologues were still cooling. Unfortunately, those takes remained hot, since Putin’s long-planned invasion only served to underscore just how far up the Russian fascist’s ass the American right-wing has burrowed.
Jimmy Kimmel played the clip of Fox News host, fish stick scion, and perpetual propagandist for the very concept of grimy human awfulness Tucker Carlson asking his (white, conservative) viewers, well, just how bad is this Putin guy, anyway? Kimmel speculated about blackmail material Putin may have on Carlson (whose nightly pro-Putin rants are now routinely carried verbatim on Russian state television), which ignores just how snugly Carlson and Fox’s white supremacist rhetoric hews to Putin’s. Carlson asking his (again, white) viewers, “Has Putin ever called me a racist?,” represents Carlson stoking the same white grievance fires that have made him Fox’s primary (although hardly only) cheerleader for conservatives bigotry-based autocracy.
Seth Meyers noted how GOP cult leader (and guy who advocated for literally every item on Putin’s invade-Ukraine to-do list while in office) Donald Trump went on a right-wing podcast in the hours leading up to Wednesday night’s invasion to praise the Russian leader’s pending land-grab as “genius” and “wonderful.” (Just to note: The guy who Hillary Clinton called a Russian puppet during the 2016 election was and is a Russian puppet.) Meyers joked that Trump’s effusive praise might be the only thing to give Putin pause, even though, as noted, Donald Trump is simply following orders.
Stephen Colbert similarly alerted viewers to the extent to which the de facto leader of the Republican Party (or “Super Callous Fragile Racist Sexist Nazi Potus”) is openly touting the strategic brilliance of a Russian dictator invading a sovereign democracy. And if Trump’s initial salvo of autocrat-fluffing was only carried on a fringe podcast that Colbert termed “some radio show,” rest assured that, once Russian bombs started killing people on Wednesday night, Trump was front-and-center on Fox News, telling Fox’s number two white supremacist hate-mannequin (which just makes her try harder) Laura Ingraham that Putin’s murderous military action only happened because of (checks notes in unsurprised disgust)... the Mueller investigation. Trump also appeared to call for Putin to invade the United States’ southern border, if anyone could untangle the still-whinging former president’s gibbering nonsense.
Hell, even noted hair-tousler Jimmy Fallon made fun of Trump, although Fallon just made a joke about Trump’s fast food addiction and then moved on. And you know what they say—when you’ve lost Jimmy Fallon, nobody cares.
So while Thursday’s post-invasion late-night monologues will no doubt have more up-to-date material to work with (you know, like actual civilian body counts from the under-fire cities of Kyiv and Kharkiv, and whatever Putin-pumping propaganda Fox and the GOP spew out), Wednesday’s will serve as a time capsule of nervous titters in advance of this potentially catastrophic war.