Stephen Colbert opened Monday’s “The Late Show” by bluntly depicting Fox News star Tucker Carlson as a Russian propaganda asset. But in the Colbert version of events, even Russian state media lackeys couldn’t help but laugh at how unconvincing “Tucker Carlson” is at lying for Vladimir Putin.
The inspiration for the joke is that state-run Russian TV has started using clips of things Tucker has said on his Fox News show as part of its pro-Ukraine invasion propaganda.
This includes: Frequently pushing the theory of U.S.-funded bioweapons labs in Ukraine; a theory that U.S. elites have been secretly trying to goad Russia into a war with the implication being that the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is actually America’s fault; and even insinuating that one of his own colleagues at Fox News might be lying on behalf of the U.S. government.
So the cold open clip begins as they all do — with a supercut of TV news explaining the gag. Then came the joke, a clip of a Russian state media news show, with fake subtitles suggesting the show is announcing a new correspondent, Tucker Carlson. Then came a clip from Tucker’s Fox News show, in which he claimed that the Biden administration abused COVID safety regulations in order to assume “war powers” (this is completely, obviously untrue) and that sanctions punishing Russia for its unprovoked war crimes in Ukraine are actually “total economic war against a sovereign country.”
Then the clip cut back to a Russian TV announcer laughing at that “total economic war” part. And the fake translation: “This is the best we can do to spread our lies? He looks like a bag of laundry with head trauma. A constipated piñata. The before photo in a brain transplant commercial. Exactly. He looks like a man with his penis caught in a car door.”
Watch the clip in the link below: