Late night hosts, including Jon Stewart and Seth Meyers, didn’t waste any time before sharing their honest thoughts about the military operation over the weekend that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and removed him from the country, as well as PresidentDonald Trumpsaying the United States would run Venezuela at least temporarily.
Stewart, host of The Daily Show, kicked off Monday’s show, joking about how “President Trump and an elite team of Delta Force special operators removed a dangerous foreign dictator from power.” However, before getting to a photo of Maduro, he flipped through photos of other controversial world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. The host also jokinly threw in a photo of Vecna, the villain in Netflix’s Stranger Things.
“No, I’m talking about the now former president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, who was reverse-ICE’d and imported,” Stewart clarified. “He was actually imported to a jail in Brooklyn.”
“Now, obviously, this is actually a very fraught moment for the world. It is highly unusual for any government, any sovereign nation, to violate the airspace and territory of another sovereign nation and hit the grab and go on their president,” The Daily Show continued, adding, “Look, no one knows how this operation is going to work out. But based on the United States’ track record, my guess is we’re going to be really happy about this for a couple of weeks. And then 30 years from now, there will be a Venezuelan leftist revolution, and the new government will point to this moment as the reason our embassy there is on fire. And it will absolutely ruin a Democrats’ presidency. Generally, that’s how this shit works. And remember, the reason MAGA was so high on Donald Trump was that he was the guy who wasn’t going to get involved with this kind of shit anymore.”
Later, Stewart was losing his mind over how candid Trump was when speaking with reporters over the weekend about one of the seemingly main reasons for the operation to capture Maduro and take over Venezuela. “We’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground. We need total access. We need access to the oil,” Trump said in clips that The Daily Show played during the show.
“Oil — precious commodity, certainly — but not the reason a country, formed 250 years ago on the ideas of liberty and self-determination, would go into a country and snatch a man at night. There must be a slightly more noble pretense,” Stewart said before yelling, “Is this your first war? I mean, what the fuck?”
The host added, “We can’t even be conspiracy theorists now. I think they did it for the oil. Yeah, no, I did it for the oil.”
Stewart also pointed out the precedent this sets for future generations in America, “that if we need shit and it’s not too far away, we are going to take it.”
“The people I feel sorry for are the Trump defendants, the defenders, the sycophants, who haven’t received the memo that we no longer have to frame our adventurism in the ideals of our great country,” he said, adding, “Look, this is all exhausting and exposes the Gulf of America — not the body of water. The real Gulf of America is the gap between the high aspirations that embody the founding of this country and the thuggish gangsterism that this crew thinks makes us great again.”
Late Night‘s Meyers also centered Monday’s “Closer Look” segment on the whole Venezuela situation.
“Donald Trump made history this weekend by becoming the first-ever winner of the FIFA Peace Prize to bomb another country and kidnap its leader,” he quipped at the beginning. “The most stunning turn of events since Hannibal Lecter’s high school classmates voted him least likely to eat your liver.”
While some Republicans in recent days have attempted to avoid talking about the real reason for the military operation, Meyers later played a video montage of Trump and those in his administration repeatedly talking about the vast oil reserves that Venezuela has.
“Damn it, I just wish there were clues,” the host joked. “It’s really just amazing how Trump just undercuts everyone around him and confesses the truth. He’s got all his little minions on TV saying this is really about the drug trade or human rights, and then Trump immediately throws them under the bus by saying the word oil over and over again, like the uncle no one listens to on Family Feud.”
Meyers also played what he called “the hypocrisy package,” highlighting Trump’s lies about being anti-war, as the president has previously said, “We’re going to stop the reckless and costly policy of regime change overseas.” But then proceeded to capture Maduro over the weekend.
“I still can’t actually believe anyone thought Trump was telling the truth about being anti-war,” the Late Night host added. “You really thought Donald Trump, the most thin-skinned, impulsive man on the planet, would suddenly discover the concept of restraint when he gained control of the world’s most powerful military. Giving Donald Trump control of the U.S. military is like giving the cast of Real Housewives an open bar and a one free slap coupon. There’s gonna be a lot of fighting, a lot of crying, and a lot of really bad dancing.”