{"id":400241,"date":"2026-01-08T18:15:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T18:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/400241\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T18:15:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T18:15:08","slug":"seth-meyers-on-trump-officials-justifying-venezuela-assault-lamest-dorks-on-the-planet-late-night-tv-roundup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/400241\/","title":{"rendered":"Seth Meyers on Trump officials justifying Venezuela assault: \u2018Lamest dorks on the planet\u2019 | Late-night TV roundup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late-night hosts mocked the Trump administration<\/a>\u2019s bullish rhetoric on Greenland<\/a> after the surprise takeover of Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a>\u2019s regime in Venezuela.<\/p>\n

Seth Meyers<\/p>\n

\u201cIf 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\u2019re not exactly thrilled,\u201d said Seth Meyers<\/a> on Wednesday\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Top UN officials warned that the shock military intervention most likely violated international law and constituted a dangerous precedent.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo there\u2019s deep concern within the international community over Trump\u2019s claim that the US now runs Venezuela,\u201d Meyers explained. \u201cThis 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, during an address to congressional Republicans, Trump mocked transgender athletes and praised Franklin Delano Roosevelt as \u201celegant\u201d in the US atomic bombing of Japan. \u201cIf Trump knew anything about America\u2019s postwar history, he would know that the US spent decades carefully constructing an elaborate, rules-based international order,\u201d Meyers explained. \u201cInstead, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

That philosophy basically amounts to the idea that \u201cinternational law\u201d is \u201cfake\u201d. \u201cThere is no such thing as international law,\u201d said one Fox News anchor. \u201cWhat rules the world and has ruled humanity is the law of the jungle. We are the jungle. We are the lion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry, but these guys are the lamest fucking dorks on the planet,\u201d said Meyers. \u201cThe only place they should be talking like that is on their Call of Duty headsets.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re grown-ass men, and you\u2019re talking like the bad guys in Zootopia 2,\u201d he added. \u201cDon\u2019t you feel a little embarrassed to say words like \u2018we are the lion, we are the predator\u2019 out loud on national television?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe conservative movement used to pretend it would be about ideas like duty and virtue,\u201d he concluded, \u201cand now they\u2019re going full Roman empire and claiming they\u2019re allowed to take whatever they want, by force if necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jimmy Kimmel<\/p>\n

On Jimmy Kimmel<\/a> Live!, the host opened with an acknowledgement of it being exactly a year since the deadly wildfires in Los Angeles. \u201cWe remain grateful to the first responders who risked their lives to protect us, especially the firefighters who got out there,\u201d he said. \u201cWe 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?\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump was busy, however, \u201cnow on day five of his side job of running Venezuela\u201d. And \u201cin case you were worried that this was some kind of a brazen money grab\u201d, Kimmel noted, \u201cChevron Don\u201d wrote on Truth Social that the \u201cInterim Authorities in Venezuela\u201d would \u201cbe 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh good, don\u2019t worry, the oil money will be controlled by him, that way we know it will be spent honestly,\u201d Kimmel laughed. \u201cAnd I\u2019m sure this has nothing to do with the fact that oil companies spent over half a billion dollars to get him elected. I\u2019m sure if the windmill people had just asked, he would\u2019ve invaded Holland instead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephen Colbert<\/p>\n

On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert<\/a> opened with Trump refusing to rule out using the military to acquire Greenland.<\/p>\n

\u201cFun fact, Greenland is a Nato ally, because it\u2019s 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,\u201d he said. \u201cSo if we attack Greenland, we\u2019ll have to fight all of Nato, and you know who else is in Nato? The United States. And we don\u2019t want to fight them \u2013 they\u2019re insane.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked about potential military action in Greenland, Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, demurred, saying: \u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not \u2018appropriate\u2019?!\u201d Colbert exclaimed. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about attacking an ally, not wearing jeans to a wedding.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a closed-door meeting this week, Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, assured lawmakers that the administration\u2019s recent threats about Greenland didn\u2019t signal an imminent invasion, and that the goal was to purchase the landmass from Denmark. \u201cThat does not sound better,\u201d said Colbert. \u201cIt actually sounds weirder because \u2013 and I don\u2019t know if you knew this \u2013 people don\u2019t buy and sell countries any more.<\/p>\n

\u201cApparently our foreign policy is from the 19th century. So is our vaccine schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Daily Show<\/p>\n

\u201cFor those Venezuelans looking for advice on how to get rid of Donald Trump: we have no idea,\u201d said Ronny Chieng on The Daily Show. \u201cBut I can tell you one thing that doesn\u2019t work: satire. Doesn\u2019t do shiiiiiiiit. But if you\u2019re in a country in the area and this sounds like a good deal \u2013 well, good news! You\u2019re next.\u201d<\/p>\n

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. \u201cLook, the world is a messed-up place,\u201d said Chieng. \u201cIf an oil rampage is what it takes to spread democracy, maybe that\u2019s what it takes, OK? Stop being such babies. So which of these tyrannical dictators are we targeting next?\u201d<\/p>\n

That would be Greenland, an independent Arctic territory controlled by US ally Denmark. \u201cThat\u2019s right, Greenland, because the only thing we hate more than a brutal authoritarian regime is whatever the complete opposite of that is,\u201d Chieng joked.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe point is: we need Greenland. Why? For their freedom, or their oil, or for national defense \u2013 look, I don\u2019t remember what excuse we\u2019re using,\u201d he said, before rolling a clip of yet another Republican lawmaker, who argued that \u201cit\u2019s important that we have a stake in Greenland. We are the dominant predator, quite frankly, force in the western hemisphere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, Trump is the dominant predator in the western hemisphere \u2013 at least, now that Jeffrey Epstein is dead,\u201d Chieng quipped.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Late-night hosts mocked the Trump administration\u2019s bullish rhetoric on Greenland after the surprise takeover of Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\u2019s regime…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400242,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-400241","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}