Dana Carvey's John Bolton gleefully tries to reassure Stephen Colbert that he's not an 'unstable warmonger'

Dana Carvey channels John Bolton
(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/The Late Show)

While President Trump's incoming national security adviser, John Bolton, is best known as a bomb-everyone hawk, "he can be just as aggressive in his personal behavior, evidently," Stephen Colbert said on Wednesday's Late Show. A Republican Congress refused to confirm Bolton as U.N. ambassador in 2005 "because of reports he would bully government analysts and had a history of berating and undermining anyone who attempted to challenge him — and keep in mind, that was before that was considered presidential," Colbert said. There's also an infamous story where he reportedly chased a female contractor down the hall of a Moscow hotel, threw a tape dispenser at her, and pounded on her door, shouting threats, he added, "which is easily the second worst thing a member of this administration has done in a Russian hotel, allegedly."

Colbert had Bolton (or Dana Carvey playing Bolton and his mustache, Gen. Snowball, with gusto) on to refute his reputation as "an unstable warmonger," and it went about as well as you'd think. Neither Colbert nor Carvey managed to keep a straight face, and you can see why below. Peter Weber

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.