Late night hosts are uniformly disgusted at Trump and his Fox News friends sliming Lt. Col. Vindman
"The impeachment inquiry keeps moving forward — and the Republicans keep sinking lower," Stephen Colbert said on Tuesday's Late Show. Forget rock bottom, "in the last 24 hours they have gotten out the blasting caps and they are fracking America's moral bedrock." Tuesday's fracking involved Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a current National Security Council official who provided damaging first-hand testimony to House impeachment investigators about President Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
"Vindman's record is sterling," including combat tours in Iraq and a Purple Heart, Colbert said. "I think it's fair to say that unlike Donald Trump, Vindman's character is unimpeachable. But that didn't stop all the president's toadies from questioning his loyalty."
"I guess it all comes down to who do you believe: The guy with the Purple Heart or the guy with the orange face?" Jimmy Kimmel said at Kimmel Live. "Maybe the most disgusting thing going on today is the president and his sycophants are questioning the patriotism and loyalty of an American combat veteran," Kimmel said. "The patriots over at Fox News found it very suspicious that our top Ukraine expert is from Ukraine — and it is suspicious when you learn someone in the Trump administration has actual expertise in his field." He had a good laugh at the notion that "the Ukrainians managed to indoctrinate a toddler to use the potty and do their bidding to one day bring down the president of the United States."
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Yes, "the new angle on Fox is that Americans can't trust this Purple Heart recipient because he moved here from Ukraine" — when he was 3, The Daily Show's Trevor Noah sighed. "What kind of baby spy thriller were you guys watching?" He had some fun with the baby-spy concept then laughed at a former GOP congressman's "epic self-own" on CNN: "In an effort to undermine Col. Vindman, Sean Duffy over here has just made it sound like he would sell out America to another country."
At Late Night, Seth Meyers noted that while Vindman was serving in the Army, Duffy was on MTV's The Real World. Watch his other jokes about Vindman's detractors below. Peter Weber
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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.
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