Late night hosts celebrate St. Patrick's Day, ponder how Biden might punish Putin for meddling in the election


St. Patrick's Day was a little different this year, The Late Show explained in song Wednesday night.
"Instead of Pfizer and Moderna, people just stayed home and did shots of Jameson," Jimmy Fallon joked at The Tonight Show. To celebrate St. Patrick's Day, "the White House fountain was dyed green... Actually, I'm being told that's just a leak in the Mt. Dew pipeline installed by Trump."
President Biden told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos that Russian President Vladimir Putin will pay some undisclosed price for what a new U.S. intelligence assessment determined was Russian interference in the 2020 election, Fallon said. "Biden sounded like he was in an '80s action movie. I was waiting for him to put his badge in the drawer and be like, 'I'm not a cop tonight, George. This is personal.'"
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"Does Putin have any sort of life outside of just messing with American elections?" James Corden asked at The Late Late Show. Traditionally, "he'll pay a price" means "Biden fires up the Corvette, tears up your front lawn doing donuts," he added. "In that same interview, Biden also said that Putin is 'a killer' and he once told Putin that he has no soul. ... So basically every meeting with Putin is like a scene from a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie."
"That sounds like James Bond in a scene from Dr. No Malarky," Stephen Colbert agreed at The Late Show. The new intelligence reports also found that Trump allies "Jim Jordan, Devin Nunes, and other 'Stop the Steal' liars like Sen. Ron Johnson were in our Capitol parroting the propaganda of our sworn enemy," Russia, he said. In response, Trump "lined 'em up and got them right in the heart with... Medals of Freedom. They got them for service to their country. Maybe one day it will be America."
Colbert also got in some jokes about St. Patrick's Day, the Irish, and "dyeing the water in the White House fountain, finally delivering on Joe Biden's campaign promise of creating new green jobs."
Surprisingly, "St. Patrick wasn't actually Irish," Jimmy Kimmel disclosed on Kimmel Live. "St. Patrick is believed to have been born in Scotland to Roman parents, which would mean he's Italian." Kimmel also recapped Biden's ABC News interview. "It's interesting, when Joe Biden says someone will pay a price, he means he'll impose sanctions or freeze bank accounts," he said. "When Putin says someone will pay a price, they're eating a plutonium-and-cheese McMuffin." 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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