"We are live after Joe Biden's first official State of the Union address, and let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, it was a roller-coaster ride of rip-roaring reasonableness," Stephen Colbert said on Tuesday's Late Show. "A week ago this was going to be a totally different speech. But when Ukraine was invaded, the whole world changed. Because right now, there is a dictator who thinks he can violently conquer a sovereign democracy — but Joe Biden beat him in the last election."
Biden started with Russian President Vladimir Putin's Ukraine invasion and asked everyone to stand in solidarity with Kyiv. "It was a moving moment of bipartisan unity, especially considering the last time Congress stood up that fast together, they were the ones fleeing a fascist invasion," Colbert joked. Biden closed off U.S. airspace to Russia — though if he "really wanted to punish Russia, he would just divert all their flights to Newark," he quipped — and he laughed at Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer getting out "a little ahead of his skis" on one applause line.
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