Late night hosts celebrate 'twosday,' joke darkly about Putin's Ukraine invasion

Russian President Vladimir Putin has started his Ukraine invasion, Stephen Colbert grimaced on Tuesday's Late Show. "Why is Putin sending troops into a place that's not his country? He claims it's to carry out 'peacekeeping functions.' And it's true: 'I keep this piece of Ukraine, I keep that piece of Ukraine, I keep all the pieces of Ukraine!'"

President Biden responded Tuesday by hitting Russia with sanctions on two banks and its sovereign debt, which "means no Russian money can come into the U.S.," Colbert said. "There goes Tucker Carlson's sponsors."

Russia's invasion "makes for a very stressful and uncertain time on the ground in Ukraine, but there's one person having the time of his life: multilingual AP reporter Philip Crowther," Colbert said, showing Crowther's viral video. "Now, that looks impressive, but if you translate it, he's just repeating the phrase: 'Where is the library? I must use the bathroom urgently.'"

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The Late Show offered to teach you just one new language: Putin.

Yes, "a journalist in Ukraine was reporting the news on the Russia crisis in six different languages, and nailed it," Jimmy Fallon said on The Tonight Show. "He also knows six different ways to say 'I'm ready to leave Ukraine now.'" It is Twosday — 2-22-22 — something that "only happens once every 100 years," he added. "President Biden was like, 'I didn't care then, I didn't care now.'"

"The last time an all-2 date happened was Feb. 22, 1922," Jimmy Kimmel said on his Kimmel Live 2-22-22 Special. "American women had just recently won the right to vote, Amelia Earhart bought her first plane, now-President Joe Biden had just passed his first gallstone."

"The biggest No. 2 of them all, Donald Trump," launched his new social media platform Monday, "and you're not going to believe this, but the rollout did not go well," Kimmel said. "Truth Social has been such a disappointment so far, Trump may have to rename it to Don Jr." And as "Putin appears to be inching toward a full-scale attack on Ukraine," he added, "Trump, of course, called him a 'genius' and called the idea 'wonderful' today. What kind of hotel room hidden-camera video does that Putin have? We want to see it, already!"

"The social media platform Snapchat unveiled a new feature last week that allows users to share their real-time location with friends," Late Night's Seth Meyers said. "You can learn more about it in an upcoming episode of Dateline."