On Wednesday, former top adviser to a long list of presidents, Henry Kissinger, passed at the age of 100. The passing sent Daily Show host Michelle Wolf into a full-frontal cable TV smackdown on the foreign policy expert’s complicated life and legacy with the accusation that he is the “GOAT” war criminal.
Wolf introduced the segment Thursday evening by calling Kissinger “immoral,” the Daily Beast reported.
“Yes, Henry Kissinger is dead,” Wolf said. “Which just goes to show you that if you have zero morals, you’ll lead a long, stress-free life. He committed massacres and lived to be 100, while the rest of us over here are dying at 47 because we can’t stop stressing over the time we waved to a person who was actually waving to someone behind us.”
She added, “no matter how you feel about Henry Kissinger, you’ve gotta agree that he’s one of America’s greatest war criminals. The question is: Is he America’s greatest war criminal?”
Wolf then introduced comedians Ronny Chieng and Michael Kosta who engaged in banter assessing Kissinger’s GOAT war criminality — greatest of all time — in the style of sports reporters assessing an athlete’s career.
Chieng enthused that Kissinger’s foreign policy career made him a “genocidal Carmen Sandiego” and that makes him the “greatest” American war criminal. He added that all the worst things in last 40 years of American history was led by Kissinger.
“Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile—shall I continue? Pakistan, East Timor. This dude was doing massacres in countries that Americans didn’t even know were countries,” Chieng said.
For his part of the scripted segment, Kosta insisted that Dick Cheney was the better candidate for the title of top American war criminal. “The man shot his friend in the face, and it was one of the nicest things he’s ever done,” Kosta joked about Cheney.
As Chieng continued to advocate for Kissinger, Kosta replied, “How can Kissinger be the war crimes GOAT when he won the Nobel Peace Prize you fucking idiot?”
But Chieng added, “That’s what makes him the GOAT, you fucking moron. Do you know how good a war criminal you have to be to win a Peace Prize for wars you escalated? The dude’s got the numbers and the hardware.”
Ending the segment, Kosta pretended to turn serious, saying, “If there’s a war criminal in your life, tell them how you feel about them now. Because you never know when they’re going to unexpectedly die of being 100 years old.”
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