Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

Dana Carvey Channels His Nuttiest John Bolton on Colbert—& It's Unsettlingly Amusing

Dana Carvey Channels His Nuttiest John Bolton on Colbert—& It's Unsettlingly Amusing
CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images

On Friday, March 23, President Trump appointed former United Nations ambassador John Bolton to replace H.R. McMaster as his National Security Advisor. The news that McMaster was going to be replaced didn't come as a surprise to many—he and the President had butted heads for quite some time, and in the wake of Hope Hicks' departure as Communications Director, Trump has been much less hesitant about shaking up the personnel at the White House. What DID surprise many was the appointment of Bolton, an obscure Bush-era diplomat with a reputation for aggressive tactics and threatening behaviors. Stephen Colbert thought the issue warranted some discussion with Bolton himself (as played by Dana Carvey).


Carvey's Bolton is as hilarious as it is terrifying.

In the clip, "Bolton" swings by the show to ease Colbert's fears, but quickly makes matters much worse. He threatens to chase Stephen down a hotel hallway flinging staplers at him, and also mentioned sending some "big fat tanks" into North Korea. Meanwhile, his mustache grew ever larger because it "gets a bit engorged when it smells a war coming on."

Bolton's mustache even weighed in on the performance:

But it turns out Carvey's impression is a little too close for comfort.

Bolton was actually blocked from his original U.N. appointment by Congress, who kept him away from the position after receiving a message from over 60 retired diplomats speaking against him. Though Bolton's professional career is plenty controversial (he once said that if the U.N. headquarters "lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference"), his former colleagues major problem with him was one of character.

During his confirmation hearings, his mistreatment of underlings and embellishment of facts both became sticking points.

In 2005, TIME ran an article detailing some of Bolton's alleged incidents. Here's a particularly revealing excerpt:

Government sources tell TIME that during President Bush's first term, Bolton frequently tried to push the CIA to produce information to conform to—and confirm—his views. "Whenever his staff sent testimony, speeches over for clearance, often it was full of stuff which was not based on anything we could find," says a retired official familiar with the intelligence-clearance process. "So the notes that would go back to him were fairly extensive, saying the intelligence just didn't back up that line."

Those episodes, sources say, frequently involved statements Bolton wanted to make about the malign intentions and weapons capabilities of Cuba and North Korea. Two analysts—one at the State Department and the other at the CIA—told the committee they had run afoul of Bolton in 2002 after they warned that he was making assertions in a speech about Cuba's weapons programs that could not be backed up by U.S. intelligence. Bolton, they said, tried to have them removed from their jobs. Witnesses say that after one of the analysts, Christian Westermann, wrote an internal memo warning of Bolton's embellishments, he was summoned to Bolton's office and subjected to a finger-wagging tirade. Westermann's boss at the time, Carl W. Ford Jr., told the committee in a public hearing two weeks ago that he considered Bolton "a serial abuser" of underlings and "a quintessential kiss-up, kickdown sort of guy."

​Bolton eventually bypassed Congressional approval by filling a vacancy left by his predecessor.

Well, if things get bad, at least we'll always have this photoset of Dana Carvey in progressively larger mustaches to keep our spirits high!

H/T - Huffpost, TIME, CNN

More from Entertainment/celebrities

Chappell Roan
Gilbert Flores/Billboard via Getty Images

Chappell Roan Announces She's Leaving Talent Agency After CEO Is Named In Epstein Files

The United States Justice Department recently released risqué emails exchanged between a then-married Casey Wasserman and convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell and others sent to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The emails were contained in the files compiled during the investigation and indictment of both Maxwell and Epstein, her co-conspirator, registered sex offender and longtime friend of MAGA Republican President Donald Trump.

Keep Reading Show less
Robert F Kennedy Jr.
C-SPAN

RFK Jr. Ripped After Giving Exteremely Telling Explanation For Why It's A 'Joy' To Work For Trump

Throughout his life, people who worked for or with MAGA Republican President Donald Trump got burned. Employees and contractors never got paid. Loyalty was repaid by being thrown under the bus to save his own skin.

The pattern continued into his public life. Members of Trump's first presidential administration were sacrificed and vilified to cover for Trump's failures and incompetence.

Keep Reading Show less
Screenshot of Piers Morgan and Megyn Kelly
Piers Morgan Uncensored

Megyn Kelly Claims 'Football Is Ours!' In Epic Tantrum Over Bad Bunny's Halftime Show

Far-right pundit Megyn Kelly had people shaking their heads after she threw a bonkers tantrum over Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime show performance, declaring that "football is ours!" and that the Puerto Rican rapper performing in Spanish was “a middle finger to the rest of America.”

The rapper, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, delivered a largely Spanish-language show that has been hailed as a "love letter to Puerto Rico" and that drew from his latest album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos, which won the Grammy for Album of the Year just a week ago.

Keep Reading Show less
JB Pritzker; Donald Trump
Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images; Alex Wong/Getty Images

JB Pritzker Trolls Trump Hard By Hilariously Redacting White House Memo Urging Republicans Not To Panic

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker trolled President Donald Trump after the White House sent a memo to Republicans urging them not to panic ahead of the release of official economic data, which critics have accused officials of delaying to obscure the scope of the country''s economic downturn.

Layoffs surged in January, climbing to 108,435—the highest monthly total since 2009 and an increase of roughly 118 percent compared with the same time last year.

Keep Reading Show less

People Describe The Fastest Divorces They've Ever Seen

"Happily Ever After" is a beautiful sentiment, but it's not the destiny for every couple.

In fact, some couples break up so quickly after getting married that some people wonder whether the happy couple married for love... or for a party.

Keep Reading Show less