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

Giorgia Meloni; Donald Trump
Antonio Masiello/Getty Images; Harun Ozalp/Anadolu via Getty Images

Italian Prime Minister's Sarcastic Remarks About Distancing Italy from The U.S. Resurface After Trump's NATO Gripe

Sarcastic remarks Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni made earlier this month in response to calls for Italy to distance itself from the U.S. resurfaced after President Donald Trump claimed during a speech at the World Economic Forum that the U.S. has "never gotten anything" from NATO.

Trump stoked tensions at the gathering of world and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland, by continuing his push to seize control of Greenland from Denmark. He reiterated his reasoning that owning Greenland is crucial to domestic and international security, dismissing the fact the territory is under the control of a key ally.

Keep Reading Show less
Amy Poehler; Jennifer Lawrence
Good Hang with Amy Poehler/YouTube

Jennifer Lawrence Stunned After Amy Poehler Suggests She's Showing Subtle Sign Of Perimenopause At 35

Menopause can often seem like a mystery, with many women knowing only that this new stage of their life is supposed to begin somewhere around age 50 and that the women in their family went through it before them.

But in recent years, Gen Xers and Millennials have opened up about the symptoms of menopause and how to abide those symptoms, and they've also increased awareness about what comes before it: the transitional time called perimenopause.

Keep Reading Show less
Jesse Watters
Fox News

Jesse Watters Ripped After Claiming The U.S. 'Owns' The Moon In Mind-Numbing Fox News Rant

On Tuesday, MAGA Republican President Donald Trump held another unhinged press conference that didn't help the White House's claims that Trump isn't cognitively impaired.

Among the topics the POTUS ranted and rambled about were Somalian immigrants, insane asylums, Don Lemon, his mother's assessment of his baseball prowess, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Greenland.

Keep Reading Show less
Ted Cruz
Noam Galai/Getty Images

Ted Cruz's Team Responds To Backlash After He's Spotted On Flight Out Of Texas As State Braces For Winter Storm

Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz's team was forced to respond to criticisms after he was photographed on a flight to California on Tuesday as Texas prepares for an arctic cold front and potentially severe winter storm conditions—events that are reminding people of Cruz's now-infamous trip to Cancún.

Political strategist Shea Jordan Smith shared an image of Cruz taken on January 20 that shows him "on a plane heading to Laguna Beach as the state of Texas braces for a rare ice threat and arctic cold front."

Keep Reading Show less