George W. Bush’s Iraq War Gaffe Drives Seth Meyers to Rip Shots on Air: He Just ‘Accidentally Confessed to Being a War Criminal’
George W. Bush accidentally confessing to “being a war criminal” was just too much for Seth Meyers to handle … at least while sober.
In case you missed what was perhaps the Freudian slip of the decade, Bush misspoke while giving a speech on Wednesday, and accidentally condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin for launching “a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion Iraq.”
“I mean, of Ukraine,” Bush added, correcting himself.
Meyers highlighted the gaffe on Thursday’s Late Night, introducing video of the moment by saying, “Here’s an extremely and shockingly real clip of former President George W. Bush giving a speech yesterday where he discussed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and accidentally confessed to being a war criminal.”
The clip was just too insane for Meyers, who was driven to rip a shot of whiskey on air.
“You know when I started this show, I poured exactly one shot of whiskey and left it in the drawer of my desk for an emergency,” Meyers explained. “And throughout the entire Trump presidency I resisted using it, but you know what … fuck it.”
Meyers then proceeded to down the shot before getting back to his show.
“I really am certain that clip was designed in a lab to melt the brains of anyone who was alive in 2003,” Meyers cracked.”Back then, if you had called the invasion of Iraq ‘brutal’ and ‘unjustified,’ the Bush administration and Fox News would have spent an entire week calling you a traitor, and every time you went to the airport the TSA would’ve given you the full cavity search.”
Meyers reminded his viewers that the Iraq War was “a time in our history that was so hysterical and intolerant of dissent that people started calling French fries ‘freedom fries’ because France opposed the war—which was both petty and pointless.”
The Dixie Chicks, now known as the Chicks, were also famously criticized for denouncing Bush and the imminent invasion of Iraq during a 2003 concert in London.
“Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence,” said singer Natalie Maines. “And we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.”
The comment made it into The Guardian, prompting intense backlash from the Chicks’ fans back in America, who were largely right-wing and supported the war.
“There is a direct line from Bush to the modern GOP,” Meyers continued. “The Trump Republican Party is the natural evolution of the Bush Republican Party, which was lawless and authoritarian and used culture-war hysteria to stir up resentments and scare voters the same way the modern Republican Party does now. They’ve just switched to different topics.”
