Thursday night on “The Colbert Report,” host Stephen Colbert addressed the op-ed piece by Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin that appeared in the New York Times Tuesday evening and suggested that the U.S. take some very specific action by way of response.

“Now, let’s talk about that Putin guy,” Colbert said. “He’s got a fascinating op-ed in today’s New York Times. Hold on a second, I forgot my rage.”

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The host retrieved a blue plastic cooler from under the desk that, when opened, bathed his face in glowing green light. Colbert dipped his face into the ice chest and bellowed incoherently for a moment, then emerged, eyes bulging and mouth contorted with fury.

“How dare! How dare!” he shouted. “How dare the New York Times print the propaganda of a homicidal KGB kleptocrat? I assume he’s filling in for Maureen Dowd this week while she’s on vacation with polonium poisoning.”

“Because news flash, New York Times, he murders journalists!” continued Colbert. “We don’t do that in America. We just let them starve to death in their dying industry.”

“No surprise, folks, that the Grey Lady’s got her legs spread for Vlad the Impaler, here,” he quipped. “They’ve got a long history of legitimizing iron-fisted tyrants. In the 80s, who could forget Qaddafi’s front page spread in the Style section, ‘Hot for Spring: Muumuu Mania?'”

Or, he said, that time Pol Pot left an add in the “Missed Connections” section of the classifieds, “Cambodian paranoid genocidal Rousseau-lover seeks educated city dweller for long walks, beautiful sunsets, mass graves. NO FATTIES.”

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He went on to criticize Putin’s admonishment that Americans should not think of themselves as “exceptional.” “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional,” wrote the Russian president.

“F*ck you,” Colbert said. “Vlad, thinking you’re exceptional is not ‘extremely dangerous,’ it’s exceptionally dangerous.”

“Folks, I was on the fence before this, but we’ve got to bomb Syria,” he concluded. “I mean massive airstrikes, and just to stick it to Putin, I say we use lesbian pilots flying the Enola Gay,” the plane used in the atomic bombing raid on Hiroshima, Japan.

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Watch the video, embedded below via Comedy Central: