On Wednesday, controversial U.S. politician Henry Kissinger died at the age of 100, which turned out to be a lucky break for Michelle Wolf. While the policymaker’s death has led to a flood of opinion pieces from a range of viewpoints, this week’s The Daily Show guest host seems pretty firm in her stance that Kissinger was a very bad man.
“Yes, Henry Kissinger is dead,” Wolf said on Thursday. “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.”
The public reaction to Kissinger’s death has been as complicated as the man himself. While some have expressed admiration for the realpolitik stan, others have gleefully welcomed the news. Wolf understands the divisiveness, but said that “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?”
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To answer that query, Wolf enlisted the help of Daily Show correspondents Ronny Chieng and Michael Kosta, who each took a side in this heated debate.
For Chieng, there’s “no question” that Kissinger—whom he described as a “genocidal Carmen Sandiego”—is indeed the greatest war criminal in American history. “You know the last few weeks in high school, where you skim through like 40 years of terrible American history in, like, two days? That all him, baby! Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile—shall I continue? Pakistan, East Timor. This dude was doing massacres in countries that Americans didn’t even know were countries.”
While Michael Kosta agreed that Kissinger would be part of any conversation about all-time best war criminals, his vote goes to Dick Cheney. “The man shot his friend in the face, and it was one of the nicest things he’s ever done,” said Kosta—which Wolf acknowledged was a good point, and suggested that maybe this was a tie.
“To quote the great man himself,” Chieng said of Kissinger, “Go fuck yourself.”
Still, Kosta wasn’t backing down—and had another doozy in his pocket: “How can Kissinger be the war crimes GOAT when he won the Nobel Peace Prize you fucking idiot?”
“That’s what makes him the GOAT, you fucking moron,” replied Chieng. “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. Count the rings, bitch.” While it might seem impossible to argue that point, Wolf had just two words for both of them: Andrew Jackson.
Ultimately, it all added up to an important lesson in perspective: Life is fleeting. “If there’s a war criminal in your life, tell them how you feel about them now,” said Kosta. “Because you never know when they’re going to unexpectedly die of being 100 years old.”
