On Wednesday, disgraced former President George W. Bush—a man who ignored warnings of the 9/11 attack, launched a deadly war in Iraq under false pretenses, destroyed the U.S. economy, was rabidly homophobic, and has somehow rebranded himself as a quirky painter—finally confessed to his crimes.
“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,” explained Late Night host Seth Meyers.
Yes, during an event exploring “election integrity” at Southern Methodist University’s George W. Bush Institute in Dallas, the ex-president said, “The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq… I mean Ukraine.”
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The Freudian slip about a war by Bush that resulted in over 1 million dead Iraqis and destabilized the region somehow drew big laughs from the crowd.
As for Meyers, it prompted him to take a shot of whiskey he’d stored under his desk before saying: “I really am certain that clip was designed in a lab to melt the brains of anyone who was alive in 2003. 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.” (See: The Dixie Chicks.)
He continued: “Remember, this 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 comedian then connected the Bush-era GOP to the current version.
“There is a direct line from Bush to the modern GOP,” Meyers said. “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.”
And, lest we forget: Like Trump, Bush considered Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin a friend and confidant, nicknaming him “Pootie Poot” and dedicating a wall at his art exhibition to portraits of Putin, including a particularly embarrassing one of him shirtless wrestling a bear.
