Conan O’Brien and Zach Galifianakis take on Trump-era comedy: 'You've now put down your best weapon, which is being funny'



Comedy used to be about making people laugh first — not lecturing audiences about politics — and according to BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere, a few comedians are finally saying out loud what audiences have been thinking for years.

“You’re looking for funny first. You don’t leave out funny,” Stu says, arguing that modern late-night television has largely abandoned comedy in favor of partisan activism.

However, Conan O’Brien appears determined to resist that trend. In a recent interview, O’Brien criticized comics who go “the route of ‘I’m just going to say F Trump all the time.’”

“That’s their comedy,” he said.


“And I think, well, now a little bit you’re being co-opted because you’re so angry. You’ve been lulled. It’s like a siren leading you into the rocks. You’ve been lulled into just saying, ‘F Trump, F Trump,’” he continued.

“And I think you’ve now put down your best weapon, which is being funny, and you’ve exchanged it for anger. And that person or any person like that would say, 'Well, things are too serious now. I don’t need to be funny.' And I think, well, if you’re a comedian, you always need to be funny,” he explained, adding, “you just have to find a way.”

And Conan isn’t the only comedian that feels this way.

In an interview on his podcast “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend,” comedian Zach Galifianakis recalled an episode he did of “Between Two Ferns” with Hillary Clinton.

“I remember when I interviewed Hillary Clinton, and I could tell she didn’t want to be there, and I totally get that. I get it. But before we had set that whole thing up, they wrote back, ‘Well, you can’t bring up those emails,’” Galifianakis said.

“And I go, ‘Well, we don’t have to do the interview. That’s fine. We won’t do it.’ When you tell powerful people no, it’s crazy. They were like, ‘OK, we’ll do it. You can ask,’” he said, adding, “Because it’s not that important to me to do it the way they want to do it.”

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Chelsea Handler learned a valuable lesson — if you're going to attack Tony Hinchcliffe, don't go first



Liberal entertainer Chelsea Handler went head-to-head with one of the biggest comedians in the United States over the weekend, and the results were brutal.

Handler was once known for her talk shows, including "Chelsea Lately" (2007–2014), but in recent years, she has become a dominant progressive voice for feminism and being alone.

'Her whole act is just talking about how it's stupid to have kids.'

Handler has garnered headlines in the last two decades for comments like, "I'm not interested in long-term commitments" in 2025, saying "being childless and alone are everything they're cracked up to be" in 2016, and "I definitely don't want to have kids" in 2013.

On Sunday, however, Handler was forced to perform ahead of rival Tony Hinchcliffe on Netflix's "The Roast of Kevin Hart" — giving the more conservative Hinchcliffe the last word.

Ladies first

Keeping with her progressive motif, Handler directed jokes at Hinchcliffe like, "Tony is what happens when women don't have safe access to abortion care," and "Tony you have the face of a school shooter and the personality of somebody who gets shot first."

The 51-year-old also went after Shane Gillis, who was hosting the roast, saying, "Tony and Shane both live in Texas where abortion is illegal, but on the upside, if you see one of them doing comedy there's a pretty good chance your uterus will start dry heaving on its own."

She then joked that both are white supremacists who, if they weren't at the event, would typically "just burn a cross on someone's lawn."

Six comedians later, it was Hinchcliffe's turn, and he did not hold back his disdain for Handler in a series of brutal roasts.

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Burn notice

"We knew Chelsea Handler would be available today because it's Mother's Day," Hinchcliffe began.

Hinchcliffe then mocked Handler's looks, saying she "looks like the f**king Joker" and is "aging like a vegetable in Lizzo's fridge."

It then seemed like Hinchcliffe may have gone off the cuff when he said Handler "f**king sucks and always has, by the way. Her whole act is just talking about how it's stupid to have kids."

He went on, "We get it, your ovaries are busted, that's like if Kevin [Hart]'s whole act was about how 'roller coasters aren't that cool anyway.'"

Rounding out his full assault, the 41-year-old Hinchcliffe said, "Chelsea actually had her eggs frozen, not on purpose, they're just inside of a cold, frigid bitch."

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- YouTube

Race to the bottom

Handler wasn't the only liberal Hinchcliffe triggered, but the family of the late drug-addict turned progressive icon George Floyd took issue with one of the comedian's closing remarks.

Hinchcliffe joked to Kevin Hart that the "black community is so proud of you — right now George Floyd is looking up at us all laughing so hard that he can’t breathe."

TMZ was told by a spokesman for the George and Gianna Floyd Foundation that Hart allowing Hinchcliffe's joke is "sad for the culture."

Floyd's family and friends reportedly think Hinchcliffe is a "racist comedian," while the foundation claimed it is only trying to better its community.

The foundation also bizarrely stated, "Let's try to be a little bit more positive — and not sit up there doing colon inspections by white comedians."

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Conan O'Brien calls out lazy Trump-hating comedians



Late-night host and writer Conan O'Brien says Trump-deranged comedians need to step up their game.

Speaking at the Oxford Union Society, the former talk-show host and "Simpsons" writer lamented that some in the comedy establishment have given up on laughs in favor of angry tirades about President Trump.

'We don't have a straight line right now. We have a very bendy, rubbery line.'

"I think some comics go the route of, 'I'm going to just say F Trump all the time' [and] that's their comedy. And I think, well, now, a little bit, you're being co-opted because you're so angry."

"You've been lulled," added the Harvard alum, likening the allure of crowd-pleasing but joke-free anti-Trump material to a siren song.

The comedian continued, "You've been lulled into just saying 'F Trump. F Trump. F Trump. Screw this guy.' I think you've now put down your best weapon, which is being funny, and you've exchanged it for anger."

Finding the funny

The 62-year-old noted that he has always prided himself on finding a way to be funny in any situation, and he did not give his peers an out when it comes to political comedy.

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"Any person like that would say, 'Well, things are too serious now. I don't need to be funny.' I think, well, if you're a comedian, you always need to be funny. You just have to find a way," O'Brien told the audience at the esteemed student debating society.

"And you just have to find a way to channel that anger. ... Good art will always be a great weapon, will always be a perfect weapon against power, but if you're just screaming and you're just angry, you've lost your best tool in the toolbox."

Playing it straight

Earlier in the interview, O'Brien recalled that some of his most joyful memories in comedy were parodying different magazines or news outlets by mocking their tone and style. At the same time, he said it was impossible to parody something that doesn't follow a "straight line."

He referred to the National Enquirer, describing the outlet's content as impossible to make fun of because it would print stories like, "Elvis found in Titanic lifeboat 105 years after sinking. He is now a woman, and he's married a giant peanut-butter sandwich."

"How do you parody that? You can't," he explained. "And I think with Trump we have a similar situation in comedy, which is people saying, 'We've got a great Trump sketch for you. In this one, he's kind of talking crazy and he's saying stuff, and he tears down half the White House to build a giant ballroom, and he says it's going to be the new Mar-a-Lago.' Yeah, no, that happened yesterday," O'Brien joked.

RELATED: How 'conservative' art can go from cringey to cathartic

Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

"Comedy needs a straight line to go off of," O'Brien added. "And we don't have a straight line right now. We have a very bendy, rubbery line. We have a slinky. We have a fire hose that's whipping around, spewing water at 100 miles an hour or something else."

Did American comedians SELL OUT for Saudi cash? The Riyadh hypocrisy exposed



From September 26 to October 9, 2025, Saudi Arabia is hosting its inaugural Riyadh Comedy Festival as part of Vision 2030’s entertainment push. High-profile American comedians, including Dave Chappelle, Kevin Hart, and Bill Burr, among others, were invited to perform for payments reportedly ranging from $300,000 to $1.6 million.

However, the conditions for their skits are strict: No criticizing the Saudi government, the royal family, the Islamic faith, or local culture.

Given Saudi Arabia’s suppression of free speech, imprisonment of dissidents and activists, and restrictions on women's rights, the agreement of so many American comedians to perform, especially under such rigid speech restrictions, has sparked widespread controversy.

Glenn Beck is certainly perplexed. If the Trump administration offered these American comedians the same amount of money to perform for a “Trump comedy weekend” on the condition they don’t criticize the government, the Trump family, or MAGA culture, they would never agree to it, he says.

“Everybody would have been out of their mind crazy on the left saying, ‘Look at Donald Trump, wants to shut people down,”’ he scoffs.

Comedian Bridget Phetasy thinks success has gone to comedians’ heads. “I think comedians got too rich. ... Maybe comedians in general just need to go back to being kind of viewed as dumb losers again,” she laughs.

“Maybe this is a challenge for them to push the limits because they can say whatever they want in America. So going to Saudi is, like, a little dangerous, a little titillating,” she adds.

However, she doesn’t necessarily blame these comedians — especially the ones who haven’t had much success — for taking advantage of the opportunity. They may be choosing to “sell their [souls],” but many of them probably needed the money.

“Some of these comedians were not hugely famous and have been struggling for a long time. ... So, I don’t know. It's like, get that bag, but you're going to have to hear about this forever,” Phetasy tells Glenn, noting that some of the more well-known comedians probably ended up doing damage to their brands for agreeing to the Saudis’ conditions.

Glenn’s co-host, Stu Burguiere, doesn’t see an issue with comedians performing in Saudi Arabia either. “I don’t understand why there is a double standard for entertainers in this world. All sorts of American companies sell products in these countries. ... Tons of investors do business in Saudi Arabia,” he says.

“This is not the Nazi regime. We’re not at war with them. They’re supposedly in some ways allies of ours, and, like, do the people of Saudi Arabia not get to laugh? Do they not get to go to comedy shows?”

“That’s all absolutely true, and I don’t blame really any of these people for taking the money and going. At the same time, you also have to understand that you are a useful idiot who’s being used by a regime,” Phetasy counters.

Unlike Stu, she doesn’t think this comedy event is the same as an American company doing business with the Saudis.

“Business people are smart enough to be behind closed doors and do all this stuff in Park City at secretive events where they all fly in on their private jet. And entertainers — their face is their brand; their jokes are their brand. ... I think that’s why they get held to this unfair double standard because they’re actually quite poor compared to everyone else around them. These are court jesters for the kings. Literally,” she says.

But Glenn can’t get past the hypocrisy. “The Jewish state could have put on a comedy festival and paid them the same amount of money, and I bet you almost all of those comedians would have turned it down because it’s Israel. They would never do it for Donald Trump,” he says.

To hear more of the conversation, watch the video above.

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'Locks up like Windows 95': Joe Rogan lays into Biden, underscoring that he's been a punch line for decades



Various liberal media outfits and Democratic donors have abandoned the pretense that President Joe Biden is mentally equipped to serve another full term. Amidst the growing acknowledgment of Biden's decrepitude, some supporters have leaned on the characterization of the 81-year-old Democrat as a truth-telling candidate of integrity.

Although happy to see the Biden competency narrative crumble, Joe Rogan and leftist YouTube personality Jimmy Dore are just as critical of the new Biden integrity narrative.

In the July 4 episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience," the titular host quipped that during the debate, Biden "locks up like Windows 95, stammers for 15 seconds, and then says, 'We beat Medicare.'"

Rogan's remarks at Biden's expense prompted Dore to attack recent revisionism about the president's character.

"No one's ever f***ing loved Joe Biden. He's always been a joke and a punch line," said Dore. "And this idea that somehow it's Joe Biden's integrity and truth-telling against Donald Trump — 'He lied, lied.' The first time Joe Biden ran for president, he had to drop out because he got exposed for being a pathological liar."

"He said he graduated at the top of his class. He graduated at the bottom," continued Dore. "He said he had three majors. ... He said he was chosen as the most outstanding ... no. It was all lies. And then he got caught plagiarizing — not only just their speeches but like their life story."

Biden launched his 1988 presidential campaign in June 1987. He claimed that he graduated in the top half of his class in law school; that he had attended law school at Syracuse University on a full academic scholarship; that he had been named the outstanding student in the political science department as an undergraduate at the University of Delaware; and that he had graduated from Delaware with three undergraduate degrees.

Biden was later forced to admit that the claims were bogus.

The Washington Post reported at the time that Biden had confirmed in a statement, "As the complete record of my law school career indicates, which I released to the press last week, I did not graduate in the top half of my class at law school and my recollection on this was inaccurate."

Biden had in fact ranked 76th out of a law school class of 85.

At Delaware, he graduated 506th in a class of 688 with a "C" average.

As for this supposed triple degree, he receive a degree with a dual major in history and political science.

In terms of being named an outstanding student, Biden later admitted a professor of the name of David Ingersoll had nominated him — but nothing came of it.

'It was an open mockery that he was a known plagiarist.'

At a press conference in September 1987, Biden also confirmed that he had faced disciplinary action for plagiarism while a freshman in law school. In one instance, he reportedly used five pages from a law review article for a brief he claimed to have written in a legal methods class without crediting the source or using footnotes.

Biden also copped to freely stealing quotes from other politicians, including then-British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock.

While Biden liberally stole speech elements and quotes from President John F. Kennedy and others, the New York Times noted that "he lifted Mr. Kinnock's closing speech with phrases, gestures and lyrical Welsh syntax intact for his own closing speech at a debate at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 23 — without crediting Mr. Kinnock."

"Who does that?" asked Dore. "He's been a joke, always was a joke."

"Did I ever tell you about 'Joe Biden night' that we used to have at Stitches?" Rogan later asked his guest. "Stitches Comedy Club in 1988, we had 'Joe Biden night.' ... That would mean I would go on stage and do your act and you would go on stage and do my act."

"Because he was a plagiarist," said Dore.

"Exactly," said Rogan. "So we would call it 'Joe Biden night,' and all the comics would go up and do each other's acts."

"It was an open mockery that he was a known plagiarist," added Rogan. "In '88."

"That's why this rehabilitation — it's all because of Trump derangement syndrome," responded Dore. "They have to pretend like Joe Biden's some kind of guy with integrity and dignity instead of, you know, the horrible criminal, anti-worker guy that he's been his whole life."

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