{"id":235534,"date":"2026-01-09T05:31:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T05:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/235534\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T05:31:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T05:31:12","slug":"conan-obrien-tells-f-trump-comics-youve-put-down-your-best-weapon-and-exchanged-it-for-anger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/235534\/","title":{"rendered":"Conan O’Brien tells ‘f-Trump’ comics ‘you’ve put down your best weapon’ and ‘exchanged it for anger’"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump<\/a> has not been a good thing for comedy, according to comedian Conan O’Brien<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Comedy needs a straight line to go off of. And we don’t have a straight line right now,” O’Brien said this week at the Oxford Union<\/a>. “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. So, comedically, it’s been very challenging.”<\/p>\n

Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The result of that, the former late-night host said, is that some people aren’t focused on making people laugh.<\/p>\n

“I think some comics go the route of ‘I’m going to just say f Trump all the time,’ or that’s their comedy. And I think, well, now a little bit you’re being co-opted because you’re so angry,” the five-time Emmy winner said. “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. F Trump. Screw this guy.’ And I think you’ve now put down your best weapon, which is being funny, and you’ve exchanged it for anger.”<\/p>\n

\"Nicole<\/p>\n

Nicole Combeau\/Bloomberg via Getty<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump speaks at a news conference<\/p>\n

He doesn’t accept it when he hears that now is not the time to be amused.<\/p>\n

“And that person or any person like that would say, ‘Well, things are too serious now. I don’t need to be funny,'” O’Brien said. “And I think, well, if you’re a comedian, you always need to be funny. You just have to find a way. And you you just have to find a way to channel that anger. Because 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.”<\/p>\n

The Conan O’Brien Must Go host gave an example from his days on The Harvard Lampoon of exactly how comedy is more difficult these days.<\/p>\n

“There was one magazine we could never do a parody of, which is the National Enquirer,” he said. He described the magazine as “the one that says ‘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.”<\/p>\n

Parodies don’t have the same effect in 2026.<\/p>\n

“With Trump, we have a similar situation in comedy,” O’Brien said, “which is people saying, ‘We’ve got a great Trump sketch for you. In this one, he’s kind of talking crazy…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.'”<\/p>\n

But O’Brien still believes comedians should speak out.<\/p>\n

He did so<\/a> in September, writing on social media that “The suspension of\u00a0@jimmykimmel<\/a> and the promise to silence other Late Night hosts<\/a> for criticizing the administration should disturb everyone on the Right, Left, and Center.\u00a0 It\u2019s wrong and anyone with a conscience knows it\u2019s wrong.”<\/p>\n

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump has not been a good thing for comedy, according to comedian Conan O’Brien. “Comedy needs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[119897,119896,93,61,60,1632,282],"class_list":["post-235534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-chilling-effect","tag-conan-o39brien","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-president-trump","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}