Conan O’Brien at the Oxford Union on November 12, 2025. (Photo: Oxford Union)
On Wednesday afternoon, a reporter for the website The Daily Caller posted a one-minute clip of Conan O’Brien speaking at the Oxford Union in November, framing it with the caption “NEW: Conan O’Brien ROASTS TDS-afflicted comedians.” Within hours, it had been shared hundreds of times and racked up hundreds of thousands of views.
In the excerpt, O’Brien criticizes comedians who rely on anger toward Donald Trump as a substitute for jokes, arguing that when a comic says “F Trump” all the time, “you’ve put down your best weapon—which is being funny—and exchanged it for anger.” He adds that, no matter how serious the political moment, comedians “always need to be funny.”
As the clip spread, it was increasingly framed as a rebuke of modern late-night television.
A repost from the account Resist the Machine was amplified by figures including Piers Morgan, who added that late-night comics have “become TDS activists,” while Elon Musk weighed in to say, “They stopped being funny long ago.”
By Thursday afternoon, O’Brien’s comments had inspired articles across the right-wing media ecosystem, and even a full five-minute discussion on Fox Business News about the political shortcomings of late-night comedy:
Conan O’Brien’s comments about ‘F Trump’ comics just inspired a five-minute segment about late-night comedy and Trump on Fox Business News. pic.twitter.com/HEx2VMudOH
— LateNighter (@latenightercom) January 8, 2026
What has been less visible in the reposts and commentary is the broader context of O’Brien’s remarks.
In his full response, O’Brien argued (as he has in the past) that Trump has made satire more difficult, comparing the challenge to parodying the National Enquirer—with the president’s statements and actions being so outlandish that traditional comedic escalation no longer works.
And although O’Brien’s excerpted comments are now being widely reported as critical of Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, elsewhere in the conversation the former late-night host in fact praised both Kimmel and Colbert for continuing to do strong work during the Trump era—comments not included in the viral posts now circulating. He also condemned Trump’s FCC Chair Brendan Carr for “putting his hand on the scale” to have Kimmel suspended.
As the clip continues to spread, it has increasingly been treated as a verdict on late-night comedy—one that omits O’Brien’s praise for Kimmel and Colbert, and much of the argument he was actually making. O’Brien’s complete Oxford Union interview can be viewed below:
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