Comedian and HBO host Bill Maher predicted a 2028 presidential victory for Republicans in general — and perhaps for Vice President JD Vance specifically — if New York City elects Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani as its next mayor.
Maher argued on his podcast that Mamdani, who garnered national attention when he bested disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) in the June Democratic primary, was essentially a walking, talking advertisement for the Republican Party as he pushed for radical changes in New York.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨Bill Maher says Zohran Mamdani will help &#8220;ELECT JD VANCE&#8221; — or another GOP nominee — in 2028 if he becomes NYC mayor🚨
&#8220;Don’t tell me that who the mayor of New York is doesn’t matter.&#8221;
&#8220;He definitely has the power and influence to elect JD Vance — or whoever is the Republican… <a href="https://t.co/0zBTxMs5QF">pic.twitter.com/0zBTxMs5QF</a>
— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) <a href="https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/1951634166153359619?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 2, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;New York is New York!&#8221; Maher explained. &#8220;It&#8217;s the media capital, it&#8217;s the financial capital. It is a bellwether like no other city is in this country. So don’t tell me that who the mayor of New York is doesn’t matter.&#8221;
Maher&#8217;s guest, progressive YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen, asked Maher whether he actually believed that Mamdani — who has advocated for a number of radical socialist changes with regard to taxation, housing, and other issues — could actually drive the kind of change as the Mayor of New York City.
&#8220;He definitely has the power and influence to elect JD Vance — or whoever is the Republican candidate next time,&#8221; Maher pushed back, arguing that everything Mamdani did would likely create opposition. &#8220;It is a walking commercial for the Republican Party nationally. When you let the Democrat socialists, and now they&#8217;re actually calling themselves social — let them take over a major American city, this is what you get: the state-run grocery stores, which worked so well in Cuba and the Soviet Union and Venezuela. Just bad ideas, and again, this ugly streak, ugly streak of antisemitism.&#8221;
&#8220;Who&#8217;s the most popular politician on the Left?&#8221; Cohen challenged Maher.
&#8220;AOC?&#8221; Maher guessed.
&#8220;One of, but who&#8217;s — Bernie, you know Bernie is — he&#8217;s not a capitalist, you know,&#8221; Cohen said.
&#8220;No, he&#8217;s not, and he&#8217;s also not president,&#8221; Maher shot back.
&#8220;He&#8217;s no — but —&#8221; Cohen tried again.
&#8220;And never would be,&#8221; Maher insisted.
&#8220;Neither is Mamdani,&#8221; Cohen said.
&#8220;No, but trust me, he will be featured in the campaign commercials,&#8221; Maher predicted, arguing that Mamdani would be a net negative on whoever did run for president.
&#8220;They boogeyman everybody,&#8221; Cohen complained, arguing that the real problem was not Mamdani but the Republicans who would use his socialist policies to damage any Democrat running.
&#8220;You don’t have to boogeyman [Mamdani]!&#8221; was Maher&#8217;s reply. &#8220;He does it to himself!&#8221;

2022 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Hosted By Radhika Jones – Arrivals

Bill Maher Predicts What Will Happen In 2028 If New York Elects Mamdani Now

Bill Maher

Comedy

JD Vance

Media

Politics

Zohran Mamdani

The following article was originally posted on “<a href="https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The New Jerusalem</a>” on Substack.
* * *
In October, 2015, Vanity Fair magazine ran a feature story about television’s late night comedy talk shows. It was headlined “Host-to-Host Sensation.” The accompanying fold-out photo of ten top talk show comics caused a sensation of its own. Much imaginary ink was as if spilled over the shocking fact that all the hosts were men. But, of course, there was nothing shocking about that. Women aren’t funny. Even the funny ones aren’t that funny. As many another foolishly honest man has pointed out, women don’t need to be funny, not at a professional level at least. Overlooked, unathletic, angry high school boys need to be funny. If they’re not funny, their genetic strain will likely die with them. That’s the kind of urgent motivation that’s required to create a grown man with the insane courage to make jokes onstage and risk being met with dead silence.
But there was something that really was shocking about the Vanity Fair picture, something very few people who were not me bothered to mention. Every single comedy talk show host depicted — all ten of them — had exactly the same political opinions. They were all Left-wingers, and they would all come to detest and despise Donald Trump.
Now, you might say that was to be expected. The Venn Diagram of overlooked, unathletic, angry little men and Left-wing men is basically a circle with a small crescent of Nazis bulging out of one side. But what was shocking — and really kind of despicable — was this: the corporations who platformed these angry little funny leftists apparently saw no reason, financial or otherwise, to hire anyone to entertain the half of the audience who held more conservative views. Their idea seemed to be that they could make all the profits they needed by amusing one half of the audience at the expense of the other. They must have thought that was good business. They must have thought it was morally acceptable. They must have thought: “Screw you, half of America. We hurl disdain in your general direction!”
Well, strange to say, this business model did not perform all that well over time.
Listen, I’m a Christian man. I try very hard not to take pleasure in the misfortunes of my philosophical opponents. But in this case, I just can’t help it. The smug entitlement of an elite monoculture that despised the common man and woman — the men and women who, in the words of George Bailey, “do most of the working and paying and living and dying” in this country — was just begging for a comeuppance. And that uppance has come.
Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show on CBS has been cancelled and will go off the air next May. The show was making 40 million fewer dollars a year than the 130 million dollars it cost to produce. And while Colbert’s paltry ratings were the highest among his Left-wing colleagues, he and they were regularly being beaten by Greg Gutfeld, the libertarian smart aleck on Fox News. That’s cable, where the shows reach around half of the network audience, and where production costs are considerably lower.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show">WATCH: The Andrew Klavan Show</a></h3>
Now, Colbert was not born talentless. His Jon Stewart spin-off show, The Colbert Report, in which he satirized conservative commentators like Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, was often amusing. But once he landed the CBS late night spot in 2015, the laughter died. Maybe it was the big money. Maybe it was the Trump Derangement-fueled rage. Maybe it was being flattered by hand-picked audiences cheering wildly for unfunny rants. But something went sour inside Colbert. Lines like “The only thing Trump’s mouth is good for is being Putin’s cock holster,” might have seemed hilarious to the kind of ten-year-olds who laugh through their noses. But to adults — especially adults weary of having self-satisfied show biz millionaires insult them with a wholly undeserved tone of moral superiority — they seemed a tad juvenile.
But Colbert’s abilities are beside the point. Stephen Colbert was bad for America. Not on his own, maybe. On his own, he was just another Hollywood putz who mistakenly thought he had something important to say. But as a brick in a solid wall of Left-wing entertainment, he did more damage than any laughter could rectify.
Networks broadcast on airwaves that are a public trust. Their stations are licensed by a federal agency, the FCC. If the monologues on network late night comedy shows can be said to have any kind of higher purpose, surely it has something to do with bringing us together, helping us laugh in the evening at the politics and passions that drive us apart during the day. If you ridicule Barack Obama, then I’ll be willing to see what’s ridiculous about Donald Trump. If you make jokes about Ted Cruz, then maybe leftists will be able to find something funny about AOC. Fair both-sides comedy has the power to soften our angry certainties with self-awareness and humility.
But if instead, you declare late night a one political party zone, what comity can your comedy produce? If you think a crafty Chicago machine pol like Obama is so perfect that there is “not a flaw or hook that you can caricature,” (as one Saturday Night Live writer put it), why should I be amused when you hammer Trump for his many peccadillos night after night after night?
During the monologue in which Colbert announced his cancellation, he turned to the camera and told President Trump, “Go f&#8212; yourself.” But hadn’t he been saying exactly that for these many years to all the tens of millions of Americans who voted for Trump, who thought him, in their good will and wisdom, a better choice than the candidates Colbert supports?
What exactly did Colbert think he knew that allowed him to dismiss so many of his countrymen? Insult each night so many of his countrymen? Disparage and belittle so many of his countrymen by continually mocking their candidates while at the same time using his mouth as a cock holster for any lying, corrupt, incompetent, third rate Democrat lucky enough to come on his show?
What angel visited Stephen in the quiet of his cultural sequestration and told him it would be all right for him — and for every single one of his corporate comedy colleagues — to consider those tens of millions of Americans as nothing more than the butts of their jokes? If they had intended to convince those voters to change sides, wouldn’t it have been wiser to spread the jokes around even just a little? But that wasn’t their intention. They despised those voters. They hectored them out of the audience. They sent them a clear message: You are not worthy of being amused.
And, of course, it’s not just the comedians. It’s every morally flatulent entertainer who ever accepted his or her Oscar or Emmy or Grammy with a speech denouncing the politicians half the electorate prefers. As the writer tells the actress in the classic show biz film All About Eve: “I shall never understand the weird process by which a body with a voice suddenly fancies itself as a mind.”
For more than twenty years, I’ve been making speeches to conservatives, telling them they should pay more attention to the arts. To movies, to novels, to music and so on. I quote James Joyce to them: artists “forge the uncreated conscience” of a people. I quote Percy Shelley: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” I tell them that complaining about movies and music and publishing will get them nowhere. The arts can only be redeemed by those who love them.
But maybe I was talking to the wrong people. Maybe I should have gone to the artists themselves. The arts aren’t leftist by nature, but they are liberal by nature. They find worth and dignity even in the Other. In the West, they always have. The Greeks mourned for the Trojan women. The Crusaders sang the nobility of their Muslim foes. Shakespeare reinvented the stock Evil Jew of the medieval Easter Play by granting him his full humanity.
Is there nothing of that spirit left in Hollywood? Or in publishing? Where conservative actors and writers have to talk in whispers? Where even to be a white male is to risk being barred from your vocation? No. They will not even award the Pulitzer to an iconic photograph depicting Trump’s courage under fire. They will not even put our glamorous First Lady on the covers of their fashion magazines. Ideology has made our cultural gatekeepers petty and small and mean.
Well, forgive me if that meanness has made me mean as well. The backlash is coming and has come, and I am glad to see it. With all my striving toward good will, the best I can muster for Stephen Colbert is to repeat to him the immortal words of a man more relevant, more daringly counter-cultural and, yes, a whole lot funnier than he is: “You’re fired.”
* * *
The following article was originally posted on “<a href="https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The New Jerusalem</a>” on Substack.
Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. Klavan is the bestselling author of numerous books, including the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The fifth installment, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/After-That-Cameron-Winter-Mysteries/dp/1613166869/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3EGZUC370LG46&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Y_NI0mDOKeowShheDQTVx5NH-fAeimJoCD56_T0Acpl8C0mup7uJf-nGGSRLEItaaekoDnvS2vWLMa4Zd2UBXQ8Y-g-P502jOWz-Y8IX3ZQsdlO7WMLrg1xIhNoKmjCorSWUR4C2l_RbiZ7apJ1MfPzGOrrEf7AdAXX6xwnJRVP_XqUfWuMuVthTWscaU3P4vgmS86-96n-721enHfX12CFQWTajqFbVnrsDkexfUf4.6_gTH6h1Bb9Pn375QdF_VAVZSayDvjQBBKGXE-MTiFo&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=klavan&amp;qid=1754049918&amp;sprefix=%2Caps%2C80&amp;sr=8-1">After That, The Dark,</a> is now available for Pre-Order. Follow him on X: <a href="https://x.com/andrewklavan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@andrewklavan</a>
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert Was Bad For America

Andrew Klavan

comedian

Stephen Colbert

Woke Culture

Bill Burr, the comedian — or perhaps I should call him an ex-comedian —is still pretty angry at me.
That’s because all the way back in February, I said that he had gone rogue. He got really sad. That was after he suggested that the healthcare CEOs of America might deserve to be murdered.
On Thursday, Vulture — which still surprisingly exists — published an <a href="https://www.vulture.com/article/bill-burr-woke-politics-billionaires-left-right.html">interview</a> with him.
“I want to ask about politics because it has been an interesting few months for you in this arena. You’ve had a few things happen, including Ben Shapiro talking about going to one of your shows and complaining that you’re becoming ‘woke,’” Vulture began. 
 
“He doesn’t even know what that word means,” Burr insisted. “His definition of woke is white liberals’ definition of woke, and they didn’t even know what it was; they just took the word from black people. That’s the worst thing about our people — not only do we take from other cultures, we don’t even take the time to understand the definition. He went there to be annoyed so he can then have something to talk about and then he can make money off dividing his own country. Those people, it’s treasonous what they do.”
“The fact is that it worked for what his goal was: for it became a thing online where a certain portion of the right complained about how you’re woke —” Vulture posited.
“Racists. They’re racists,” Burr complained. “They send pictures of monkeys to me and my wife. They’re f***ing horrible people. And they’re cowards, and they never say it to your face. &#8230; What I’m finding is that people keep trying to categorize what it is that you’re doing. Like that idiot Ben Shapiro: ‘He’s woke now!’ That f***ing guy. He was trying to bring me into his fold. At one point, the guy liked me. And then when I didn&#8217;t, all of a sudden I&#8217;m a, I mean, I&#8217;m supposed to look at that guy like he&#8217;s an adult?’
Vulture: “Do you feel misunderstood if people take your words one way or the other?”
“No, I&#8217;m not, mis — I’m deliberately misunderstood,” Burr moaned.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2251-member-exclusive?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=The+Ben+Shapiro+Show&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
Okay, a couple of quick housekeeping notes there. First, I don&#8217;t need to pay to go to your comedy show to be annoyed. There&#8217;s a lot of stuff in the world that annoys me. And typically, I don&#8217;t shell out hundreds of bucks and then take my wife and my friends to a show in order to be annoyed. I&#8217;m sorry; you did a bad show, and a bunch of people didn&#8217;t laugh in Florida, and then you fussed like a child and then walked off the stage. It was really ridiculous.
That&#8217;s on you, dude. You probably should give the people refunds because they paid for Bill Burr at Red Rock. Instead, they got Joy Behar at some dive bar.
You used to do jokes like this. “Look at the WNBA. They&#8217;ve been playing in front of 3 to 400 people a night for a quarter of a century. Not to mention it&#8217;s a male-subsidized league. We gave you a league. Where are all the feminists? That place should be packed with feminists wearing jerseys, flashing it &#8230; going nuts like the guys do in the upper deck &#8230; ‘Me on the jumbotron. Am I doing it?’”
Or: “Women failed the WNBA. Ladies, ladies, name your top five all-time WNBA players. Name five WNBA teams. Name the WNBA team in your city. You can&#8217;t do it.”
Or: “You don&#8217;t give a f*** about them. They play night in and night out in front of nobody. It&#8217;s a f*** tragedy.”
That&#8217;s what you used to be. But now your latest material is like this: “Then they&#8217;re talking about looting, but CNN and Fox News are not going to bring up the insurance companies that are just going to keep everybody&#8217;s premiums and still give themselves a bonus. Free Luigi!”
Or: “For conservative people to act like they&#8217;re not the biggest babies also is hilarious. Have you seen this? My people? Whitey, we&#8217;re all upset. There&#8217;s enough of us to get it going, trending, anyway. (laughing) We&#8217;re upset about the new Cinderella movie. ‘The actress playing Cinderella isn’t white. There&#8217;s no prince. They changed the story. What am I gonna tell my kids?’ The things my people get upset about. ‘What am I going to tell my kids?’ Well, talk around it the way you do, the way we talk around the real history of this country.”
I&#8217;m glad he&#8217;s laughing at himself because nobody else is. Man, what a fall.
Not liking your show isn&#8217;t “treason,” you doof; you&#8217;re not the president. You&#8217;re the guy who came in second in the Billy Corgan lookalike contest because you showed up sloppy drunk and forgot to shave again.
Here&#8217;s what I mean by wokeness: There is a definition, and I&#8217;ve explained it over and over and over again on the show. It&#8217;s not my definition. It&#8217;s the definition that Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic — who literally wrote a book on Critical Race Theory — laid out in explaining the basic principles that match up with wokeness.
One: racism is ordinary, not aberrational.
Two: Our system of white over color-ascendancy serves important purposes, both psychic and material.
So you put those together for wokeness. What that means is that the system of America is designed to create racially disparate outcomes. Any proof of racially disparate outcomes is evidence of the malignancy of the system.
There&#8217;s another element of wokeness that is self-contradictory here, that there is a racial essentialism that stops you from criticizing as unfactual the viewpoints of others. “You don&#8217;t understand because you&#8217;re not black,” or ‘You can&#8217;t understand because you&#8217;re not gay.”
This ends conversations and contradicts the fundamental basis of wokeness, because the basis of wokeness is that everybody is basically the same, which means all group outcomes should be the same, which means any inequality of group outcome is evidence of systemic inequity.
But then wokeness will also posit that racial groups are so different that you can&#8217;t even talk to one another. You can&#8217;t even criticize the viewpoints of members of another racial group. It&#8217;s a bizarre defense mechanism.
I call Bill Burr woke because he is. He believes that America is a deeply racist place and that it&#8217;s embedded in all of our social systems, and the evidence of that is our economic inequality, and therefore, it&#8217;s probably okay to shoot healthcare CEOs.
And if you criticize him as woke, it&#8217;s because you don&#8217;t really understand the term “woke” because black people invented that term, and when white people use the term “woke” as a descriptor, it’s cultural appropriation.
Oh, how times have changed. 
Bill Burr used to tell this joke: “The black guy who brought up leg-shaking, saying, ‘Elvis took leg-shaking from us.’ It&#8217;s like, ‘Really? Leg-shaking? No, nobody thought to do this. Black people came up with that. You telling me that? I&#8217;ll even give you that. Let&#8217;s say you came up with that. Where did that black dude learn how to do it? Didn&#8217;t he watch some older black guy do it because he&#8217;s the same color? He&#8217;s not stealing. He&#8217;s just carrying on the tradition. But if Elvis does it. Oh, what the f***. Now he&#8217;s the biggest thief ever.’ That doesn&#8217;t make any sense to me.”
The current Bill Burr would presumably call that Bill Burr insensitive and unresponsive to the needs and definitions of black people, which is amazing, because Bill Burr is whiter than a painting of a polar bear in snow on a white canvas.
He&#8217;s the most annoying form of a woke person: a white lib, the kind he likes to criticize. The white person who apologizes for being white by pretending that he can speak on behalf of black people about the systemic privileges of being white.
While pulling down millions of dollars to be an angry thumb of a human.
So Bald Rumpelstiltskin over there — who gets mad when you call him by his real name — is still pissed off. I didn&#8217;t enjoy his comedy show last year, and he thinks that my wife and I and our friends paid to attend his show just so that I could criticize him.
Here&#8217;s the thing. On a random weekday night, if I&#8217;m going to a comedy show, I&#8217;m going because I want to laugh. We paid to attend your show because you used to be funny, and then you transed yourself and turned into a white, bald, allegedly male version of Sunny Hostin on The View screeching at me about income inequality and racism.
You&#8217;ve decided that you&#8217;re a victim and that everyone you know is a victim and that America is cruel and nasty, and you&#8217;re deliberately misunderstood just because you won&#8217;t put on a great show anymore.
I used to enjoy watching Bill Burr. But now watching him is like watching Robin D&#8217;Angelo, but even whiter and even faker and less funny and with a screechy Boston accent to boot.
You turned into Billy, the piss-drunk woke leprechaun. Good luck with that, dude.
Listen, I hope you turn it around. I really do, because the world needs better comedians, and I like a lot of comedians that disagree with me, including Louis C.K. and Dave Chappelle.
But we don’t need 57-year-old men trying to earn street cred with fellow kids by turning into a human embodiment of those stupid “In this house” lawn signs. That makes me sad. It does.
And yeah, you&#8217;re being a woke jackass.

Shaq’s Fun House

Bill Burr Went Woke. Now He’s Whining About It.

Ben Shapiro

Bill Burr

If late night comedy on network television is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/late-night-collapse-colberts-fall-and-the-death-of-balanced-comedy">dying</a>, NBC host and comedian Seth Meyers may have inadvertently revealed one of the reasons for that — and admitted that he has played a part in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cbs-host-breaks-ranks-offers-surprisingly-sane-reason-for-colberts-ouster">bringing that about</a>.
Meyers told host Dax Shepard on his &#8220;Armchair Expert&#8221; podcast that his goal — as the host of &#8220;Late Night with Seth Meyers&#8221; — is to make sure that his show is &#8220;cathartic&#8221; for him while he&#8217;s making it and for the audience as they&#8217;re watching it.
WATCH:
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Seth Meyers goes on the Armchair Expert podcast and claims that he views his &#8216;Late Night&#8217; NBC job as wanting &#8220;to make a show that&#8217;s both cathartic to do and cathartic to watch.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/wqHq2AeTYG">pic.twitter.com/wqHq2AeTYG</a>
— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) <a href="https://twitter.com/alexchristy17/status/1950235834671599859?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 29, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Shepard began by pointing to the obvious left-leaning nature of Meyers&#8217; show, asking whether he felt like people who agreed with him came to watch his show because they found it comforting in a way. What he didn&#8217;t say aloud was that having a show that leaned so far in one particular direction could potentially alienate half of the country.
&#8220;Have you felt over the years that it&#8217;s a bit of a dog whistle for people to come commiserate with you in a way that you&#8217;re like, ‘Ugh,’ I don&#8217;t, let&#8217;s put it this way. I have my own political opinions. I find one of the most boring things in the world is to hear someone else&#8217;s political opinions because there&#8217;s only two, but everyone&#8217;s saying it as if they thought of it themselves and it&#8217;s novel,&#8221; Shepard said. &#8220;No. You just declared you&#8217;re on that side. I get it. So, I would imagine people find you in restaurants and they want to bond over that with you.&#8221;
Meyers agreed, but went on to take the argument a bit further — saying that ultimately it didn&#8217;t matter if he was changing the minds of people who did not agree with him and suggesting that his show might inspire more of the people who do agree with him to get out and vote.
&#8220;Early on, people would say, ‘Do you really think you&#8217;re changing anyone&#8217;s mind?’ And it was ‘no.’  I would like to think that maybe we could, like, if someone&#8217;s like, ‘Should I vote or not?’ You would want to maybe if they watch our show, they think ‘You know what, I am going to get out and cast a ballot,'&#8221; he claimed.
&#8220;Yeah. Yeah. But I think you&#8217;d be hard-pressed to find someone in America that doesn&#8217;t know how they feel about Trump,&#8221; Shepard replied. &#8220;I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s one left.&#8221;
&#8220;I think that for us, we want to make a show that&#8217;s both cathartic to do and cathartic to watch,&#8221; Meyers continued, making it clear that he viewed his show as a place for liberal opinion first and comedy second — if at all.

Late Night with Seth Meyers – Season 11

Seth Meyers Helped Kill Late Night Comedy: Here’s How

Seth Meyers Helped Kill Late Night Comedy: Here's How

Seth Meyers

You can’t say Stephen Colbert didn’t try.
“The Late Show” host spent years spreading every anti-Trump narrative in the media. The “Very Fine People” speech. Russian Collusion. The Ballad of Stormy Daniels. Pee-Pee tapes. If it was critical of the president, Colbert pounced and seized.
True? False? Fake News? No matter. Colbert was on the case, weaponizing his nightly broadcast as an in-kind contribution to the DNC.
Except it didn’t work. Trump returned to the Oval Office earlier this year. And, now, Colbert won’t be around the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City to watch Trump complete his second term.
<div id="attachment_952651" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-952651" class="size-large wp-image-952651" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2225461053-864x576.jpg" alt="People participate in a protest titled 'Colbert stays! Trump must go!' outside the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City on July 21, 2025. &quot;The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,&quot; a staple of late-night US television, will end in 2026, the CBS network said, days after the comedian blasted parent company Paramount's $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump as &quot;a big fat bribe.&quot; (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP) (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2225461053-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2225461053-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2225461053-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2225461053.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images</div>
“The Late Show’s” cancellation sent shock waves through Hollywood. Supporters decry the decision, ignoring the cold, hard math behind the move. Reports say the show loses CBS $40 million (or more) a year.
Why would any business keep a show on the air for that price?
“The Late Show” became free therapy sessions for those who still can’t believe the country elected the real estate mogul – twice. They tuned in to hear their beliefs reflected back at them, aided and abetted by Colbert’s smug delivery.
It must have felt empowering to hear him call Trump Vladimir Putin’s [bleep] holster at the height of the Russian collusion scandal. Did it matter that it was all built upon a lie?
Apparently not. And Colbert never felt compelled to apologize for misleading his audience.
The Colbert we see today isn’t the one we were first introduced to on, where else, “The Daily Show.” His shtick at the time, expanded via “The Colbert Report,” was mocking a Bill O’Reilly-style commentator.
He excelled at the role, earning some respect even among right-leaning viewers. He put the funny first, much like he did as part of the “Strangers with Candy” sitcom years earlier.
<div id="attachment_952649" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-952649" class="size-large wp-image-952649" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-460161346-864x576.jpg" alt="WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 8: (AFP OUT) U.S. President Barack Obama (L) talks to television personality Stephen Colbert during a taping of Comedy Central's &quot;The Colbert Report&quot; in Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University on December 8, 2014 in Washington, DC. This is President Obama's third appearance on &quot;The Colbert Report&quot; that will broadcast its final show on Dec. 18. (Photo by Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-460161346-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-460161346-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-460161346-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-460161346.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images</div>
He seemed a smart choice to succeed David Letterman on “The Late Show” in 2015, but he initially struggled in the ratings against “The Tonight Show” juggernaut. Then, Colbert found his inner Bernie Sanders and turned the showcase into a hard-Left platform.
The move paid dividends. “The Late Show” soon became the ratings leader before the rise of Fox News’ “Gutfeld!”
The shift didn’t help the show’s longevity. The bill has come due. Why?
He neglected to heed the Ghost of Johnny Carson. The late-night king knew well enough to mock both sides of the aisle and have fun doing so.
The joy seeped from Colbert’s performance. So did any sense of balance. Now, you’re as likely to see a “Pod Save America” host on his show as a Tom Cruise or Sydney Sweeney.
Progressive viewers may vote for Sen. Adam Schiff, but on a charisma scale of 1 to 10 he’s a 3, at best.
What happens next? Colbert vows to go down fighting, slamming President Trump with every sketch and monologue in his waning days. Oh, like he’s done the past nine or so years? The Legacy Media will <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2025/07/24/trump-epstein-files-late-night-hosts/85356533007/">amplify them all</a>, hoping to sway the public against Trump beyond their cartoonishly biased reportage.
Reporters will miss crafting headlines like this as much as they miss Colbert: &#8220;Late-night guys are giddy with Trump and Epstein jokes after latest developments.&#8221;
How can Colbert possibly do more to attack the Trump administration at this point? He can’t, unless he takes a page from “The View” playbook.
Unhinged conspiracies. Fear-mongering on steroids. Undisciplined rants that cause the studio audience to clap like seals and sane viewers to watch their jaws go slack. That’s all Colbert has left, and he risks losing whatever cultural heft he has remaining if he goes down that road.
Does he really want to start sharing “Legal Notes” like “The View” does to protect himself from lawsuits?
<div id="attachment_952655" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-952655" class="size-large wp-image-952655" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2225551799-864x576.jpg" alt="NEW YORK CITY - JULY 21: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert during Monday's July 21, 2025 show. (Photo by Scott Kowalchyk/CBS via Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2225551799-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2225551799-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2225551799-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2225551799.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Scott Kowalchyk/CBS via Getty Images</div>
Plus, he’s only 61. Surely, he wants to keep working in comedy once “The Late Show” expires. He’s a natural fit for video podcasting, where the modest budgetary requirements all but guarantee his success.
Sane progressives will see right through any “View”-sized transition, meaning he’ll peel off some of his base along the way. Maybe the show will lose more than $40 million over the next 10 months.
The upside for Colbert’s late-night competitors? With “The Late Show” out of the way, they’ll be more progressive viewers for them to attract, at least on paper. No Colbert? Let’s see how Jimmy Kimmel is attacking President Trump today.
It’ll be a sugar high, at best.
Late-night TV is dying. Blame YouTube, the rise of funny social media accounts or comedians who actively chased away more than half the country with their polemics. Colbert is far from alone on that front. Seth Meyers, John Oliver, Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel all lean to the Left. And they kissed conservative viewers goodbye some time ago.
“<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/video/5612703584001">Not good riddance but riddance,”</a> as Kimmel infamously said about his shift to the hard Left.
The format likely would perish with or without Colbert’s handiwork. We stopped collecting 8-track tapes some time ago, too. His Trump obsession, and fueling insults like “Clapter” to the lexicon, a term for jokes meant to spark applause, not laughter, made matters worse.
The biggest irony? While audiences no longer find Colbert’s shtick funny, a certain two-term president is having the last laugh.
* * *
Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic and editor of <a href="https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HollywoodInToto.com</a>. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News’ Big Hollywood. Follow him at <a href="https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HollywoodInToto.com</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Late Night Collapse: Colbert’s Fall And The Death Of Balanced Comedy

Late Night Collapse: Colbert’s Fall and the Death of Balanced Comedy

David Letterman

Democrats

Entertainment

Jon Stewart

Leftists

Legacy Media

President Trump

&#8220;CBS Mornings&#8221; host Tony Dokoupil offered a different take than most of his colleagues — and even some at other legacy media networks — when he conceded on Tuesday that the decision to oust Stephen Colbert and cancel &#8220;The Late Show&#8221; might have been about politics, but not in the way they all thought.
Amid a virtual firestorm of complaints that Colbert&#8217;s cancellation was political — specifically, he&#8217;d been too <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-view-melts-down-over-colbert-king-trump-is-coming-for-the-court-jesters">vocally opposed to President Donald Trump</a> on a network that was staring down the barrel of a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/big-and-important-win-trump-crows-over-settlement-in-cbs-paramount-lawsuit">multi-million dollar lawsuit</a> — Dokoupil argued that the &#8220;one-sided&#8221; nature of Colbert&#8217;s commentary may have put off more people than just Trump.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
WATCH: ‘CBS Mornings’ co-host Tony Dokoupil brings a much-needed reality check to the table of liberal journalists fawning over ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’. His co-hosts dismissed all this, proving his point:
“I don’t have an MBA, but I don’t — [Jon Stewart] is not… <a href="https://t.co/qR5R74g2vY">pic.twitter.com/qR5R74g2vY</a>
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) <a href="https://twitter.com/CurtisHouck/status/1947754373833977899?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 22, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Co-host Vladimir Duthiers complained that, regardless of the expense to produce shows like Colbert&#8217;s, they were &#8220;part of the cultural zeitgeist and they have been part of television since the beginning of television. So that’s why people are reacting the way that they are.&#8221;
Over several objections from his co-hosts, Dokoupil laid out his point — and also argued that comedian Jon Stewart was wrong when he suggested that Paramount had felt threatened by Colbert&#8217;s show as the merger progressed: &#8220;No, I understand the emotional views. I don’t have an MBA, but [Stewart is] not right that the merger, the $8 billion, is based on reruns of a comedy show, no. People are buying the movies and the sitcoms, and the sports. They’re not based on reruns of us either, so I think it’s wrong.”
&#8220;And what no one seems to acknowledge is that the politics also changed,&#8221; Dokoupil continued. &#8220;The business changed, and so did the politics. And it got way more one-sided than anything Johnny Carson was ever doing. I think we should reflect on those changes as well. It’s been a big shift culturally in that regard, also for sure.&#8221;
&#8220;People will miss those shows when they&#8217;re gone, that&#8217;s the bottom line,&#8221; Duthiers insisted.

CBS Host Breaks Ranks, Offers Surprisingly Sane Reason For Colbert’s Ouster

CBS Host Breaks Ranks, Offers Surprisingly Sane Reason For Colbert's Ouster

CBS News

Donald Trump

The View

Many of us fondly remember the days when late-night talk show hosts like Johnny Carson and Jay Leno came into our living rooms every night with one goal in mind: to entertain as many people as possible through laughter.
But with the rise of Donald Trump, late-night comedy shows morphed into nightly attacks on the man over 77 million Americans sent to the White House. Every evening for years now, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel subjected their audiences to non-stop Trump bashing.
It’s vicious, relentless, and, worst of all, not funny.
These “comics” came to view their platforms not as vehicles to entertain a broad spectrum of the American public, but rather a podium from which to blast out their ultra-left politics and Stage 4 Trump Derangement, while cloaking themselves in obnoxiously self-righteous sanctimony along the way.
As anyone who suffered through their childishly acrimonious monologues could attest, if you hated Trump in particular, or anyone to the right of Che Guevara in general, you found comfort in the acid bath of antipathy that came spewing from your screen courtesy of hosts who we were told were comics.
But things might be changing.
Last week, Colbert announced that CBS had cancelled his show, and that they would not replace him. One imagines that Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, and Seth Meyers — none of whom are bringing in audiences — will be canned imminently.
Many have met the demise of Colbert — a man whose idea of comedy was dancing hypodermic needles to push a government narrative in a manner that would make Pravda blush — marks the end of late-night talk shows as a whole. But are they really dead? Or is it just the DNC propaganda machine version of these shows bound for extinction?
As I <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-sad-politicization-of-late-night-television" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a> a while back while lamenting the death of the genuine late-night comedy of Carson — whose last show in May 1992 was watched by an astounding 50 million Americans — several times over the years I did make a sincere effort to watch Colbert or Kimmel.
They were funny on The Daily Show and The Man Show respectively. And I’m willing to be entertained by a truly funny Trump joke. But the level of sheer vitriol and ugliness masquerading as humor on these shows made them impossible to watch. So did the monotony: late night hosts just kept coming at the guy, one Trump assault after another after another. On Colbert one night I literally counted five Trump “jokes” in a row in the opening monologue before I finally had to turn him off. Not because it offended my politics, or my feelings. But rather because it failed to make me laugh. Why else would anyone tune in?
For example, a recent Colbert monologue about Trump sending in the National Guard to quell anti-ICE street violence in California featured the following:
“What’s going on in LA reminds us that it is crucial to speak out against Trump’s fascist impulses, his rampant corruption, and his egregious violations of our norms and our laws…The last time a president bypassed a governor to send in the National Guard was 1965 when LBJ used troops to protect civil rights demonstrators in Alabama. So, we’ve come full circle. Troops were used to protect protesters by Lyndon B. Johnson. Now they’re being used to harass protesters by Donald B. D***.”
Crickets. Cough. Scraping chair leg.
Who needs to tune in to a DNC stump speech after a long day at work? What normal American wants to be subjected to an obsequious Colbert slobbering over guest Adam Schiff while the serial liar looks at the camera and says in his toughest beta male milquetoast persona: “Donald, piss off”? Hmmm. Maybe I’ll just read a few pages of a book before I turn in.
Hang on to your seat, because the laughs just kept on coming.
Consider such comedy gold as his declaring that the Iran strike didn’t take out all their centrifuges, whether true or not. Colbert said it was “less Operation Midnight Hammer and more Operation M.C. Hammer.” Huh? That barely makes sense, let alone makes people laugh. This is the best his team of 24 writers could come up with?
Despite the predictable howls from the usual suspects — for whom late-night hosts are the pharmacies for their daily dose of TDS — Colbert was not fired because he criticized Trump. It was really just a matter of dollars and cents.
Colbert attracts 2.2 million viewers on average; Kimmel 1.7 million; Fallon, just 1.19 million. Colbert and Kimmel average just over 200,000 in the key demographic of viewers 25-54.
Tellingly, these represent just 60% of numbers put up by the Fox Network’s late-night competitor <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/greg-gutfeld-the-new-undisputed-king-of-late-night" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Greg Gutfeld Show</a>.
And then there’s production budgets, really the heart of the matter. Colbert’s show costs more than $100 million a year to produce, including Colbert’s $15 million salary. The problem for Colbert is that his show only brings in roughly $60 million in annual ad revenue.
Megyn Kelly, a former Fox TV host herself, estimates that Gutfeld’s budget for his successful forum is around $10 million. This doesn’t include his salary; the last numbers I saw shows Fox pays their unsung late-night star $7 million annually.
So, even if the total cost of the Greg Gutfeld Show is around $20 million, that’s still a fraction of the cost of legacy media’s failing late-night offerings. Which means there is still a way to make the late night format profitable.
Like its rivals, The Greg Gutfeld Show is certainly political in nature. Gutfeld isn’t Carson, and conservatives will likely feel more at home with Gutfeld and his rotating panel of conservative hosts. But unlike the other shows, Gutfeld is also entertaining, light-hearted, self-effacing, and, most importantly, funny.
In a way, Colbert’s demise is an apt metaphor for the sinking fortunes of the Democrat Party itself. You cannot alienate so many in a market without someone else seeing the opportunity your disregard presents while you steadily lose viewers, and influence. Whether one loves or hates Fox, they have a winning late-night formula that the mainstream media has abandoned by prioritizing divisive politics over entertainment.
Mike Wallace once asked Johnny Carson why he never got into serious subjects. Carson’s response is worth remembering:
<blockquote>“That’s not what I’m there for. Can’t they see that? Why do they think that just because you have a Tonight Show that you must deal in serious issues? That’s a danger. That’s a real danger. Once you start that, you start to get that self-important feeling that what you say has great import. And, you know, strangely enough, you could use that show as a forum, you could sway people. And I don’t think you should, as an entertainer.”</blockquote>
The legacy media should take Johnny’s advice. If they choose to go down the self-destructive path forged by Colbert and his ilk, then good riddance.
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared on the pages of The Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, Zerohedge, and other outlets. He is the author of three <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id=55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id%3D55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3K_WhJtiUZw7LF1PwSIHtH">books</a>. Follow him on <a href="https://x.com/bschaeffer123" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://x.com/bschaeffer123&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0P6pRoAqcBhUQ1W0qwN5rH">X/Twitter</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Colbert’s Demise: When Politics Supersedes Comedy In Late Night

Democrat

Greg Gutfeld

The internet does not have high hopes for Larry David’s newly announced project, a sketch comedy show about American history produced by the Obamas.
Variety <a href="https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/larry-david-american-history-sketch-comedy-series-hbo-1236451946/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> that David will co-write the new HBO program with Jeff Schaffer, with whom he worked on the long-running comedy show “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” David will star in and co-write the six-part series, the outlet noted.
Barack and Michelle Obama are set to executive produce the project through their Higher Ground Productions company.
The show’s description says, “President and Mrs. Obama wanted to honor America’s 250th anniversary and celebrate the unique history of our nation on this special occasion…But then Larry David called.”
Former President Obama commented on the pairing, saying, “I’ve sat across the table from some of the world’s most difficult leaders and wrestled with some of our most intractable problems. Nothing has prepared me for working with Larry David.”
Social media mainly had negative reactions to the news of David and the Obamas teaming up.
“It sounds like it’s gonna be one big lecture. I hope I’m wrong,” one account <a href="https://x.com/EricBalchunas/status/1943381813772325127">predicted</a>.
“Played out. Preaching to the choir. We don&#8217;t need more lectures from Hollywood,” another <a href="https://x.com/AwardsDaily/status/1943367269498917054">wrote</a>.
“This is going to be so awful,” a third commenter on X <a href="https://x.com/imjaredz/status/1943396360692097354">predicted</a>.
“Get ready for the most unfunny experience of your life,” another <a href="https://x.com/EliseMcCue/status/1943494127145955393">replied</a>.
“Trash propaganda I’m sure,” said another, while someone else just wrote, “Yikes.” 
David has been vocal about political issues and recently had a meltdown over Bill Maher having dinner with President Donald Trump. He was so incensed that the comedian penned an op-ed for The New York Times, repeating the tired trope that Trump was literally Hitler. 
CNN Republican Scott Jennings blasted David for publishing the op-ed, saying it was just another example of Democrats attacking anyone who tried to open the lines of communication between people with differing opinions.
“This is the modern Left,” Jennings <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cnn-republican-torches-larry-davids-dinner-with-hitler-column-attacking-bill-maher">said</a>. “It’s an attempt always to intimidate people into not ever doing it again. It’s to silence yourselves, or we’ll do it for you. That’s the purpose of this op-ed, so that the next comedian, or the next person on the American left chooses not to speak to Donald Trump.&#8221;

Larry David

‘Yikes’: Larry David Teams Up With The Obamas For New American History Comedy Series

Barack Obama

Michelle Obama

Television

Longtime filmmaker Terry Gilliam said the reelection of President Donald Trump has changed the landscape of comedy.
The “Monty Python” alum reflected on the change during an <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/terry-gilliam-interview-trump-brazil-mary-poppins-umbria-1236307758/">interview</a> with The Hollywood Reporter that was published earlier this week. Gilliam, 84, said comedy had been hesitant and safe for a long time, but now with the Trump administration, that’s starting to shift.
“I think Trump has changed things considerably. He’s turned the world upside down,” the director said. “I don’t know if people are going to be laughing more, but they’re probably less frightened to laugh.”
He added, “There have been woke activists with a very narrow, self-righteous point of view. That’s frightened so many people, and so many people have been very timid about telling jokes, making fun of things, because if you tell a joke, these people say you’re punching down at somebody. No, you’re finding humor in humanity!”
“So, irony, satire were basically dead,” Gilliam said. “And humor, to me, is probably one of the most essential things in life. You’ve got six senses, and the seventh sense is humor, and if you don’t have that, life is going to be miserable.”
The filmmaker also observed how Trump’s return hasn’t been great for his upcoming comedy, “The Carnival at the End of Days.” The project is a satire about Satan trying to stop God from wiping out humanity and leans heavily on mocking woke leftism, which Gilliam said is very different in the current world.
“[Trump has] f***ed up the latest film I was working on. Because it was a satire about the last several years when things were going as they were. He’s turned it upside down. So he’s killed my movie,” Gilliam said.
“That was how I approached it. I think Trump has destroyed satire. I mean, how can you be satirical about what’s going on in the way he’s doing the world?” he added.
He next joked about adding a “preamble” in the movie to call out the “Trump lost years from 2020 to 2024.”
Gilliam said something similar in an <a href="https://deadline.com/2025/07/terry-gilliam-interview-brazil-next-project-1236450896/">interview</a> with Deadline, also published this week. 
“&#8230;The script, in some ways, is out of date because it was a satire of the world two years ago, and Donald Trump has come along, and he is the carnival. He’s turned the world upside down — everything,” he told the outlet. 
“We may have to rework some of the story because parts of it was very specific about the wonderful world of woke before The Donald took over again. That very narrow way of thinking of life. We’ll see where it goes. At the moment, I may be out of a job for another 10 years,” the filmmaker said.

Terry Gilliam

‘Monty Python’ Alum Said Trump Resurrected Comedy, People Are ‘Less Frightened To Laugh’

'Monty Python' Alum Said Trump Resurrected Comedy, People Are 'Less Frightened To Laugh'

Humor

As Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal famously said, “Love means never having to say you&#8217;re sorry.”
Someone should tell that to modern day comedians.
Too many apologize for their past jokes, often years after uttering them. For some, it’s Damage Control 101. The “wrong” joke, no matter how long ago it was spoken, could be a cancel-worthy affair.
Take <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52815624" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jimmy Fallon groveling for forgiveness</a> during a 2020 Tonight Show episode over a 20-year-old blackface sketch. The apology came during the height of the BLM movement.
In other cases, it’s pure virtue signaling, since no one actually remembered the bad joke in question.
The latter may explain Sarah Silverman’s recent mea culpa. The far-Left comic previously got pinched by Cancel Culture when a 2007-era blackface gag <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/sarah-silverman-says-she-lost-film-role-wearing-blackface-2007-n1041621" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cost her a movie role</a>.
She took a rare shot at Cancel Culture while sharing that story.
“You have to ask yourself, would I want this person to be changed or do I secretly want them to stay what I deem as wrong so I can point to them as f***ed up and myself as right?”
More recently, Silverman <a href="https://x.com/RollingStone/status/1924113153228423434">apologized for using the n-word</a> in previous comedy routines.
“I felt like the temperature of the world around me at the time was, ‘We are all liberal so we can say the n-word. We aren’t racist, so we can say this derogatory stuff’ … I was playing a character that was arrogant and ignorant, so I thought it was OK. Looking back, my intentions were always good, but they were f***ing ignorant.”
She’s far from alone.
Tina Fey once blasted the woke mob for policing humor. The “30 Rock” alum said she makes it a policy <a href="https://reason.com/2015/12/20/tina-fey-is-done-apologizing-for-offensi/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">not to explain her jokes</a>.
Post-George Floyd, a very different <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-53148316" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Fey yanked four “30 Rock” episodes</a> from syndication for featuring various blackface jokes. Said episodes cannot be found on streaming or DVD platforms, according to the BBC.
Fey apologized for the “pain they have caused.” What pain? The subject came up during the BLM protests. How many people cared before…or after? Context is everything, particularly in comedy, and the episodes weren’t designed to attack or belittle black people.
Standup comedian John Mulaney isn’t known for his political musings. Yet he still circled back to apologize for a riff about the 2020 presidential election. He dared suggest it didn’t matter if an elderly Joe Biden or a slightly less elderly Donald Trump won.
“Outrage” ensued, and he <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/12/john-mulaney-snl-backlash-kimmel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">backpedaled on Jimmy Kimmel Live!</a>
&#8220;I should have said I very much want one to win over the other, and there will be improvements if one wins. I deserved backlash. I flat-out just forgot to do it&#8230; I never was like, ‘Hey, don’t you mean that one guy is worse than the other?’ And I forgot to make the joke good.&#8221;
Taylor Swift is arguably the most famous celebrity in the world, meaning she’s heard her fair share of insults, jokes and more. It’s not pretty, but it comes with the territory.
Comedienne Nikki Glaser still felt the need to <a href="https://www.today.com/popculture/miss-americana-nikki-glaser-apologizes-taylor-swift-t172987" target="_blank" rel="noopener">apologize to Tay Tay</a> after an old crack she made about the pop superstar resurfaced in the Swift documentary “Miss Americana.”
“She’s too skinny; it bothers me&#8230;all of her model friends, and it’s just like, c&#8217;mon!'&#8221;
Glaser called it “projection” due to her own eating disorder issues. Has she apologized to others <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/nikki-glaser-does-a-brutal-hilarious-high-speed-roast-of-biden-trump-and-other-politicians-video/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">she’s hammered with her humor since then</a>? It’s even more ironic because her biggest career boost came when she killed it at Netflix’s “The Roast of Tom Brady” last year.
The Apology Tour isn’t reserved for stand-up comedians. The key forces behind 2007’s “Superbad” — co-star and co-writer Seth Rogen, and star Jonah Hill — have apologized for the movie’s raunchy humor.
Rogen apologized for <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/seth-rogen-regrets-homophobic-superbad-jokes/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">capturing how real teenagers talk</a> in the hit comedy.
&#8220;There are probably some jokes in &#8216;Superbad&#8217; that are bordering on blatantly homophobic at times. They&#8217;re all in the voice of high school kids, who do speak like that, but I think we&#8217;d also be silly not to acknowledge that we also were, to some degree, glamorizing that type of language in a lot of ways.&#8221;
Hill piled on, blasting his own early comedies as portraits of “<a href="https://variety.com/2019/film/festivals/berlin-film-festival-jonah-hill-wants-to-challenge-traditional-masculinity-1203134534/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">toxic masculinity.”</a>
“I love those films, but I also think that if you look back at those films, a lot of what they’re showing is major bro comedy, and bro masculinity.”
He said he wanted his newer films to educate viewers about the “problematic behavior” highlighted in these box office hits.
Not every comic performer feels this way. Monty Python alum John Cleese isn’t eager to apologize for his past gags, and he occasionally does so <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/john-cleese-issues-sarcastic-apology-155723976.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">with tongue firmly in cheek</a> to make his point.
Podcasting giant Adam Carolla is even more firm in his “no apology” mantra.
The “Mr. Birchum” star defended his position in 2015 during a <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/adam-carolla-done-apologizing_n_6811940" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HuffPo conversation</a>.
&#8220;Go find a politician or somebody who&#8217;s in charge and poke a popsicle stick up their butt…I&#8217;m a comedian. I&#8217;m done apologizing, I really am&#8230;And by the way, everyone who apologizes is faking it. They&#8217;re only doing it because they&#8217;re gonna get canned.&#8221;
He later started his book, “Everything Reminds Me of Something: Advice, Answers … but No Apologies“ with this promise.
“I’m not going to apologize. S****y times call for s****y language.”
And, bless his heart, 98-year-old Mel Brooks has yet to apologize for “The Producers” and its pro-Hitler ditty, “Springtime for Hitler.”
Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic and editor of <a href="https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HollywoodInToto.com</a>. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News’ Big Hollywood. Follow him at <a href="https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HollywoodInToto.com</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Sarah Silverman

Comedians Apologize…For Jokes? 

Cancel Culture

George Floyd

Tina Fey

Comedian Nate Bargatze recently mentioned some of the failures of people currently running Disney.
The 46-year-old standup artist, who has become popular in recent years for telling clean jokes that are also hilarious, said that Walt Disney is one of his biggest influences, emphasizing that the entrepreneur cared about his audience (other names on the list included Jerry Seinfeld, Judd Apatow, and Adam Sandler). But he said CEO Bob Iger isn’t doing the best job of carrying on Disney’s legacy.
“Now Disney is run by a guy that’s just a businessman,” he told <a href="https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a64621068/nate-bargatze-interview-2025/">Esquire</a> in a new cover interview, seemingly referring to Iger. “Well, that guy doesn’t care about the audience.”
He then referenced his own fans and how much he owes them, saying, “None of this happens without them.”
The article goes into detail about how Bargatze is currently the most successful comedian in the world, outselling Seinfeld, Dave Chappelle, and Sebastian Maniscalco combined last year. What makes his story even more incredible is that his comedy doesn’t include swearing, sex, drugs, or politics. 
Bargatze talked about some of his fellow comedians who garnered attention for saying controversial things and how he attempted to avoid that path. 
“They would skip a bunch of steps,” he said of his contemporaries. “Now they’re mentioned everywhere because they said something crazy. Now Netflix called them and they got a special.” 
“The hardest thing to do is to stay that path because it’s not as flashy,” Bargatze told the outlet. “You got to just sit in it. You got to slowly keep going. Then you get to the point where I’m at now. I’m frustrated by an entire system that’s like, ‘Y’all were just grabbing headlines,’ when I felt like, ‘Why did y’all not look at me more?’”
The comedian also hinted at plans for ending his standup career and working on entertainment projects with broad appeal, plus opening a theme park in Tennessee called Nateland. “I don’t think anybody’s even trying to make stuff for everybody,” he said.
Meanwhile, Disney has not been doing well lately with several high-profile flops in recent years, including the latest disaster, “Snow White.” The film is expected to lose up to $100 million after being plagued by controversies with both the lead stars and the content of the movie itself. 
Iger was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/disney-ceo-bob-iger-promises-to-reduce-output-of-marvel-movies-tv-spinoffs-after-multiple-flops?author=Amanda+Harding&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Disney+CEO+Bob+Iger+Promises+To+%E2%80%98Reduce+Output%E2%80%99+Of+Marvel+Movies%2C+TV+Spinoffs+After+Multiple+Flops">formerly</a> the CEO of Disney from 2005 until 2020. He was replaced by Bob Chapek and then reinstated to his position in November 2022 when Chapek was fired. In November 2023, Iger said the studio was too focused on sequels.
Last May, the Disney exec promised the company would pivot from focusing on quantity to quality, reducing the studio&#8217;s output of sequels and television spinoffs overall.

Nate Bargatze

Comedian Nate Bargatze Says The ‘Businessman’ Running Disney ‘Doesn’t Care About The Audience’

Comedian Nate Bargatze Said The Person Running Disney 'Doesn't Care About The Audience'

Celebrities

Disney

U.S.

Late night host Jimmy Kimmel has a theory about how Trump won the 2024 election. In his opinion, it came down to comedians being “canceled” for telling funny jokes.
The 57-year-old celebrity shared his opinion during a newly published <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/jimmy-kimmel-trump-late-night-future-interview-1235315906/">interview</a> with Rolling Stone. 
“I don’t put limits on what I laugh at,” Kimmel said. “But for me personally, as I’ve grown older, as I’ve matured, I won’t make a joke that I wouldn’t make if a person of that color or persuasion was in the room. That’s how I look at it. I think a lot of the outrage is completely manufactured, and it’s like, a lot of these people who are angry aren’t really angry. I think these liberals who’ve done such a good job of viciously attacking comedians are a big part of the reason why Trump is the president right now.”
The comedian expanded on what he meant, mentioning how he thought people were fed up with being told what they were allowed to think was funny.
“I just think human beings in general, when you see something that makes you laugh and you see a bunch of other people laughing, and then somebody steps in with their arms folded and goes, ‘That’s not funny, and here’s why that’s not funny,’ it just doesn’t give you a good feeling about a person. And you want to say to that person, ‘Lighten up,’” he said.
Kimmel went on, “There’s no black and white when it comes to comedy. There is no line. The line is different for every person. Dave Chappelle can say things that somebody else might not be able to. I don’t think anybody should be canceled. I really don’t.”
He also mentioned his intention of continuing to focus on President Trump during his nightly monologues. “It was 2016, and I had Hillary Clinton on,” he told the outlet. “I said to Hillary during a commercial break, ‘I hope Trump gets the nomination. I think he’ll be a slam-dunk for you.’ And she said, ‘Be careful what you wish for.’ I’m not in the group of people who thought he might win. Listen, when O.J. was found not guilty, I was just absolutely shocked. I had that same feeling.”
&#8220;I had this faith in America that was shaken, and I still am not over it,” Kimmel said. “I thought that when it comes down to it, this country, we do the right thing. That’s obviously in the past.”

Jimmy Kimmel

Jimmy Kimmel: Libs ‘Attacking Comedians’ Over Jokes Is A ‘Big Reason’ Trump Is President

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