Former late night host Conan O’Brien is so close to getting it. During a Tuesday appearance at the Oxford Union, O’Brien criticized the type of comedian who has reduced themselves to saying nothing except “F Trump.” However, earlier in the event, O’Brien refused to apply this standard to the likes of ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel and CBS’s Stephen Colbert.
It is a point O’Brien has made in the past: that Trump is hard to parody, and as a result, too many self-styled comedians have allowed themselves to turn into rage machines. This time around, O’Brien declared, “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 gonna be the new Mar-a-Lago.’ ‘Yeah, no, that happened yesterday.’ ‘Oh, well, where's my check?’ ‘You don't get a check. Come back to me and tell me when you've got an idea.’”
He continued, “And so comedy needs a straight line to go off of. 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, I don't know.”
Moving on to Trump’s critics, O’Brien added:
And, so comedically, it's been very challenging, and I think some comics go the route of 'I'm gonna just say F Trump every, 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, 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' you know, 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. You just have to find a way, and you just have to find a way to channel that anger into a way that is—because good art will always be a great weapon, will always be a perfect weapon against power.
That all makes perfect sense except for the part when O’Brien hailed Kimmel and Colbert as comedians who do good work. O’Brien also claimed that the reason why ABC affiliates decided not to air Jimmy Kimmel Live! was because of FCC pressure and that his suspension was the result of a federal government pressure campaign and not what it actually was, which was Disney giving Kimmel time to calm down after his remarks about the political identity of Charlie Kirk’s assassin. Similarly, O’Brien conceded that CBS’s financial justification for cancelling The Late Show has some merit but still suggested that some people just want to be on the Trump administration’s good side.
Last year, Kimmel and Colbert, respectively, told 97 and 92 percent of their political jokes about conservatives. The other comedy shows, where there is plenty of “F ”Trump”-style “comedy,” weren’t that much better.
Here is a transcript for the January 6 event:
Oxford Union
1/6/2026
CONAN O’BRIEN: 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 gonna be the new Mar-a-Lago.”
“Yeah, no, that happened yesterday.” “Oh, well, where's my check?” “You don't get a check. Come back to me and tell me when you've got an idea.”
And so comedy needs a straight line to go off of. 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, I don't know. And, so comedically, it's been very challenging, and I think some comics go the route of “I'm gonna just say F Trump every, 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, 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” you know, 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. You just have to find a way and you just have to find a way to channel that anger into a way that is—because good art will always be a great weapon, will always be a perfect weapon against power.
