Conan O’Brien Calls Out Comedians Who Slam Trump, Says They’ve Exchanged ‘Humor’ for ‘Anger’

Conan O’Brien says he understands why Donald Trump’s second presidency has been “very challenging” for comedians — but he believes comics still need to do what they do best: be funny.

Speaking during a recent appearance at Oxford University (shared on YouTube on Tuesday, Jan. 6), O’Brien, 62, offered blunt advice about what happens when a comedian’s act becomes pure rage instead of comedy.

He said some performers fall into a pattern of repeating profanity-laced anti-Trump lines as the entire joke. But, in O’Brien’s view, that kind of approach can backfire.

“When you’re so angry, you’ve been lulled into just saying ‘F Trump, F Trump, F Trump,’” he explained. “I think now you’ve put down your best weapon, which is being funny. And you’ve exchanged it for anger.”

O’Brien acknowledged the argument he often hears in response: that the moment is too serious to prioritize humor. But he disagrees — especially when it comes to comedians.

“If you’re a comedian, you always need to be funny,” he said. “You just have to find a way… to channel that anger… because good art will always be a great weapon. It will always be a perfect weapon against power.”

In other words, he argued, simply yelling doesn’t land the same punch as a well-crafted joke. “If you’re just screaming and you’re just angry,” he said, “you’ve lost your best tool in the toolbox.”

During the conversation, O’Brien also pushed back on an assumption he said he hears often: that Trump’s presidency must be a goldmine for comedy. In reality, he argued, it’s more complicated.

He compared the challenge to his days at The Harvard Lampoon, where student writers produced parodies of magazines — except one. The National Enquirer, he said, was too outrageous to spoof because it already sounded like satire.

O’Brien suggested Trump can create a similar problem for comedians: the “joke” can end up sounding like the real headline.

He illustrated it with an example of a sketch premise where Trump “kind of [talks] crazy,” tears down part of the White House, and builds something flashy — and then undercut it with the punchline that reality now moves faster than parody. “Yeah, no,” he joked. “That happened yesterday.”

For comedy to work, O’Brien said, it needs a stable baseline — something “straight” to bounce off. But right now, he argued, the baseline itself keeps shifting.

“So comedy needs a straight line to go off of,” he said. “And we don’t have a straight line right now. We have a very bendy, rubbery line. We have a slinky.”

Elsewhere in the talk, O’Brien reflected on how he approached politics during his years in late-night TV, saying he often leaned into a “cartoony” style and mocked politicians on “either side.” That approach, he said, worked well — but he warned that it’s easy for comics to lose their footing when they’re focused on delivering a message rather than landing a joke.

“It’s tricky,” he said, especially when someone is “really trying to make a point.”