Comedian Nikki Glaser revealed that “real fear” is what keeps her from turning her roasting skills to Donald Trump and his MAGA base.
Speaking on the red carpet Sunday for the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which this year went to Conan O’Brien (selected before Trump’s overhaul of the center), Glaser told The Hill that she used to steer clear of politics in her comedy because “I don’t want to alienate anyone.” But that’s changed, she said. “I’m at the point now that if I don’t say something political, it’s because I’m scared to.”
As for what she thinks could happen if she made politicians the butt of her jokes, Glaser explained, “You just are scared that you’re going to get doxxed and death threats or who knows where this leads—like, detained.” The roast comedian emphasized that she wasn’t being dramatic as she joked about ending up “on the gallows.”
“It’s a real fear,” she explained. “It’s unfortunate that that’s true, but I’m not going to lie and say I don’t think about that sometimes and go, ‘Oh, god.’ Can I just say, I hope they all know, I can be up on the gallows and say, ‘I was just joking. I’m a comedian.’ I hope that that’s a defense.”
Glaser hasn’t always steered clear of making aggressive jokes about Trump and politics. In 2022, when she guest-hosted Jimmy Kimmel Live, Glaser’s remarks about politicians on both sides of the aisle were brutal.
She referred to Trump as a “bloated factory-farm pig corpse” and opined that Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene’s mom was “anti-abortion.” Though she had jokes for the likes of Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg too, they were less visceral than her Republican takedowns.
Now though, Glaser said she feels she’s “too angry,” but also “too uninformed” to comment on politics.
“I’m uninformed on purpose because I just get too upset,” she said in another red carpet interview Sunday, without detailing which headlines she found upsetting. “When I’m depressed, I can’t be funny,” she went on, but “recently I’ve been so upset and in disbelief” that politics has “become funny again.”
Glaser was in the right place for that sentiment at Sunday’s Kennedy Center event for O’Brien, which featured several savage jokes about the president, who was never named but at one point referred to as an “orange a--hole” by Sarah Silverman.
Glaser got in the action at the event during a bit where she was interrupted by a recurring Conan character “The Interruptor,” per Deadline, in which they joked that the character was chosen as Trump’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development because he was a “registered sex offender.”
“Which this administration considers…” Glaser replied, as The Interrupter cut in, “A massive plus!”
For more, listen to Nikki Glaser talk about roasting Tom Brady and trying not to get “canceled” on The Last Laugh podcast.
