The biggest challenge of being a comedian during President Trump’s administration is finding a joke “more absurd” than reality, late-night host Conan O’Brien recently told CNN.
“People ask me all the time what’s the biggest challenge being a journalist in the Age of Trump — what’s the biggest challenge being a comedian in the Age of Trump?” CNN host Jake Tapper asked Mr. O’Brien, 54, during an interview televised by the network Friday.
“Comedians usually in a normal era are supposed to take these sort of serious situations and find the comedy in them and stretch them a little bit. In the Trump era we’re essentially dealing with — I mean, every day there is such a mother lode of, I don’t know how else to say it, surreal news, that it can be very hard to find a joke that’s more absurd than what’s actually happening,” Mr. O’Brien responded.
He continued: “It’s really hard to take what’s happening right now and make it somehow more absurd than it really is. So it’s a challenge for comics. People think it’s easy, but it’s actually a little more difficult I think right now.”
While Mr. Trump remains a frequent target of late-night hosts and comedians, others before Mr. O’Brien have agreed that the president is practically beyond parody.
“It’s really tricky now, because satire has kind of become reality,” Trey Parker, the co-creator of the Comedy Central cartoon “South Park,” said in 2017.
“[W]e were really trying to make fun of what was going on, but we couldn’t keep up, and what was actually happening was much funnier than anything we could come up with,” Mr. Parker said last year.
Mr. O’Brien’s comments to CNN came on the heels of a visit to Haiti this month promoted by a crude remark Mr. Trump allegedly made recently about that nation and others. He filmed his trip for a primetime special premiering Saturday evening on TBS, “CONAN Without Borders: Haiti.”
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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