( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Jesters once had considerably more leeway than the average person to make fun of the king. If otherwise loyal subjects made light of their leader, they could lose their head. Jesters, however, could test the limits of the possible with relative impunity—until they crossed the line and lost their heads as well.
Donald Trump hasn’t revived the guillotine—not yet. So, modern jesters Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert don’t have to worry about decapitation. But ABC and CBS, fearful of falling afoul of the Trump administration, metaphorically cut off the heads of their late night hosts by cancelling their shows.
After CBS announced that it was axing The Late Show for “financial reasons,” Colbert’s show goes off the air next May. The franchise, which began with David Letterman in 1993, has indeed been losing money, not because of a dearth of viewers but a decline in advertisers. But Trump watchers suspect that the real reason is that Paramount, the parent company of CBS, needed government approval for its sale to Skydance. Shortly after the announcement of Colbert’s cancellation, the FCC approved the sale.
Jimmy Kimmel’s (temporary) cancellation was more explicitly political. After the comedian made a joke about the “MAGA gang” politicizing the killing of Charlie Kirk, Trump’s FCC threatened to discipline Kimmel if ABC didn’t act. So, ABC removed Kimmel from the air. This is the same ABC that paid $15 million to settle Trump’s defamation suit against George Stephanopoulos, money that will go toward the construction of Trump’s presidential bookshelf (sorry, library).
This week, ABC reversed itself, likely because of so many negative reactions, and Kimmel will return to the air. But Sinclair and Nexstar, two TV companies, won’t air his show on their local affiliates, reducing his audience by nearly a quarter.
Trump, as he tends to do, has doubled down by calling for NBC to cancel Seth Myers and Jimmy Fallon. He has also remarked that any TV station that criticizes him risks losing their operating license. Comedy Central, which employs Jon Stewart at The Daily Show, is also owned by Paramount but presumably he’s safe since the Skydance deal already went through. John Oliver has also been a scathing critic of Trump, but he operates from the relative safety of HBO, which doesn’t need an FCC license. But HBO is owned by Warner Brothers, and Paramount wants to gobble them up too. Arbitrary corporate decisions threaten comics just as much as vindictive presidential decisions.
Actually, no one is safe because, as Trump said at Kirk’s funeral, he’s not in a forgiving mood. “I hate my opponents and I don’t want the best for them,” the president remarked, to contrast his views with the generic, Christian, turn-the-other-cheek kind of forgiveness. Remember: Trump’s presidential career was launched at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner—basically a political roast—where then-President Obama made fun of the blowhard businessman. Comedy and revenge are thus the twin sources of America’s current catastrophe.
The United States is generally a place where comedy is king. As the weekly cartoon series South Park demonstrates, by routinely putting Trump in bed with Satan, nothing is sacred in this country.
Trump, like most would-be dictators, has no real sense of humor aside from making fun of other people. Can he wipe out the great scourge of comedy in America? He has many models to choose from.
Funny or Die
North Korea has a big film industry. It has even produced some light-hearted comedies, like An Urban Girl Comes to Get Married (1993) and the circus flick Comrade Kim Goes Flying (2012). But there’s no such thing as stand-up comedy in North Korea, and it would be impossible to imagine a North Korean version of Jon Stewart doing a satirical version of the news.
After all, poking fun of the political leadership is considered a crime in North Korea. Even accidentally defacing a picture of the Dear Leader—by folding a newspaper with his picture in it—could land you in hot water.
In 2014, Seth Rogan and James Franco produced The Interview, which not only made fun of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un but killed him off at the end of the film. North Korea denounced the film, which not surprisingly paints an unflattering picture of the country and its leader. North Korean hackers also broke into the accounts of Sony, the producer of the film, and released a trove of embarrassing information. In response to various threats, including terrorist attacks on theaters planning on screening the film, Sony decided to release the film only on-line.
So far, even the fictional assassination of sitting American presidents is permitted in the United States—consider Nicholson Baker’s Checkpoint (2004), a novel about a debate over killing George W. Bush, who was president at the time. By 2017, however, comedian Kathy Griffin’s photo of herself posing with a fake bloody head of Donald Trump led to her immediate dismissal from CNN and tumble into D-list purgatory.
Trump has a certain affinity for Kim Jong Un, having met with him three times and exchanged “love letters” with the dictator. No doubt Trump appreciates the personality cult in operation in North Korea and the country’s zero tolerance for political criticism. In his cold heart of hearts, Trump might also take a shine to Pyongyang’s policy of public executions. If he opts for the North Korean model, Trump might indeed bring back the guillotine.
Out with the Puppets
When I was studying in the UK in the mid-1980s, one of the most popular TV shows was Spitting Image, which featured puppets of famous British figures like Margaret Thatcher and the royal family. The satire was biting, but not biting enough to survive the 1990s. It has been recently revived on YouTube, where the puppets are updated (Trump, Musk) and the humor is cruder (the phone sex between Trump and Putin is, admittedly, pretty funny).
What hasn’t been revived is the Russian version of Spitting Image known as Kukly, or Dolls. Debuting in 1994, the show made great fun of Boris Yeltsin and his problems with alcohol. After a steady diet of Soviet entertainment, Russian viewers were thrilled at the irreverent approach to current events.
Vladimir Putin, however, was not amused. According to Meduza,
In January 2000, just weeks after Putin became Russia’s acting president, NTV aired an episode of the program depicting him as an evil, muttering baby gnome. Four months later, after his first inauguration, Kukly imagined the year 2020: Putin was still in office and ordering raids on NTV’s parent company. The episode was prophetic but too optimistic: it ended with Putin’s resignation.
It’s 2025, and Putin is still in office. Kukly, on the other hand, went off the air more than two decades ago. If Trump goes for the Russian option, he’ll put all TV under state control, subject independent media to fines and lawsuits, and force all self-respecting journalists into exile.
Don’t Get Political
Stand-up comedy has been popular in mainland China since the 2010s. It exploded during the pandemic: in 2021, there were an estimated 18,500 live performances.
But then, in May 2023, the comedian known as House made a joke that compared his dogs to the People’s Army: “first-rate in conduct, victorious in battle,” which is a common tagline for the military. Although it loses a little something in translation, the joke still packed enough of a punch to earn House a detention and his comedy group a $2 million fine.
As Chang Che reported in The New Yorker:
The House incident plunged the comedy industry—and the wider entertainment scene—into hibernation. Standup shows across the country were cancelled. Police shut down music festivals and bar gigs. By the fall, most comedy clubs had resumed operation, but the industry was settling into a new, bowdlerized state.
Comics still have to be careful about their jokes. Fan Chunli, a rural woman comic who tells acerbic stories about her abusive ex-husband, has gained a national following. But local Chinese authorities have warned about joking that stirs up “opposition between men and women.”
President Barack Obama talks with Jimmy Kimmel during a Jimmy Kimmel Live! video taping in Los Angeles, California, March 12, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza). Public Domain. H/t Picryl.
Even stand-up comedians in the Chinese diaspora who perform in Mandarin have opted to be careful. As one comic described the implicit rules of the comedy game:
Don’t say anything that makes China look bad. To most comedians, that means no jokes about censorship, no mentioning the president’s name, and no discussion of China’s extraordinarily strict COVID lockdowns or social topics like domestic violence.
If Trump chooses to emulate the Chinese approach, he’ll use fines and detentions to encourage a similar atmosphere of self-censorship. Stand-up comedy in the United States has often focused on sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Political humor hasn’t really been big since the days of Tom Lehrer (who died recently though he quit the comedy scene in the mid-1960s). So, once the late-night hosts are muzzled, it might not be so difficult for Trump to impose his utopian vision: don’t say or write or show anything that makes America (and Trump) look bad.
Other Models
Jesters are in short supply in other countries—Iran, Turkey, Hungary—anywhere that somber authoritarians see comedy as a threat. The bottom line is that they’re right. Comedy is a threat. Sure, the emperor has no clothes. He also has no sense of humor.
Egypt’s version of Jon Stewart, Bassem Youssef, was arrested and then forced into exile in 2013 by the authoritarian regime in Cairo. In Turkey this summer, Recep Tayyip Erdogan is cracking down on cartoonists, arresting several journalists at a satirical magazine over one relatively innocuous cartoon. The Nicaraguan government has also cracked down on cartoonists, sending Pedro Molina into exile, and has even threatened the family of another satirist in exile in an attempt to shut down his jokes. In Iran, the government recently brought suit against one of the few women comics for, of all things, making fun of a tenth-century poet.
There’s a common saying here in the United States: comedy is tragedy plus time. Trump is no laughing matter, even if many comics get a lot of mileage out of making fun of the president. Every day is a new tragedy in this second Trump era. Let’s just hope that one day soon we will be able to laugh about all this.
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