During a recent appearance on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, Zach Galifianakis spoke about the relationship between comedy and politics, offering observations about what he sees as a failure of nerve among certain comedians who have chosen access over accountability.
The conversation turned to Galifianakis’s famous Between Two Ferns interview with President Obama, which Conan O’Brien described as a masterclass in not softening the comedian’s approach for a powerful guest. That observation opened the door to a broader critique.
“Podcasters that have had the president on now, they don’t do their court jester gesture,” Galifianakis said. “They don’t do it. They just suck up to him. So the comedians that have podcasts that have had Trump on, they’re not doing their job.”
He continued, “That’s not the job of a comedian. You are to challenge. You are to make uncomfortable. You’re not to sit there and fake laugh. That is not the job of the court jester. Period.”
Galifianakis also reflected on his own experience setting terms before interviewing Hillary Clinton. When her team responded that certain topics were off limits, his answer was simple.
“They wrote back, ‘Well, you can’t bring up those emails.’ And I go, ‘Well, we don’t have to do the interview.’ When you tell powerful people no, it’s crazy. They were like, ‘Okay, we’ll do it.'”
His reasoning was direct: “It’s not that important to me to do it the way they want to do it. If you’re going to come in a comedy setting, you’ve got to do it the way we want to do it.”
O’Brien added his own perspective, noting that those who allow themselves to be the target of humor often come out looking better for it.
“If they go to the supposedly vulnerable place and have a sense of humor about it, it is magical for them.” He pointed to Obama as an example of a leader who understood that dynamic, entering Galifianakis’s world of deliberate rudeness and giving it back in equal measure.
O’Brien noted that not every political figure is capable of that.
“I think there’s this misconception that the media just wants to go after conservatives, and they don’t understand that everyone benefits when they laugh at themselves. Period. Everyone wins.”
Galifianakis agreed and addressed what he sees as a structural problem with comedy that punches down rather than up.
He said, “The punching down that the right seems to do, I don’t want to get political here, but that’s not as funny to me as taking on the powerful. The math of it doesn’t work for me.”
“To take on some marginalized people, make fun of that, listen, I’m all for humor, I can defend it, but that mathematically… that’s why you don’t see a lot of comedy that comes out of the right. It’s hard to do. Not saying you cannot. It’s just difficult to do because of the dynamics.”
