Comedian Nikki Glaser has been on a hot streak since her celebrated performance at Netflix‘s Roast of Tom Brady and the Golden Globes. But Glaser recently admitted that even she feels hesitant to crack jokes about the current political climate and President Donald Trump in fear of potential backlash.
“You just are scared that you’re gonna get doxxed and death threats or who knows where this leads, like, detained. Honestly that’s not even like a joke. It’s like a real fear,” she said, per Deadline.
“So it’s unfortunate that that’s true, but I’m not gonna 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,’” she continued. “I hope that that’s a defense.”
According to the outlet, Glaser was one of the few celebrities to walk the red carpet at The Kennedy Center for the Mark Twain Prize ceremony Sunday (March 23), which was awarded to Conan O’Brien.
The Kennedy Center was recently taken over by President Trump, who appointed himself chairman and replaced board members who had been previously appointed by President Joe Biden. He also vowed to root out the performing arts center’s “woke” programming.
Glaser added that she believed most of the evening’s guests will focus on O’Brien, and they certainly did. But other reports note several of O’Brien’s colleagues also took aim at President Trump.
Per The Guardian, Sarah Silverman told O’Brien, “I just really miss the days when you were America’s only orange asshole.”
Glaser is set to host the Golden Globes again in 2026 on CBS.
Her take-no-prisoners approach — which received rave reviews — may look very different when she takes the stage again in light of the political climate. However, Glaser wasn’t so tight-lipped about Trump after he won his first presidential election. Back in 2017, she told Flood Magazine that humor was “a coping mechanism, obviously, for those of us who laugh about what a fucking jackass he is.”
Still, she added, “When people say, ‘Oh Trump, at least he’s good for comedy!’ it’s like no. No one needs this. It’s like making a parody of a movie that’s already a comedy. No one does that because it’s comedy on comedy. Maybe at the beginning it was funny, but now it’s just sad.”