Zach Galifianakis has criticized comedian podcasters who have interviewed Donald Trump without challenging him.
The Republican President, 79, has appeared on various podcasts over the years, including The Joe Rogan Experience, Flagrant and This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von — all of which are hosted by stand-up comedians.
“All the podcasters that have had the president on now, they don’t do their court jester. They don’t do it,” Galifianakis said on a new episode of the Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend podcast. “They suck up to him.”
The Hangover star argued that by doing so, comedians are “not doing their job.”
“That’s not the job of a comedian,” he insisted. “You are to challenge, you are to make uncomfortable... you are not to sit there and fake laugh. That is not the job of the court jester. Period.”
Recalling the time he had former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on his Between Two Ferns podcast in 2016, Galifianakis said: “I could tell she didn’t want to be there. And I totally get that.”
He revealed that he nearly called off the interview after being told he could not bring up her email controversy. “I go, ‘Well, we don’t have to do the interview. That’s fine, we won’t do it,’” he said. “When you tell powerful people no, it’s crazy!”
Galifianakis added that Clinton’s team quickly relented, agreeing to let him discuss the hot-button topic. “It’s not that important to me to do it the way they want to do it,” he said. “If you’re going to come into comedy, you’ve got to do it the way we want to do it.”
Agreeing, O’Brien lauded Galifianakis’s 2014 interview with former president Barack Obama as “hilarious” and “magical.”
“He sat there and entered your world of being intentionally ignorant about who he is, what he does, cutting him off, and being insanely rude and gave it back to you in equal measure,” the former Late Night host said. “And you looked at it, and you’re like, ‘This is a great piece of comedy.’ And I know it reflects well back on the president.”
O’Brien suggested that Trump would do well “to understand that if he let himself be the butt of the joke, it would be humanizing.”
“It wouldn’t work,” Galifianakis responded. “You wouldn’t do that with him.”
Trump previously appeared on Andrew Schulz’s Flagrant podcast in 2024. During the conversation, the comedian — who later admitted his regret for supporting Trump over Kamala Harris — made headlines for laughing at the president’s claim that he is “basically a truthful person.”
“What does that mean?” the Code Guy alum asked through a fit of laughter. Trump then went on to dispute critics’ claims that he “rambles,” with Schulz jumping in to quip that he instead “weaves.”
“I don’t ramble. What you do is you weave things in. You do it,” the president said to Schulz, prompting him to again burst into laughter.
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