Conan O’Brien Stays Quiet On George Floyd Killing: “It Doesn’t Feel Right To Talk About My Feelings Of Sadness & Anger”

Click here to read the full article.

A solemn Conan O’Brien stayed quiet on his thoughts about the killing of George Floyd Monday on Conan. Instead, the late-night host listened.

“Today feels very different,” O’Brien said. “We’re rightfully sickened by the needless killing of a black man named George Floyd. But it doesn’t feel right to talk about my feelings of sadness and anger. To do that today feels inadequate and even somehow wrong. Our national crisis is that a large and vital community in our country is in real pain ― pain because they do not feel safe, or dignified or seen. And most important of all, they do not feel heard. … So I’d like to use my very small part of television today not to speak but to listen … to someone who knows what it’s like to be black in America in 2020.”

More from Deadline

O’Brien then introduced Van Jones, CNN political commentator and CEO of Reform Alliance. Jones said black parents have always had a small hope that there was something they could tell their children that they could do that would keep them safe from even the worst officers. “We kind of sprinkled this fairy dust on our kids every day about how to survive encounters with police,” Jones said. “In this situation, there’s nothing we could have told our kids to survive. It was a lynching.”

You can watch O’Brien clip above and Jones below.

Best of Deadline

Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.