Trump Jokes Go Missing From CNN’s Kennedy Center Broadcast

The “upper echelons of the comedy world” are not pleased about CNN’s broadcast of the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor—at least, according to Page Six.

On March 19, the Kennedy Center honored Adam Sandler with the annual award, and a week later, CNN picked the show up for broadcast for the first time. And according to Page Six, “insiders were disappointed but not surprised” to see that the broadcast cut the Donald Trump jokes. At least one comedian, Chris Rock, was reportedly frustrated by the omissions made to his set.

One Rock joke that reportedly went missing from the broadcast called Trump’s hush money payment to Stormy Daniels “romantic”; in another, the comedian reportedly quipped that arresting Trump would only make him more popular. (The ceremony took place before Trump’s indictment.) “We hear Rock wasn’t pleased with the omission,” Page Six writes.

The broadcasted ceremony did, however, include Rock’s joke that Paul Pelosi (who was seated in the audience) is “the only guy that knows how I felt”—presumably after Will Smith slapped him at the Oscars.

Other comedians whose Trump jokes reportedly did not make the broadcast were David Spade and Dana Carvey. Spade reportedly riffed that Mark Twain himself could not win the award named in his honor nowadays, thanks to the “woke police,” while Carvey did a Trump impression and made cracks about Nancy Pelosi.

Neither Spade nor Carvey provided comment in Page Six’s report and representatives for both comedians, as well as Rock, did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.

Carvey did note one of the cuts on Twitter last week, although he did not seem particularly ruffled. “Unfortunately due to time my Trump bit got cut, but now thanks to modern technology you can watch it here, now,” the comedian wrote last week as he tweeted out an unaired clip from the night. “It’s like magic!”

Ever since last year, when CNN came under new management, some viewers and media critics have worried that the cable news network might be moving to the right—especially after Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter’s abrupt ouster last year. In a conference call last year, CEO Chris Licht reportedly told producers that he would prefer for the network’s anchors to stop calling Trump’s lies related to the election the “Big Lie.”

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A representative for the Kennedy Center told Page Six, “The Kennedy Center and our own producers from [production company] Done+Dusted are the sole decision-makers for what is included in both the live show and the final broadcast—not CNN.” CNN’s representative, meanwhile, told Page Six that the jokes were cut for time.

The videos posted from the ceremony to the Kennedy Center’s YouTube page bear CNN’s branding alongside the performing art center’s own, and the segments do not appear to include any of the allegedly missing jokes.

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