Jesters were often allowed to tell the truth to those in power in exchange for making them laugh. But not all kings, presidents and deputies feel comfortable with jesters, and many politicians have felt the temptation to silence them or, at least, set limits for them. Maybe one joke can’t change any vote, but many politicians are more afraid of a comedian than a talk show host.
For example, Donald Trump accused during his first term Saturday night live, especially for the imitations of Alec Baldwin, and at this moment he celebrated the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s show, one of his fiercest critics, and the temporary suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s show, caused by pressure from the Federal Communications Commission. In Spain, ultra organizations such as Abogados Cristianos and Hazte Oír have often dragged comedians before judges. These trials are doomed to failure, but they increase pressure on freedom of expression and can lead to self-censorship by comedians and screenwriters to avoid the costs of a trial.
Carmen Aguilera is the director of The intervalthe satirical news program on La Sexta presented by El Gran Wyoming. He says he hasn’t had to answer calls from politicians, but that the space has been the subject of unsuccessful requests. For example, from the Francisco Franco Foundation (for a sketch in which a dictator doll appeared) or Christian Lawyers (for another in which Wyoming dressed as a bishop). In his opinion, humor worries politicians and puritans because it is a very effective tool of criticism, sometimes “the only one we have”. Echoing George Orwell, who wrote that jokes are small revolutions, Aguilera says that humor is “a small revenge of the most common people against the powerful” because it highlights excesses, weaknesses and contradictions.
A joke or meme, thanks to its entertainment aspect, can work as a lever to expand the limits of freedom of expression and public debate, encouraging people to say things that might seem inappropriate in less playful contexts. For Xavi Puig, author of the essay make people laugh (Debate, 2025), the work of a politician’s communications team and advisors can be destroyed: “This is dynamite for his reputation.” And something that not even he can control, the co-director also adds The world today, satirical medium that he collected in another book, Better Don’t Joke About This, the threats, lawsuits and burofaxes he has received in his more than 15 years of history.
In the United States, satirical comedians have gained presence and influence especially since the tenure of George W. Bush. Many Americans (on the left) said they prefer to be informed The daily show, by Jon Stewart, or with The Colbert Report, by Stephen Colbert, to do it with mainstream media and news. Puig attributes this tendency to the inability of politicians and the media to “transmit constructive information” in a context of discrediting institutions, which has led to offloading, at least in part, this role onto the comedian, attributing to him a responsibility that should not be his. This trend also helps to understand why comedians are the object of the attention of politicians and activists: the role of the comedian in the formation of public opinion is more relevant than it might seem, although it is, as Aguilera says, “an anomaly”.
However, it’s not easy to know whether humor can change the way we think (or vote) or just strengthen it. Philosopher Steven Gimbel, author of Isn’t he smart? (isn’t that smart?, without Spanish translation), explains in a video call that, according to many studies, humor helps you form an opinion if you still have doubts. Or conversely, it can make us question a preconceived idea by showing us not only how something is, but also why it shouldn’t be this way or how it could be in other circumstances. The problem is that it is becoming less and less common to have doubts and it is more common to accept ideologies as monolithic blocks without nuance. This also affects fast food chains: political scientist Alison Dagnes tells us in a video call that, in the United States, Chick-fil-A chicken restaurants are associated with conservative values and Starbucks coffee shops with progressive ideas, to the point that there are Democrats who don’t go for the former and Republicans who don’t go for the latter.
As stated by academic James E. Caron, author of Satire as a public sphere of comics (satire as a comic public sphere, without translation), satire helps to identify like-minded people, which is important for “satiractivism”. This term refers to the way in which humor can motivate us to be more informed and, sometimes, to be more politically participatory. Aguilera gives the example of a campaign The interval which encouraged the sharing on the networks of a photograph with the comb dedicated to Benjamin Netanyahu: this initiative does not serve to stop any genocide, but helps to make visible the refusal of a significant part of citizens to the attacks in Gaza.
Humor can also be counterproductive, at least from the point of view of the comedian who harasses or the audience who laughs at the politician who is harassed: one of the most debated questions is whether focusing on a politician benefits him, even if it involves laughing at him. So much so that many of them do the opposite of Trump: instead of getting angry at comedians, they seek them out. In his memoirs, The world of the tarantulaPablo Carbonell recalls the attention paid to Esperanza Aguirre, then Minister of Culture, in He who falls falls in the late 1990s: “He always knew very well where he was and what revenue he intended to obtain.” More recently, US Vice President JD Vance dressed up for Halloween as one of many memes distorting his appearance to try to appropriate this surreal criticism.
Indeed, politicians increasingly use humor directly, trusting in its ability to capture attention. Or they try, because they often fail: Aguilera refers to the Ministry of Housing’s recent announcement showing people of retirement age, but still sharing an apartment. The ad received criticism from all sides, in an unusual combination of right and left, for its inappropriate tone.
More exaggerated is American Trumpism’s use of humor, as in the video of Donald Trump bombing excrement on protesters against his government. As Matt Sienkiewicz and Nick Marx explain in their book It’s not funny (it’s not funny, without a Spanish edition), many conservatives – comedians, politicians and social media users – are comfortable with transgression, and some do not hesitate to try to normalize homophobic, sexist and racist messages with a supposed layer of humor.
Dagnes published in 2012 A conservative walks into a bar (a conservative walks into a bar, without translation), a book about the absence of right-wing comedians. He believes that the landscape has changed since then, but he does not agree with the use of the “humor” label for these messages: in his opinion they are insults without nuance and without any attempt to show inconsistencies. Puig agrees and categorizes Trumpist humor as disguised harassment. He compares it to graffiti: can it be literature? Maybe yes, but not just because it is a word written on a surface.
