Bill Burr may not find this funny, but the irony of it is pretty amusing.
Last week, the comedian was caught on camera getting pretty salty with reporters on the red carpet of the 2025 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor ceremony, where his friend and fellow comedian, Conan O’Brien, was being honored.
Burr’s frostiness was prompted when a journalist told him she’d been “reading up” on his support of accused UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter Luigi Mangione and asked him to clarify his previous comments, according to a video published on YouTube by a freelance journalist.
“I don’t think you read up on it because I said what I felt about it, and I said what a lot of people said,” he responded bluntly.
“What are you going to bring up next, the Middle East?” Burr continued, sarcastically. “I went to summer school three out of four years of high school, I’m not qualified to talk about this.”
Visibly annoyed, Burr began to snarkly make fun of the reporter by pretending to be one and asked, “What do you think about global warming?”
But his sarcasm didn’t really register with another reporter, who latched on to his global warming crack, and decided to ask him a question about Tesla boycotts and Elon Musk.
“I don’t watch the news!” Butt replied. “I have no idea what’s going on.”
Burr then went on to explain that what he does watch is silly Instagram content like “people wipe out on motorcycles” and “lions and hyenas fight each other.”
“I don’t think you should be asking a comedian,” Burr said about the more serious social and political questions being hurled his way. “You’re a journalist.”
When the second reporter pointed out that “comedians are on top of current events,” Burr got even more irritated.
“No, no that’s weak,” Burr said. “That’s you guys passing the buck. You guys need to have balls again, which you don’t.”
He then went on to mock the media, and imitated the press again by talking in a silly, high-pitched voice.
“You guys go, ‘Should we be thinking this? Duh?’ You guys present stuff like that. You guys used to have balls. You need to get your balls back. And it’s not my job, I’m a dancing clown.”
Ultimately, Burr did express why he was so frustrated by these types of questions.
“I’m not going to have some controversial moment so you guys can have clicks,” Burr said earlier in the video. “I’m not doing that. I’m here for Conan.”
Ironically, his red carpet meltdown did get “clicks,” however. A clip of the interview made its way on to X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday, and quickly went viral, garnering over a hundred thousand likes.
Although one may empathize with Burr, his frustration is of his own creation. In the past couple of months, Burr has spoken out about Musk numerous times — albeit many of his remarks were spurred by reporters. But when it comes to Burr’s support for Mangione, some of his praise was completely unprompted. The comedian yelled “Free Luigi!” out of nowhere during a segment for Complex in which he was shopping for sneakers, according to one Reddit post. He also gave Mangione another shoutout, unprompted, on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in January.
Yet, it seems the source of Burr’s exasperation with the press is less about them asking him questions about current events, and more about how traditional outlets report on current events.
Burr pointed out what he felt was media hypocrisy while speaking to Kimmel in January. The two were discussing the Palisades wildfires, when Burr took issue with the media condemning looters and not health care CEOs, who, in Burr’s opinion, are equally deplorable.
“They’re talking about looting,” Burr said. “But CNN and Fox News aren’t going to bring up the insurance companies that are just going to keep everybody’s premiums and still give themselves a bonus.”
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When Kimmel’s audience applauded, Burr smiled and then yelled: “Free Luigi!”
