THIS IS CNN: CNN Can’t Kill Tim Dillon:
I’ve been researching comedy,” CNN’s Elle Reeve announces grimly at the start of her hour-long interview with comedian Tim Dillon, released this week more than a month after it was recorded. What follows is an extended whine about the manner in which legacy broadcast media in America has ceded its status as the gatekeeper of the American cultural narrative to podcasters.
Is it the most satisfying piece of television I’ve ever watched? Possibly, yes.
The irony – and it’s almost too perfect to articulate – is that had Dillon not demanded, while appearing recently on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, that CNN release the interview in full rather than packaged into a tightly edited segment to fit a specific narrative, it probably would never have seen the light of day.
The viewer quickly becomes aware that Reeve – who has the unfortunate habit of speaking with her eyes closed, as if she cannot bear to look at Dillon – is still far from over the bewildering failure of the American people to seize the God-given opportunity they recently had to elect Kamala Harris as president.*
She wonders if this catastrophe was not the fault of a gang of Rogan-led podcasters who have become the new establishment.
To his credit, Dillon responds to her question in good faith: “To hang this defeat on a few podcasters and to say they were the problem, I just don’t buy the narrative. I don’t think I’m the new establishment. If you weigh a few comedians with podcasts versus all of the people who supported Kamala Harris… multi-billionaires, huge media institutions, a whole political party apparatus, I just don’t think most people are going to buy that. It seems a great way to excuse running an unpopular candidate on a platform the American people weren’t sold on.”
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Watching Reeve’s interview, it is easy to see how through her questions she deliberately casts a wide net, seemingly comfortable in the knowledge that anything contentious or controversial in the responses will be amplified in the editing process. She pushes Dillon, for example, on the fascist-style salutes Elon Musk and Bannon supposedly made, the Machiavellian manner in which Rogan apparently controls American comics, and what she perceives to be the modern cancellation of left-wing comedians.
To this last point, Dillon cites the vast and ongoing success of left-leaning comedians Chelsea Handler, John Mulaney, Sarah Silverman and Bill Burr. When he mentions Louis CK, she instinctively makes a throat-slitting sign to imply cancellation. He continues: “Is Trevor Noah not popular? He does arenas. He’s one of the most popular comedians in the country… Where’s Amy Schumer? I don’t know. Maybe she’s in her $15 million townhouse in Brooklyn. I think she’ll be OK.”
CNN journo tells Tim Dillon that there are no left-of-center comedians. Tim Dillon rattles off a dozen 😂 pic.twitter.com/qgiH5DiWuX
— Clint Russell (@LibertyLockPod) May 20, 2025
* Christian Toto notes that Dillon told Reeve, “his podcast bookers reached out to both Sen. Bernie Sanders and Gov. Tim Walz to appear on his podcast, presumably before Election Day. Both declined the invitation.”
As Natalie Sandoval of the Daily Caller adds, Tim Dillon Agrees To Interview With CNN And It Went Exactly How You Expect. “Kudos to CNN for airing the entire interview. The true ineptitude of the CNN brain trust, sans editing, is a sight to behold. If only there was a way to play Reeve’s portion of the interview at double speed. Not that I’d dare fast forward through a second of her insights, but because she speaks with all the vitality of a patient hooked up to a morphine drip.”
Say what you will about Cathy Newman grilling Jordan Peterson, at least she brought plenty of energy to the proceedings. Reeve appears in the interview to be the equivalent of this meme if it had downed a whole bottle of Mandrax:
