Comedian Whitney Cummings skewered CNN and its rating numbers during the network’s “New Year’s Eve Live” special from Times Square on Tuesday night.
In fact, Cummings was shocked at points throughout her approximately 4-minute roast of 2024 that CNN did not cut to commercial.
“The 2024 election fried our brains. The Democrats couldn’t hold a primary because they were too busy holding a body upright,” she said in an obvious reference to President Joe Biden.
“Are we still rolling? Am I off?” Cummings asked CNN co-hosts Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen.
“Go for it!” Cohen exhorted her.
“It was amazing that the pro-choice party didn’t give their voters one when it came to the presidential candidate,” Cummings continued. “Kamala was forced on us so hard you’d think she was patented by Pfizer or Moderna, whichever one.”
🚨 LMAO! Comedian Whitney Cummings is absolutely ROASTING Kamala Harris and CNN… while on CNN 🤣🔥
“Kamala was forced on us so hard you’d think she was patented by Pfizer!”
“I’m now playing like 3,000 seat theaters, which is about the viewership of CNN these days.”
She’s… pic.twitter.com/aZvnH6o5AQ
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) January 1, 2025
“Oh God, Andy just gave me a very scary look,” she said.
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Pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and Moderna tend to be among the top advertisers on network television and beyond, so Cummings seemed genuinely surprised she got away with her joke.
Cohen appeared not too fazed and encouraged Cummings to continue her set.
Cummings closed out her 2024 roast, saying, “Since we only have a minute left live on establishment media, why don’t we say a bunch of things that we know that they’ll never cover.”
“Are we still rolling?” she asked.
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Cummings listed afterward on X some of the topics she rattled off on CNN and others she did not get to on air.
“The first trump shooter didn’t have any silverware in his house, The Crown prince of Saudi Arabia put money into Disney, why is fluoride still in our water? Monsanto paid Google to skew search results, why are so many presidents chefs dead?”
this is what I said at the end of my roast set on CNN tonight that I zoomed through beacause I was running out of time (and scared) : Since I only have a minute left and I’m live on an establishment media, I figured I’d list some of things mainstream media will never cover:…
— Whitney Cummings (@WhitneyCummings) January 1, 2025
“I can’t believe you guys are still letting me go. This is amazing. I love CNN. Please stop me, Andy, because I will just keep going. … No censorship on CNN,” Cummings said as her time on the network ended.
She then posted part of her roast on X and asked, “I mean please list the lies I told?”
I mean please list the lies I told? https://t.co/pkXyiInUp3
— Whitney Cummings (@WhitneyCummings) January 1, 2025
The coup de grâce — a dig at CNN itself — was said during her interview and not the roast.
Cummings noted that she has been “playing bigger and bigger venues” around the country.
“I thought being a mom would mean that less people want to come see me. I’m now playing, like 3,000-seat theaters, which is about the viewership of CNN these days,” she said.
Ouch!
It should be noted that almost all the comedian’s hits were on the left and CNN.
And she was not wrong about the network’s abysmal viewership numbers.
Fox News reported, “In the two weeks following Trump’s win, CNN saw double-digit percentage drops across the board in key metrics, shedding 33 percent of total viewers compared to 2024 averages, losing 39 percent in the [25-54] demo and 36 percent of its already small audience during prime time.”
“During the first week of December, CNN’s prime-time lineup of ‘Anderson Cooper 360,’ ‘The Source with Kaitlan Collins’ and ‘CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip’ averaged only 367,000 total viewers from 8-11 p.m. By comparison, Fox News Channel averaged 2.5 million total prime-time viewers during the same period,” Fox noted.
The Food Network’s prime-time programming saw bigger numbers during the time period.
CNN, to its credit, let Cummings say her piece.
Nothing like some good old-fashioned truth-telling to start the new year off right.
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