Dave Chappelle Prostrates Himself Before the Saudis

Even if you took the money, you don't have to 9/11 your friends

Oct 03, 2025

Dave Chappelle criticized the status of free speech in the United States while on stage at the Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia.
The comedian was one of more than 50 performers participating in the event, which has come under fire for being held in a country which has been accused of human rights violations and an oppressive regime.
“Right now in America, they say that if you talk about Charlie Kirk, that you’ll get canceled,” Chappelle told an audience of 6,000, according to The New York Times. “I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m gonna find out.” He then added, “It’s easier to talk here than it is in America.”
Chappelle later noted he feared returning to the United States because “they’re going to do something to me so that I can’t say what I want to say.” …
One comedian, Tim Dillon, says he was disinvited to attend the event for an unearthed joke that he previously made about Saudi Arabia — which arguably sends the message that if you wish to be invited to the Riyadh Comedy Festival in the future, you better not make jokes about the country even when you’re back home.
A representative for Chappelle had no immediate comment.
Comics attending the Riyadh Comedy Festival have come under fire by some for “comedy washing” the Saudi regime in return for big payouts (Dillon says he was offered $375,000, which gives a sense of the potential baseline).
Comedian Bill Burr, after performing at the show’s opening night on Friday, defended the project on his podcast, suggesting that the cultural exchange could have unexpected benefits.
“It was great to experience that part of the world and to be a part of the first comedy festival over there in Saudi Arabia,” Burr said. “The royals loved the show. Everyone was happy. The people that were doing the festival were thrilled. The comedians that I’ve been talking to are saying, ‘Dude, you can feel [the audience] wanted it. They want to see real stand-up comedy.’ It was a mind-blowing experience. Definitely top three experiences I’ve had. I think it’s going to lead to a lot of positive things.”

As Aaron Blake notes:

Dave Chappelle in Saudi Arabia: “It’s easier to talk here than it is in America.” Saudi law makes it illegal to “challenge[], either directly or indirectly, the religion or justice of the King or Crown Prince.”
Also illegal: “any attempt to cast doubt on the fundamentals of Islam.” Screenshots of the contract comedians were apparently asked to sign barred them from saying anything derogatory about Saudi Arabia or the royal family, or even joke about religion.

Neal Pollack in The Spectator:

Chappelle said onstage in Saudi Arabia that “it’s easier to talk here than in America.” He even told the audience that he was afraid to return to America because he’s not allowed to truly speak his mind. He said he’d let his new Saudi fans know if he was being censored, even though the odds of Dave Chappelle actually being censored are lower than the Carolina Panthers winning the Super Bowl.
Chappelle said, in the creepy conspiratorial audience whisper that’s his trademark, “It’s got to be something I would never say in practice, so if I actually say it, you’ll know never to listen to anything else I say after that. Here’s the phrase: ‘I stand with Israel.’”
Nice, Chappelle. Also, up yours, you anti-Semitic jerk. Enjoy your freedoms.
Much less controversial than Chappelle in Saudi Arabia was Kevin Hart, the world’s greatest sellout. “I love what y’all are doing here,” he said. “I’ll continue being a positive ambassador of your change to the world.”
With that, the positive ambassador of T-Mobile and Capital One credit cards went back to his hotel suite to wallow in his pile of gold.

Venezuela Slams “Illegal Incursion” By U.S.

Barron’s:

Venezuela’s government slammed what it called an “illegal incursion” Thursday by US fighter jets into an area under Venezuelan air traffic control, accusing the United States of a “provocation” that “threatens national sovereignty.”
The Venezuelan foreign and defense ministries said the planes were detected “75 kilometers from our shores,” without saying whether they violated Venezuelan airspace.
Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino earlier claimed five US fighter jets had “dared to approach the Venezuelan coast” and had been detected by air defenses and the tracking systems of Maiquetia international airport, which serves the capital Caracas.
In their joint statement, the defense and economy ministries accused the United States of flouting international law and jeopardizing civil aviation in the Caribbean Sea.
US President Donald Trump last month dispatched 10 F-35 aircraft to Puerto Rico, a US territory in the Caribbean, as part of the biggest military deployment in the area in over three decades.
He also sent eight warships and a nuclear submarine to the region as part of a stated operation to combat drug trafficking across the Caribbean to the United States.
Venezuela’s left-wing authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro has accused Trump of a covert bid to bring about regime change.
US forces have blown up four boats belonging to alleged drug traffickers in recent weeks, according to Trump.

The GOP’s Obamacare Crossroads

Kim Strassel.

It was hard-won Republican ignorance that landed the country with ObamaCare in the first place. The GOP didn’t want to know or talk about rising healthcare prices, couldn’t be bothered to learn about the problem. Barack Obama was happy to fill the gap. After the passage of the Affordable Care Act of 2010, healthcare reformers like Sen. Tom Coburn and Georgia Rep. Tom Price (both physicians) rallied the GOP to offer pro-market alternatives, and the party nearly succeeded in repealing the mandate-subsidy mess in 2017. That failure instead spurred a return to the Dark Ages, and the lack of interest is now herding Republicans toward further expanding and perpetuating the fiasco.
Knowledge, and courage, would require Republicans to explain to the public that most of the ObamaCare premium increases that are coming in 2026 are a result not of those expiring bump-ups, but because ObamaCare overall is failing. The government mandates and insurance subsidies have created a toxic stew of industry consolidation, inflated payments, opacity about those payments, constrained choices, and the steady erosion of (better) employer-provided coverage. Continuing to shovel money into “temporary” Covid-era bonuses—to avoid a “cliff”—isn’t even the equivalent of putting a Band-Aid on a femoral artery bleed. It’s making the cut bigger.
One glimmer of possibility: Some Republicans are making the case that getting nothing in return for giving everything is, to use the words of Donald Trump, not so smart. The GOP senators working on an extension compromise with Democrats had vaguely suggested that there might be some (minor) price to extending the enhanced handouts—say, income caps, or minimum amounts participants must pay for premiums, or fraud prevention. But that’s doing little more than making the Covid-era expansion of ObamaCare a little less bad.
Republican health reformers, those who still exist, are instead making the case that Democrats should have to give far more. If what’s driving ever-increasing prices is the structure of ObamaCare itself, the trade for more subsidies needs to be structural reforms to the underlying program. Making the rounds is a recent op-ed by health guru Avik Roy, who proposes pairing any extension of enhanced subsidies with permanent reform of ObamaCare’s more costly insurance regulations, for instance rules that land younger Americans with outsize costs. Some senators have been bringing in healthcare gurus to give briefings on other ideas, and there are many—essential benefits, the medical loss ratio, etc. There are plenty of problems Democrats should be expected to own, and to fix, as a trade for more dollars.

Youngkin Orders Protection for Women in Schools

Fox News:

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed an executive order on Thursday directing the Virginia Board of Health to draft regulations preventing biological males from participating in female sports and changing in their locker rooms.
The order follows controversy in a Washington-area county, where the school district will mark LGBTQ+ History Month in October – and at least one elementary school reportedly encouraged students to observe “National Coming Out Day” on Oct. 11.
Youngkin’s Executive Directive 14 aims to stop males from undressing and utilizing designated female spaces and keep biological men out of women’s-only athletic teams…
In that regard, Loudoun County Public School’s announcement it will celebrate LGBTQ+ History Month may run afoul of Trump and potentially now Youngkin, according to critics.
The board voted Wednesday to proclaim October as such, approving a motion from board member April Chandler of Algonkian.
The move “affirms [LCPS’] commitment to fostering equity, belonging and inclusion,” the board said in its minutes.
The school board did not respond to a request for further comment.
In Aldie, near Front Royal, an LCPS elementary school under LCPS’ auspices reportedly took the pronouncement a step further, after parents sent a purported letter from their children’s school to a reporter at ABC News’ Washington affiliate.
The reporter, Nick Minock, also posted on X that the LCPS livestream of the board meeting appeared to be inoperable Wednesday night.
The letter was reported to be from Henrietta Lacks Elementary and encouraged families to promote National Coming Out Day:
“There is also a special day called national coming out day to celebrate being yourself,” it read.

The L.A. Entertainment Economy Downturn

WSJ:

Los Angeles is full of transplants who moved here to pursue dreams of working in movies and TV. Few earned millions as stars or A-list directors. They build the sets, operate the cameras, manage the schedules and make sure everything looks and sounds perfect. The work isn’t steady, because film shoots end and TV shows get canceled. But established professionals had rarely gone more than a few months between gigs—until now.
The entertainment industry is in a downward spiral that began when the dual strikes by actors and writers ended in 2023. Work is evaporating, businesses are closing, longtime residents are leaving, and the heart of L.A.’s creative middle class is hanging on by a thread.
“This is the first year since 1989 that I haven’t had a show to work on,” said Pixie Wespiser, a 62-year-old production manager and producer who has worked on 36 TV series, including the original “Night Court” and its recent revival. “I look around and I see so many people who are seriously suffering.”
At the end of 2024, some 100,000 people were employed in the motion picture industry in Los Angeles County, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Two years earlier, there were 142,000.
The primary reason is that Hollywood is making less stuff. The film business has yet to rebound from the shutdown of theaters during the pandemic. TV production was booming in the 2010s and early 2020s as companies tried to jump-start streaming services, but in 2022, investors saw streaming growth was slowing and decided what actually matters is profitability. Entertainment companies, which plan productions many months in advance, cut spending dramatically when the strikes ended the following year.

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