Comedian Roy Wood Jr. on Sunday went after the White House and CNN at the Peabody Awards, according to a report from The Hollywood Reporter.
“Last year’s host was Kumail Nanjiani, so that is back-to-back years with a minority host. The Peabodys standing up for diversity, how about that?” Wood said during the event, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“Which means in a few months, the White House will cut their funding and so they’ll have John Mulaney, that’s on y’all,” he added, according to the outlet, appearing to reference the Trump administration’s recent attempts to target diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts.
Back in January, President Trump issued an expansive executive order stating that “illegal DEI and DEIA policies not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws, they also undermine our national unity.”
The president added that the policies “deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system.”
According to its website, the Peabody Awards does not have any “set criteria for judging the winners,” but “recognize stories that illuminate social issues with depth and complexity as much as stories that entertain and inspire through their art or voice” in fields including streaming, television, digital media and radio.
Wood also seemingly referenced the recently released book “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” by his CNN colleague Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“It’s hard to create stuff about terrible things without knowing all of the terrible things. It’s hard — that’s why I quit ‘The Daily Show,’ it was too much stress,” Wood, the host of CNN’s “Have I Got News For You,” said, per the report. “I work at CNN now, I ain’t got to do nothing but plug Jake Tapper’s book.”
The Hill has reached out to the White House and CNN for comment.
