Golden Globes Host Nikki Glaser Cuts Trump And ICE Jokes Minutes Before Broadcast—’You Just Don’t Say That Guy’s Name’

On January 7, Renee Nicole Good, a thirty-seven-year-old mother of three, drove away from federal agents on a South Minneapolis street. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross fired three shots—one through her windshield, two through her driver’s side window. She died shortly after. Within days, nationwide protests demanded accountability. By January 11, when comedian Nikki Glaser took the Golden Globes stage before millions, the nation was asking a stark question: What happens when power goes unchecked?​

Glaser had built her reputation on fearless comedy. At Netflix’s Tom Brady roast in May 2024, she delivered a performance so sharp it “changed everything,” she told Today. She mocked Brady’s divorce with surgical precision and went viral overnight. Her career launched into the stratosphere. Facing 8.66 million Golden Globe viewers on a night when nationwide protests raged, the sharpest roaster in comedy went quiet on current events. No references to the administration. No commentary on federal enforcement. Not even coded wordplay. She chose safety over risk.​​

The Mentor’s Warning

Comedy legend Steve Martin wrote a joke for Glaser before the ceremony. It referenced the Kennedy Center’s controversial renaming to include the president’s name—a move that sparked legal battles and family outrage. Martin’s punchline: Glaser had just performed at the renamed Kennedy Center and was now at a similarly rebranded Beverly Hilton. But Martin called her back with a warning. “He said don’t do that. It’s not the right tone for the night,” Glaser told Howard Stern. “And he was right,” she admitted.​

The Joke That Felt Too Dangerous

Glaser had planned wordplay about a bar running out of frozen water. The punchline: “I hate the cold stuff”—a double meaning aimed at Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But she scrapped it. “It just felt like, oh, even that’s being too trivial,” she told Stern, according to Variety. “This isn’t even that anymore. It’s hard to strike the right tone”. The decision exposed a chilling reality: when a simple, abstract joke about frozen water feels too dangerous to tell on network television, comedy itself has been silenced. Not by law, but by fear.​

Who Was Renee Nicole Good?

According to reporting and video footage, Renee Nicole Good was a Minneapolis mother of three. On January 7, she was driving when she encountered federal agents conducting operations. What followed became the catalyst for nationwide outrage. The Department of Homeland Security claimed she attempted to run over officers—an act of domestic violence, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey rejected that account entirely. “That’s nonsense,” he told reporters. “The video shows an agent recklessly exercising power that led to someone losing their life”.​

The American Civil Liberties Union’s campaign organized a weekend of action planned for January 10-11, with demonstrations emerging across America demanding accountability. In Minneapolis, hundreds gathered at vigils and marches, some confronting federal officers outside enforcement facilities. Governor Tim Walz placed National Guard troops on standby. The scale was unprecedented: a mother’s death had awakened widespread rage about unchecked federal power.​

Hollywood Speaks on the Red Carpet

Mark Ruffalo, Natasha Lyonne, and Wanda Sykes arrived at the Golden Globes wearing black-and-white pins reading “ICE OUT” and “BE GOOD”—honoring Renee Nicole Good and Keith Porter, a Los Angeles man shot by an off-duty enforcement agent on New Year’s Eve. “This is for Renee Nicole Good, who was murdered,” Ruffalo told USA TODAY. Sykes declared: “We need to speak up and shut this rogue government down”. The red carpet became a space for truth-telling. But the stage where Glaser would speak remained carefully neutral, carefully silent.​

When Glaser took the stage, she never mentioned enforcement agencies, the administration, or the protests raging across the country. The absence was deafening. In previous years, Golden Globes hosts—particularly Ricky Gervais—had wielded comedy as a weapon against power. But Glaser had read the room, read the moment, read the fear. She chose to perform within safe boundaries, delivering jokes about celebrities while power—the story of the week—went unexamined on Hollywood’s biggest stage.​

One Permitted Jab

Glaser did land one punch—not at government, but at her own network. “The award for most editing goes to CBS News,” she quipped. “Yes, CBS News: America’s newest place to see BS news”. She was referencing CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss’s decision to shelve a segment about Venezuelan migrants deported to a brutal El Salvador prison. Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi said the story was “factually correct” but Weiss killed it anyway, according to The Los Angeles Times. Glaser’s joke was sharp, but it targeted editorial cowardice at her employer, a safer target than the government itself.

Days after the ceremony, Glaser sat with Howard Stern and explained her thinking. “You just don’t say that guy’s name right now,” she said of the president. “I just want to give it space”. She believed political jokes are “not funny” right now, given the climate. The calculation was brutally clear: an 8.66-million-viewer audience wanted escape, not confrontation. Glaser read that demand and delivered safety. But in doing so, she became part of the larger narrative—how fear reshapes discourse when silence feels like survival.​

The 2026 Golden Globes drew 8.66 million viewers on CBS, a nearly seven percent decline from the prior year’s 9.27 million, Nielsen data showed. It marked the second straight year of ratings drops. The absence of political edge—the thing that made the Golden Globes must-watch television—likely mattered.

Glaser will host again. She’ll joke about celebrities and entertainment. But the Golden Globes 2026 will be remembered for what wasn’t said—and what that absence revealed. When fear convinces the boldest voices to whisper, when a mother’s death becomes too risky to reference, when current events disappear from a stage built for truth-telling, silence becomes complicity. The broader question lingers: in moments that demand witness, demand voice, demand accountability, what responsibility do those with platforms bear? Glaser’s answer that night was deferential. History may judge it differently.​