Photo-illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty Images (Christopher Polk/Variety, Kevin Winter)
Clearly, there aren’t enough Yondr covers in the world to stop people planning to secretly record Dave Chappelle’s stand-up performances. Over the weekend, despite the comedian’s strict policy of locking audience members’ phones, two clips from his Nov. 7 show at Madison Square Garden began circulating online, in which Chappelle mentions the late right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk. “Since this guy, Charlie Kirk, was murdered — and I shouldn’t say this publicly — but I feel better,” Chappelle says in one of the clips. “I’m sure Charlie Kirk is watching us right now, laughing so hard he can’t breathe,” he adds in another. Since going viral, clips of Chappelle’s performance have drawn backlash from conservatives and sparked speculation about who or what else Chappelle might be referring to in the material. But why is all this so complicated? Isn’t that just a push of a button from a comedian known for pushing buttons? Here’s everything you need to know.
In the clips that have circulated online, there is no additional context about how Chappelle segued into his material about Kirk or set up the ensuing punchline about Kirk “laughing so hard he can’t breathe.” According to a source who attended the performance, the reference to Kirk’s murder was a non-sequitur that followed shortly after Chappelle explained that he suffered from the suicide of a friend, hence why he said that Kirk’s murder made him “feel better.” But this is all the information available at this time. It turns out that joke clips posted without the full context of a performance aren’t the best way to assess a comedian’s full artistic intent.
Some online commenters were quick to point out the similar wording between Chappelle’s punchline (“I’m sure Charlie Kirk is watching us right now, he’s laughing so hard he can’t breathe”) and a controversial line uttered by Hinchcliffe during The Roast of Kevin Hart earlier this year, referring to George Floyd: “But you did good, Kevin. The black community is so proud of you. Right now, George Floyd is looking at all of us, laughing so hard he can’t breathe.” The joke sparked backlash after the roast aired, with many, including Floyd’s family, questioning why it was relevant or necessary to reference Floyd’s killing in this context. Chappelle spoke openly about Floyd’s killing; he released a moving special in 2020 called 8:46 a.m. discussing the racist police brutality that leads to senseless killings like Floyd’s, so it is reasonable to assume that Chappelle’s choice of wording here, rather than a coincidence, was a direct reference to the infamous Kill Tony host.
The comedian’s Kirk comments on MSG angered many prominent conservative commentators, including several who had defended or aligned themselves with the comedian following backlash over his transphobic jokes in previous years. Elon Musk, who appeared on stage with Chappelle (and got booed) at a 2022 show in San Francisco, took to his platform, X, to ridicule Chappelle’s Kirk material. “Shame, shame, shame on Chappelle,” he wrote, adding in later posts that Chappelle is “cruel” and “just funnier.” Ben Shapiro, who in 2021 published a YouTube video attacking overly sensitive leftists titled “Dave Chapelle (sic) is funny. Get over it,” posted an outraged 28-minute video on November 9 titled “Chappelle’s Clip Shows You What the Left Really Believes.” Even fellow comedian Rob Schneider joined the chorus, posting an open letter to Chappelle on »
No. This isn’t even the biggest platform on which he made jokes about the murder of the former CEO of Turning Point USA. In his Netflix 2025 special, The Unstoppable…Chappelle joked about people equating Kirk’s death with that of Martin Luther King Jr. “They were both shot in the neck, but that’s about where those similarities stopped,” he said, which garnered far less negative reaction at the time. A few months before the special’s release, while performing at the Riyadh Comedy Festival in October 2025, Chappelle also name-checked Kirk: “Right now in America, they’re saying if you talk about Charlie Kirk, you’ll be canceled,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m going to find out.”
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