Josh Johnson Reveals His Risky Trump Joke Cut From ‘Daily Show’

Comic Josh Johnson said his first HBO special, “Symphony,” puts “me in a place where I now have another bar to set for myself and try to reach even higher.”

But Johnson’s day job as a correspondent and rotating host on “The Daily Show” sometimes has him going lower.

Asked by celebrity.land on Tuesday if he had a recent joke about President Donald Trump that was just “too much” to air, he thought for a moment.

“It was during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner episode that I did,” he said, referring to the April event where a shooter was arrested and charged with attempting to assassinate Trump.

The joke, he said, went something to the effect of: “It’s like, there have been enough attempts that people have questioned if they’re fake to the point where he really is the boy who cried shot.”

“Yeah, didn’t make it,” he added.

That kind of material has often led to extreme consequences in the Trump era and spurred debate about free speech. Just ask Jimmy Kimmel. His throwaway line that Melania Trump was an “expectant widow” days before the incident prompted Trump’s call to have him removed from the air again.

“I don’t think that they have noticed me,” Johnson said of Trump and his MAGA acolytes. “I really don’t.”

Given the fierce applause at a New York City screening of “Symphony,” Johnson’s storytelling punctuated by live music will likely get him noticed further by fans. The performer begged the audience to keep a lid on the content until it premieres Friday on HBO. So we’ll leave it at that. (It will also stream on HBO Max.)

Johnson said he keeps his club-gig muscles toned by performing on weekends. His Comedy Band Camp tour revs up in June.

In the meantime, he has plenty to keep him busy on the political front for “The Daily Show.”

Johnson said if Trump weren’t occupying so much bandwidth, he’d like to zero in on California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s considered a Democratic presidential hopeful for 2028.

“I think that there’s a real blind spot that people have for a person who makes politically advantageous moves at the cost of kind of everyone and everything, at least in rhetoric,” Johnson said. “And I think that thing should be called out more.”

He also likes to envision a time when Trump isn’t in charge.

“I think a lot of people feel that way,” he said. “I think that plenty of people are like, ‘Oh, it’d be great if I never thought about this guy again and didn’t have to live in a world where he affected how clean the water is.’ That’s a pretty big deal. And it’s seen as flippant because nine things happen a day. It’s never just, like, one scandal.”