Comedian Whitney Cummings on Wednesday shared the jokes she cut from her CNN New Year’s set, including one seemingly at the expense of transgender people.
“Another 2024 CNN joke I cut for time: Shania Twain’s on the show tonight. Reminds me of this year’s Paris Olympic theme: ‘Man! I feel like a Woman,’” Cummings posted on X, the former Twitter, referencing Twain’s late-’90s hit.
Cummings wrote that she cut the joke because she “didnt know if [Twain] was going to go before or after me or if she would even do that song.”
Some people on X praised Cummings’ joke, while others questioned what exactly it meant.
“Is the joke just… trans people,” one person wrote.
“if you have to resort to this sort of transphobia in your comedy, you are announcing to the world that you are so desperately unfunny and your creative well is entirely dried up,” another person wrote.
The 2024 Olympics were accompanied by a firestorm of public transphobia, much of it directed at Algerian female boxer Imane Khelif, who is not trans.
On Wednesday, Cummings also tweeted: “If I was going to be on CNN after the ball dropped I was gonna say ― can we say it’s 2025 or we still waiting for the White House press office to give the okay?”
Representatives for Cummings did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
“Watch What Happens Live” host Andy Cohen, who co-hosted the New Year’s Eve special with CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, smiled and nodded along Tuesday night as Cummings did a “roast” of the expiring year, joking about the WNBA and the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Cooper appeared more straight-faced.
At the end of her roast, Cummings listed off things she thought the media would “never cover” otherwise.
“Trump shooter didn’t have any silverware in his house. No one thought that was weird,” Cummings said. “Are we still rolling? The crown prince of Saudi Arabia put money into Disney, so just know that there won’t be any girl characters in the next ‘Cars’ movie. Are we still rolling? This is wild. Why have so many presidents’ chefs died? Weird. Boy Scouts of America, they renamed themselves ‘Scouting America.’ You know who else changed their name? Sean Combs. Just saying. Let’s learn something in 2025.”
Afterward, Cummings spoke with Cohen and Cooper and said Cooper was “melting down.”
“I only understood like half the references,” Cooper said. “I’m not a pop culture [person].”