Whitney Cummings Says Criticism of Riyadh Comedy Festival Is Racist and Hypocritical

Riyadh Comedy Festival performer Whitney Cummings just clapped back at critics of her Saudi Arabia trip, calling them racist and hypocritical. This defense comes just two months after Cummings went on a rant about how, like the COVID pandemic, the Stop Asian Hate movement was a plot orchestrated by “our enemy,” China.

In recent years, Cummings has been giving cultural observers the perfect case study for what happens when a comedy career slows down. Long after the end of her divisive sitcom 2 Broke Girls and with job opportunities drying up in the entertainment mainstream, Cummings’ slide to the far right end of the comedy podcast spectrum has hit some pretty despicable lows. Just in 2025, Cummings doxxed the DEI woke lesbian first responders who saved her home from the L.A. wildfires, she spread Alex Jones level conspiracy theories about the cause of the blaze, she implied that, contrary to the hashtag, there isn’t nearly enough Asian hate in America, and she performed for the pleasure of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the controversial Riyadh event.

Now, Cummings is going on the offensive against small-minded xenophobic bigots like the Human Rights Watch who objected to her participation in a whitewashing event produced by and for an authoritarian regime with a lengthy history of slavery, torture and political incarceration. “I guess I’m this weirdo, I don’t operate under the idea that every government and their people are the same,” said Cummings, whose check was signed by the Saudi government and not the Saudi people.

When the conversation turned to the Riyadh Comedy Festival late in the newest episode of Cummings’ Good for You Podcast, the comic mocked the coverage of the event and the ensuing backlash, saying, “I don’t think I need to address it, you guys have it figured out!” After Cummings pointed out that there is a difference between the people of Saudi Arabia and the government of Saudi Arabia (the main difference being that the people of Saudi Arabia would never book Whitney Cummings), she said of the criticism levied against the festival, “It’s just racism!”

“I think it took me a second, because, when people are going, ‘You’re doing something unethical,' I’m like, ‘Oh, these must be ethical people, let me listen, and then you’re like, ‘Oh no, you’re just racist!'” Cummings continued of her critics, many of whom are international human rights watchdog groups who have been fighting to raise awareness about the Saudi government’s brutal oppression of the Saudi people. 

Then, pivoting back to her politics, Cummings said of her critics, “These are also, by the way, the same people who go like, ‘Trump’s not my President, I’m nothing like our government,’ but other countries are?” Cummings further ranted. “Just because you don’t believe in comedy, doesn’t mean other people don’t.”

Of course, the objective, inarguable fact that Cummings is deliberately omitting from her clap-back is that, while a despotic government doesn’t represent its subjects’ humanity, despotic governments can and do pay spineless performers exorbitant sums of money to whitewash their reputation for torturing, silencing and executing those same subjects. 

The Riyadh Comedy Festival was a government-funded, government-organized and government-attended event, and every American comedian who participated knew exactly which dictator was paying their fee. Cummings only played the Riyadh show because the Saudi Royal Family wanted to use her platform to rehab their image — it’s not like the people of Saudi Arabia were begging their rulers to bring them the mind behind 2 Broke Girls.