Cowardly Science Awards Cut Seth Rogen’s Comments About Trump From Speech

It turns out that Silicon Valley’s tech bros can’t take a joke. Comedian Seth Rogen found this out the hard way this month, when he presented at an awards ceremony for scientific innovation, the Breakthrough Prize, which annually doles out awards of dubious merit to various members of the field’s gilded class. Rogan’s attempt at a light roast directed at the well-heeled audience, which included the likes of Google co-founder Sergei Brin and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, did not go over well.

Rogen reportedly went off script when he took some shots at the tech bros in attendance who had contributed to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. The Hollywood Reporter reports that Rogen said the following: “And it’s amazing that others [who have been] in this room underwrote electing a man who, in the last week, single-handedly destroyed all of American science,” Rogen said. “It’s amazing how much good science you can destroy with $320 million and RFK Jr, very fast,” the comedian said. THR notes that Edward Norton, who was presenting alongside Rogen, was visibly “uncomfortable.”

The audience of wealthy tech magnates was not impressed. The comedian’s “ad-lib landed with a thud,” THR writes, and only received light applause. Worse still, the foundation that hosted the event proceeded to edit Rogen’s jokes out of the video that would be posted online a week later. From the report:

Those watching the event on YouTube a week later, though, wouldn’t have a clue about Rogen’s pointed barbs. The so-called “full video” was subtly edited to make it seem as if Norton’s “light applause” comment was a reference to his entrance with Rogen. The stream also cut out a throw-away joke Rogen made a few minutes later in describing the work of the physics prize winner, Gerardus ‘t Hooft of the University of Utrecht. Using the metaphor of a wheel to illustrate the concept of symmetry, Rogen said the wheel could roll either left or right — and quipped that the crowd would “roll right,” according to a source in the audience.

Gizmodo reached out to the Breakthrough Prize Foundation for more information about why they felt this was necessary. In a statement to THR, the foundation said: “This year’s ceremony lasted longer than the prior few years, and several edits were made in order to meet the originally planned run time.” It should be noted that the YouTube video in question is quite long, at 139 minutes, but apparently not long enough to include another 30 seconds’ worth of material.

Any of the tech dipshits in the audience who supported Trump’s presidency very much deserved this. Under Kennedy, the Department of Health and Human Services has gutted federal grants for science research at universities across the country, while also firing droves of officials from critical health agencies like the FDA, the NIH, and the CDC. In the meantime, Kennedy is focused on commissioning a highly questionable study to help determine what can already be considered settled scientific ground: whether vaccines cause autism or not (they don’t). Critics maintain Kennedy’s changes will derail important scientific and medical research, while potentially putting Americans’ lives at risk.