Adam Carolla has a theory about what happened to Rosie O'Donnell, Kathy Griffin, Gavin Newsom, and Karen Bass. They all had jobs. Then they got consumed by one thing: fighting Donald Trump. And according to Carolla, it swallowed everything else they were supposed to be doing.
On a recent episode of "The Adam & Dr. Drew Show," the comedian and "Man Show" host rattled off names of public figures he says have surrendered their entire professional identities to opposing the president. Politicians who were elected to govern. Comedians who were paid to be funny. All of them, in Carolla's telling, now do the same thing full-time.
"Gavin Newsom, Karen Bass — their full-time job is just fighting Trump. … It's no longer what they want to do, it's 'what does Trump want to do?', then 'I'm going to go fight Trump.'"
He then turned to the entertainment side of the ledger:
"Rosie O'Donnell, you wanted to do comedy at some point, right? Now you sit and you fight Trump. And Kathy Griffin, you wanted to do comedy, and you both could do it at a high level, but you threw it all away to fight Trump. Could you imagine?"
According to Fox News, Carolla drew a clean line between disagreeing with a president and letting that disagreement devour your life. He put it simply: "I didn't like Obama, but I didn't give up on life to fight Obama."
That distinction matters. Political disagreement is normal. Restructuring your entire existence around opposition to a single person is something else. And the evidence that these figures have done exactly that is not hard to find.
O'Donnell moved from the United States to Ireland after the 2024 presidential election. She has consistently spoken out against Trump on social media and in interviews, demanded his removal from office numerous times, and, in a 2025 interview, admitted she had promised her therapist she would stop posting about Trump on social media. She could not follow through.
Griffin recently declared herself "uncanceled" nearly a decade after sharing a photo of herself holding a bloody mask designed to look like Trump's head. She has also told her podcast listeners to talk to their neighbors and "find out if they're MAGA or not," because it is important to know "who's on our team."
These are not people engaged in normal political discourse. These are people who have organized their daily lives around hostility toward one man.
Carolla and Dr. Drew Pinsky explored why this happens, and Carolla's theory was surprisingly thoughtful. He argued that comedians use their brains for a living, and when that brain has nothing productive to do, it drifts.
"If you're a comedian, and you have some downtime, and you're no longer hitting the boards, you know what I mean? You got money in the bank, and you can kind of have your afternoons off. And you don't need to go out and hit mics that night, then that mind will start wandering on you. What you need to do at that point is go build a gazebo. You need to get up and get out. … You need a project."
There is real insight in that. Carolla is not diagnosing a political problem. He is diagnosing a human one. People who lose their sense of purpose will find a substitute, and opposing Trump has become the most available substitute for a certain kind of famous person who no longer has a reason to get out of bed in the morning.
Pinsky agreed, observing that the behavior "must be rewarding in some way because they keep doing it, right? It gives them meaning."
Pinsky raised another point worth considering. He suggested that these figures might not have anyone in their lives willing to say, "Hey, hey, what are you doing?" because otherwise, "it would be hard to keep doing it month after month."
Carolla took it further. He theorized that anyone who asked those questions "would be expelled from that person's life if they started asking questions." He imagined a friend suggesting to O'Donnell that they play pickleball instead of recording another anti-Trump tirade, and O'Donnell responding: "Get out of here."
That dynamic is worth taking seriously. When the people around you only reinforce one behavior, and anyone who challenges it gets pushed out, you are not engaged in political activism. You are in a feedback loop. The obsession feeds itself because no one is left to interrupt it.
Fox News Digital reached out to O'Donnell, Griffin, and Newsom for comment. None of their responses was noted. Bass' office, however, did respond, and the statement is revealing in ways her team probably did not intend:
"Mayor Bass will always fight for LA — against ICE's cruel raids and against the status quo — which is why, after decades of rising homelessness, she delivered historic reductions, reversing the trend line in LA and bucking the national trend."
A comedian says the mayor of Los Angeles spends her time fighting Trump instead of governing. The mayor's office responds with a statement that leads with fighting ICE. The second half of the statement pivots to homelessness, claiming "historic reductions" without offering a single number to support the claim.
Carolla said their full-time job is fighting Trump. Bass' own office confirmed it in the first sentence of its rebuttal.
The deeper point Carolla is making is not really about Trump at all. It is about what happens when talented people abandon the thing they were good at in exchange for the thing that makes them feel righteous. O'Donnell and Griffin were successful comedians. Carolla acknowledged they "could do it at a high level." Now one lives abroad posting through her rage, and the other is declaring herself "uncanceled" from an incident that defined nearly a decade of her public life.
Politicians are no different. Voters elect them to fix potholes, reduce crime, build housing, and manage budgets. When those officials spend their energy and political capital on performative resistance, the people who elected them get less of what they were promised.
Carolla nailed the diagnosis. When the brain has no constructive goal, "it starts turning. And that's a problem." The turning has been visible for years now, in green rooms and city halls alike. The only people who cannot see it are the ones still spinning.