Bill Burr warned that Trump supporters cheering immigration crackdowns may eventually discover the same government power turned in their direction.
The “Social Reckoning” comedian made the claim in a nearly hour-long Rolling Stone interview that moved through President Donald Trump, ICE, housing, surveillance fears, wokeness, Luigi Mangione and Ben Shapiro.
Burr aimed his strongest warning at white Americans who, he argued, are too comfortable with immigration raids because they do not imagine themselves being loaded into federal vehicles.
“I was talking about that ice stuff on stage and I was going talking about my people, white people. It’s like we’re not nearly upset as we need to be because we don’t see ourselves going into the van,” Burr told Rolling Stone.
Bill Burr just sat in a Rolling Stone chair and tried to run the same bit he does on stage — then walked straight into the third rail.
He starts with the state-vs-state civil war: Texas hates California, California hates Texas, somebody hates Florida, somebody hates New York.… pic.twitter.com/3wnB9E1Vh2
— Pete Santilli 🇺🇸 🇮🇹 🎙️ (@petersantilli) September 24, 2026
He described asking an audience who they believed would be next after migrants, only for one person to shout back, “Liberals.”
“And I go, ‘Who do you think’s going in the van next?’ And this guy in the crowd, he’s like, ‘Liberals.’ I go, ‘Did you just say liberals?’ Dude, you’re literally talking about half of your team,’” Burr recalled.
Burr’s point was that MAGA-aligned voters who assume they are safely inside the protected circle are being played by the people they support.
🪖Seventeen battle-tested candidates are ready to strike a decisive blow to the Democrat Machine — but they urgently need resources. 🪖 Join the grassroots push to save the House Majority and back them today! ➡️➡️➡️ Make a 17X impact!!! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
“They’re going to work their way back to you. Eventually, you guys will be. These people, they think they’re in the group. They think they’re going to get under the mountain or get on the spaceship. It’s like you’re not. They’re using you,” Burr exclaimed.
The ICE comments came as Burr talked about how touring the country has made him see Americans turning regional resentments inward instead of focusing on a shared outside enemy.
“I mean, just touring as a comic, how much I’ve seen it change. It used to be like we hated the Russians,” Burr reflected.
“Now it’s like Texas hates California, California hates Texas, these people hate Florida, somebody hates New York. It’s like, guys, same teams. We’re on the same teams here. How would this help you?” he asked.
Burr’s distrust extended to data centers and “Alligator Alcatraz,” which he suggested were part of some larger system of control.
“Yeah, we’re all, I don’t, I don’t know what they plan on doing with us, but I think it has to do with Alligator Alcatraz. I think eventually, or those data centers,” Burr claimed. “There’s something like all of that, that they need. Those giant things are for, to monitor us.”
He also praised local resistance to ICE and data-center projects, saying the opposition made him feel encouraged.
“It’s really creepy. And I’m, I’m very excited about all of these towns that have pushed back against ICE and these data centers and all of that because they are not good for anybody, anybody,” Burr added.
On housing, Burr rejected the idea that illegal immigrants are the reason Americans cannot afford homes and instead pointed to wealth concentration.
“Listen, the reason why, you know, people can’t afford a house is not because of some illegal immigrant who’s making less than minimum wage. I mean, that is basic math. Okay?” Burr argued. “So, if one person is taking 90% of it, eventually, you know, people have to live under a bridge.”
That same suspicion of elites carried into Burr’s comments on Luigi Mangione and the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, with Burr arguing that the healthcare industry responded by hiding executives instead of questioning why the anger existed.
“I mean, if you look at all of this stuff, like the response to the Luigi [Mangione] thing, it wasn’t, ‘Maybe we need to look at what we’re doing if it makes some crazy person do this.’ [Healthcare executives’] response was to take their faces off the internet and get security,” Burr told Rolling Stone.
Burr questioned why corporate leaders would need protection more commonly associated with elected heads of state.
“You’re not the president. You’re just the CEO of a business. Why do you need this level of security?” he continued.
Thompson, a married father of two, was killed in December 2024, and Mangione pleaded guilty in federal court Aug. 14 to murdering him.
Burr also sparred with the Rolling Stone host over wokeness after the host reduced the concept to “common consideration.”
The comedian pushed back, arguing that the “toxic left” seized control of the label and helped define it in a way that made the right recoil.
“Because woke then got into the post Me Too thing where it became like this McCarthyism where it wasn’t, let’s go after these bad guys,” Burr explained.
“It then morphed into, I don’t like what you’re talking about in your act, so maybe you need a little timeout,” he continued.
Burr said the term became unbearable once people started awarding it to themselves.
“My favorite thing was there was our people calling themselves woke,” Burr noted. “They bestowed it on themselves. Why? Because you say so? And then it really became insufferable.”
“So, people on the right, their reaction to woke shit is the white left’s definition of it, which was insufferable,” he concluded.
Burr’s latest comments also reopened his fight with Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro, who had branded him “woke” after Burr focused on “greedy” CEOs following Thompson’s murder.
In an 2025 Vulture interview, Burr argued that Shapiro did not understand the word and accused him of profiting from division.
“He doesn’t even know what that word means,” Burr charged. “His definition of woke is white liberals’ definition of woke, and they didn’t even know what it was; they just took the word from Black people.”
Burr also called Shapiro an “idiot” and said people on the right had sent racist images to him and his wife.
“That fucking guy. He was trying to bring me into his fold. At one point, the guy liked me and then, all of a sudden, I’m a fucking asshole. I’m supposed to look at that guy like he’s an adult?” Burr remarked.
Shapiro answered in an Aug. 1 YouTube video by using Burr’s older comedy as a contrast against his newer political commentary and explaining why he believed the label applied.
“I called Bill Burr woke — because — he is,” Shapiro stated. “He believes that America is a deeply racist place, and that it’s embedded in all of our social systems, and the evidence of that is our economic inequality, and therefore, it’s probably ok to shoot healthcare CEO’s.”