This week, when you click on Netflix, you can see an hour and a half window into Washington's political transformation.

Or that's what the streaming service would like you to believe.

Netflix is broadcasting the ceremony for the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for American

Humor.

This year it was Conan O'Brien getting honored.

And the event was recorded just a few weeks after President Trump appointed himself as the

chairman of the Kennedy Center's board.

It casts something of appal over the whole night.

Like, here's how Triumph the Insult Comic Dog started the evening.

Thank you all for coming.

And shame on you for being here.

That should cover it, yes.

I wanted to know how all these jokes landed.

So I called up Katie Waldman from the New Yorker.

She was in the audience.

I was reporting on the broader takeover of the center.

And so I just kind of wanted to see what would happen.

I also sort of thought that, oh, Conan O'Brien, he's definitely going to pull out. He has so much

capital and goodwill because of the Oscars. So you were surprised he showed up.

Yeah, yeah. Katie says, this broadcast does not exactly skewer our political moment.

Part of the problem, she says, is Conan himself.

His humor is so self-deprecating that it's impossible to see him as the animating force

...