Shane Gillis, the comedian best known for getting dropped by Saturday Night Live last year, just made a great point about President Trump. Politicians and other comedians should take note.
“I think it’s important for our country to admit one thing,” Gillis said in a clip posted to Twitter last week. “Left or Right, I think we need to come together and admit that he is funny.”
Watch the full bit here:
Political material pic.twitter.com/Sm8GAbyok5
— Shane Gillis (@Shanemgillis) March 4, 2020
Gillis is right: You don’t have to support Trump to agree that threatening to nuke a hurricane (whether or not Trump really did so) is kind of funny. Right? But not to those who’ve been so dumbfounded by their hatred for the president that they give him more power than he deserves.
“Donald Trump Is Actively Trying to Destroy the Planet,” reads a 2017 headline in the Nation. “Will Donald Trump Destroy the Presidency?” wonders a writer at the Atlantic. “Donald Trump and his followers could destroy America even if he loses,” argues another at Quartz. These are just a few examples of the many, many instances demonstrating how the 2016 election broke more than a few brains.
Love Trump or hate him, Gillis says, you just have to laugh: “He’s funnier than most comedians.” Then again, that may reflect more on the state of comedy than the humorous powers of the POTUS. Politics — and, more specifically, a desire to #Resist Trump — has killed comedy and late-night TV shows. Trump is funny, yet somehow, anti-Trump comedy rarely is.
Gillis jokes that performing in New York, he hears plenty of comedians bashing Trump. But, he says, they’re lucky Trump doesn’t do stand-up. If so, “He would bury you.”
Trump would make a great comedian for the same reason he’s a successful politician. Other presidential candidates tried desperately to be likable; Trump treated everything as a joke.
“He’s undefeated in every debate he’s been in, and he’s never said a fact at one of the debates,” Gillis said. “He argues like a fifth grader, and he’s funny. It’s impossible to beat him in a debate. You can hit him with as many facts as you want, and he just goes, ‘No.’ Holy shit. How did no one prepare for that?”
Whatever that says about Trump himself or the state of our politics, the truth is that we could all benefit from more levity. It might help comedians break out of their politically correct ruts, and it would be a good strategy for Democrats this fall. Trump won’t lose in 2020 thanks to more headlines about him literally destroying democracy. He couldn’t care less about that, and his supporters couldn’t either.
To win the White House, someone will have to beat him at his own game. (Good luck, Joe Biden.)
