I'm Manny, I'm Noah, this is Devin and this is no such thing. The show where we settle our drum arguments and yours by actually doing the research. On today's episode, should Politicians be Funny? And his humor kind of a cheat code to getting elected? As always, we'll talk to an expert, but then stick around for my conversation with comedian Mike Verbiglia.
What a deeply unfunny person. He doesn't have it.
No, there's no no such thing, no touch thing, touch, thank.
Touch, thank.
Touch thank.
All right, boys, I was influenced to do this episode based on some recent activity by one Gavin Newsom. In case, yeah, in case you're someone in the audience who literally does not consume one ounce of politics.
Uh.
While a lot of our audience is international, many assume they know American politics.
I'm sorry for for huge in Australia. Yeah, I'm sorry for doing international erasure. But Gavin Newsom is a Democrat. He's the former mayor of San Francisco. He's the current governor of California. He's kind of like your archetypal politician, right, He's like literally got slicked back here. He's always wearing a suit, very polished, he's got the veneers good talk, or if he doesn't have veneers, don't sue me. He's
got really great teeth. Yeah, it would be amazy if if he doesn't have a credit veneers congratulations, and he's probably going to be running for president. Is we've come to terms with that by now, Perhaps because of this impending presidential run, Gavin Newsom and his team have turned up the aggression, let's say, towards Donald Trump.
And we need to stand up to this authoritary. We need to stand up at this moment, fighting fire with fire. I'm going to punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.
And one of the ways Gavin Newsom is doing this is by using humor. They are mocking Donald Trump on social media.
So just to look at some of the tweets here, all capital letters Trump and.
Very trump like.
It's obviously trying to go Trump and get at tension.
Basically, Donald Trump uses a very specific syntax in his posts. He does all caps, sometimes he capitalizes words that don't need to be capitalized, he puts quotes aroun words that don't need quotes, and the Gavin Teae is writing parody versions of those except to push their own agenda.
In one post, Gavin Newsom calls maga Republicans quote snowflakes and all caps, and another he says this quote Donald is finished. He is no longer hot. First the hands so tiny, and now me, Gavin C. Newsom have taken away his step. Many are saying he can't even do the big stairs on Air Force one anymore, uses the little baby stairs now sad.
While conservatives argue that this is childish and silly.
If I run his wife, I would say, you are making a fool of yourself.
Stop it.
He's got a big job as governor of California, but if he wants an even bigger job, he has to be a little bit more serious.
Democrats have been saying, yeah, that's kind of the whole point.
I freaking love what Governor Newsom is doing because that's what offense looks like. And I'm tired of being told, you know, when they go low, we go high. I mean, the way I see it, when they go low, we should bury their ideas below the capitol.
So this was going on throughout twenty twenty five, but as recently as a few days ago on New Year's Eve, Gavin's press team posted this happy New Year to everyone, especially the deeply disturbed losers suffering from extreme Newsome derangement syndrome. Speaking of losers, I hope Donald Trump has the twenty twenty six quote he deserves after unleashing chaos on the people of this great country. But I want to play you, guys,
Gavin Newsom on Stephen Colbert's show. He responds to the reaction that he's been getting to some of the stuff.
Two kings.
Everything we were doing and try to break through wasn't working anymore. And so we decided to do something right to your point, a novel called Humor. And I gotta say, oftentimes Democrats we're little, you know, we just we don't We're not as humorous as we should be. Little staff could be a little stiff. Yeah, And so we thought we'd have some fun with it. But I never imagined it would break through like it has and get under the skin of the President of the United States and some of my friends.
I thought it was interesting that this kind of usage, deliberate usage of humor in a political strategy.
Especially as Newsom says, they try other things and they didn't break through. Right, So this wasn't the first thing on their list, but it's the thing that they think has worked.
Yeah, and he's obviously not the first politician to try and inject comedy or humor into his political strategy. You've got people like Donald Trump, who sometimes makes you laugh by accident, like you're laughing at him, but sometimes it's saying stuff that's supposed to make you laugh.
Is visceral response to attack people on their appearance.
I never attacked him on his look. And believe me, there's plenty of subject matter right there.
That I can tell.
You know, We've got characters like Eric Adams, who like is saying some absolutely insane.
Shiit n life may I I got to test the product.
But he I think he knows that he's hilarious. Yeah, I'm curious. Do you guys feel like humor is a successful strategy for politicians to appear more relatable? Like, have we just been seeing very specific cases? Do we feel largely that they should stick to policy?
Well, it's interesting because the conversation today is so focused on like their social media accounts, which it's like, Gavin's not in the lab photoshop making this up. You know what? I mean, so it's like that that to me adds a layer where I'm like, all right, this isn't you. This is like a bunch of whatever thirty year olds who work for you making that makes it like this distance where it's like, well, I don't even think you're funny,
you know. I think a lot of politicians, you know, It's like Obama was funny famously.
The White House correspondent, like he was very like.
Good comic timing and like that is relatable, or like, you know, Bernie Sanders is funny when he's and like, you know, dismissing something or whatever. Like So, I mean, I think it's a good and normal human thing to use humor. I don't think it should be like the bulk of your political strategy. It's like the who would you want to get.
A beer with?
Thing? Like I remember when our boy George W. Bush was elected. That was like the big thing. It's like he seems like a chummy guy. Yeah, It's like and like that counts for something. It's like, Okay, can this be someone I could relate to in a normal human way.
Yeah.
I think people are over estimating the power of humor because I think what people associate humor with is like authenticity or like not being guarded or buttoned up. But if you're not naturally funny or you're forcing humor, it also doesn't work.
Right.
We've seen plenty of examples of like really stuffy politicians trying to be funny and it's like, yeah, okay, this is even worse.
Jd Vance with the yeah.
Jd Vance is like someone who famously is not funny, right like, and he tries and it doesn't connect.
Right.
So, I think like a politician could be not trying to be funny, but just a little bit less guarded, a little bit more relaxed, a little less worried about saying the wrong thing at all times or not saying anything at all because you're so afraid of what you like, who you may upset. I think that more so is more important than like a politician being funny.
Yeah, I think you guys are right about this. Essentially, with no was saying about would you get a beer with this person, it's like this ability for the politician to be able to hang essentially. I've been watching unfortunately the Flagrant podcast and you just you see politicians go on there and you start to wonder the value of like them being in that kind of environment. Obviously, Donald Trump went on there last year and they were just
kind of kissing his ass, so it doesn't count. But Pete Boodajudge went on, and I was kind of surprised by how easily he kind of melted into that, into that environment.
You can't privatize the public park, right, this is the all I do, public goods, why we have governments, why we collect taxes.
Were turning to such libs already.
Dude, and it literally made me as like a voter be like oh interesting, Like I didn't know that he had this side to him. At the same time, I could never imagine Kamala Harris being on that show, because some Democrats are so risk averse, not able to be an environment where like the questions weren't approved ahead of time and that kind of stuff I think gets to people.
And it's frustrating with her specifically, because I do think she has it in her, like I you know, we've obviously seen clips and instances of like like her talking about cooking and shit. It's just like you can be normal.
Yeah, No, she seems a lot more normal if she would let herself be that way.
Yeah, that's what's so funny.
Where was this?
They're going back and forth about her not being on Joe Rogan or whatever, and it's like, I actually think if she was able to relax and go on something like that, she could be good. Yeah, but like she's so trained up that she won't. But yeah, when she talked about cooking or whatever, like after a speech or whatever, talking to just people.
I should be calling you, Harris, you should not.
That's not on my birth certificate.
Okay, just don't call me, Auntie.
I won't call you.
You could see you know one how she got to where she is.
Yeah, there was a moment the Mama Lass stuff where it was like, Okay, this does feel kind of relatable. But then you hear stories like the Subway Takes Guy, where it's this viral show where you go on and give a hot take. Apparently Kamala went on during the campaign and had a take that was so focused, group tested, and awkward that everyone just mutually decided to scrap the episode.
Her take was that bad. It was really really bad. Then it was it was like, didn't make any sense. I can tell you this. I was bacon as a spice, you.
Think that was her opinion.
You thinks you had like a research group trying to figure something.
That research group. And then I was like, if I post this, a lot of people are going to be out at me.
Now.
Counter example, Zorn Mundani, newly elected mayor of New York City. You know, not like the funniest guy ever, but one can easily see the effect a politician can have when they're able to be themselves, regardless of the situation or environment. But speaking of the effect that politicians can have, we're going to be hearing from a humor historian who's going to walk us through the history of humor in politics, and then we're going to hear from actual comedian Mike Birbiglia.
That's after the break. We're back. I'm Anny, I'm Noah Devin, and we're about to hear from doctor Mark Rolf. He is an expert in the history of humor in politics. He's a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. And here I'll just have him introduce himself.
Well, basically, I've always been interested in politics, humor and history since childhood. I've basically built a career out of those three things combined. I treat satire as really a species of rhetoric, an offshoot of rhetric. So humor and satire generally as means of persuasion.
Okay, So before we get into the weeds, I do love to talk about these kind of topics more existentially. So I asked him what even is humor? Why do we laugh?
The term humor is an ancient one, but up until about three four hundred years ago, it was part of medicine. Humor or humors referred to the four liquids of ancient and medieval medicine black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood, and the balance of these four liquids dictated your temperaments. That's why we can still say sometimes, oh, he's in a bit of bad humor. Split humor from laughter, they're
not the same. But the way we've talked about the two together during the three hundred years, but particularly the last two hundred years, we've said humor and laughter are equivalent. If there's laughter, there's been a joke, Okay, But when you think about it, there's laughter for a range of reasons without jokes. Okay, you tickle a baby, the baby laughs, there's no joke. Obviously, there can be release of joy, physical effects that are good without any joke. The Vikings
they laughed with scorn without jokes. They laughed with scorn at enemies, and they would laugh at violence. Aristotle the philosopher talks about how Greeks would laugh at unkliness. What I'm pointing to is a range of different things that we laugh at as human and as one philosopher called Henry booksOn said, laughter is in need of an echo. It's part of our sociality. We can laugh in our own but when we laugh with others, we are establishing bones with them as well.
So this segment really made me think about people like Eric Adams, Yes, and even Curtis Leewa, who is the Republican nominee for mayor of New York City, Like, are we laughing with them or at them? If we're gonna split humor and laughter a part as concepts.
Even with President Trump, Yeah, there are times where he makes a joke that will make me laugh, and there's times where he's not making a joke and I'm cracking out.
Yeah, Yeah, I was serious. I wondered about kind of the ratio with someone like Donald Trump, for example, Like, if we're gonna say he's funny, maybe we want to quantify what percentage of the things he's saying is supposed to make you laugh versus what is just you know, we're just like this guy's insane.
I think more than lots of left leaning people would admit he's purposeful. Yeah, Like, I think a lot of times he's trying to be funny and often succeeding, and people are laughing at him, maybe thinking they're laughing at him, but they're laughing with him.
Yeah, like not we're not not clocking that he is trying to be.
Fun or like not giving credit where it's due basically and more generally thinking about what he just said there where it's like, I'm much more likely to laugh out loud if I'm in a movie theater or watching something with another person than if I'm sitting by myself watching a movie, Like it's really hard to get a real laugh out of me by myself. And obviously that's not like a conscious thing, but it is something like I'm signaling that.
I got the joke, I guess.
Yeah, it's interesting to think about that community aspect of laughter.
Yeah, it makes me think of like memes, even where like the point of it is a kind of a communal reaction to the content. So one thing I wanted to ask doctor Rolf to do was give me a brief overview of the history of humor in politics, because something I learned when I was reading about his work is that this is kind of a relatively new concept.
Much of what we know about humor started around three hundred years ago in Britain, and we carry on many of the ideas, especially this idea of political satire from the British, and that went to colonial America and all
the British literature of that time. So you've got the concept of humor, and then you get later on with the British the idea of a national humor, and then America imparts its twist on the idea in the eighteen seventies, with the set of humor being a good individual thing that a person can be admired for having a good sense of humor and a little bit suspect for not
having a good sense of humor. So in that way, when you look at the history of a lot of our ideas, you find that they're not as universal as we might think that they have really short periods in
the scheme of things. I've looked at how some of these things went to America, and how American ideas of humor, vaudeville and the invention of the joke that we know today was also an invention of America in the eighteen seventies and eighties, when you've got a huge creation of a mass entertainment circuit going on and the creation of joke writers. The anonymous two or three line joke that we know today an American invention. Seta gets used these days,
particularly in America, as a means of political identity. So a lot of Americans consume their news in a line with their views, and they consume satire or humor in line with their views.
As your slogan says Fox News, we read the chain mails your grandma gets in her inbox out loud like they were true.
And obviously it lines up with this issue of polarization of America.
So I thought it was interesting that humor historically is something that we use to grade like a human being, Like you might think someone is a great person, but if they're not funny, it's kind of suspect.
Well, even if they're not funny, then you have to know what is funny, you know, like every dating prompt effort is like you must have a good sense of humor, or every love island, they're like what your type. It's like, you know, really great banter, like great sense of humor. So like being it if you're not the one telling jokes, being able to laugh at jokes is very important. I feel like it's just like a roundabout way of being like, not like someone who has like a stick up their ass.
Yeah.
And I also thought it was interesting that the kind of concept of a joke is pretty new and also American.
In the seventies, I wasna say, I was going through some stuff in my head. It's not gonna say this guy's wrong.
How old is this guy?
And I do think he means like in a formal like he was saying like specific was telling jokes, the kind of anonymous as he calls it, an anonymous two or three line joke.
The new version, the modern version of what we consider a joke, not like the slapstick stuff of the past.
Right, So we today have our kind of modern day examples of politicians using humor in politics. But I asked doctor Rolf if there were any famous examples in the past that those of us who are so young might not be acquainted with.
You can go back to John F. Kennedy. Given what I've said about the history before, we think more highly a person who displays a good sense of humor, and that's when we commend them for having wit. So we think that they're a bit superior, bit more intellectual, a bit more classes. That's how John Kennedy used humor.
What have you done for the women according to the promises of the platform.
I'm sure we haven't done enough.
And so people often look back to his press conferences in which he's charming the journalists nearby, but also the TV viewers with his sense of humor. You've also got ron Reagan. He employed a comedic writer called Doug Gamble, and there was a famous line in the nineteen eighty four election against Walter Mondo, and the issue of Ronald Reagan's age come up. You might know the crip.
You already are the oldest president in history, and some of your staff say you are tired after your most recent encounter with mister Mondale. Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances.
I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience.
That cuip was written by Doug Gamble. Doug Gamble has also contributed some crips to Donald Trump. Some people didn't take it quite as a joke, but he's lined about oh jijimping being president for life is now.
They wanted to give that a shout some day.
Okay, that came from Doug Gamble. Those are some of the ways in which politicians can use HUMA, as well as using CUMA as an attack dog against opponents.
So I knew politicians could be funny naturally, but I didn't know that they were like actually hiring comedians, not really to make their speeches funny, but to just have little bits here and there.
Yeah I need to do that.
Yeah, my guy over here, this.
Guy Doug Gamble, who wrote that famous line for Reagan, who's also seems to be still around writing stuff for Donald Trump. So sometimes, you know, we hear some silly thing from a politician and we think, wow, this guy's on one, but it actually could be written from some comedian.
Yeah, you're written Pomo should have used Doug in his last debate against Zorn because he did not have some some good coming.
Biden should have hired that guy before. I didn't realize Trump had used him.
Yeah, he's like talking about old Yeah, all right, So we learned a lot about kind of the history of the utilization of comedy in politics. Is that a word utilization, about use? The use over complicating it. We learned a lot about the use of comedy in politics in history. But now I think it'd be a good idea to talk to an actual comedian, you know, get their thoughts about why some of this stuff lands, why some of
it doesn't. And famously, there's a popular podcast that does just that where they work on jokes in real time. It's called Mike Brobiglia's working it out. So after the break, I'm going to head over to the studio where he records that podcast and talk to Mike. All right, we are back. This is Manny and this is my conversation with comedian Mike or Biglia.
Thanks for doing this, Mike, Oh yeah, thank you.
I've been doing a little bit of studying about the usage of humor and comedy in politics for like the last one hundred years or so. Wow, And I've been surprised to learn that politicians used to quite frequently hire comedians to either appear wittier or in some instances like specifically write jokes for them. JFK hired a comedian to kind of appear smarter on the on the campaign trail, and then some politicians like Ron Reagan actually had comedians
write specific jokes for him. There's a famous instance where Walter Mondale kind of cracks at Reagan for being too old, and his response is that he's not going to use Walter's inexperience against him, and that was actually written by a comedian. So I guess my first question is, like, have you heard of this happening today? Have you ever been asked to kind of punch up a politician's speech.
I've been asked, I think I have before. I think I've maybe submitted jokes maybe during debates or something.
So this is like debate training almost.
I don't think any of mine were used. I also didn't take it very seriously. Yeah, Like I don't think I was very focused on it or and I don't think I was in the inner circle of it. I find the assignment to be hard. Yeah, political comedy, I just find it to be hard.
What about it is hard? Is harder than, for example, being in a room like a stand up comedy show.
It's funny, like I heard John Stuart describe it recently in an interview with The New Yorker where he said, you look at Trump and it's like he's not funny, but he has a funny cadence. And I think that combined the cadence he's like an entertainer's cadence, combined with a complete and total willingness to say anything, regardless of any meaning whatsoever. Yeah, and I think he's able to pull that off, and not many people are because people
have integrity. There's not that many people with that little integrity, you know.
What I mean.
Yeah, it's a unique and some people call shame. No shame, right, And it's like interestingly seeing Newsome mimic it on Twitter has been fascinating to me because I think it has defanged Trump a little bit because it shows the trick and the trick is just bombast. The trick is just all caps bomb bast pomp, and it's like, Oh, that's not hard. That's an intern just wrote like, I don't think Avin Newsom's writing these bombastic tweets. Yeah, this wouldn't be. My guess.
A lot of people I know find Trump to be funny. I debate my friends whether we're laughing at or with Trump. Sure, is there some sense from the public maybe that it's like, wow, I wish I could say the things that Trump says, or that he's like kind of crossing boundaries that might feel freeing to people.
I've heard different theories on it, and I don't know which is true, but I've heard, like one theory is that people have, for thirty forty years and maybe longer, maybe one hundred years, have felt so lied to by politicians that there's something in it where they go, well, at least here's all the raw footage of the documentary, and then we can cut our own from it.
Yeah, you know what I mean.
Yeah, Like, here's the lies, here's the truths, here's the everything. I'm unloading the clip up, you figure it out. Yeah, And it's a little bit in the kind of do your own research realm where people are like, oh, okay, I can make sense of this nonsense, I think. I mean, I think that's part of the appeal from someone who for whom it does not appeal.
Right, And you touched on this a little bit already, But why is the kind of Gavin Newsome strategy? Why do you think is resonating with some people?
I see a lot of I think, yeah, I think it resonates because it reveals what Trump does as a trick.
So demystifies. It's like seeing how a magician does, like a card trick or something.
Yeah.
Plus he's a governor and so there's like it's high stakes. It's higher stakes in if Mike Berbiglia the comedian did the bunch of all caps tweets, which I'm sure comedians have done, you know, I'm sure that that's out there as a trope, but like him doing it from this stately position, like does feel consequential?
Yeah, I guess from a kind of a zoomed out perspective, what do you think it is about? Like someone having a good sense of humor that signals a level of authenticity, like when some politicians, as we're going to get into in a second attempt humor and ya want to fall short the public consensus is kind of that they are fake, are there manufacturer? Or this is like a focus group tested,
there's some inauthenticity. So what is it about a good sense of humor that makes people feel like, wow, this is like a real human being.
I think that great jokes are based in an observation that is either true or feels true. And so when a politician is observing something that people have feel like they've observed, there's a sense of like, well, we're watching the same reality here.
Yeah.
I think that there is something where there have been some politicians without naming names in the last thirty years where they were not able to read the room and as a result, people really like lost faith in them, Like you know, a famous example, actually this does name names is the George W. Bush Mission accomplished right where it's kind of a tone deaf. Yeah, everyone's just going, what, there's all these people dead?
What are you talking about?
And I think that that and the opposite of that is when someone is funny or nails a truth in a moment or what feels like a truth in a moment, I you know, I mean even like the speech that all these people criticized, which is like Trump's I want to say it's a inauguration like seventeen or something. Was the carnage speech.
Yeah, this American carnage stops right here and stops right now.
A lot of people were like, Oh, it's so dark and so this and so that. Well yeah, but also like some people's lives are really dark.
It's like painting a picture to them that felt familiar.
Yeah, So I actually think I criticize ninety nine percent of what Trump does. That speech. I actually found like, Eh, it's not for me, but it's hitting with some people.
Yeah, and you understood why it was resonating. So on your show, you do a lot of kind of like working on all yeah, which is a lot of fun to listen to and to better kind of understand the dynamic here that that we've been talking about. I love to do a quick experiment with you. I've brought a couple of jokes from politicians in the past couple of years, and I'd love to get your sense of like why they didn't work and what you might do to help
them if you were hired to write them. All Right, So the first one is from J. D. E.
Vance.
This is when he was on the campaign trail.
Democrats say that it is racist to believe. Well, they say it's racist to do anything. I had a die Mountain Dew yesterday and one today. I'm sure they're gonna call that racist too, But it's good. I love you guys.
I love you guys. That's a tough one. Yeah, I mean it's it's clearly it's a great example of someone who is surrounded by people who agree with him all the time.
Right.
It's like, I actually think that one of the keys to being a decent comedian is playing for crowds who aren't dying to hear what you say next. Because I do a mixture of shows like when I'm on tour, it's meaningful for my process. But I know that those people have watched my other six specials and they get the tone of what I'm doing, and they right, And
so I like, it's an inside joke. I know that they know that I know that I'm joking about this, this and this, and that these four things we can accept to be true.
Yeah.
And then I also played the comedy Celler in New York and others like it. Where I'm not on the bill, I pop up. I would saying most people don't know who I am, or at least half don't know who I am, And so you get what I think of as like a true bounce like in tennis, true bounce of the ball or basketball, like yeah, where you go? Okay, kind of an unbiased, blank slate. Yeah, this is Yeah, this is how this reads to people. And so that the g Van's clip is a great example of like
it's very telling. Yeah, he's clearly surrounded by people for whom they believe everything is construed as racist all the time. Yeah, even a diet mountain dew, which is a really tricky analogy. I don't even know what the joke is. Yeah, can you explain.
I guess that's what I was looking. I was seeking information on. I think he's clearly, after telling the joke, waiting for action. Yeah, the diet mountain de I don't know. I'm from Ohio as well. I drank mountain dew growing up. I don't, I don't. I didn't see what was going on here in the.
Mag I'm unaware of any racial implications of mountain dew nor diet mountain. Yeah, so I would say, like zoom out. If he's playing to his bass and he wants to make a joke about how everyone calls everything racist all the time. I would pick something that has a racial implication. Yeah, Yeah, choose a product that has a racial implication. People can call me racist for blank filling the blank product that whatever. So that's for playing for his bass, for playing like wider.
I don't know. It's almost like you'd have to nail the perfect thing culturally that people are annoyed at, yeah, because they've heard it called racist, and we all know that's a bit.
Much, right. What confused me is that this is an audience ostensibly rooting for him, like wanting to be entertained by truly bombing. Yeah, to be fair to JdE e Vance, which is a sentiment I've never had in my life and probably never will again. How much of this could be that some jokes fall flat on some cross I'm sure you've had experiences before where you've told the same joke to two different rooms and gotten two completely different reactions. As you're touching on earlier.
Certainly, but but that joke is just not gonna work. I think that, honestly. It's it's that he's surrounded by sick offens who are just laughing on every word he's saying, yeah, versus listening to the content of what he's saying. What a deeply unfunny person too, I mean he is really, he doesn't have it.
I've got one more for you, okay, and this and should be fair. You know that was someone on the right. We're gonna pick someone on the left.
Now.
We've got a joke here from Amy Klobatar and uh, it's a little bit of a compilation.
The President actually sent out a tweet he made fun of me for talking about climate change in the middle of a blizzard, and he called me snow woman. So I wrote back, Hey, Donald Trump, the science is on my side, and I'd like to see how your hair would fair in a blizzard. So I wrote back, Hey, Donald Trump, the science is on my side, and I'd like to see how your hair would.
Fair in a blizzard.
So I wrote back, Donald Trump, the science is on my side, and I'd like to see how your hair would fair in a blizzard.
And you get the picture this. She's done this maybe one hundred times, the same joke, over and over, and just for the listener. During that clip, Mike had his head in his.
I don't even like, get the jokes? Can you explain the joke to me?
He at one point was criticizing the Democrats for like drumming up climate change as like a real thing. Of course it is. And I guess this is her response, if you don't think climate change is real, well, I would like to see what your hair would be doing in the blizzards that are happening more often. I guess I'm very confused as well.
Yeah, that's a tricky one. I like Senator Klobsher a lot, but that one is clearly.
Maybe this is can't come from someone on her team or right.
I performed a couple fundraisers in the last election, and I say, people make fun of us in the city. They call us coastal elites, just because we live on a coast and we're better than other people. And in fairness, part of the time we live in Aspen. And it's like,
I think, with jokes, you you need a target. I did a special for Netflix years ago called Thank Cover Jokes, and essentially one of the key points in it is like all jokes are aimed at someone or something, like all all jokes are offensive to some.
Target, like as a target.
Yeah, every joke if you think about it, unless it's just nonsense, which is its own genre, like unless it's abstract. But it's interesting hearing her take aim at Trump in that way because it's like it just doesn't land. And it doesn't land because so many jokes have been made about his hair, about his skin, about his whatever like that. You know, orange skins his hairs are two pays.
You know.
And to your point, it is kind of unclear initially what the target of the joke is. Yes, I guess everyone's hair would kind of be going.
On, right, and it's it's but it's it's a real quandary. I would say, four people who are on the other side of him to make jokes at his expense, because it's like it's all done, it's all been done. I mean, it's part of the reason I don't go into political comedy realm right now. I did a little bit when
George W. Bush was president. The only reason I did was that someone was opening up for me in Pittsburgh and they were doing all this pro George W. Bush material interesting And I've never been in the habit of censoring anyone. Yeah, so I didn't say, hey, could you not do them, so instead, I wrote a joke about Georgia B. Bush and that ended up on my album To Drink Mike, and the premise is it's like Georgie W. Bush is like the guy who shows up at the
barbecue and starts the whiffle ball game. He's a wiffleball tony. He's like, hey, y'all want to play wiffle ball? And then they played through the analogy with WMD's and all that, and I have not. It was interesting about that joke is that played in the South in the middle of the country, partly because it was so silly, like, yeah, it's kind of absurd, it's absurd, similar to mulaney horse in the hospital bit.
This guy being the president, it's like there's a horse loose in a hospital. It's like, there's a horse loose in a hospital. I think eventually everything's gonna be okay, but I have no idea what's gonna happen next, and neither do any of you, and neither do you parents. Because there's a horse loose in the hospital.
And there is something that he's capturing that even a Trump supporter I think would not disagree with, which is it's just chaotic. Yeah, and there's a point to it. Yeah, it's fun. You can't dispute. There's chaos with this president.
Yeah, we just did two jokes that you punched up. I wondered if you have time to listen to one from Trump, I would like to know why it works. Actually, that's a lot of people find this clip to be really funny, and I do too, if I'm being honest. Wow, yeah, I contain multitudes. So this this joke I see gets circulated often on X for example, where people be like, okay, you got to hand it to him. In some instances, would we be better off?
As an example, in a wreck, what are we doing? It's like I saw somebody I won't even say because it's embarrassing. We want it where the women over there don't have to wear the you know what? Then I saw women interviewed. They said, we want to wear them. We've worn them for a thousand years. Why would anybody tell us not to?
They want to?
What the hell are we getting involved for? In fact, it's easier. You don't have to put up makeup. Look how beautiful everyone looks. Wouldn't it be easy if wa right? I'll tell you if I was a woman, I don't want to Wah, I'm ready, darling, let's go true.
What is it about this one that's like some people are like, Okay, I can see the humor in this.
In my opinion, it appeals to the audience's sense of wanting him to be right. So, if I were gonna guess as to the people in the audience and the people posting it are isolationists, they don't think we should be in foreign wars, et cetera. And then here's this guy making this kind of outrageous nonsense digression that in some way lands it in the sense of everybody wins in the joke. Yeah, it's like the isolationists win because they're like, we also don't want to be in foreign wars.
The people in the Middle East win because that's what they there, that's what they want. Also they want us not to be there, they want etc. And then his example is minute and it's specific, and it's surprising. Yeah, first of all, you don't think he's gonna talk about women's point of view ever, Yeah, I mean, it's just someone who doesn't care about women clearly. So then he does in a surprise turn and it's confirmation biased on what the audience already wanted to hear.
Right, So that's really insightful. You're saying, essentially, this joke confirms the view of the world that I would like to see, Like you're like, the.
People posting that I'm sure are isolation is yeah, and the people in the audience are too.
Really fascinating. Well, thank you so much for doing yeas been illuminating.
Thanks.
I'm glad it's great talking about it because it's not what I do.
Yeah, all right, that was my conversation with Mike. Mister Mike Berbiglia. Gotta say, very nice guy. The most interesting thing I got from this interview is something that the historian told us, which is that a lot of the things we find funny are actually just kind of confirming what we already believe in politics. Yeah, and so when he was saying that a lot of people like that Trump joke about the Burkas because we actually don't want to be involved in all these wars. Yeah, I don't
know that really resonated. I didn't realize that was why.
Yeah, I was like, it's kind of right, right where it's like lead people alone, let them do their own thing. Right, if Trump was saying the opposite of that and that clip, we wouldn't find it as funny exactly.
And like both both at the time MAGA people and people on the left were kind of the no more foreign Wars stuff. Yes, that hasn't panned out for the MAGA people, but still funny to me.
What's funny to me about that clip, and he mentioned it earlier in your interview with him, is like, so much of what's funny about Trump is his delivery, and that delivery is like very Larry David esque, you know, the way he like talked because like no, no, no, no, like live alone, like honey, let's go. I was like I could see this being like, you know, something similar kind of did happen in curb But I was like, Larry could do this same bit in Curve.
Yeah, it's more like than it is like set up punchline, yes, I guess.
Yes, yeah, yeah. He has that sort of just sort of like stream of consciousness sort of thing. And that was when you know, we've reached another level of Trump stream of consciousness where it never really comes back to the beginning of the weave as But that was when you could still kind of follow what was Yeah, yeah, it was start to a.
Nice level where you know, we still got somewhere. Yeah, there was a destination exactly.
Yeah.
What's what's notable is that it does sound comfortable and like it's actually natural and not yes, versus other ones where it feels like a pre written thing and it's just like, Okay, now, now's the time when I bring out my joke and everyone's gonna love it, you know.
Yeah.
You know, to his credit, that's something Trump's able to do is sound like he's just talking yeah, extemporary, it feels genuine offense.
Might still thinking about the Mountain Dude thing, right.
Polar polar opposite of what we're just talking about now is JD vance. He's like trying to force.
Now, what're spread about it is that like it sounds like that's a joke he thought about ahead of time.
Yeah, you know, oh it was totally test like someone wrote on his team.
It wasn't like he was just like you know you It's like it's like he felt like that was the second or third time he told that.
Yeah exactly.
Yeah, like I said in that in that conversation, you know, the most glaring part is that the crowd wants you to be successful here. The fact that they didn't have any kind of a react.
Well, you can see everyone started being like wait, yeah, we.
Had to think. They're like, wait, what does that mountain do?
They're like saying it in their head, mountain do diet mountain? Does it sound like something racist?
Yeah?
I don't know.
No such thing as a production of Kaleidoscope Content. Our executive producers are Kate Osborne and mangesh Hot Tokador. The show was created by Many Fidel, Noah Friedman and Devin Joe. The theme and credit song is by me Manny and the mixing is done by Steve Bone. Special things to our guests doctor Mark Rolf from the University of New South Wales and Mike Birbiglia. Definitely check out his show Mike Birbigley as working an out everywhere you listen to podcasts.
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