Problematically, the line between the two groups has gotten thinner in recent years; President Donald Trump came up as a nasty cultural commentator as much as a businessman and Elon Musk’s most sincere desire is for anyone to find him funny. Meanwhile, folks like Joe Rogan, Andrew Shulz, Tony Hinchcliffe, Theo Von and more have somehow found themselves with outsized political influence. Comedy and politics are somehow more entwined than ever before, and Democrats have struggled to counter the “manosphere” and podcast ecosystem that boosted Trump’s 2024 campaign. But if you ask Kimmel (an outspoken Trump critic), the Democrats’ own response to humor is to blame. “I think a lot of the outrage is completely manufactured, and it’s like, a lot of these people who are angry aren’t really angry,” he tells Rolling Stone. “I think these liberals who’ve done such a good job of viciously attacking comedians are a big part of the reason why Trump is the president right now.”
He continues, “I just think human beings in general, when you see something that makes you laugh and you see a bunch of other people laughing, and then somebody steps in with their arms folded and goes, ‘That’s not funny, and here’s why that’s not funny,’ it just doesn’t give you a good feeling about a person. And you want to say to that person, ‘Lighten up.'”
Democrats are buzzkills: an easy position to take and a hard one to argue against. But is it a coherent political theory for the outcome of the 2024 election? Well, Kimmel is himself a comedian, so political coherence may be too much to expect. “I just don’t understand how Americans can support what [Trump’s] doing and the stupid stuff that he gets hung up on, like transgender sports and the stuff that affects almost no one,” he says at one point of the Rolling Stone interview. On the flip side, he argues that “There is no black and white when it comes to comedy. There is no line. The line is different for every person. Dave Chappelle can say things that somebody else might not be able to.” But Dave Chappelle is also hung up on transgender issues, a subject that Kimmel previously called “stupid.” Speaking of the president, Kimmel opines that “I think most comedians have a strong sense of justice, and he violates that so frequently.” But the sense of justice that might drive someone to protest an offensive joke has, in his mind, pushed the country to the right.
Of course, comedy and politics are two very different lanes—or at least they used to be. And anyway, Kimmel has a greater theory for the last election, though it’s no less Hollywood than the comedy problem. “[When] people ask me why they think Trump won, I really believe the reason more than anything is he’s so much more famous than Kamala Harris,” he says. “He is a celebrity. He is a star. He is the most famous person in the world. And it’s hard to compete with that.” You can read the full interview here.
