By Jason Zinoman
The stand-up of Tony Hinchcliffe, a popular insult comic, became an immediate issue in the presidential campaign on Sunday after his racist lines at a Donald Trump rally earned immediate blowback and criticism from, among others, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Tim Walz.
As Hinchcliffe has done in the past when embroiled in controversy, he doubled down. On the social platform X, he wrote that Walz had found the time to “analyze a joke taken out of context to make it seem racist.” Walz didn’t do that. But to the extent that there was a relevant context to Hinchcliffe’s dopey, trolling punchlines, it’s this: They were delivered at a Trump campaign event nine days before the election.
There was a time not long ago when people wondered why there weren’t more conservative comedians or why there wasn’t a right-wing version of “The Daily Show.” These questions have always been a little naive. Comedy has long had a conservative streak, and anyone who ever attended middle school knows that jokes can be as effective at reaffirming the status quo as challenging it.
But comedy has become more partisan over the years; late-night TV’s move from neutral Johnny Carson to anti-Trump hosts is only one example. In this election, a forceful new Trump-friendly contingent has emerged, one dominated by male comics, many from Joe Rogan’s orbit. Whereas the biggest names in pop music have come out aggressively for Vice President Kamala Harris, the artists who have provided the most support for Trump have been comedians.
Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, have made comedy podcasts a regular stop, aiming to win over young male voters dissatisfied with mainstream news outlets. Just in the past week, Vance has appeared on the podcasts of Tim Dillon, a satirical comic who specializes in booming nihilistic rants, and the oddly poetic, bro-ish comic Theo Von. After much public speculation over whether Trump would be invited to sit down with Rogan — the most popular comedy podcaster and the one who gave a boost to many of these comics — it happened. (Trump has also appeared on podcasts with Von and with New York standup Andrew Schulz, a podcaster so popular he headlined Madison Square Garden this year.)
This doesn’t even count Greg Gutfeld, who as Fox’s highly rated right-wing answer to late night has had Trump on as well.
The podcast stars tend to protest that they are being pigeonholed politically. Rogan himself has balked at being called conservative. (He has called himself a bleeding-heart liberal, but he is far more animated and persistent in criticizing the left than the right.) And along with chummy, un-fact-checked conversations, there are occasionally moments of slight pushback in these episodes. When Trump described himself as “basically truthful,” Schulz laughed. Rogan occasionally poked fun at Trump’s meandering replies and tried futilely to get concrete responses about evidence that the 2020 election was rigged.
And yet, a survey of the many hours of conversations between these comedians and Trump mostly reveals slavish affection and even a certain kinship. Harris finds a similarly warm reception on Howard Stern’s Sirius program or “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” and she has a few comedian surrogates like George Lopez, who spoke at a recent event. But the Trump campaign is using many more comedians to get its message out. That’s why you can see their mutual interests much more clearly.
Trump and his hosts share a disdain of the news media, a reflexive paranoia about so-called cancel culture, a delight in transgression and a love of cruel insult jokes. These podcasters may fashion themselves as cynical truth-tellers, but on the subject of comedy, they are hopeless romantics. So when Rogan told Trump in their three-hour conversation on Friday, “You have, like, comedic instincts,” it was the ultimate compliment.
You won’t hear much policy talk here or concern about offensive, false statements about immigrants. For these comics, Trump’s insults are proof of his authenticity.
The current conservative movement cares about comedy, especially as a proxy for free-speech issues. Witness the top Trump surrogate Elon Musk, who soon after his purchase of Twitter, motivated in part by the platform’s muffling of The Babylon Bee, the conservative equivalent of The Onion, tweeted: “Comedy is now legal.”
A similar if vaguer obsession arose in Hinchcliffe’s stand-up set at the Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday, when he said, “Censorship is amongst us, people. It’s a very, very, very big deal” and “Let’s make speech free again.” There’s no joke here. That it’s never been easier to say almost anything, including the most offensive or untrue comments, to a global audience doesn’t matter. This idea of censorship weighing on comedy has been repeated so many times on so many podcasts that it is accepted as truth.
And it dovetails with the conservative media fixation that its voice is being silenced. It’s a potent idea, and its appeal to male listeners who feel they are being forced to be overly sensitive to other people’s sensitivities is easily underestimated.
Hinchcliffe’s set seemed to backfire Sunday. His now notorious line likening Puerto Rico to garbage inspired several major Latino stars like Bad Bunny and Ricky Martin to respond with outpourings of support for Harris. Even the Trump campaign did something unusual Sunday, distancing itself from the comic by saying Hinchcliffe’s comments did not reflect its views.
But this offensive set was no gaffe. His remarks were scripted and appeared on a teleprompter. The power of this brand of trolling insult comedy relies on the scolding response, which then sets up the point about free speech and creates a new cycle of press. Harris has generally adopted dismissive responses to such outrages, suggesting she understands this is a way to bait her. But Walz, perhaps sensing an opportunity to reach Puerto Rican voters in swing states, called out the comic forcefully.
Will more people be turned off by cheap cracks rooted in regressive stereotypes than those who delight in a campaign promising to stick it to hall monitors? I don’t know, but the shift in the role of comedy since the first time Trump ran for president is striking.
Looking back, one could see a turning point when he appeared on “The Tonight Show” in 2016. Jimmy Fallon earned a torrent of criticism for softball questions, chummy jokes and, most famously, ruffling his hair. Many argued that he was “normalizing” Trump. That now seems naive.
The truth was that Trump had already been normalized over many decades of popular culture, by everyone from the tabloid press to “The Apprentice” producer Mark Burnett to late-night talk show hosts like David Letterman. But for a variety of reasons, Fallon made a good receptacle for public anger. And the enduring impact is that late-night comedy shows, a longtime home for Trump, stopped inviting him and made him their almost nightly punching bag.
Since then, a new comedy-media ecosystem has matured on the internet, and Trump is taking advantage of it. The stars at these new outlets are not worried about normalizing the candidate; they not only embrace but amplify Trump’s most extreme instincts. It’s a new normal.
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