Donald Trump may not like being a punchline and seemingly never laughs, but he has a funny bone behind his frowns and scowls.
Just ask Obama speechwriter and self-described comedian Jon Lovett. “Trump’s very funny. When he says Merry Christmas to all the haters and losers, that’s funny. He’s funny,” Lovett tells The Hollywood Reporter from the Just For Laughs comedy festival in Montreal.
Sure, the U.S. president has laid ruin to U.S. politics since returning to the White House. “Trump is a vandal. He’s doing vandalism to our country,” Lovett insists. But he can’t ignore Trump’s surprise comedy chops behind that lower lip pout or when he shows open anger.
“When he steamrolls in an interview, or when he’s on stage, he’s doing his version of crowd work with his MAGA base. So I do think he’s funny. That’s part of his skill,” Lovett argues.
He took to the stage in Montreal for a live presentation of his Lovett or Leave It podcast, with Gianmarco Soresi, Roy Wood Jr., Mary Beth Barone and Zach Zucker as guests.
And while Trump’s no stand-up, Lovett insists “he’s got a cruel sense of humor, and it works at times. He has a great sense for television. He knows what’s going to play well. And he knows when what’s happening is silly or ridiculous, and he knows when he needs to be on the outside of it, with the audience watching it.”
“We can pretend otherwise, but we do so at our peril,” he added. For Lovett, as a host of the Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It podcasts from Crooked Media, doing audio content allows him to fulfill all his creative interests and goals. “It’s writing. It’s performing. It’s politics. It’s comedy. And I get to do all of them,” he explains.
All of which is an unconventional route to stand-up for Lovett. “I didn’t do open mikes out of college, my path to telling jokes on stage wasn’t the traditional one. I always feel a little bit of an outsider in the comedy world,” he admits.
And Lovett points to the challenge of making comedy amid Trump’s world of distractions and political division. “It’ll be hard to describe to future generations how stupid and dangerous politics in American have become,” he explains.
One solution is to use comedy as opposition to Trump, including the Democratic Party, and become happy warriors, because the serious part of politics is exhausting, embarrassing and causes unending anxiety.
“We have to stay invested, and that’s going to be a mix of seriousness when it’s called for, but also a willingness to make fun of thse people for being fools like Trump is a clown with a gun. The gun doesn’t change the fact that he’s a clown, and the fact that he’s a clown doesn’t change the fact he’s holding a gun,” Lovett insists.
The Just For Laughs comedy festival continues through Sunday.