In a series of comments made to The Daily Beast in a recent interview, actor and comedian Jim Gaffigan commented on his anti-Trump tweets from 2020, saying that he regrets having posted things that supporters of the president-elect took personally and for which they will never forgive him.
As background, Gaffigan went on an anti-Trump spree back in 2020, when the first Trump administration was wrapping up alongside the Floyd riots and Covid. In one, for example, the comedian wrote, “Look Trumpers I get it. As a kid I was a cubs fan and I know you stick by your team no matter what but he’s a traitor and a con man who doesn’t care about you. Deep down you know it. I’m sure you enjoy pissing people off but you know Trump is a liar and a criminal.”
In another, he claimed that people died because of Trump, saying, “You know Trump just creates enemies. You know you can’t trust him. You know he been incompetent during this crisis. You know all those people didn’t need to die. Trump talks about the Space Program and you can’t safely go to a movie. Wake up.”
In any case, speaking to the Daily Beast, Gaffigan said that his comments had not been meant as personal attacks on Trump supporters and that he regrets framing them in a way that seemed like a personal insult. He said, “I regret that people think that I was criticizing people that support Trump. And that was never the intention. I regret – someone said like, now I can’t follow you anymore and I kind of said ‘F you’ to them.”
Building, Gaffigan noted that there are a number of Trump supporters who feel passionately enough about the past tweets that, though they used to like his comedy, now can’t and won’t forgive him. Beginning to speak on that note, he commented on the importance of authenticity, saying, “But it’s weird because I think authenticity is really an important thing, not only as a comedian, but also with your children.”
Continuing, he noted that there’s a large block of people who would, but for the personal-seeming tweets, like his comedy, but now can’t forgive him. He said, “For me, I don’t regret it, but I also do acknowledge that there are true die-hard Trump fans who probably enjoyed my comedy, but because they feel so passionately will never forgive me.”
Gaffigan did admit that part of comedy is offending other otherwise losing people, saying, “But also, something I’ve noticed in doing stand-up for so long is, you’re going to lose people. You’re also going to attract people. But there are going to be people who are like, you know, ‘I don’t have kids, I think he’s funny, but I don’t get this.’”
And, when he was asked what number of former supporters he lost because of his comments, Gaffigan said, “I wouldn’t say it was measurable. But there were definitely comments on social media, and there are still some. My son, who’s so funny — I posted something, and my 18-year-old son commented, ‘I liked him until he went on his Trump rant.’”
Gaffigan recently played and demolished Tim Walz in a skit for SNL. Watch part of the skit here:
Featured image credit: By Justin Hoch, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16675281
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