The Not-So-Golden Age of MAGA Troll Comedy

Final week, WABC AM 77 in New York introduced that disgraced shock-jock relic and gushing Nazi fan Anthony Cumia had returned to the radio in our nation’s most cosmopolitan metropolis. Two months into this second Trump administration, it was simply the most recent instance of media companies throughout the board scrambling to placate the president and guarantee his unappeasable, completely aggrieved supporters that they’re seen, cherished, and appreciated. The Cumia information got here alongside a Netflix announcement that it had signed a three-special take care of comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, most well-known for his gig on the Trump Madison Sq. Backyard rally the place he referred to as Puerto Rico a “floating island of rubbish.” The week earlier than that, Shane Gillis hosted Saturday Night time Reside; in 2019, he’d been employed and fired by SNL’s producer Lorne Michaels earlier than he’d even appeared in a sketch, as previous podcasts surfaced the place Gillis threw phrases like “fucking chinks” and “white faggots” round.

There’s nothing new on this embrace of right-wing troll comedy; it’s a throwback to the shock radio world the place Trump started his media profession 30 years in the past. In these heady days of “simply kidding” racism, Don Imus’s radio present was even simulcast on liberal MSNBC. Again then, Imus may name reporter Howard Kurtz a “boner-nosed…beanie-wearing Jew boy,” and sum up PBS’s White Home correspondent Gwen Ifill’s gig thusly: “They let the cleaning lady cover the White House,” and nonetheless guide Invoice Clinton or John McCain. Howard Stern, in the meantime, platformed Klan members and performed a racist vacation tune referred to as “N——- Claus.” Then as now, Trump used that form of humor to advance his pursuits. As his Atlantic Metropolis on line casino empire collapsed, Trump went on Imus’s present guilty his failure on Native American–owned casinos, saying, “They don’t appear to be Indians to me.” Three a long time later, he stopped his State of the Union tackle to name Senator Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas.”

The resurgence of troll comedy displays the postelection pattern of chasing MAGA followers because the pop-cult demographic du jour. Regardless of Trump’s nonexistent mandate and razor-thin popular-vote victory, the The Washington Put up and the Los Angeles Instances radically altered their editorial pages to keep away from our vindictive president’s wrath and courtroom his supporters—leading to large-scale defections of subscribers. Because the administration scours the halls of our federal authorities to take away any seen signal of range, MSNBC cleansed its prime-time lineup of non-white hosts—drawing outraged pushback from star anchor Rachel Maddow. The saddest seize for this imaginary MAGA cultural revolution must be Amazon Prime selling reruns of The Apprentice. Bezos and firm have wager that the American individuals, after seeing the president all day on the information and studying his each day Reality Social micro-manifestos, will need to calm down at day’s finish binge-watching his previous “reality-TV” present late into the evening.

To this point, the advertising and marketing technique of pandering to Trump and his liberal-media-hating base has not helped stated liberal media a lot. It’s value them subscribers and visitors, and left the erstwhile resistance-branded crew at MSNBC starved for scores. All of those media decision-makers have misinterpret Trump’s 312–226 Electoral Faculty win as a nationwide vibe shift slightly than the meager fashionable win that it was. The viewers hasn’t modified—there’s no crimson wave remaking the essential contours of media programming. However, MAGA appeasement lumbers on. California Governor Gavin Newsom fell for it, launching a brand new podcast this month with hardcore MAGA company like Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon. It blew up on him—not by way of scores, thoughts you, extra within the style of a Musk-designed SpaceX launch.

No, nothing a lot has modified. A bit over 10 years in the past, Anthony Cumia suicide-bombed probably the most profitable radio reveals in America, his personal Opie and Anthony Present. After an evening wandering Instances Sq. like a Travis Bickle who misplaced his cab, he bought right into a bodily altercation with a Black lady. He adopted the incident up with a racist sequence of social media posts about it, which led to his dropping his job. Since then, Cumia has confronted domestic violence charges, shrinking platforms, and a desperate reach to extremists for more listeners. It’s laborious to maintain the “simply jokes” veneer up whereas circulating pictures of your self with white supremacist Nick Fuentes and posting commentary like “White individuals all around the world really want to get 1930’s Germany kinda pissed at this level.” In June 2024, together with a photograph of New York Senator Chuck Schumer grilling beef hamburgers, Cumia wrote, “Rumor has it 6,000,000 burgers were cooked that day.”

With out his previous accomplice, Cumia’s a helpless, humorless bigot. No trendy media transfer as dangerous as a Cumia resurrection may occur with out the non-public involvement of a billionaire. Enter WABC’s proprietor, John Catsimatidis, who made his billions founding Manhattan’s Crimson Apple grocery retailer chain. Like so many in our billionaire class, from Trump to Musk to Bezos, Catsimatidis purchased into the media world to advertise his enterprise pursuits and politics—a surrogate outlet, little doubt, within the wake of his failed marketing campaign for mayor of New York in 2013. Right now, WABC’s each day programming is a Manhattan troll farm of MAGA all-stars. There’s The Stone Zone with Roger Stone; Brian Kilmeade’s put up Fox and Buddies present; the late Rush Limbaugh’s zombie sidekick Bo Snerdley; Mark Levin; Fox ogre-in-exile and assassination fanfic king Invoice O’Reilly; and Catsimatidis’s personal hour with former Fox star Rita Cosby, Cats & Cosby.

How’s it going? “Cats” spent the week following the Cumia announcement doing harm management for his Nazi-adjacent expertise deal. “WABC is not going to permit him to say something antisemitic,” Catsimatidis advised the Jewish Telegraphic Company. He stated it was his understanding that Cumia’s contract barred him from antisemitic feedback on WABC, which Catsimatidis declared was “essentially the most pro-Jewish station in America.” He admitted that he knew about and mentioned Cumia’s posts with him, after which employed him anyway. In response to the JTA, all these posts are nonetheless up.

That week, Netflix topped WABC’s troll rent with a three-special deal announcement for Tony Hinchcliffe, whose “island of rubbish” joke made him nationally well-known. The final time anybody outdoors the phantom zone of podcaster fame heard of Hinchcliffe he was calling Peng Dang, an immigrant Asian comedian who launched him on-stage in Austin, “a grimy fucking chink.” In his half-joking, actually-not-really type, Hinchcliffe referred to as his Texas viewers “race traitors” for laughing at Deng’s jokes. Deng took to social media to go after Hinchcliffe. Like Cumia’s tweets, you possibly can resolve for your self whether or not Hinchcliffe meant it or not (the full sets are here), however the extra related calculation is that these trolls know there’s an anti-immigrant white-nationalist viewers on the market, and they’re going to fortunately pander to it.

Hinchcliffe is a roast comedian, and could be seen doing much less hateful variations of those jokes on the expense of Jewish comics like Jeff Ross and Black comics like Kevin Hart within the 2024 Netflix roast of Tom Brady. At a roast, none of it issues, as a result of no matter Jew jokes or Black jokes a comic book does, the opposite comics get to punch again. Nominally, they’re buddies, or a minimum of receives a commission to chuckle like they’re buddies. It’s comedy’s model of pro-wrestling. Positive, someone will get hit by a chair, nevertheless it’s not actual, and too absurd to be taken critically.

After Hinchcliffe’s Madison Sq. Backyard star flip, all of the sudden woke Republicans lashed out at his Puerto Rico jokes, primarily as a result of Latinos make up a desperately wanted GOP demographic. “This joke bombed for a purpose,” whined newly minted snowflake Senator Rick Scott of Florida. “It’s not humorous and it’s not true. Puerto Ricans are wonderful individuals and wonderful Individuals!” Days later, a laughing Jon Stewart defended Hinchcliffe. “I discover that man very humorous,” Stewart stated. “Clearly, on reflection, having a roast comic come to a political rally per week earlier than election day and roasting a key demographic, most likely not the very best determination by the marketing campaign politically, however to be honest, the man’s simply actually doing what he does.”

Stewart’s “the man’s simply doing what he does” apologia will get stretched fairly skinny right here. The MSG rally wasn’t a roast or a phase of Hinchcliffe’s podcast, Kill Tony. Trump’s crew needed to echo an American Nazi rally staged at the same venue in 1939. There was no Puerto Rican comedian to reply him. They employed Hinchcliffe to whip up a hate rally. He took the gig to assist Trump get elected. Whenever you present up for a white nationalist rally, and also you do white nationalist jokes, you are likely to appear to be a white nationalist. That, too, is what Tony Hinchcliffe does.

Marc Maron noticed all of it very in a different way from Jon Stewart. “The anti-woke flank of the brand new fascism is being pushed virtually completely by comics, my friends,” he wrote the day after Hinchcliffe’s MSG set. “Whether or not or not they’re self-serving or true believers within the new fascism is unimportant. They’re of the motion…. They’re a part of the general public face of a fascist political motion that seeks to destroy the democratic thought.”

Troll comedy has at all times been a seamless match for fascism, one thing the musical Cabaret made clear again in 1966. In 1990, on the peak of his personal troll fame, Andrew “Cube” Clay additionally bought out Madison Sq. Backyard and filmed these reveals for his live performance film, Cube Guidelines (1991). In Roger Ebert’s review, he referred to as out troll comedy’s fascist vibe: “It’s eerie, watching the pictures of the viewers. You by no means see anybody simply plain laughing, as in the event that they’d heard one thing that was humorous. You see, as a substitute, habits extra applicable at a fascist rally, as his followers stick their fists within the air and chant his title as if he have been making some form of assertion for them. Maybe he’s. Maybe he’s giving voice to their rage, worry, prejudice and hatred. They appear to cheer him as a result of he’s getting away with expressing the sick ideas they don’t dare to say.” George Carlin echoed those thoughts on Larry King’s present, calling Clay’s comedy a “sharing of anger and rage.” Carlin additionally questioned whether or not Clay actually shared that anger and rage along with his viewers. Most probably, he didn’t—which is why it’s referred to as trolling.

Shane Gillis mounted his second shot internet hosting SNL two weeks in the past. Lorne Michaels’s invites to Gillis look transparently motivated to spice up SNL’s foreign money with the MAGA comedy base and spare the present the dreaded model of “woke.” The notoriety of his firing from SNL skyrocketed Gillis’s profession. It took off like he had been a forged member for 5 years. As a troll comedian, he’s now a severe draw at enviornment venues. That success furnished the excuse for his first SNL internet hosting gig in February 2024, simply because the marketing campaign yr started. Inside weeks of that, Warner Bros. Discovery imported Invoice Maher’s Actual Time trollery for Friday-night segments on the information channel MAGA loathes above all others, CNN.

Each of Gillis’s flop-sweat drenched monologues come throughout extra like meandering podcast chatter than stand-up. Not like different trolls, he appears genuinely uncomfortable with the rep he’s garnered. Regardless of the success it introduced him, he doesn’t enjoy it. “Should you don’t know who I’m, please don’t Google that,” he stated in his first SNL monologue, and it’s perhaps the funniest factor he ever stated on the present. Nonetheless, when his second monologue hit an ungainly silence throughout a bit about how he must ask his girlfriends in the event that they’ve ever had intercourse with Black males, he did what each bombing troll comedian does—he blamed his “liberal” viewers. Has he ever seen Colin Jost and Michael Che’s Weekend Replace joke swaps? Their race-specific jokes are brutal, they usually get laborious laughs from that very same “liberal” viewers—however to get these laughs, they really write jokes.

Sure, Trump’s return means it’s morning in America once more for troll comedy. In a rustic as multicultural and numerous as ours, there’ll at all times haters, and there’ll at all times be comics to cater to them. But it surely’s additionally true that pandering to them finally blows up of their faces. Troll legends like Imus, Cumia, and Andrew “Cube” Clay all bought an enormous profession boosts from their “Am I offending you?” sneers. Like Trump, the Diceman sold out Madison Square Garden. If you wish to see him this month, he’ll be on the Tarrytown Music Hall, in Tarrytown, New York. Troll comedy at all times collapses the identical means—when individuals cease asking whether or not you imply it or not, as a result of it simply doesn’t matter.