Jordan Klepper of “The Daily Show” has been to so many Donald Trump rallies that we felt compelled to ask him if we’re gonna be OK if the Republican nominee wins the election.
HuffPost put the question to him on Zoom recently ahead of a new special on Monday night where he mines MAGA disciples for laughs yet again.
Hey, Jordan, are we gonna be OK?
At first, the funnyman played it light. “When we’re at the point when we’re worried about fascism and we ask the comedian if we’re gonna be OK, we are past the point of wondering if we’re going to be OK.”
Pressed for a more serious answer, Klepper unloaded a rank reality check.
“We’re in a very serious moment in our history right now,” he said. “And what scares me, no matter what happens on Nov. 5, the mediums for which we have our conversations are so broken and so ill-equipped to handle any kind of nuance, that I really am fearful for what happens next year, two years from now, three years from now.”
“There’s a whole host of things to be worried about if Donald Trump gets into office,” he continued. “… If there’s not a Trump administration and there’s a Kamala Harris administration, that doesn’t stop 49% of the population from still getting the kind of information they’re getting.”
“The social media structure and the cable news structure right now is making us dumber, it’s making us weaker and making us more open to manipulation,” he continued. “So, yes, we are in trouble.”
Klepper cloaks pessimism with goofiness in his latest collection of man-on-the-campaign-trail encounters, “The Daily Show Presents: Jordan Klepper Fingers The Pulse: Rally Together.” It airs Monday at 11:30 p.m. on Comedy Central and then streams on various platforms.
Klepper’s crashing of Trump rallies in swing states still mocks the under-informed. But for a change of pace, he brought an affable Trumper named Ed to his first Kamala Harris rally.
“Ed to me feels like the family member of yours who you have a connection with and you don’t agree with on everything, but you don’t see darkness in his heart in the way you project on to other people you haven’t met within this MAGA movement,” said Klepper, a correspondent and rotating host on the political comedy news show.
Klepper has forged friendships with some of the regulars and said attendees are mostly civil. But at the same time, his security detail for the average Trump get-together has expanded from zero to four, often due to followers who believe they are on “vigilante excursions” encouraged by their “great leader,” he said. He has been bum-rushed at a school board meeting and has received personal threats, which he didn’t care to detail.
Still, Klepper doesn’t anticipate ending his forays into the epicenter of Trumpdom, no matter the outcome on Nov. 5.
“Keeping my dates open,” he said.
