About That Theo Von/Trump Collab
And some other wild things that happened in comedy this week.
The big comedy news this week is that podcaster Theodor Capitani von Kurnatowski III, better known as Theo Von, fresh off his interview with Bernie Sanders, sat down with none other than Donald Trump. The interview, set up by UFC exec Dana White, was more personal than political, covering subjects like addiction, Kid Rock, and Trump’s various sons before winding its way to the former president’s supposed policy achievements and gripes with the Democrats. The political commentariat was particularly dazzled with a stretch of the conversation where Von describes his sobriety journey, which I will begrudgingly acknowledge is the sort of thing you don't often see in these conversations. Per Helen Lewis in The Atlantic:
His discussion of drug and alcohol addiction on Theo Von’s This Past Weekend podcast demonstrated perhaps the most interest Trump has ever shown in another human being. Before watching the video of the episode, I hadn’t realized the former president was capable of sentences that end with a question mark… He peppered Von with questions: Which was the “bigger up”? Which was harder to quit, cocaine or alcohol? How long had he been sober? Which was a greater problem in the U.S., alcohol or opiates? “Fentanyl is laced into everything now, it’s horrible,” Trump said. Von lamented that the blow these days was terrible and he had no idea where people were getting it from. Trump looked sympathetic.
Lewis observes later that comedy podcasts have “expanded the talk show circuit,” describing This Past Weekend as “Ellen for men.” It’s an important point, though I might add that, given the leanings of the most popular podcasters, this expansion generally only benefits one side of the political spectrum, and pretty much every podcast in this class could be described as Ellen for men. In his newsletter Read Max, Max Read offers a similar analysis, describing Trump’s courtship of podcasters and streamers as a “dipshit outreach strategy”:
This interview comes on the heels of one with streamer Adin Ross earlier in August, and an interview with YouTuber/podcaster Logan Paul back in June; the same month, the Canadian pranksters of the YouTube channel “Nelk” recorded a TikTok on behalf of Trump’s vice-presidential candidate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance.
What do Von, Ross, Paul, and the Nelk Boys have in common? I’ll admit that it’s unfair to lump a harmless and affable dumbass like Von in with a malevolent little twerp like Ross. But they all provide varying levels of access to a large audience of young men who might find Trump appealing--guys who like “edgy,” trollish, hedonistic, attention-seeking personalities.
As Read notes, one potential flaw in this strategy—which RFK Jr. also deployed before dropping out and endorsing Trump on Friday—is that “a sizable majority of the dipshit audience is 15-year-old boys who are not legally able to vote.” Indeed, it’s interesting that Trump’s appearance on This Past Weekend began much like Tucker Carlson’s: just as Carlson said his kids are fans of Von, so too did Trump pass along his son Barron’s admiration. “He knows you very well,” he told Von. “He said, ‘Dad, he’s big.’”
I will admit I'm less charmed by Von than Read is, which is not to say I don’t think he’s charming. He is, and his charm is what differentiates him from many others in the Joe Rogan crew—not that a lack of charm has ever cost them any fans. I’ve described Von in the past as someone who makes Rogan look like Nietzsche; to put this a little more kindly, he strikes me as someone fully and completely present in every single moment, free of doubt or pretense and therefore able to meet his guests exactly where they are. This is no easy skill, and it makes for natural, free-flowing, and often very funny conversations. At the same time, it seems to correspond with the same sort of gullibility that makes Rogan such a mark. Von may be charming, but he is also easily charmed, especially by the famous and powerful. He is the quintessential useful idiot; with scant critical capacities or object permanence to speak of, he offers an empty vessel for his subjects to fill with their own agendas and ideologies, which he is often all too happy to co-sign.
And just like everybody else in the world, he has his own ideology too. Traces of it emerge here and there, and if you pay attention long enough it becomes pretty clear why Trump and RFK Jr. would come to his podcast searching for votes. I’ve written about Von’s transphobia, anti-vaccine comments, and his shocking remarks about public health at the beginning of the pandemic. What struck me about his conversation with Trump was one of the few policy issues he cared to ask about: immigration. “We had two border patrol agents that came on in the past two years, 'cause we wanted to learn about it from people that are there on the ground,” he said,
and one of the things that we found out was a lot of times they keep arresting the same people, because the people that are coming in illegally aren't being prosecuted. That's one of the biggest problems they were saying. What can we do differently to make things safe at the border? It's the fact that a family can’t—a father can’t—you know—can’t sleep at night because he doesn't know who's going through his yard or going through it. It's just not fair. It's not what you sign up for when you're an American. What are you going to differently?
In response, Trump brags about his border wall, claims that Kamala Harris wants open borders (she doesn't, alas), and tells Von that other countries' crime rates are decreasing “because they're sending all their criminals here.” He will fix this, he says, by sealing the borders and expelling the criminals. “I don’t think people should be allowed to be in our country if they’re criminals,” Von tells Trump, who you may recall is a rapist recently convicted of fraud. After Trump rants again about all the murderers and terrorists flooding into the US by the hundreds of thousands, Von adds: “In Brooklyn alone, there's a huge building that is housing just Haitian people. They're just housing this, wandering around Brooklyn all the time, my friends are telling me.” (Von lives in Nashville and Los Angeles, according to his website.)
Do you see what I’m getting at? It may be true that this particular strain of racism and xenophobia has the backing of both major political parties, but it is racism and xenophobia all the same. Von’s invocation of “Haitian people… wandering around Brooklyn” is especially egregious. It’s not at all clear what he’s referencing—and he has a habit of straight-up lying; recall his baseless claim that the polio vaccine “gave cervical cancer to tons of women” in his chat with Tucker Carlson—but my best guess is that he’s talking about a building recently purchased by an NYC nonprofit serving Haitian-Americans, which plans to use it as a community center. (The horror!) I suspect whatever he's hearing from his friends can be traced back to Fox News or Matt Walsh or whichever other right-wing media personality would like you to be terrified of Black people walking around Brooklyn; here, again, we see how people like Von serve to launder propaganda.
In The Atlantic, Helen Lewis speculates that we may see Trump grace other comedy podcasts with his presence. Given how thirstily podcasters boosted RFK Jr. and how eager Trump is to spend time with people who adore him (compounded by his apparent post-assassination attempt wariness towards the campaign trail), I’d bet she’s right. It’ll be very interesting to see who in the Heterodox Comedian Crowd decides to finally stop pretending that they’re not fully on Team Trump.
“If you really don't like the Jews, just have 'em be over there.”
Presented without comment, an exchange from this week’s Patreon episode of Flagrant, Andrew Schulz's podcast:
Schulz: I heard a fire take by some bitch. I don't even know who she was, but she was like, "I don't understand this. All these people are anti-Zionists, anti-Zionist this, you don't like—but you also don't want Israel. Why would you be against a place where we could send them all and then they just live there?" I'm like, yo, that's some good hillbilly logic.
Mark Gagnon: Antisemitic Zionists. That's brilliant.
Schulz: Right? Like if you really don't like the Jews, just have 'em be over there.
Gagnon: Yeah. That's why we gotta have trans in the military. I'm supportive. Put 'em on the front lines. Only trans in the military. Attach a rocket launcher to ‘em while you're doing the surgery. Double it up.
Alexx Media: Wow. Fucking shit.
Gagnon: That's too far?
Schulz: Nah, nah. That's fire.
Joe Rogan: Comedians Who Complained About Louis CK’s Leaked 2018 Set Aren’t Real Comedians
Presented with brief comments, an exchange in this week’s episode of The Joe Rogan Experience featuring comedian and Louis CK opener Raanan Hershberg:
Rogan: The filming thing is fucking strange. Because some people want to get filmed, 'cause you can get some clips like interacting with the audience. But it's like, you have to have an opportunity to work out stuff. Because there's times when you're on stage and you're saying things and you have a new bit and you don't know where you're taking it while you're taking it there.
Hershberg: Of course, yeah. And you have to like—that’s why when they leaked the Louie thing, it was—any comic who criticized him should lose their comedian badge right away.
Rogan: They have, to me.
Hershberg: If you release something when they weren't planning for it, it doesn't matter what they said in it, you're at fault for releasing something. You know?
Rogan: Well, it's obviously an audience member that released it. But the comics that criticized him, like: hey man, fuck you. Like you, pretending—first of all, the guy didn’t do comedy for 10 months. And then second, the stuff that he was saying, if you know him and you know his act, and I guarantee you fucking do, ‘cause a lot of those people are just haters. If you know him, you know, given enough time, he would make that horrible premise really fucking funny.
Hershberg: Yes! And frankly, it was pretty funny then.
Rogan: Pretty funny then. It was pretty funny. I mean, it was horrible that he was saying like, “Push the fat kid in front of you.”
Hershberg: But that’s funny!
Rogan: But you don't think there would be layers upon layers that would make that joke brilliant in a year if you just let him do it?
Hershberg: And you learn the cushions. Like, he didn’t have the cushions. You learn—people like Louie, the great comics, they’re great at learning how to make a hard joke work. And he hadn’t maybe developed the cushions yet onstage, but they would’ve come.
Rogan: He hadn’t done any comedy at all in 10 months. So this is like literally the first set he did.
Hershberg: I think anyone who criticized him about that was the kind of comedian who doesn't take risks. Because if you take any risks, you wouldn't want stuff to be released.
Rogan: Right. Exactly. And if you understand how jokes are developed, like—there’s too many people that got into it from something else, and they did standup in the beginning, and then they got into it again, they consider themselves standups, and then they'll come out and criticize something like this. And you go, just shut the fuck up, man. You're not even doing it right. You're not even doing it right. Like, you saying that he’s, that this is bad. Like, come on man, this is how everybody creates material.
Hershberg: You have to, yeah. Once he puts it on a special, then you can judge it once he decides.
Rogan: Exactly.
In summary: if you force female comics to watch you masturbate and then use your powerful manager to keep them quiet about it? That’s fine. If you criticize another comic’s jokes mocking nonbinary people and the survivors of the Parkland massacre? Fuck you, go fuck yourself, your comedian badge is revoked.
Does It Violate Patreon’s Terms of Service to Say Judaism Is Controlled by a Blood-Sucking Cult?
Let us return briefly to War Mode, the podcast hosted by Holocaust deniers and frequent Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast guests Bill McCusker (brother of Matt McCusker) and Andrew Pacella (just some guy they’re all friends with).
In a Patreon episode released this week, the duo interviews one of their heroes, the conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier David Icke. The conversation is mostly incomprehensible if you haven’t spent the last 15-plus steeped in hours-long YouTube documentaries about aliens and lizard people and astral projection and vibrational energy and 5G, but you’ll be shocked to here Icke also had a few words to say about the Jews. To wit:
Icke: The Jewish community is actually controlled by a secret society called Sabbateans, or Sabbatean Frankists, that actually have no allegiance to Jewish people at all. They hung them out to dry so many times over the years. And they'll have no compulsion about doing it again. And what concerns me is that Jewish people as a group are going to be subject to the consequences of all this stuff that's going on.
Pacella: I mean, Netanyahu said that—what did—he said something—he gave them all like the extreme vaccines—
McCusker: Oh yeah, he vaccinated the shit out of Israel.
Icke: Well that’s a wonderful example of what I mean. Where he’s talking to Jordan Peterson, who's doing this interview with him and letting him get away with the most extraordinary lies. I mean with his mate, Ben Shapiro. But Netanyahu actually said that he'd allowed Pfizer to use Israel or Israelis as a laboratory for his fake vaccine. And I've got a number of contacts in Israel and they contact me when these things are going on. And they were saying, what a bloody nightmare it was there with all the pressure to have the fake vaccine.
Pacella: You need a card to go food shop—you need a vaccine card to go food shopping, right?
McCusker: Yeah, now you do. [Ed. note: no, you don’t.]
Icke: So, why would you do that? I remember a Jewish lawyer, it was during Covid, and he's giving evidence to a investigation, and he said that what happened in Nazi Germany—people remember—he said, but what's happening in Israel—this is during Covid—is reminding me of Nazi Germany. And he asked the question, why would the government of Israel be treating its people like the Nazis did, right? Well, what if this Sabbatean cult, which actually has contempt for Jewish people, were basically the same force that was manipulating in Germany, as was manipulating—that took over Israel? Because this Sabbatean cult has been in control of Israel from day one. It's certainly in control via Netanyahu. And so it keeps doing things that are not good for Jewish people.
Pacella: It’s funny that his name is “yahoo.”
Icke has previously claimed that the so-called Sabbatean Frankists were involved in 9/11, Nazi Germany, the Iraq invasion, and the pandemic; he has also said that the cult includes the Rothschild family; he has also described the Rothschild family as blood-drinking Satanists reptilian shape-shifters; he has also said that the earth is controlled by shape-shifting reptilian aliens who drink the blood of Aryan children. Hmm!
I asked Patreon if Icke’s comments on War Mode violate its community guidelines, which proscribe the use of “harmful stereotypes” and “code words or proxies” to attack people on the basis of religion. Patreon declined to comment.
What Else?
-Just For Laughs has a new owner, something called ComediHa!, which is already planning festivals in Sydney, Vancouver, and Bermuda. CAA reportedly still has a small stake; Howie Mandel is out.
-I loved the latest Simple Town short, Simple Town Goes to London.
-I also loved Conner O’Malley’s film Rap World, and while I may be too late to the punch here, you should definitely check it out if it screens in your city.
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