Why These Legendary Comedians Won’t Joke About Trump

Martin Short and Steve Martin have deliberately kept politics — and President Donald Trump — largely out of their comedy, but in Short’s case, it’s not because he’s short on opinions.

“Steve and I have great respect for the fact that we don’t just want a liberal audience. So you want the audience to feel that this is, in a way, a safe zone. A zone where they’re not going to be made to feel like a jerk because they voted one way,” Short, 68, told The Daily Beast in an interview released Sunday.

“So that’s why we deliberately do not mention Donald Trump,” he continued. “But as far as the Trump presidency, I wouldn’t even call it a presidency. It’s an asterisk. It’s a typo. I mean, every day it’s worse and 10 years from now the history books will be having a field day with it and the shame of the people who supported him, if they’re still around, in the sense of being in the public eye, will be like the people who supported McCarthy.”

Short’s biggest issue isn’t necessarily Trump himself, he says, but rather those around him, citing Fran Lebowitz’s quote that New Yorkers didn’t vote for Trump because “we know who he is.”


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