A Quote by Hasan Minhaj

When people were like, "Oh, wow, Donald Trump is so crazy. That's so nuts, what's happening?" in the 9 a.m. meeting, Jon Stewart was like, "No, I've seen this before, in Robert Mugabe. I've seen Trump as an African dictator. You guys don't know about nationalist rhetoric all over Europe?" "No, I thought we were the center of the world." He has the ability to actually talk about that in a real way: "Oh, I've been there. I've talked to people there. This is just the remix on stuff that's been brewing for three, four years." That's something very special.
I was like, wow, this guy's [Donald Trump ] going to do well. And I remember people laughed at me. People were like, oh, you silly ignorant person who's just come to this world. You clearly shouldn't be at "The Daily Show" 'cause you don't know what you're talking about. And I was like, but I don't know. He seems like he connects with people. I can relate to him as a performer. I can see what tools he's using. He's good at riffing. He's good at taking the crowd on a journey. I can see what he's doing.
People hear from Donald Trump that he's such an extraordinary success. They didn't know about Trump airlines and Trump mortgages and Trump vitamin network and Trump steaks and Trump Taj Mahal. They didn't realize a lot of small people have been crushed by Donald Trump's rise to become a very wealthy man, successful financially, but this is a guy who has not been a uniform success.
I guess the cool thing about the '80s is the kind of like adventure in terms of, you know, people were very willing to use sounds that were completely ridiculous or whatever. There was a lot of stuff happening in the '80s and it's all over the place. I guess that's probably the coolest thing for me and that's what I like about it. Just kind of that like, 'Oh, what's this sound? Oh that's wacky. Let's use it anyways.'
Donald Trump has been about we, the people. I just wanted to counter that sound bite because that's part of the problem, bad sound bites. He's been about we the people. If he were just about Donald Trump, you wouldn't have had 14 million people voting for him.
I remember going to a Trump rally in South Carolina, and it was really important and it was really interesting to talk to the people who'd shown up there because they were not caricatures, and so often Trump voters, Trump supporters were being portrayed in the media, probably I'm guilty of it as well, as caricatures. Each of these people, and I talked to maybe a dozen of them, had a very particular reason why he or she was supporting Donald Trump , but these were not casual, inexplicable decisions.
Sixty one percent of Donald Trump`s supporters believe that President [Barack] Obama was not born in the United States.They believe Donald Trump`s lie about where President Obama was born, the lie he started telling four years ago and has since replaced with other hate-driven lies like the thousands of Muslims Donald Trump lies about having seen celebrating in New Jersey on 9/11.
Donald Trump talks to a lot of people. That doesn't change his ultimate views. If you go back on YouTube and you look at Donald Trump talking about trade in the 1980s, in the 1990s, this is the same person today. He's no different. So, while a lot of people like to talk and argue about who's talking to President Trump and who's influencing him to make decisions, it's Donald Trump. It's his agenda. It's always been his agenda. And it always will be his agenda.
It was a realization for me when Oprah was talking about New Moon. I was like, "Oh, my god, she's watched a movie that I've been in!" People were like, "It just kicked in for you?," but it's just work for me. The idea that somebody that I've admired for so long had seen something that I'd done was when I understood the magnitude of it.
For 18 months, leading up to the November election, I did everything in my power to show how ridiculous and crazy Trump's rhetoric was. I literally did a piece called "Donald Trump Is White ISIS." But, partisanship aside, there's a huge populace of people that were like, "I hear what you're saying, but I need something to change in my life, and I would like to have a representative that I think will do that for me."
When Donald Trump was first elected, there was a lot of fear of a trade war. They listened to Trump's rhetoric on the campaign. Oh, we're going to put a 45 percent tariff on China, a 35 percent tariff on Mexico. We haven't seen any of that.
Eddie Izzard is wonderful, I think, but I've only seen that one HBO special he did. He's one of the few people who talk about stuff other than girlfriends and relationships and flatulence and genitalia. There are very few of them who actually talk about real stuff.
During the campaign [Donald Trump] talked about reaching out to African- American voters in particular. He talked about inner cities in a way that did offend some people. Lot of Democrats. Some African- Americans of saying what have you got to lose.
I kind of wish people didn’t know who I am, that I could just lie, say I’m a speechwriter for Obama. This is what I said before Twilight. And then Obama came along and picked up all these young writers. I found out this guy, Jon Favreau — who’s not the actor Jon Favreau — is writing for him. And I was like, Wow, I wonder if the people who thought I was bullshitting at the time are like, ‘Oh my god. That guy! That kid who was drunk in some bar actually wrote the health care bill!’
People that support Donald Trump are gonna circle the wagons around Trump even more so after this. This isn't gonna cause Catholics or other Christians to say, "Oh, my God, the pope, oh, no, pope says Trump's not a Christian. I gotta abandon Trump." No. It isn't gonna happen that way, I don't believe.
Because a part of the entire [Donald] Trump experience or whatever this last six months [of 2015] has been sort of feels like we`ve been living in a dream, but this is all actually happening.I mean, it`s great to be a political journalist in this time. It`s about the rhetoric. You hear his supporters on the campaign trail say we`re glad he`s not politically correct.
The Internet is really our meeting place. We have this amazing listserv. Every time I log onto it I feel a sense of pride, because if you log on and say, "Oh I was just in San Diego and I was in a park and I saw a lion," the flurry of replies on average is just like--wow! All these existential questions about what it means to be an African, and never having seen a lion at home, but having seen a lion here. Everything you say turns into this real philosophical debate--it's incredible in so many ways. And it's an invigorating place to be.
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