Ellen DeGeneres offers hopeful message for Americans after election
After a stunning Republican upset during Tuesday’s election left Hillary Clinton supporters (and a growing number of celebrities) reeling in the wake of a Donald Trump presidency, talk show host and comedian Ellen DeGeneres is stressing the importance of optimism in times of despair.
Flexing her signature smile and cheery demeanor, DeGeneres opens Thursday’s show with a joke about finding comfort amid the poll results. “You may have heard there was a big presidential election on Tuesday,” DeGeneres says. “The big winner was alcohol.”
She also offers a quote from a former first lady as a means to comfort her audience. “Well, obviously, a lot of people were disappointed by the results. My job is to be hopeful and to make everybody feel good, and I’m going to keep doing that for as long as I can,” the Finding Dory star says. “At times like this, it’s important to remember what Eleanor Roosevelt [said]: ‘It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness,’ and I think that is a beautiful thing… If you’re feeling a little anxious or scared, I am here to tell you that things can turn out to be ok…”
DeGeneres then plays a viral clip from the upcoming BBC documentary Planet Earth 2, in which a baby iguana symbolically (and successfully) crosses a beach that’s crawling with lizard-eating snakes (you can watch that video here).
“This will make you feel better,” the 58-year-old says, introducing the footage, which sees the reptile scuttling away from an army of slithering foes. “He made it! That little baby iguana got away! And that’s what we’re going to do. We are all going to do that. If we feel like there are snakes coming at [us] from any direction… the snakes may be the fact that you don’t feel heard, or that no one’s on your isde, or you don’t like what’s on the holiday Starbucks cup this year — no matter what your snake is, there’s hope for your little iguana.”
The Ellen DeGeneres Show airs weekdays. Check your local listings for showtimes in your area, and watch a preview of Thursday’s show’s monologue below.
