2016 The Choice: Colin Quinn on his new Netflix special and the Clinton-Trump finale
by Summer Delaney and Kelli Hill
With Election Day just five days away, Donald Trump is closing the gap on Hillary Clinton’s lead in the latest national polls. Regardless of which candidate wins, the 2016 election cycle has been one for the history books, and has provided plenty of material for comedians.
Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric sat down with comedian Colin Quinn to discuss the Clinton-Trump finale and the Netflix special of his off-Broadway show “Colin Quinn: The New York Story.” This election, Quinn believes, has been unlike anything he has seen.
“Here’s the problem with this country, in my opinion,” Quinn said. “Now, everybody is a [critic] and social media made it worse. It’s just everybody saying, ‘Here’s what should happen.’ I know everybody’s opinion in this whole country on every subject.”
As for the candidates, Quinn thinks Trump has gained so much support because people are dissatisfied and feel that a vote for Trump is a way of rebelling. “The reason he got popular is because he was saying what everybody had in the back of their mind,” he said. “Even if people are like, ‘But that’s ruining your self-interest,’ they’re like, ‘I don’t care, because I’m so mad now, I don’t care.’”
In the case of Hillary Clinton, the comedian also understands how some voters have negative feelings towards the candidate: “I think they’re legitimate just because there is something about her, there’s something about her personality,” he said. “It’s that smile. I used to say that smile has the sincerity of a lap dance. There’s something off about her.”
Quinn also commented that anyone else in a head-to-head against Trump would be running away with the election. “Bernie Sanders is probably fuming at whoever told him to drop out of the race by now. He could have won this whole thing probably.”
Quinn’s upcoming Netflix special focuses on the melting pot of New York City being shaped by the experiences of immigrants since the nation’s founding. When addressing our contemporary immigration debate, Quinn believes people’s opinions are due to a combination of factors.
“For some people, it’s xenophobia for sure, but for other people, it’s like, ‘Wait a minute, [immigration] drives my wages down,’” he said. “There are two sides to it. It couldn’t be figured out worse than we do it now. It couldn’t be articulated worse. It couldn’t be done worse.”
Quinn’s show, “Colin Quinn: The New York Story,” debuts on Netflix on November 18.
Yahoo News Now Special Edition: “2016 The Choice” — Every weekday until the election, we’ll be coming to you live from the Yahoo Studios in New York City, bringing the latest information and analysis of the day’s most compelling storylines in the race for the White House.
