2016 The Choice: Finding humor in the election cycle with New Yorker satirist Andy Borowitz
By Alex Bregman
On Monday, Oct. 17, 2016, Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric talks with satirist Andy Borowitz, creator of the New Yorker’s The Borowitz Report. The two discuss finding humor and levity in this year’s wild and vitriolic election cycle.
About Donald Trump, he joked, “He is hysterical, very funny in sort of a terrifying way — sort of the way Germany in the ’30s was hilarious. For me, as a comedian, it’s kind of tough to really improve upon that. So even though there’s been a lot of material, I’m really eager for the election to be over because I’m sort of tired of competing with that.”
Borowitz, however, thinks that Trump has been bad for comedy and satire. He said, “The problem with Donald Trump, and he is really… I’m a satirist and he is really pre-satirized. I mean he comes out, he already says, ‘I want a drug test.’ I mean I used to come up with wacky headlines about things politicians say or do, and it’s really impossible to improve upon what he does.”
On Trump saying that the election is being “rigged” by the media, Borowitz thinks just the opposite. He said, “They actually rigged the primaries, if anything, for Donald Trump.” He compared the primary season to a reality show: “The primary unfolded like a reality show where you had a huge bunch of people on the island and Trump’s real goal was to ritually and serially humiliate every one of the people off the island, and he was really good at it. I mean, his skills as a reality show performer were really good. Unfortunately that is not the job we are electing him for, but it was great in the primary, said Borowitz. “And the media — they were his media partners. So he has absolutely nothing to complain about the media. It’s just that they kind of stopped doing what he wanted them to do at this very crucial moment.”
On what happens if Trump loses, Borowitz said, “I think people will be pissed off briefly. Trump won’t go away. I think that he and Steve Bannon will start some great alt-right news network.”
On the news that Trump’s son-in-law has been in talks to start a Trump News Network, Borowitz joked, “I would love to see how that works with Jared Kushner, a Jewish guy, funding this alt-right thing. That’s going to make for some interesting office parties around the holidays.”
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.
