LOS ANGELES - MAY 30: Jordan Klepper arrives for the Comedy Central, Paramount Network, TV Land Press Day on May 30, 2019 in West Hollywood, CA (Photo credit: DFree / Shutterstock)
Comedian Jordan Klepper is known for his viral interviews with some of President Donald Trump's most diehard MAGA supporters, and recently shared details about some of the scariest — and most insightful — moments from those interactions.
On Wednesday, The Daily Show posted a video from Klepper's recent "After the Cut" segment, which shows longer and more in-depth moments from the show that don't make it into the final broadcast. He wryly observed that as a former improvisational comedy teacher, he wasn't used to having to travel with a security team, but that the combative tone of contemporary American politics required him to do so.
At the 2020 Million MAGA March ("their number, not mine," Klepper quipped), he noted that "there was such an energy of anger there that at one point we got chased down an alley," and that "the tone has shifted and people want to aggressively come up and engage with you in some way."
ALSO READ: 'Alarming': Small colleges bullied into silence as Trump poses 'existential threat'
Klepper recounted one interaction in which he was covering Trump's first impeachment trial (over the Ukraine scandal), and interviewed a Trump supporter who insisted that the proceedings were illegitimate, saying that she believed Trump had nothing to hide as he wasn't preventing anyone from testifying. He then recalled getting her to admit that she "didn't care" once he confronted her that Trump was indeed trying to block former National Security Advisor John Bolton from testifying.
"We can have debates about what you want, that's politics," Klepper said of the interaction. "When your politics becomes who you are, we can't debate that."
"A Trump magic trick is he made folks think that's who they are, that they are MAGA," he continued. "That moment for me was revelatory."
He also recalled a time in which he was interviewing Trump supporters outside of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and "talked to a man who was swinging a pitchfork and talking about revolution."
"And as I'm interviewing him, I get interrupted by another man who's screaming obscenities at us," he said. "And obscenity man gets shushed by pitchfork man who says, 'you do not speak for me,' leaving me grateful for the more level-headed man swinging a pitchfork."
Watch the full video below, or by clicking this link.