dailybeast | As his now infamous 2016 line about giving Trump a chance—inadvertently echoed in Biden’s victory speech earlier Saturday night—revealed, Chappelle’s politics have never been simple to characterize. His public criticism of Hillary Clinton in the final days of that election were bad enough that he had to later clarify that he was “not a Trump supporter.” His willingness to give Trump a “chance” followed him for months, at least until he told Stephen Colbert in 2017, “It’s not like I wanted to give him a chance that night.”
More recently, during an episode of David Letterman’s Netflix show My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, Chappelle answered a question about Trump’s Muslim ban by offering up what easily could be considered a both-sides take on the two presidential candidates.
“You don’t expect necessarily that empathy, compassion or cultural astuteness from a guy like that,” Chappelle, who converted to Islam in the early ‘90s, told Letterman. “What you’re sad about is that the chair doesn’t have more humanity in it. But has that chair ever been that humane? When Biden called Trump the first racist president ever, well clearly that’s not true. So how do I feel when I hear a white person say some stupid shit?”
As Letterman laughed, Chappelle answered his own question with a comical shrug.
“I would implore everybody who’s celebrating to remember, it’s good to be a humble winner,” Chappelle said on Saturday. “Remember when I was here four years ago? Remember how bad that felt. Remember that half the country right now still feels that way. Please remember that.”
“Remember that for the first time in the history of America, the life expectancy of white people is dropping because of heroin, because of suicide,” he continued. “All these white people out there that feel that anguish, that pain, that man, they think nobody cares. Maybe they don’t.”
“Let me tell you something: I know how that feels,” he added. “I promise you, I know how that feels. If you’re a police officer and every time you put your uniform on, you feel like you’ve got a target on your back, you’re appalled by the ingratitude that people have when you would risk your life to save them, believe me, I know how that feels.”
“But
here’s the difference between me and you,” Chappelle said. “You guys
hate each other for it. And I don’t hate anybody. I just hate that
feeling. That’s what I fight through. That’s what I suggest you fight
through. You’ve got to find a way to live your life. You’ve got to find a
way to forgive each other. You’ve got to find a way to find joy in your
existence in spite of that feeling. And if you can't do that…come get
these n---a lessons.”
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