Sarah Silverman can see the bright side to Donald Trump’s run for the highest office in America. Speaking to Andy Borowitz as part of the New Yorker Festival, the comedian chose to forego any talk of her career and future projects to focus on the state of the 2016 election. “Put aside the horror that there was ever a possibility that he could have been president,” Silverman said of Donald Trump, “he’s kind of great. Great in the way that when you see anti-Semitism out in the open — like when Mel Gibson said that stuff about Jews, Jews loved that because it’s something that you can point to, and it’s not just this gas in the air. When things are out in the light, darkness cannot exist out in the light.”
According to Silverman, the darkness that Trump represents is in his racism and misogyny. “Donald Trump embodies real feelings in a real part of this country, but at least you can point to him and it’s there and it’s tangible and it’s real. And maybe that’s a good thing, and maybe the next person will be like Pence, which is terrifying because he comes off great, but he’s a monster.” Adding about Pence, “He’s not a friend to the woman, but he’s slick and he’s calm and he has a really good demeanor.”
Silverman was a noted supporter of Bernie Sanders. She actively campaigned for the Vermont senator with speeches and on social media throughout his bid for the Democratic nomination. She is now a full supporter of Hillary Clinton — she even spoke at the DNC — and threw her weight behind the candidate because, “She’s a person who listens, and she has listened to Bernie’s ideas.” When asked by an audience member if she thought Joan Rivers would be a Trump supporter, she was a bit conflicted:
I loved Joan so much, but we are very different people. She loved stuff, and gold — there’s a picture of her in her apartment and it’s gold, everything is gold and fancy and china … She really was a monster on Celebrity Apprentice, which she won, and she loved Donald Trump, but she’s very passionate about gay rights and that may — well, Trump never really says anything about it.”
