Dave Chappelle spent years refusing to examine his own transphobic opinions. Circa 2021, Chappelle decided, seemingly out of nowhere, to make “transphobia” his entire comedic shtick. Whenever anyone questioned why Chappelle – a pioneering comedian in the early ‘00s – was going all-on on punching down on a marginalized community, he doubled-down. He even openly associated with nutjobs like Elon Musk (whose ideology is also centered on transphobia), and brought Musk on stage with him (Elon got booed to hell and back). Well, a few years have passed since all of that went down. Now, suddenly, Dave Chappelle thinks it’s gross that Republicans embraced transphobia in the same way he did. Are you joking?

Dave Chappelle called out Republicans in a new interview with NPR, accusing members of the political party of “weaponizing” his transgender jokes. The comedian has courted controversy since 2021 after his Netflix special, “The Closer,” included jokes that were widely criticized as transphobic. Netflix boss Ted Sarandos defended the special at the time by citing “artistic freedom,” prompting trans employees and allies at the company to walk out in protest. The comedian then doubled down on trans jokes in his follow-up special, “The Dreamer.”

“I did resent that the Republican Party ran on transgender jokes. You know, I felt like they were doing a weaponized version of what I was doing. That’s not what I was doing,” Chappelle told “NPR’s Newsmakers” host Michel Martin. “I’ll give you an example, before I learned the phrase, ‘I respectfully decline,’ I was on Capitol Hill, and everybody ran up to take pictures with me from every congressional office. And I just take pictures with whoever asked. I didn’t ask how they vote or what their voting record is.

“At first, it was CBC people,” he continued. “Then here comes Lauren Boebert and she said, ‘Can I get a picture?’ And I had already taken 40 pictures. I didn’t want to say no in front of everybody, but I didn’t know the phrase ‘I respectfully decline.’ So I just took the picture. And then she posted the picture before I could even get from there to the show and says something to the effect of, ‘Just two people that know that it’s just two genders.’ Just instantly, like, weaponized or politicized. So I got to the arena, and I lit her ass up for doing that. And she should never do that to a person like me.”

Chappelle often avoids talking about politics on the record. When he was asked by NPR in his latest interview to weigh in on whether or not Donald Trump is “funny,” Chappelle lamented over the president’s behavior.

“Maybe if he wasn’t president, I’d think that was funny. Or maybe at times… I do think, you know, that that’s wearing thin,” Chappelle said. “There are funny things about him. Like, if I were to talk about him, it would be funny. ButI think what he does is so consequential and so much of these things, you know, in my lifetime, I’ve never really seen anything of a phenomenon quite like I’m not trying to be political, but it’s remarkable. I don’t know. I don’t know how funny it is.”

[From Variety]

There’s nothing wrong with having a quiet opinion, doing further research, seeing where people are politically aligned, and making adjustments along the way. I shouldn’t have to explain this to Dave Chappelle like he’s a f–king child. He knew full well what he was doing and he did it anyway. He can’t come out now and say “but I don’t like it when MAGA a–holes are saying the exact same bigoted things I said!!” You don’t get a cookie for correctly identifying your hateful transphobic ideology in someone else.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.