The Uncontainable Lewis Black

Lewis Black cannot be contained. He never has and never will be. He’s simply made for speaking the truth in the most profane, yet brilliant way possible. The 69-year-old comedian brought The Jokes On Us Tour to Colorado on in late April and showed the crowds what a real rant looks like.

Of course, this is nothing new. In 2016, the Yale University alum took The Rant Is Due Tour: Part Deux on the road with frequent opener John Bowman, and was lamenting the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency. This year, as expected, Black had a lot more material to pull from following Trump’s surprising election into the White House.

While waiting to board his plane at the O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, Black had some time to jump on the phone to discuss a bevy of topics from Donald Trump to Cardi B.

On The Trump Presidency

I kind of realized the people who really like him, what they really like is the TV show. It’s a better TV show than the president before him. It’s just a straight up TV show “. That’s the one they really like.

The thing that made me really go, “This is enough” — and I don’t know what took me so long — and really had to find a way to make this funny — is that CNN’s complicit. They’re all producing the show. MSNBC is producing the show. Fox News is producing the shows. They’re all producing the show. They helped him become the president. It’s the weirdest television show I’ve ever watched.

On The Media

I think it’s disgusting. In some ways, what [Trump’s] doing, in a sense, you can’t be irate about. To me, it’s what the media’s doing. They care about the same thing he cares about, and that’s money. They’re all in the same boat.

I need an explanation. I don’t care what a former Obama guy has to say or this guy or that guy has to say. I need two economists — one that’s kind of conservative and one that’s kind of liberal — who understand this, and finished college or high school and can explain what it means. No one out there knows what it means, and I’m really smart, and I don’t know what the fuck it means.

What they’re doing is offensive. Like, “Oh he’s going to do these tariffs.” Okay, why don’t you spend the next 10 minutes explaining what the fuck a tariff is, you dumb son of a bitch?

On People Saying Trump Distracts Us From The “Real Issues”

It’s the same thing they always do. They think somehow these people in government are really smart. When did you arrive at that conclusion, you fucking idiots? I lived in Washington. Here’s how deep it is — it’s, “Where are you going to eat lunch?” You fuckheads. “Did you know there was this new place to get a salad?” To say he’s distracting us, you didn’t live with him in New York. This is the way he operated.

On The 2020 Election

We can discover just how appalling the Democratic Party is. The thing is, it’s the Democrats scare me just as much because they’re not helping. In the same way when the Republicans needed to do certain things, it did not come into play. They scared me.

On Both Political Parties Being “Evil”

It wasn’t that case when I was a kid. You start with the right brain and your brain starts to move to the left as you get older, but this government only operates from the middle, and that’s it. That’s the way it’s written. That’s the way it’s discussed.

On Gun Control

Like with gun control, you can get your gun, but it should take three days at least to get your gun. There’s no law saying it takes three days to get your gun. Here, you can get a gun that shoots 12-15 bullets. Why? Because you’re hunting. If you want to protect yourself, an army’s not coming to your house. You don’t need 1,000 bullets. The other way isn’t working, is it? Everybody wanted their guns. Okay, everybody got their guns, but it ain’t workin’, and you took off the table the CDC being to basically research and figure out what it means to have this amount of weaponry out there. They stopped doing the study. You gotta do the study, you figure out a solution, you move on, and you shut the fuck up.

On What Happens If Trump Gets Re-Elected

I don’t know. I don’t have a clue. I seriously don’t. I’m never right. Everything I’ve ever thought is wrong.

We have decided we put together a satire of movement of all levels — Congress and the presidency. We haven’t done it totally with the Supreme Court because that always fluctuates. They are the last of the people who seem to actually like to read things.

On His Biggest Challenge Doing Standup

The difficulty I have is taking things that I seriously don’t think are funny anymore and make them funny. People who have really done great with it, but I haven’t been able to do it. Andy Horowitz have written some brilliant things. My friend Kathleen Madigan has done some incredible things with it. I haven’t been able to. I think it’s already satire.