On Thursday, October 27, New York City experienced one of the first rains of the fall season. The sky of granite chilled all below, including the icy pellets of rain slapping down on the umbrellas of hurried commuters. Among the people avoiding the chilly barrage was the Republican Nominee for President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.
The Donald was headed to Caroline’s on Broadway—a comedy venue— to perform a stand up routine. But he wouldn’t be going at it alone. Also set to take the stage that night was Hillary R. Clinton, the Democratic Nominee, and the sitting President, Barak Obama. The political foes—or at least their slightly more absurd doppelgängers—had been brought together by a comedy duo determined to make audiences laugh at an election that hasn’t been particularly funny to some people.
Brendan Fitzgibbons, 33, and Lance Weiss, also 33, have been MCing their stand-up/mulita-media/impressionist show, “Anyone Can Be President, Even Us”, since July. Joined on stage every Thursday night by impressionists and other comics, Fitzgibbons and Weiss give the show an anchor. Focusing heavily on the 2016 election, the duo has been able to draw from the plethora of election related news slogging its way through the cable news stations and social media sites.
On their second to last show before the election, Fitzgibbons and Weiss took to the stage to warm up the rain soaked crowd. “Does anyone not know that this is a political show?” asked Fitzgibbons. Either everyone in the crowd knew or they were too embarrassed to admit they didn’t because no one spoke a word. “Good,” said Fitzgibbons, “That would be awkward,” said Weiss, and the show began.
Fitzgibbons and Weiss have traveled similar paths towards this wacky election. Both men majored in political science in college, Fitzgibbons at the University of Illinois, and Weiss at Georgetown University. And while both were intrigued by comedy, neither had fully pursued it as a career until moving to New York City.
“I did the political thing,” said Weiss, “I worked for the Department of Justice, I worked for ‘Hardball with Chris Mathews’, I worked for J.P. Morgan,” he paused, “It’s not real.” His pessimism is not fueled by some fundamental misunderstanding of the political system. Rather, he has been inside of several appendages of the political machine and has come away with a profound disappointment in what he has seen. Even in the show, his jokes, although somewhat political, remain fairly secular.
Fitzgibbons originally moved from Illinois to New York City for an internship at Rolling Stone magazine. Soon after his move, he went to an open mic to try his hand at comedy. “My first time on stage was at a lesbian bar called Caddyshack,” he said, adding he didn’t know this before he got on stage. “But it went well enough to keep going so I just kept it going from there.” From the early days of his comedic career, Fitzgibbons has always had a few political jokes in his repertoire, particularly about the absurd criticisms President Barak Obama frequently received. Fitzgibbons doesn’t quite share Weiss’s discontent with politics, but he clearly has some frustrations that he releases through his comedy.
To begin the show, Weiss and Fitzgibbons play a game they call “Porn or Trump”. The rules and objective are simple, both comics take turns reading a quote and the audience has to guess whether the quote is attributable to a porn video or to the Republican Nominee for President. “It’s actually the first idea for the show that we had,” said Fitzgibbons. After hearing a few objectively audacious quotes from Trump, “we asked ourselves, where else do they say the craziest shit?” said Weiss. “Porn!” concluded Fitzgibbons through a light chuckle. The game is harder than one might expect. The audience was divided in applause after a few quotes that could’ve gone either way. Said Fitzgibbons, “It’s funny because I thought those were some of the easier ones.”
While sharing the stage, the physical contrast between the two comics is subtle but important and quite possibly speaks towards their political attitudes. Fitzgibbons wears a clean shave, a grey-buttoned shirt, a grey cotton cardigan sweater, and a pair of blue jeans. Throughout the show, he fidgets with the Chicago Cubs hat on his head. Sometimes the hat sits straight ahead, pulled low over his eyes, and at other times, the hat is completely backward and rested on the tip of the back of his head like a yarmulke. From frontwards to backwards, the hat rests, even if for only a moment, in every position in between.
Weiss, in a plaid button shirt, and a pair of dark jeans, wears stubble on his cheeks. The hat on his head remains untouched throughout the night, save for the few times it was removed to scratch an itch. Fitzgibbons’ humor is quicker—his punch lines jab. Weiss’ humor is smooth—his punch lines float. While not entirely yin and yang, Weiss and Fitzgibbons complement one another in a way that lends itself nicely to this campaign.
Although Fitzgibbons and Weiss anchor the show and bring all the acts together, “Anyone Can Be President, Even Us” is focused on impersonations of the three most discussed political leaders today. Dion Flynn impersonates President Obama and shows the audience what a stoned Obama doing stand-up might look like. Camille Theobald impersonates Hillary Clinton and reveals that her race for the presidency is just an elaborate plot to sleep with an intern, all in the name of revenge. Finally, Bob DiBuono impersonates Donald Trump by throwing together a string of sentences and half sentences in what seems like one elongated breath of ignorance.
During Flynn’s impersonation of Obama, the President called out a small woman sitting in the corner. With her face in a stone scowl, the President pleaded with her to smile. Her response was muffled by the audience’s laughter but her tone was loud and clear. She wasn’t interested in smiling and she was even less interested in being the punch line to the President’s joke. She revealed that she was from Finland and then the President left her alone. After Flynn’s set ended, Weiss and Fitzgibbons took the stage and showed some of their favorite memes generated from the election. Theobald came on stage to do her Clinton impersonation and left without interacting with the frowning Finnish woman.
At this point, the ruthless DiBuono, under the guise of Donald Trump, commanded the stage.
There has been a slurry of Trump impersonations over the course of the election but DiBuono’s is something special. His face is just orange enough, his suit is just baggy enough, his red hat masks his eyes just enough, and his stream of conscious routine is just offensive enough. The impersonation is so good that someone who hasn’t seen the real Donald Trump on television every day—like someone from Finland—might confuse DiBuono for the real thing. When speaking about DiBuono, Weiss said, “It’s crazy because he says a lot of things that Trump has really said.”
Halfway through DiBuono’s routine the Finnish woman began to heckle the comic. It may have been the two-drink minimum that sent her over the edge. Or maybe it was her inability to distinguish real from fake. Regardless, her insults were hurled towards the stage and Trump did not back down. After DiBuono’s gaze went towards another audience member, the Finnish woman got up to leave. “Where are you going, Miss?” belched Trump. She unloaded on him, calling him a phony, a fake, and a rude man. She had to be guided out of the venue by one of the doormen.
“That was one of the funniest things I have ever seen. I think she thought he was really Trump,” said Weiss after the show. Fitzgibbons and Weiss laughed and wondered if some tourists who see the show think that major politicians tour comedy clubs around New York City on their off nights. But after a presidential race where almost everything that happens is dubbed “unprecedented”, the line between comedy and reality is becoming more and more blurred. As November 8th becomes imminent, Fitzgibbons and Weiss have seen their crowds become increasingly more anxious. “I just want people to laugh,” said Weiss. “Laughing is more true than politics.”
