[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC and now, yes what a treat? Jordan Klepper from The Daily Show joins us for a few minutes. For those of you, who don't stay up that late, or don't look at the videos the next day, Jordan Klepper had the very bizarre assignment over the last year of covering the Trump campaign for a comedy show.

As it turned out, something that I'm sure he will never forget covering the January-sixth Capitol riot for a comedy show. How the heck do you do that? Just as a sample before he comes on, here's 12 seconds of Klepper, where the guy who arrived at the January-sixth rally on a bicycle.

Jordan Klepper: How did you get your bike in?

Speaker: Right over here.

Jordan Klepper: What kind of bike best works for a few-tile attempt to thwart democracy? Is it a cross-trek situation?

Speaker: That's just a weird question.

Brian Lehrer: A few weeks after January sixth, Klepper asked a pro-Trump maga protestor who was still there, what she thought about the riot and she said.

Speaker: What I saw and what there's a lot of evidence showing is that many of the initial people who entered the building violently were leftist of Antifa.

Jordan Klepper: I was here. It seemed like a lot of people were Trump supporters. A thousand people broke into the Capitol, erected a noose outside and tried to kill the Speaker of the House and the Vice President.

Speaker: I literally think that you have added they tried to kill all those things and you have ignored-

Jordan Klepper: I got to show you some videos.

Speaker: You want to trade videos because I'd love to share a video with you as well.

Jordan Klepper: I'm not going to give you my email.

Brian Lehrer: A small sample of the work of Jordan Klepper on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on Comedy Central. Maybe you know some of Jordan's other work is Comedy Central Show, the opposition with Jordan Klepper or his Comedy Central special, Jordan Klepper Solves Guns or other things. Hey Jordan, thanks for some time today, welcome to WNYC.

Jordan Klepper: Brian, thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: How did you approach that assignment in general, covering Trump rallies for the 2020 campaign for a comedy show?

Jordan Klepper: [laughs] You show up for a comedy show, and you end up at an insurrection. I can't say that was the plan to begin with. I think initially when I drew that card, we were just following Trump as he began to run five years ago now, and it was fun. You wanted to get the flavor, it was a new idea.

This man, who was a reality TV star, was suddenly having these giant rallies and people were excited. Initially, it was like, that's where the party was. Eventually, that party turned into a full-on gala, which then turned into a movement of sorts. In what direction? I'll let the viewers decide.

Brian Lehrer: You covered January sixth in Washington for The Daily Show. Of course, you didn't know it would turn into the insurrection that it became. What did you think you were going to cover?

Jordan Klepper: I will say, we knew it was going to get a little bit dicey. I covered along with the crew that I had out with the Million MAGA March a few weeks earlier. I say that with quotation, which is hard to do hand quotes on the radio, but I don't quite think there were a million people there.

That was the self-proclaimed Million MAGA March. When we were there at the Million MAGA March, a lot of people showed up. A lot of people were angry, and they were talking about doing violent things even then. When we arrived on January sixth, we had four security guards right around us.

We knew it was going to be dicey. We knew people were going to be dressed to impress and to intimidate. I can't say, I thought they were going to get inside the Capitol, but I knew people were there looking for a fight. We had saw that earlier, and we found ourselves actually at the Capitol.

Outside the gates when they broke through the gates and went up towards the Capitol, because we knew that's where people would end up. We were just shocked that it appeared as if security didn't see that coming, that's as much as we did, but who knows? Comedy Central has a great Intel program and maybe we were ahead of the curve.

Brian Lehrer: You can be the next director of national intelligence when you're done with your comedy career.

Jordan Klepper: Biggest draw.

Brian Lehrer: What we heard in the clip there of you with MAGA bicycle guy on January sixth, asking him how a bicycle helps him with a few-tile attempt to thwart democracy, he was ticked off at you for that question. Can you reflect on that moment, or how that represents some of your body of work?

Jordan Klepper: [laughs] People being ticked off at me does represent my body of work. If you want to get a bit of a nutshell, there it is. I think that day, when you arrive with a camera at a MAGA protest or rally, you're a public enemy number one, but that doesn't mean people don't want to talk to you in the camera.

People want their voice heard, and they also want to engage in some discussion or fight. What I've noticed over the last four or five years, is things have gotten dicier and dicier. Especially post-election, where suddenly you weren't going to a celebration of the underdog winning, you were going to people angry that they lost.

It's not new for me to get wayward glances or aggressive behavior. The last few months though, it definitely elevated. We were traveling with security. We've had to drop our cameras and run down alleys as of late. Even on January sixth, as we were covering and talking to people as they were approaching the Capitol, running up the Capitol, our cameraman was assaulted by a man in military fatigues.

That's become par for the course, which is a sad state-of-affairs, that we're just trying to ask questions. Yes, we come from a company network, but I think that was most intimidating and aggressive from their perspective, was I think the fact that we were covering it at all.

Brian Lehrer: Didn't Trump once tell one of his rallies, “If you beat up a satirist, I'll pay your legal bills.”

Jordan Klepper: [chuckles] Well, I have to look into that. I don't think he knows the word satirist-

Brian Lehrer: Yes, you’re probably right.

Jordan Klepper: -but he definitely implied it.

Brian Lehrer: Now, how else did January sixth go for you? That scene with MAGA bicycle guy was at the rally before the riot. What did you do once the serious stuff started going down?

Jordan Klepper: Like, any good fake journalist, I got into my Subaru and I drove as fast as I could back home to New York. I believe that's what all the heroes do. We were prepped to be there. We were there all day, and we were covering folks, especially we were there at the monument when the Proud Boys decided to leave the Trump speech and head towards the Capitol. We followed them. Like I said, it was getting pretty dicey and we were right there at the Capitol.

I had talked to a man wheeling a pitchfork, our cameraman got assaulted and there were flash bangs going off. There was smoke grenades that were being detonated at the time. It was a surreal situation.

When people ask me about it, I have to hold two feelings in my head at the same time, which is sadness about what was happening toward democracy at the time, and absolute idiocy at the same time. I interviewed a man on a segway, riding up the Capitol trying to breach the walls. It's a comical situation, if it weren't so sad.

By the time things began to get more and more violent, we did leave. We got our interviews and we got out there feeling it wasn't quite safe for us, plus parking is just astronomical in DC. If you don't get out before 5:00, you're really going to pay through the nose.

Brian Lehrer: There weren't special insurrection parking zones?

Jordan Klepper: You'd be surprised. They really didn't think ahead on that either, and that's something I think we need to focus on. The media has not been paying attention to just the parking planning in DC. They could've been much more thoughtful to those of us who were there.

Brian Lehrer: Jordan Klepper from The Daily Show with us. What was it like on the finished product of The Daily Show that night? I was actually on anchoring national special coverage on public radio, and it was hard enough on the serious side. It was a very unfunny day in our nation's history. What did you actually do, and what did Trevor Noah do on The Daily Show that night?

Jordan Klepper: I'll tell you what was strange about that, because we're doing a field piece and we don't quite have the infrastructure to turn things around, necessarily that night. This piece was going to air a day or two later. I did leave as things were happening, and basically how we work is we head home, we set back footage and we start compiling stuff, basically from when we can get on the phone with the editor. I was driving from DC up to New York, listening in real time to news about what was happening at the Capitol.

I think the piece was changing as I was driving. Again, at the time we left, they hadn't breached the inside of the Capitol. No one had died at that point. At that point, it felt completely few-tile that it was just people-- It was going to be people yelling and barking outside the Capitol for the rest of the day. That story continued to change. I think, as we were putting together that piece, we had to shift some of our assumptions of this just being perhaps a bunch of people with pitchforks and hidden weapons, gaining no access and nobody getting hurt to something that really did have tragic consequences.

It's a weird target and comedy has shifted so much in the last four years. You look at that footage, you tell the story that you want to tell and you try to be reflective of the experience you had through the lens that we have. January sixth was a whole new ball of wax for us on the editing table.

Brian Lehrer: You're originally from Michigan.

Jordan Klepper: I am, yes. Kalamazoo, Michigan, born and bred.

Brian Lehrer: Can you do a next-generation Michael Moore thing, and explain to the rest of us why your home state has such wacky politics, like those militias who wanted to kidnap the Governor and things like that?

Jordan Klepper: Oh, you want to talk about my cousins now? Is that what you're saying?

Brian Lehrer: It's your cousins, and now I know who to blame.

Jordan Klepper: There you go, yes. Michigan, like a lot of places in America, you go a hundred yards and politics shift just like that. I come from Kalamazoo, which is a college town, a fairly liberal town, but five miles outside of Kalamazoo and its farm country, it's cherry country, it's hunting country. I grew up, my grandpa was a proud NRA member. He took me out shooting at hubcaps, set against Lake Michigan Dunes. I say that now, that might be illegal. Don't come after me or my grandfather, [chuckles] but that was just how we grew up.

Guns were something that-- It's an issue that I've covered a lot for The Daily Show and a special that I did in-- I come to New York and I understand the push for gun control. I am right there behind them, and I go back to Michigan, it's a much more complicated issue. Guns mean a very different thing in the Midwest, much like Kalamazoo, much like suburban Michigan. I think that's where you see what happens at the Capitol. You're like, “Michigan is full of multitudes. Walt Whitman would have loved it there. You have a little bit of America in every corner, and half of it's trying to overtake the Capitol.”

Brian Lehrer: The multitudes reference, some people got it, some people didn't, you realize that, right?

Jordan Klepper: This is why you come on NPR. I'm going to drop Walt Whitman reference. WNYC fans can't-- First of all, this is what you're paying for. I know it's pledge-drive time. If you want to hear this Whitman reference from a satirist such as me, and for us to bandy about words like satire, pay for it. I think it's time. I think that recurring membership is the way to go. That's all I'd say, make your pledge now.

Brian Lehrer: Unsolicited. Let me ask you about your Comedy Central special, Jordan Klepper Solves Guns because I see you treated this week that it has something in common with The Godfather. Can you lay that out for us?

Jordan Klepper: [laughs] I believe that special just became available on paramount+, which The Godfather also became available. Sometimes, it's difficult to find past Daily Show shows or the “solves guns” special that I did. Now, if you're on Paramount+, you can watch The Godfather and you can watch my special. I would highly recommend watching my special first, because it is in the news right now.

The House Bill H.R.8 is up and the Background Checks is a yet again, in the news. We might get some progress towards actually trying to make America a little bit safer. I'm excited that, that is actually being talked about again or at least it should be more so.

Brian Lehrer: I see you treated that both your special and The Godfather leave you contemplating lax gun laws and distrustful of old toilets. I will skip the second part of that, and just ask for people who haven't seen your special yet, how do you solve guns?

Jordan Klepper: Well, I don't want to spoil anything. There's a chance I don't quite get as far as I had hoped. Although I will say, the title was tongue-in-cheek, but the reality of that special was there's just so much common ground on the gun issue than the NRA or a lot of gun lobbyists would have you believe. I think more often than not, we approach issues like, “50% of America thinks this and 50% of America thinks that.” When it comes to guns and part of the fun that I had with the special was, trying to talk to my family back in Michigan, about their relationships with guns.

What I tried to dispel was this fallacy that gun owners are against Background Checks. Most gun owners, they support Background Checks. They don't want guns in the hands of somebody, who is unsafe, that makes them look bad as well. I think that narrative is corrosive to productive gun control measures, because we really think like, “Oh, this is a left-right issue.”

It's like, “No. If we really listen to most Americans, they want other Americans to be safe.” I think, if we can focus on that, "you can solve" this gun issue by listening to what people want, which is a safe place where their kids don't have to worry about getting hurt.

Brian Lehrer: We just have a minute left. Now that the Trump era is over, at least as president, what's the Jordan Klepper beat at The Daily Show now?

Jordan Klepper: [laughs] Well, for me, it's going to be a lot of just RNR, relaxing as much as I can. It looks like our democracy is intact better than ever. No, of course, I'm kidding. I still have a pessimistic view, on where our country's heading in many ways. I do think Trump is out of office, but Trump is here to stay.

Even though he's not tweeting, he sends his tweets in the form of Matt Gates or Kevin McCarthy or regurgitating his point-of-view and taking over that party. For the next few months, I'm looking to follow what happens to the Republican Party, what happens to the POV of QAnon and the Americans who feel left out by what happened on January sixth. I think it's still a story to see where we go from here, and I'm looking to cover that.

Brian Lehrer: Jordan Klepper, from The Daily Show and the comedy special, Jordan Klepper Solves Guns. This was great. Thank you so much for giving us a few minutes,

Jordan Klepper: Brian, thanks for having me.

Copyright © 2021 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.