Aziz Ansari calls out racist Donald Trump supporters in ‘SNL’ monologue
As host of the first Saturday Night Live episode following Donald Trump’s inauguration, Aziz Ansari urged the president to speak out against a small pocket of his supporters the comedian calls “lowercase KKK.”
These people, he said, have “gotten way too fired up about the Trump thing for the wrong reasons. I’m talking about these people that, as soon as Trump won, they’re like, ‘We don’t have to pretend like we’re not racist anymore! We don’t have to pretend anymore! We can be racist again! Whoo!'”
“If you’re one of these people, please go back to pretending,” he added. “You’ve got to go back to pretending. I’m so sorry we never thanked you for your service. We never realized how much effort you were putting into the pretending. But you gotta go back to pretending.”
Ansari defined it as a “casual white supremacy,” the “people that are running around saying stuff like, ‘Trump won! Go back to Africa!’ ‘Trump won! Go back to Mexico!'” He continued, “Is that the plan, by the way? We’re all going to move? All the minorities? Forty-some percent of the country? Every minority’s going to move? Beyoncé’s going to move? Beyoncé ain’t moving.”
He went on to acknowledge that not all Trump voters share this same opinion.
“I’m sure there’s a lot of people who voted for Trump the same way a lot of people listen to the music of Chris Brown, where it’s like, ‘Hey, man! I’m just here for the tunes. I’m just here for the tunes! I don’t know about that other stuff. I just like the dancing and the music. I don’t condone the extracurriculars,'” he said. “If you think about it, Donald Trump is basically the Chris Brown of politics, and ‘Make America Great Again’ is his ‘These hoes ain’t loyal.'”
Ansari later called on Trump to make a speech denouncing racism. “Don’t tweet about me being lame or the show. Write a speech,” he said. “A real speech. Because these people are out there, and it’s pissing a lot of people off. And I think it could make a difference.”
Citing George W. Bush’s speech about Muslims following 9/11, the comedian noted, “Everyone applauded. Democrats, Republicans, it didn’t matter. Because it’s not about politics. It’s about basic human decency and remembering why the country was founded in the first place.”
Watch Ansari’s monologue:
