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Former Obama Speechwriter Jon Lovett on How Trump Is Funny Like a 'Clown With a Gun'
Donald Trump may not like being a punchline and seemingly never laughs, but he has a funny bone behind his frowns and scowls. Just ask Obama speechwriter and self-described comedian Jon Lovett. 'Trump's very funny. When he says Merry Christmas to all the haters and losers, that's funny. He's funny,' Lovett tells The Hollywood Reporter from the Just For Laughs comedy festival in Montreal. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'In the Land of Arto': Camille Cottin, Zar Amir Ebrahimi Journey Into Armenia and Its Past (Exclusive Clips) Why Stand-up Legend George Wallace Can't Get Off the Stage After 49 Years in Comedy: "I'm Living My Dream" Oasis Play Wembley: 5 Takeaways From Liam and Noel Gallagher's Nostalgia-Packed Return to Stage Sure, the U.S. president has laid ruin to U.S. politics since returning to the White House. 'Trump is a vandal. He's doing vandalism to our country,' Lovett insists. But he can't ignore Trump's surprise comedy chops behind that lower lip pout or when he shows open anger. 'When he steamrolls in an interview, or when he's on stage, he's doing his version of crowd work with his MAGA base. So I do think he's funny. That's part of his skill,' Lovett argues. He took to the stage in Montreal for a live presentation of his Lovett or Leave It podcast, with Gianmarco Soresi, Roy Wood Jr., Mary Beth Barone and Zach Zucker as guests. And while Trump's no stand-up, Lovett insists 'he's got a cruel sense of humor, and it works at times. He has a great sense for television. He knows what's going to play well. And he knows when what's happening is silly or ridiculous, and he knows when he needs to be on the outside of it, with the audience watching it.' 'We can pretend otherwise, but we do so at our peril,' he added. For Lovett, as a host of the Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It podcasts from Crooked Media, doing audio content allows him to fulfill all his creative interests and goals. 'It's writing. It's performing. It's politics. It's comedy. And I get to do all of them,' he explains. All of which is an unconventional route to stand-up for Lovett. 'I didn't do open mikes out of college, my path to telling jokes on stage wasn't the traditional one. I always feel a little bit of an outsider in the comedy world,' he admits. And Lovett points to the challenge of making comedy amid Trump's world of distractions and political division. 'It'll be hard to describe to future generations how stupid and dangerous politics in American have become,' he explains. One solution is to use comedy as opposition to Trump, including the Democratic Party, and become happy warriors, because the serious part of politics is exhausting, embarrassing and causes unending anxiety. 'We have to stay invested, and that's going to be a mix of seriousness when it's called for, but also a willingness to make fun of thse people for being fools like Trump is a clown with a gun. The gun doesn't change the fact that he's a clown, and the fact that he's a clown doesn't change the fact he's holding a gun,' Lovett insists. The Just For Laughs comedy festival continues through Sunday. Best of The Hollywood Reporter From 'Party in the U.S.A.' to 'Born in the U.S.A.': 20 of America's Most Patriotic (and Un-Patriotic) Musical Offerings Most Anticipated Concert Tours of 2025: Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar & SZA, Sabrina Carpenter and More Hollywood's Most Notable Deaths of 2025 Solve the daily Crossword
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2 hours ago
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Federal government to stop funding hotel rooms for asylum seekers, IRCC says
Asylum seekers staying in federally-funded hotels will soon have to check out as Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) says that funding will end in September. A spokesperson for IRCC told CBC News via email that as of Thursday, the federal government was housing 485 asylum seekers in five hotels in Ontario and Quebec, noting it has spent approximately $1.1 billion on temporary hotel housing for asylum seekers since 2020. "This measure was never meant to be permanent, and IRCC is funded to continue hotel operations only until September 30, 2025," the email said. Ottawa has provided funding for asylum seekers to be housed in hotels across Canada since at least 2018. Federal officials have previously said this system was always meant to be a stop-gap measure to deal with historic surges in migration. Meanwhile, it was recently revealed that plans to revamp Canada's outdated asylum system have been cancelled, and proposed border laws will likely make it more challenging to claim asylum. IRCC says it will help those still in hotels find housing, but experts and advocates say that could be a tough task in cities with high demand and low supply. Municipal shelters are consistently full, according to Adaoma Patterson, director of community investments at United Way Greater Toronto. While some additional capacity has been added in the form of a dedicated shelter for asylum claimants in Peel, she says more needs to be done to avoid overloading an already-stressed shelter system. "I think municipalities are doing everything that they can. But shelters take a long time to build. So it's not something that can happen overnight," Patterson said. Affordable housing shortages also make it challenging for asylum seekers, who sometimes encounter problems finding landlords willing to rent to them, she said, adding that some could end up on the street or in unsafe living conditions due to overcrowding. "Anyone who is not in safe, stable housing, there's always a risk that their health is compromised. And then in extreme cases, you might see someone pass away," she said. Number of asylum seekers declining: IRCC Over 15,000 asylum claimants who were previously in hotels have now transitioned to independent living, IRCC said in its email to CBC News. The department says it will help the 485 people remaining in the hotels find longer term housing before the program ends on Sept. 30. It said it will support people on-site while they look for longer-term housing, and that it will continue "supporting provinces and municipalities in developing their own long-term housing strategies." "While asylum volumes remain high, they are nearly 40 per cent lower than last year," IRCC said. CBC News asked IRCC why volumes have declined but has yet to receive a response. WATCH | How the government scrapped plans to revamp the asylum system: Last year, the federal government cancelled an IRCC project meant to revamp Canada's outdated asylum system. The $68-million project was intended to be a major reform after Canada began seeing surges of asylum seekers entering the country, putting pressure on an already struggling system that relied heavily on paper files. Meanwhile, the government's proposed Strong Borders Act contains controversial new measures, including changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that would force asylum seekers entering the country to make their claims within a year. Where will money come from, economist asks Christopher Worswick, an economics professor at Carleton University who focuses on migration, questions whether the volume of asylum claims has really declined that much. "Or is this just an attempt to offload it onto the province," he asked. Worswick says housing asylum claimants is an international obligation — and an expensive one at that. He warned that while the decision to end hotel funding may be motivated by a desire to cut federal spending, it could result in passing on costs to provinces and municipalities that are also cash-strapped. With those budget challenges and municipal governments lacking the taxation powers that higher levels of government can use, Worswick wonders, "Where is the money going to come from?" WATCH | How a Vaughan church is helping house refugees and asylum seekers: Grassroots organizations stretched to limit Community organizations have previously stepped in to support asylum seekers who fell through the cracks in different levels of government support. But they say they're also feeling strain. In 2023, hundreds of asylum seekers slept on the streets in downtown Toronto amid a funding stalemate between the city and the federal government. Miracle Arena For All Nations, a church in Vaughan, Ont., was one of several community groups that stepped up to help. Minister Isaac Oppong says his congregation has fed and housed over 500 asylum seekers on the church grounds since June 2023. He says he's concerned that ending the hotel program without other solutions in place will again lead to people sleeping in the streets. "There's nowhere for them to go. There's no repurposed buildings or there's no other housing. We will go back to square one like 2023," he said. Oppong says his congregation supports asylum seekers on a volunteer basis and hasn't received any government funding. He says it's not financially sustainable for local groups like his to continue supporting the influx of people long-term. "It's bringing people into your lifeboat because you see they're drowning," he said. "But obviously you can't keep them in the lifeboat. You have to take them somewhere else." Solve the daily Crossword
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6 hours ago
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What the U.S. dairy industry really wants from Canada
U.S. dairy producers insist they're not looking for Canada to dismantle its supply management system, but they do want Canada to follow the letter and spirit of the existing deal that governs the dairy trade between the two countries. U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly blasted Canada as "unfair" and "ripping us off" with massive dairy tariffs, in a way that isn't fully accurate. However, senior figures in the U.S. dairy industry are concerned there's also some misrepresentation happening north of the border, creating a false perception of what U.S. producers are actually seeking in terms of access to the Canadian market. Shawna Morris, executive vice-president for trade policy and global affairs with the National Milk Producers Federation and the U.S. Dairy Export Council, says it's not true that her industry wants Canada to abandon its system for protecting the dairy sector. "We've never been out to eliminate Canada's supply management," said Morris in an interview from her office in Arlington, Va., just outside Washington. "It's much easier to create a boogeyman and fear-mongering around that being the goal of the Americans, but that's certainly not what our industry has advocated." Becky Rasdall Vargas, senior vice-president of trade and workforce policy at the International Dairy Foods Association lobby group, says she recognizes the Trump administration has been "fairly abrasive" in its tone toward Canada. "But at the same time, I think we feel pretty ignored by Canada in terms of our legitimate trade concerns." Two main trade irritants According to Morris and Rasdall Vargas, the U.S. industry has two main irritants with Canada: how the Canadian government allocates the existing quotas for tariff-free imports of dairy products, and how Canadian milk producers dump cheap milk protein into the international market. The import quotas negotiated under the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA, which Americans call USMCA) are designed to give U.S. producers tariff-free access worth roughly 3.5 per cent of Canada's domestic demand for dairy products. "Three per cent is pretty limited," said Morris. "It's certainly not a situation where our industry is gonna come in and take over the Canadian dairy market." CUSMA sets import quotas for 14 categories of dairy products. That allows an annual volume of each category to enter Canada tariff-free, and any imports exceeding the quota would get hit with sky-high tariffs of 200 per cent or more. Canada's rationale for this is ensuring the domestic dairy industry thrives by effectively capping how much the U.S. can export each year, preventing cheaper American products from dominating the market. The U.S. government supports its dairy sector with hefty direct subsidies. The U.S. dairy industry says it's not asking for Canada's quotas to be increased or the tariff rates to be decreased. Rather, it wants changes to how Ottawa allocates the quotas: more specifically, who gets them. Big Canadian dairies dominate import quotas Much of the quota volume is allocated to major Canadian-owned dairy processing companies such as Saputo and Agropur. Industry analysts on both sides of the border say such companies have little incentive to import U.S. products that would compete with their own. According to the U.S. producers, this restricts their access to the Canadian market. Their evidence for that claim: Canadian trade statistics showing tariff-free imports from the U.S. have almost never reached the quota limits in any category. WATCH | What Donald Trump gets wrong (and right) about Canada's dairy tariffs: "For five years, Canada's been playing games with these tariff rate quotas," said Morris. "That's a lot of volume that should have been able to reach Canadian consumers." Despite those complaints, Canada's imports of U.S. dairy products have risen significantly since the CUSMA quotas took effect in 2020. Those imports totalled $897 million in 2024, according to Statistics Canada data, more than four times the value of imports in any year before 2020. "Trade certainly should be far higher than it is," said Morris. "That was what USMCA promised to deliver and quite frankly has fallen far short." A key change the U.S. producers would like to see is for Canada to grant retailers and the food-service sector a share of the tariff-free quotas, allowing them to import some U.S. dairy products directly. The U.S. industry also wants Canada to be far stricter in taking away allocations from importers that fail to use their full quota in a given year. While a bill that Parliament passed in June bars Ottawa from agreeing to raise the dairy import quotas or lower the tariffs, it doesn't prevent other changes to the system, leaving Canadian trade negotiators some wiggle room. WATCH | Canada's supply management system, explained: 'An inherent mismatch' The other chief complaint from the U.S. focuses on Canada's cheap exports of milk proteins, also described as milk solids, such as skim milk powder. The Americans argue that because Canada's supply management system keeps domestic prices artificially high, Canada can sell its excess production of milk proteins internationally at artificially low prices, undercutting the competition. "It frankly makes no sense that you could have one of the highest milk prices in the world and yet be exporting dairy protein at some of the lowest prices globally," said Morris. "That's just an inherent mismatch." Canada's pricing of milk solids for the export market is currently the subject of a U.S. International Trade Commission investigation, ordered by the Trump administration, with a hearing scheduled for Monday. Dairy Farmers of Canada declined a request for comment on the case. "During the recent election, all major parties expressed support for supply management and stated that it would be off the table in upcoming trade negotiations," the organization said in a news release in June. The Trump administration is not the first to accuse Canada of breaching CUSMA terms on dairy. Joe Biden's administration twice took legal action over Canada's handling of the dairy quotas, claiming it was unfairly undermining U.S. access to the Canadian market. The U.S. won the first dispute, which it launched in 2021, but failed to win the second, in 2023. Now in 2025, Rasdall Vargas says her industry wants Canada to be willing to hear its true concerns and do something about them. "Ultimately, when we have a trading partner who isn't taking our concerns seriously until they're threatened to do so, it's also not a good feeling from our side," she said. Whatever anyone thinks about Trump's bluster on Canadian dairy, Rasdall Vargas believes it's having an impact. "I think that's the president's way of having our back, probably more abrasively than Canada would like," she said. "I will say I've never seen Canadian dairy interests take U.S. concerns about Canadian dairy policy more seriously than in the past six months."
