Michael Ian Black on the Best Way to Defeat ‘Humorless’ Trump

Michael Ian Black began his career performing deeply absurdist comedy with his legendary sketch group The State and the besuited comedy trio Stella. Now, among other things, he’s a weekly columnist covering the 2024 election for the Daily Beast. But Black does not consider himself to be a political commentator “in any way, shape or form, even though I often comment on politics,” he says in this week’s episode of The Last Laugh podcast.

During our wide-ranging conversation, Black shares his thoughts on where the 2024 race stands right now, how Donald Trump became America’s worst crowd work comedian, why he’s cautiously optimistic about the prospect of a Kamala Harris presidency, and what viewers can expect from his new satirical CNN game show Have I Got News for You with Roy Wood Jr. and Amber Ruffin. Plus, what he remembers about filming his explicit sex scene with Bradley Cooper in Wet Hot American Summer and why, after two reboots on Netflix, the cult classic finally “feels like it’s done” to him.

We’re speaking ahead of the first (and only?) big debate between Harris and Trump and Black is loath to make any bold predictions about how it would play out. “In my short career as a quote, unquote political commentator, I have already made one of the single worst predictions of the campaign season,” he concedes, referring to a column posted the day before the game-changing Biden-Trump debate in which he wrote, “Whose mind is getting changed by watching 90 minutes of this bullshit? It’s a rhetorical question but I’ll answer, anyway: nobody.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.