Jordan Klepper has spent the better part of the past decade working as a correspondent on The Daily Show—much of that time fully immersed in the MAGA universe.
And yet, even with all that on-the-ground experience, Klepper has never been able to convince a Donald Trump supporter to come over to the other side. He has come close though, and thinks he has an idea about the best way someone else can succeed where he has failed.
During a new “After the Cut” audience Q&A session released on Wednesday, Klepper was asked whether he thinks there’s anything that could force a Trump fanatic to think long and hard about the former president’s fitness for office (again). And the comedian was clear that getting a person to reconsider a long-held belief is a very hard thing to do, especially if you’re approaching them with the specific goal of changing their mind.
After admitting, that no, he has never been able to convince anyone to turn on Trump, Klepper told a story about meeting a woman who did change her mind about the former president after spending 60 days in prison for her role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“I think jail shook her,” Klepper said. “And I think she started doing her own research, as she said, and a couple of things didn’t line up. And she felt like she was taken in. And so she felt it was her duty to come out to this Trump rally, and talk to people about what she’d been through. They weren’t necessarily great at listening to her. But there’s a little glimmer of hope in there.”
Describing our current political moment as a “crisis of certainty,” Klepper went on to say, “I talk to everybody, on all sides, who are very certain about their beliefs. And if you actually want someone to see something that they haven’t seen before, and cross that divide into believing something else, they have to acknowledge that they have a sense of uncertainty.”
The best way to achieve that, according to Klepper, is for whoever’s doing the approaching to also admit to being uncertain. “So I think in order to change somebody’s mind, you have to be a bit of a loser to begin,” he added.
“It sounds strange, but you have to concede something to get anywhere,” Klepper continued. And is fully aware that it’s “doubtful” that that sort of vulnerability could ever happen on a TV show like The Daily Show. “But with friends and family, there’s an opportunity,” he said. “One, because there’s a connection there and hopefully some love—although I know it’s been a hard few years.”
Klepper’s prediction is that if you can approach that person without judgment and admit your own uncertainty—“concede something that you don’t know”—you might just be able to make some progress. “But if you can’t relate to them like another human being and say, ‘I, too, am uncertain about some of these things,’ then you will never reach them as a human being in asking them to come over to a side of better understanding.”
“I think our only option,” Klepper concluded,” is a step toward concession.” Even if that might seem like a trigger word for Trump supporters.
For more, listen to ‘The Daily Show’s’ Jordan Klepper on The Last Laugh podcast.
