Trump Changed Jokes to Appear Wealthier; Bankruptcies Off Limits at 2011 Trump Roast

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The Huffington Post published on Tuesday an in-depth investigation into the production of Donald Trump’s 2011 Comedy Central Roast, and what they discovered is interesting, if not entirely unsurprising; Trump is as humorless and difficult to work with as we all previously thought. Reporter Daniel Libit spoke with many of the key figures behind the Roast of Donald Trump about the behind-the-scenes details of the event.

According to the story, writing for the roast was a difficult process, as Trump had a few things he was unwilling to offer up as fodder for jokes. While producer Rick Austin said that roastees “do get to cite a couple things that they would say are just off limits,” such as the deaths of family members, Trump’s blacklisted topics were purely motivated by his ego. Roast writers were specifically told (not in writing but it “was definitely conveyed verbally”) that they could not joke about Trump’s previous bankruptcies or insinuate that he was not as wealthy as he claimed. Trump’s hair, an obvious target for vicious joke writers like those on the roast, was also a contended topic that had the writers bending over backwards to try to work into the broadcast.

The icing on the cake, however, was the excessive amount of edits that Trump made to his rebuttal jokes, many of which were made to make him look as wealthy as possible. A joke about his “25,000 square-foot penthouse atop [his] solid-gold space station” was edited to say “50,000 square-foot” instead, and a reference to him leaving the roast to go “and make a million dollars somewhere else” was changed to read “a billion dollars.” Writer Jesse Joyce added that Trump would cross out whole punchlines to jokes, to which Joyce demonstrated “a classic lack of understanding of how a joke works.”

Every behind-the-scenes testimony, which came from multiple writers and producers on the show, and even current Comedy Central President Kent Alterman, points to one thing: That throughout the creative process, and even while on stage, Trump was vehemently opposed to anything that might soil his image. Viewers of the roast may remember that Trump spent much of the roast sitting tight-lipped and looking rather unpleased with the fact that a bunch of people were taking turns talking about how not-awesome he is.

Trump was, at the time, mulling over a possible presidential bid, something that Alterman and the roast staff found to be comical back then, but much less-so now.

“If you go back and watch the roast, there’re probably a lot of oddly prophetic things being said that are relevant today,” said Alterman. “But just the idea that someone who did a Comedy Central Roast [is] a major party [nominee] for president is pretty shocking.”

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Bill Tressler

Bill is a writer and comedy enthusiast from New York. An avid gamer and podcast fan, he strives to always toe the line between charming irreverence and grating honesty.
Bill Tressler
Bill Tressler
Bill is a writer and comedy enthusiast from New York. An avid gamer and podcast fan, he strives to always toe the line between charming irreverence and grating honesty.