Days after having Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton appear as a guest on his popular Funny or Die web series Between Two Ferns, actor Zach Galifianakis said he would not extend the same invitation to Republican Donald Trump.
“I wouldn’t have somebody on that’s so mentally challenged,” the 46-year-old Hangover star told the Los Angeles Times this week when asked if he’d have Trump on the show. “I feel like I’d be taking advantage of him. And you can print that.”
Galifianakis described Trump as “the kind of guy who likes attention — bad attention or good attention. So you’re dealing with a psychosis there that’s a little weird.”
The actor’s interview with Hillary Clinton earlier this week — in which he asked the candidate what might happen if she were to become pregnant in office and how many words she was able to type per minute as Secretary of State — set a record for the most-viewed video in 24 hours on the Funny or Die website, with 30 million views.
Galifianakis told the Times that he was “nervous” before interviewing Clinton, but described the candidate as “very personable” in real life. The interview reportedly occurred while Clinton was still recovering from pneumonia.
“She was very game, and the fact that she was sick that day – having that knowledge and watching the news when everybody was kind of wondering what was going on, it just kind of makes you laugh,” he told the paper. “She just had pneumonia. It was not that big a deal. I love that the story became that she had pneumonia versus ‘Oh, she’s really working hard, even through this.'”
“I walked away from that whole interview going, ‘She’s cool,'” Galifianakis added. “I thought she was cool, and I don’t know if that was my impression of her before that.
‘Funny or Die — founded as a pure comedy website by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay in 2007 — morphed into a political vehicle for Democratic politicians and liberal ideology shortly after its launch. The website has produced videos like “Do the Donald,” a Tom Green rap video comparing Trump supporters to KKK members and Nazis, to “The Art of the Deal,” a 50-minute parody of Trump’s bestselling book starring Johnny Depp as Trump, to the “North Carolina Anti-Gay Tourism Commercial” and “Prop 8: The Musical.”
Galifianakis’ Between Two Ferns series won an Emmy in 2014 for an interview with President Obama, in which the president used the show — popular among millennials — to push signups for the then-new Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.
Clinton’s appearance on the show may have been an overt effort to shore up support from millennials, who overwhelmingly do not trust her.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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