Comedian Jordan Klepper is set to host a new Comedy Central talk show that will skewer Breitbart News and other conservative and “alternative” media.
The Opposition With Jordan Klepper, which premieres on the cable network on September 25 in the 11:30 p.m. ET time slot, will see the Daily Show veteran portray an “alternative media” correspondent.
Taking questions from a room of writers and critics during Comedy Central’s session at the Television Critics Association summer press tour Tuesday, Klepper explained how his new show will explore and spoof conservatives, conspiracies, and media.
“I’ll be playing a know-nothing provocateur who fights for the forgotten man and I may, at times, also forget that man,” he said.
“The outsider is the new thing. Donald Trump calls himself the outsider as he tweets inside the Oval Office. Breitbart was the outsider but Steve Bannon now is in the West Wing. Who is the outsider other than somebody who is upset and anti the mainstream, anti-facts,” Klepper said. “That’s why we are the opposition. We are not mainstream, we are not establishment, we are not listening and we are definitely not helping.”
Klepper said the ideas for the show were inspired by the influence conservative media had on Donald Trump’s supporters; many of them, he claims, accused him of being a Hillary Clinton plant and part of the “deep state.”
“I watched this normalization happen,” he added. “They weren’t parroting the sounds of CNN or even midday Fox News. Their information was coming from Infowars and Breitbart and The Blaze.”
In an appearance Wednesday on KTLA 5, Klepper said “the fringe has becoming mainstream. I feel like these alt-media sources are now funneling their way into mainstream media and also funneling their way into the Oval Office.”
“So we decided that was a world we wanted to explore — and kind of do a satirical news show that sits in this world, this world of Breitbart News and InfoWars and The Blaze who is anti-mainstream, anti-the establishment, anti-listening, and anti-helping. We have our own facts and our own truth.”
In a press statement, Comedy Central said “The Opposition with Jordan Klepper will satirize the hyperbolic, conspiracy-laden noise machine that is the alternative-media landscape on both the right and left. The Opposition is the voice of the new America. It is the America that defines its own reality. It’s the America of paid protestors, Obama’s birth certificate, and the certainty that CNN is fake news.”
Klepper plans to send “foot soldiers … my confederacy of paranoid dunces, who will be born out of this alt-media culture,” to cover news from the field.
“You’re going to get news every day that’s about investigating Donald Trump. Nobody’s talking about how we should be impeaching Hillary Clinton,” he said. “I’ll get back to you on that. … We’ll figure it out.”
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