Dave Chappelle: 'I resent the Republican party' for 'weaponizing' my anti-trans jokes

Even though he has built a successful career in comedy over the past decade with set after set mocking the transgender community, Dave Chappelle told NPR he doesn’t see it that way. And he used the interview to call out Republicans, claiming they’re the ones who hurt trans people, by twisting his jokes.

“I don’t feel like anything I do is malicious or even harmful,” Chappelle told NPR’s Michel Martin during a Newsmakers video podcast recorded in his hometown of Yellow Springs, Ohio, which was posted Wednesday.

Among other topics, Martin asked him about “the weaponization of jokes.”

“I did resent that the Republican Party ran on transgender jokes,” Chappelle said. “I felt like they were doing a weaponized version of what I was doing. That’s not what I was doing.”

It’s hardly the first time the popular comic has had to answer for his anti-trans routines, going back as far as 2017. Wanda Sykes called him out in 2023. Earlier this year, trans comedians offered unsolicited advice on how to tell trans jokes on Saturday Night Live without offending anyone. That followed Chappelle’s controversial set in Saudi Arabia last December, where he doubled down on using trans people as a punchline, as Out reported.

Chappelle offered NPR listeners an example of how the GOP “weaponized” his comedy.

“Before I learned the phrase, ‘I respectfully decline,’ I was on Capitol Hill, and everybody ran up to take pictures with me from every congressional office. And I just take pictures with whoever asked. I didn’t ask how they vote or what their voting record is,” Chappelle said.

“Here comes Lauren Boebert, and she said, ‘Can I get a picture?’ And I had already taken 40 pictures. I didn’t want to say no in front of everybody, but I didn’t know the phrase ‘I respectfully decline.’ So I just took the picture,” he said. “And then she posted the picture before I could even get from there to the show and says something to the effect of, ‘Just two people that know that it’s just two genders.’ Just instantly, like, weaponized or politicized. So I got to the arena, and I lit her ass up for doing that. And she should never do that to a person like me.”

Chappelle must have missed the backlash his jokes about trans people have generated across his eight Netflix standup specials since 2016, including Sticks & Stones (2019), The Closer (2021), The Dreamer (2023), and Unstoppable (2025). It was reported in 2016 that Netflix was paying him $20 million for each one.

“I think if I did hurt somebody with my work, boy, they would have been laid that at my feet. I’m just not doing that.”

Trans comedian, speaker, and civil rights pioneer Vandy Beth Glenn of Decatur, Georgia, sees it differently.

"The law of unintended consequences has brought down better men than Chappelle," Glenn told Out.

Melody Maia Monet, the award-winning Trans Resource Manager at the LGBTQ+ Center in Orlando and popular YouTube personality, responded to a Threads post by her friend, out gay actor and longstanding trans ally, Wilson Cruz:

“We told him that would happen,” Monet commented. “That his jokes as someone seen to be on the left, was creating the environment for the right to capitalize on it. He isn’t ‘just a comedian’ as they all like to say. They are tastemakers. Entertainment cannot make change in and of itself, but it can point to where change needs to be made or where things can be exploited. Congrats Dave for showing that the ‘trans issue’ could be weaponized. You didn’t pass the laws, but you pointed the way.”

“I’m not even mad [people] take issue with my work. Good, fine. Who cares?” Chapelle has said to his critics, as Variety reported. “What I take issue with is the idea that because they don’t like it, I’m not allowed to say it. Art is a nuanced endeavor. I have a belief that they are trying to take the nuance out of speech in American culture, that they’re making people speak as if they’re either on the right or the left. Everything seems absolute, and any opinion I respect is way more nuanced than these binary choices they keep putting in front of us. I don’t see the world in red or blue.”

Asked to weigh in on the behavior of President Donald Trump, whose obsession with trans Americans was evident as recently as Monday, when he brought up “men in women’s sports” at a White House publicity stunt about his tax policy, Chappelle had this to say:

“Maybe if he wasn’t president, I’d think that was funny. Or maybe at times… I do think, you know, that that’s wearing thin,” Chappelle told NPR. “There are funny things about him. Like, if I were to talk about him, it would be funny. But I think what he does is so consequential and so much of these things, you know, in my lifetime, I’ve never really seen anything of a phenomenon quite like [him]. I’m not trying to be political, but it’s remarkable. I don’t know. I don’t know how funny it is.”