Here's Literally Why Comic Sarah Silverman Changed Her Comedy Routine When Trump Was Elected in 2016

The outspoken comedian recently opened up about how Donald Trump's presidency forced her to reevaluate her iconic oblivious, offensive persona. Sarah Silverman built her career playing an "arrogant ignorant" character that leaned into controversial topics like race and sexism. However, after Trump's shock 2016 election victory, she felt this exaggerated onstage persona no longer resonated or had the same subversive impact. "That character was no longer really amusing to me, because he embodies that completely," she explained on David Duchovny's Fail Better podcast.

It wasn't a conscious decision at first to move away from her trademark ignorant act. "I just very naturally started changing," Silverman said. In her breakout 2005 special Jesus Is Magic, she fully committed to this heightened, cringeworthy persona - "I'm Sarah Silverman, but I'm totally doing a character." This carried through to her Comedy Central series The Sarah Silverman Program which gleefully courted controversy from 2007-2010 by satirizing hot-button issues like racism, sexism, and religion, as per HuffPost.

However, seeing Trump's brand of arrogant ignorance and casual bigotry not just accepted but elevated to the highest office forced Silverman to evolve her own comedic approach. "Especially when Trump was elected and how the world changed in that way, that character was no longer really amusing to me, because he embodies that completely," she told Duchovny, as per The Hill. It wasn't due to audiences souring on her provocative jokes either. "It wasn't like, 'Well, the audience isn't laughing at my racist jokes anymore,'" she clarified.

For Silverman, the profound social shift and moral reckoning of Trump's rise necessitated a creative response and reevaluation of what types of commentary had comedic value versus what was just offensively ignorant. "Comedy really dies in the second-guessing of your audience," she explained her philosophy. "You really have to stay with what is funny to you and that hopefully changes over time because it means you've grown, or you've changed, or the world has changed and you've changed with it - or the world has changed and you haven't."

Upon re-examination, much of Silverman's early work built around playing an ignorant bigot doesn't hold up from today's more enlightened perspective. "In some ways, the stuff I did doesn't hold up because it comes from a white privilege," she admits candidly. She cited watching Prince win a segregated "Best Black Artist" American Music Award in 1984 without batting an eye - something she now finds abhorrent in hindsight. "We don't know now what we don't know now," she mused on society's continual evolution and generational blind spots.

While Silverman still hasn't shied from political humor - memorably skewering anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last year - her comedic voice has undeniably shifted away from punching down at marginalized groups. The days of playing an offensive, marginalized-baiting character for cheap shock value are over. "The only thing really to be embarrassed about is if we don't change from it," she said of outgrowing past provocations that stemmed from ignorance rather than true satirical insight.