08-05-2025
Stewart Lee will not perform in US over fears Trump joke would lead to prison
Stewart Lee has claimed he will not perform in Donald Trump's America because he fears being locked up for his jokes.
The comedian said he had recently been offered the chance to perform for a week in a Chicago comedy club, but turned it down.
He told Krishnan Guru-Murthy's podcast, Ways to Change the World: 'I wouldn't work in the States at the moment. I'd worry about them going through my jokes and ending up spending two days locked up without my heart medication. I just would worry about it.'
In his 2018 stand-up show, Stewart made several jokes criticising Trump.
'Because I've got a Trump bit [in the routine] I have to check at half time every night that he's not been assassinated or fallen into a barrel of porn actresses or something,' he told an audience in Southend.
'I don't know if you can make massive generalisations about Americans who voted for Trump. Because Americans voted for Trump for all sorts of different reasons. And it wasn't just racists who voted for Trump. C---- did as well.'
He also said: 'Not all Americans that voted for Trump wanted to see America immediately descend into being an unaccountable single party state exploiting people's worst prejudices to maintain power indefinitely. Some Americans just wanted to be allowed to wear their Ku Klux Klan outfits to church.'
Jokes on his latest routine are currently unknown, but Lee claimed the US is embracing fascism.
'I don't see a way out of where we're going. Let's call it what it is. People are pussyfooting around this idea. People are being deported, wrongly, from the United States to an El Savador jail without due process. What's that?
'Trump is doing deals for resources with dictators. It absolutely is that and we have to call it that, and we have to act in the way that we should have done more quickly in the Thirties,' he said.
In a wide-ranging discussion about comedy, Lee said people may be surprised to learn that the audience at his shows is not entirely made up of Guardian-reading liberals.
'They're not exactly who you think they are,' he said. 'There's a lot of people that would fit the Guardian reader stereotype, but when I go to Southend or Carlisle or Derby there simply aren't that many people like that living there.
'People come out[to his shows] that like comedy. They don't have to agree with you. The assumption is everyone goes to laugh at things they agree with, and while I am happy to provide crumbs of comfort towards an ideologically disenfranchised liberal middle class who've been made to leave Europe and whatever, I also like the fact that people come who don't agree with you but like the skill of the humour.'
