Comedian Dave Chappelle just almost apologized for his transgender jokes. Now, his critics are debating whether to take the win or leave him in the doghouse.

To hear Chappelle tell the story now, it’s Republicans who “weaponized” his routine for malign, political gain. “That’s not what I was doing,” he now says.

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Lauren Boebert takes a selfie with anti-trans comedian Dave Chappelle

The comedian, 52, invited controversy in 2021 with his Netflix special The Closer, and a profane and anatomically graphic riff on trans people. A lot of trans people, allies, and a sizable number of Netflix employees protested the routine.

“Gender is a fact,” Chappelle declared in the show. “[All of us] had to pass through the legs of a woman to be on Earth,” he said, before comparing trans women’s vaginas to plant-based meat substitutes.

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They’re “not quite” real, he said.

He then really set the LGBTQ+ establishment off with a defense of transphobic author JK Rowling and a declaration that he was “Team TERF.”

At the time of The Closer‘s premiere, GLAAD argued Chappelle was “punching down.” Chappelle countered that his critics lacked a sense of humor and nuance. MAGA types exploited the controversy and were happy to imply Chappelle was one of their own.

In a new interview with NPR, however, Chappelle takes pains to distance himself from the anti-trans hysteria stoked by Republicans and the Trump administration, which followed his own association with dragging that community.

“I did resent that the Republican Party ran on transgender jokes. You know, I felt like they were doing a weaponized version of what I was doing. That’s not what I was doing,” Chappelle told NPR’s Newsmakers host Michel Martin.

“I’ll give you an example,” Chappelle said, detailing an encounter with anti-trans MAGA stalwart Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO).

“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 recounted.

“At first, it was [Congressional Black Caucus] people,” he continued. “Then 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.

“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.”

Throughout the interview, Chappelle lands back on an argument that what matters most, particularly in turbulent times like these, is the ability of everyone to speak freely, and not get siloed into politically convenient ideas of left and right.

Chappelle recently gifted the public radio station in his small Ohio town a new $15 million studio that he hopes might be a laboratory for that theory.

“I’m not even mad they take issue with my work,” Chappelle said of his critics. “Good, fine. Who cares? 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 by Martin if Donald Trump is funny, Chappelle paused and replied, “Maybe if he wasn’t president.”

Trans and trans-allied social media commenters on Bluesky seemed unimpressed with Chappelle’s recent realization that his jokes helped fuel Republicans’ and transphobes’ attacks on trans people.

Trans activist and civil rights attorney Alejandra Caraballo wrote on Bluesky that the comedian himself had weaponized his jokes against the trans community before Republicans allegedly “politicized” his stand-up routines.

“It’s why trans people criticized him for doing it,” Caraballo wrote, adding, “There’s a reason why great comics have historically avoided punching down. Because it doesn’t stay in the comedy club. It inevitabl[y] filters out into society to cause actual harm to the communities they’re targeting.”

Regarding Chappelle’s discontent about Rep. Boebert representing him in ways he didn’t like, Caraballo wrote, “[His NPR interview] really captures how someone like Chappelle can target a whole community, double down, make millions from it and then get offended when someone casts him in a way HE doesn’t like.”

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