There’s a certain kind of comedian who mistakes cruelty for courage. The kind who stands on stage, soaks in applause from a room full of people who already agree with him, and walks away thinking he just spoke truth to power. David Cross is that comedian right now, and his latest special is the evidence.
In The End of The Beginning of The End, Cross performs a bit where he sings a song cobbled together from Trump’s speeches. Cute enough. But the kicker comes when he refers to the lyrics as having been written by “the late Donald Trump.”
The crowd didn’t gasp. They didn’t shift uncomfortably. They hooted. They clapped. They celebrated the fantasy of a sitting president’s death like it was a punchline at a birthday roast.
Cross, basking in the moment, then added longingly: “Someday we’ll be able to say that.”
Let that sink in. A professional comedian, on a produced special, openly daydreaming about the death of the President of the United States — and his audience ate it up like candy corn at a Halloween party nobody wanted to leave.
When “Comedy” Becomes a Confession
Cross didn’t stop there. He took his act on the road — specifically, onto the podcast of Dean Obeidallah, a left-wing commentator who called himself “patriotic” and argued that patriots should “despise” Trump. Obeidallah added that the hatred is “really like, there’s something personal about this.”
Cross agreed, offering this gem of self-awareness:
“Well, he makes it personal. George Bush never made it personal, I didn’t like his policies and thought he was full of shit, but Trump makes it personal. He forces you to make it personal so, yeah. And the audience took it personally.”
Translation: “I can’t control my emotions, so it’s his fault.” Classic. A grown man blaming the president for the fact that he stood on stage and joked about the man dying. That’s not comedy — that’s therapy dressed up in a microphone.
Then Obeidallah really cranked up the hysteria, recalling Trump’s comment to women about being their protector. Cross repeated the line back mockingly: “You will be protected and I will be your protector and then some more stuff and then you will be protected whether you like it or not.”
Obeidallah then went full tilt, calling Trump’s remark something a “rapist” would say. Because apparently reassuring voters about safety is now a criminal act — at least in the fever swamps of progressive podcasting.
The Real Punchline? Cross Thinks You’re Stupid
And here’s where it gets really fun. When asked how Trump managed to win the presidency, Cross decided to just insult the entire country:
“It says where we are in America, it speaks to our media, it speaks to the fecklessness of Democrats, it speaks to what is the true nature of Americans and what can be appealed to, which I think is very human as we’re seeing, it speaks to the education system. Um, so yeah.”
Read that again. Slowly. The man who just fantasized about a president’s death on stage is lecturing you about America’s education system. He thinks Trump won because voters are dumb. Not because people were tired of being talked down to by exactly this kind of smug, self-satisfied entertainer. Not because grocery bills doubled or the border was a sieve. No — you’re just not as enlightened as David Cross.
That “um, so yeah” at the end really ties it together. Eloquence for the ages.
Trump Lives Rent-Free — With a View
Here’s what guys like Cross will never understand: Trump doesn’t need to “make it personal.” He just exists, and they lose their minds. He goes about governing — cutting deals, slashing regulations, bulldozing through bureaucratic nonsense — and these people respond by fantasizing about his funeral on stage. That says infinitely more about them than it does about him.
Trump didn’t tiptoe around his critics. He never has. And every time someone like Cross throws a tantrum disguised as a Netflix special, it only reminds ordinary Americans why they pulled the lever for the guy in the first place. Nobody who’s worried about feeding their family is sitting around laughing at death jokes about the president. That’s a luxury reserved for people who’ve confused their bubble for the whole country.
David Cross used to be funny. Genuinely funny. Now he’s just another entertainer who traded jokes for rage, wit for venom, and a career for a clapter reel. Wishing for the death of a president isn’t edgy. It isn’t brave. It’s the cheapest applause line in the book — and the audience cheering for it is the saddest part of the whole bit.
