Wanda Sykes flips off booing crowd after anti-Donald Trump joke bombs
Wanda Sykes is used to making people laugh with her comedy, but her latest routine on President-elect Donald Trump fell flat at the TD Garden arena in Boston on Saturday.
Instead of garnering laughs, the comedian’s anti-Trump joke elicited boos from a very large crowd that attended the 22nd annual Comics Come Home fundraiser.
“After the election I was going around consoling people. I said, ‘Guys, look on the bright side. Look at this.’ I was telling everybody... I am certain this is not the first time we’ve elected a racist, sexist, homophobic president,” said Sykes, as the audience went wild. “He ain’t the first one. He’s just the first confirmed one.”
Before Sykes could even finish the jab, the stadium filled with thousands echoed with angry boos.
And Sykes was quick to fire back, “F*** you, motherf****ers. F*** all y’all. F**** all y’all.”
The comedian then began calling out her critics on stage, pointing, “You, you, you, you, you...”
When the crowd showed no sign of simmering down, a bewildered Sykes asked, “How can you -- the evidence is there. How can you say he’s not racist?”
To help prove her point, Sykes referenced the leaked 2005 Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump told Billy Bush that you can “grab [women] by the p****” and “you can make them do anything.”
“How can you say he’s not sexist?” said Sykes after reciting Trump’s lewd remarks from the 11-year-old tape.
Eventually, Sykes turned away from politics, but it was too late. She lost the crowd, and she knew it.
Before she left the stage after her minutes-long set, Sykes flipped the middle finger, according to the Boston Herald.
On Monday night, Sykes took to Facebook to explain the situation.
“First of all, I was not booed OFF stage. I didn’t go anywhere. I was booed while ON stage in the middle of my set,” Sykes wrote. “Some people in the audience didn’t want to hear my Trump jokes. Hell, I couldn’t even get to the punchlines. They were booing the setups.”
After getting some laughs during the second half of her set, the comedian then added, “I left the stage with my head held high and with my middle finger even higher.”
WARNING: This video contains some graphic language.
This isn’t the first time a famed comedian has bombed while floating an anti-Trump joke.
In October, around 200 people walked out of Amy Schumer’s Tampa show after the actress and comedian called Trump an “orange, sexual-assaulting, fake-college-starting monster.”
Afterward, in a statement to Vanity Fair, Schumer responded to the backlash: “I loved the crowd and my show in Tampa last night! I want to thank the 8,400 people who stayed. We had a great time! We have always depended on comedians to make us laugh and tell the truth. I am proud to continue that tradition.”