Jordan Klepper Follows Conspiracies to Their Satirical Extremes
*By Alyssa Caverley*
The world that comedian Jordan Klepper has created on his Comedy Central show might fold in on itself if not for the inherent tension keeping up all four walls of "The Opposition," a late-night political satire.
"I play this heightened character that satirizes the voices on the right and the far right," said Klepper in an interview with Cheddar. Think of Sean Hannity on Fox News, or the bombastic and conspiratorial Alex Jones of Infowars who inhabit a "world that doesn't believe in the mainstream, that's anti-mainstream, anti-facts, anti-reality."
Stephen Colbert's old Comedy Central character was based on a mainstream version of a conservative talk-show host, but as the political commentary has become more extreme, Klepper's comedy had to follow it to the fringes.
"We find the chaos and the thing that frustrates us and we try to expose it by looking at some of the tactics, looking at some of the motivations behind it and expanding it to such a degree that it just feels ridiculous and I think people need that in this day and age when it does feel so dark," Klepper said. "A little bit of laughter can break out of that fear bubble that we live in and hopefully provide a little bit of solace."
As the country's political discourse has grown more polarizing since Donald Trump was elected, Klepper said his show has a role to play in late-night comedy helping to synthesize and understand what is going on by tracing people's own fears and finding the absurdity.
The Comedy Central funnyman joked that many of the far-right talk show hosts he watches are a "bucket of inspiration," providing him with as many conspiracy theories to mock as they seem to feed Fox News and, ultimately, the White House.
Klepper said his show probably wouldn't have registered in quite the same way had Trump not won the 2016 presidential election. He would be talking more about issues than the "orange" man in charge, he said.
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/jordan-klepper-calls-out-right-wing-conspiracy-theorists-on-satirical-talk-show).
Russian forces escalated their attacks on populated urban areas Tuesday, bombarding the central square in Ukraine’s second-largest city and Kyiv’s main TV tower.
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