Magician and self-described “carnie performer” Penn Jillette has a heart of gold. That, or he can take errant insults from the best and the worst of them, because during his stint on Thursday’s Opie Radio, he responded like a scholar and a gentleman to Donald Trump‘s randomly tweeted insults.
The 2016 GOP presidential hopeful’s tirade began in the wee hours of Thursday morning:
I hear @pennjillette show on Broadway is terrible. Not surprised, boring guy (Penn). Without The Apprentice, show would have died long ago.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 16, 2015
I loved firing goofball atheist Penn @pennjillette on The Apprentice. He never had a chance. Wrote letter to me begging for forgiveness. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 16, 2015
Radio host Gregg “Opie” Hughes read the tweets to Jillette, who had already read and responded to the first one before the show went on-air:
@realDonaldTrump Sorry you couldn’t make the opening, but we know you’re busy. Would have liked to have seen you. Be well.
— Penn Jillette (@pennjillette) July 16, 2015
Talk about taking the moral high ground. However, Trump’s second tweet went live just half an hour before the interview began, so Opie asked for additional comments from Jillette. Jillette, in turn, responded just as he had before:
“He can be unlikable, but I am really very fond of him. And still, with what you read, it kind of makes me like him more!”
Jillette even put Trump into a rather lofty category of people:
“Thelonius Monk, the great jazz piano player, said — and it’s not a well-known quotation but I love it — he said, ‘The genius is the one who is most like himself.’ That’s what I love with Bob Dylan, Lenny Bruce, Tiny Tim — they were completely like themselves. Trump, for better or worse, is in that category. I have talked one-on-one with Bob Dylan, and I have talked one-on-one with Trump, and they do not have filters. They speak honestly and from the heart.
“Unfortunately, when you move into the political arena when you’re speaking from the heart, if your heart has some really dark, wrong areas, and that comes out too, that becomes very, very unpleasant….When [Trump] says, ‘What I’m saying is going to have some policy implications,’ then all of sudden we have to be our better ourselves. It is perfectly okay to be, personally, a little uncomfortable with certain immigrants. It is not okay for our country to be that way.”
Not that any of it mattered to Trump, who kept tweeting about how crappy he thinks Jillette’s Broadway show is:
The worst show in Las Vegas, in my opinion, is @pennjillette. Hokey garbage. New York show even worse!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 16, 2015
Check out the clip below, courtesy of Opie Radio:
[Image via screengrab]
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