When Donald Trump declared his interest in running for president at his roast in 2011, the audience, full of New York high society, cheered him. Four years later, the situation had completely changed. Trump had decided to run as a Republican, and many of his old acquaintances in New York turned on him.
During the 2016 campaign, Trump was frequently compared to Hitler. As the Huffington Post noted, former Mexican president Vicente Fox and comedian Bill Maher expressed such sentiments. Gilbert Gottfried called him “Hitler without the warmth” on the Seth Meyers Show. He viewed the billionaire’s campaign as a sort of joke that he thought would die out, not expecting his message to resonate among a large segment of the American public. Given this view, as well as Gottfried’s place within liberal New York’s high society, one can assume that he did not vote Republican.
In 2018, Gottfried again discussed Trump. In the El Paso Times, he said that he wished he had been nicer to Trump while he was on “The Apprentice.” After all, had he known Trump was going to be president, he might have gotten a cabinet position. The part about a cabinet position was no doubt a joke, and Gottfried has rarely discussed his politics openly. But given his skewering of Jared Kushner and his comments on Trump, it seems safe to assume he wasn’t a fan.
