Chelsea Handler at Politicon: “Donald Trump Scares the Shit Out of Me”

Chelsea Handler played to the crowd Saturday at Politicon, bashing President Donald Trump in two separate appearances.

“He doesn’t have a value system,” she said to CNN’s Jake Tapper onstage. “He’s not interested in the American people. He lies constantly. He’s also unstable, and I believe he has syphilis.” (Tapper protested that last declaration).

Handler, who has an eponymous show on Netflix, said she’s not interested in playing it safe and pulling punches, even if it means potentially losing pro-Trump viewers. “I can’t worry about the people I’m ostracizing,” she said. “Nobody’s going to like you all the time.”

Handler knows, however, there are some limits to what she can do in taking on the president. “I can’t walk around with a Donald Trump head with blood all over it,” she said, a reference to Kathy Griffin’s much-publicized May tiff, which caught the attention of the Secret Service.

Of Trump’s seeming desire to have an independent administration divorced from traditional Republican powers, Handler said, “Donald Trump scares the shit out of me.”

Tapper mentioned that he’s appeared on Handler’s show, to which she said she didn’t remember. “It was right after the election, you might have been drunk,” Tapper said. Handler replied: “If it was right after the election, I was definitely drunk.”

Talking about the traveling she’s been able to do for her show Chelsea, Handler said, “Netflix is amazing, they let me do whatever I want.”

Earlier in the day, Handler spent an hour yelling at and with conservative firebrand Tomi Lahren, who defended Trump and his policies. 

Handler told the large, raucous audience in attendance a story about a run-in with the current president several years ago. Trump, according to Handler, approached her at a restaurant and introduced himself. “He’s not as disgusting as I thought he would be,” Handler said she told a dining companion.

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