Final insult

Today: Jennie Rose Halperin, digital strategist and librarian at NYU’s Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy.

Issue No. 200

The Trump Era of Joan Rivers
Jennie Rose Halperin

The Trump Era of Joan Rivers

by Jennie Rose Halperin

The late Joan Rivers was friendly with Donald Trump for decades, with Rivers openly praising Trump in several interviews, including one on her own show. “He’s so smart,” she gushed in a 2012 appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen. “I think he would have made a great president… He’s a businessman!” A closer look suggests that this chirpy observation was more about their relationship and his celebrity than about endorsement. 

During this year’s presidential campaign, Trump told journalist Ramin Satoodeh that Rivers had voted for him in 2016, an election that took place two years after her death. “I thought she might have been a Republican,” he said. “She voted for me, according to what she said.” 

While Rivers and Trump were publicly close, she also told comedian Kathy Griffin “not to make an enemy out of Donald Trump,” advice that Griffin famously did not heed. 

“I think in the beginning she would have been like, ‘Yes, great, super,’” Rivers’s daughter, Melissa Rivers, offered in a 2017 interview when asked whether her mother would have supported Trump’s political career. “And then she would have been like, ‘Oh shit,’ as he came closer to the presidency.”

As a finalist in the 2009 season of NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice, Rivers faced off against poker champ Annie Duke for the big prize of $250,000, to be donated to the winner’s designated charity. Across the huge conference table from the contestants were judges Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, their father seated between them. 

“Joan, why should I pick you to be the Celebrity Apprentice?” Trump asked Rivers.

“Because I think that I represent winning, and business, in the new way that this country is taking on, which is we are honorable,” Rivers said. “We cannot do business in the old way, you can’t grab money because it will affect those you grabbed from... America is all about charity.”