Stand-up comedian and writer Sarah Cooper’s spent the past four years making viral videos lip-syncing videos of President Donald Trump’s seemingly endless gaffes, and she said she’s “feeling hopeful” as Trump approaches his last days in office.
Cooper had a predictably pithy send-off for the president in an episode of “The Last Laugh” podcast hosted by the Daily Beast’s Matt Wilstein, and said she thought Trump was a “petty bitch” for stating he won’t attend the Biden inauguration (Vice President Pence, however, said he would attend).
“What a petty bitch,” Cooper said. “That is all I have to say. What a petty bitch. You can’t even shake the man’s hand? I mean, come on.”
“It’s so on-brand though,” Cooper said of Trump. “If he had been gracious and conceded and been this amazing beacon of light at the end of his term, we would have been like, wait, he did pivot! But he never pivoted.”
“I’m really excited. I’m really happy,” Cooper said, adding: “There’s still a part of me that’s like, is it really over? Could it really be over?”
Cooper said she “won’t be able to breathe a sigh of relief until Biden has his hand on the Bible” Jan. 20, but that she’s “feeling more hopeful” than in prior months. “For awhile, I was still very scared, but I’m getting less scared every day,” Cooper said.
President Trump was banned from Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and a plethora of other social platforms after his supporters incited a violent insurrection at the capitol last week, a move that Cooper is uniquely suited to comment on. Prior to breaking into the stand-up comedy scene full time, Cooper worked as a designer for Yahoo! and in user experience for Google, helping the search giant develop productivity tools like Google Docs, Slides and Sheets.
“I guess cynically, I think, why now?” Cooper said. “[Trump] had been promoting so much hatred and violence for so long. So it feels a little late. Cooper added that she thought social media companies only reacted by banning Trump because they were worried about political backlash if they let him continue to post (and potentially incite more riots). Cooper said she wondered if the companies were concerned they’re “going to be exposed if any more violence happened,” or “trying to curry favor with Democrats” since the Democratic Party now controls the House and Senate.
Somewhat ironically for Cooper, Trump’s social media bans didn’t change her content strategy at all, since the president’s Twitter account has banned her for being what she calls a “presidential reply guy” since 2017.
“I was on his s— list from Day 1 almost,” Cooper joked.