On Tuesday, comedian Dave Chappelle announced his support for 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate Andrew Yang.
“I’m Yang Gang!” Chappelle said in a press release, according to The Daily Beast.
“Thank you [Dave Chappelle] and welcome to the #yanggang,” Yang captioned a photo of himself standing alongside Chappelle. “You are the best. Let’s do this for our kids.”
Thank you @DaveChappelle and welcome to the #yanggang. You are the best. Let’s do this for our kids. 🙏👍 pic.twitter.com/HGznFG00kr
— Andrew Yang🧢 (@AndrewYang) January 14, 2020
Earlier on Tuesday, an excited Yang announced the endorsement to his supporters. “I’m going to be endorsed in about two hours by Dave Chappelle!” he said.
.@AndrewYang: "I’m going to be endorsed in about two hours by Dave Chappelle!" pic.twitter.com/dBo2RSXYdM
— The Hill (@thehill) January 14, 2020
According to The Hill, the comic will headline upcoming shows in support of the Democratic candidate, set for January 29 and 30 in South Carolina.
“Dave’s team reached out to our team, and they were thrilled to put the two of us together,” Yang told New England Cable News last week, The Hill noted. “We sat down and talked about his concerns for the country and what we need to do to for the next generation. Dave’s a dad like I am. And then after we met, he said, ‘Look, I want to help, and what can I do to help?’”
The former “Chappelle Show” star has been an unapologetic proponent of free speech.
In October, while accepting the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center, Chappelle offered a fierce and hilarious defense of the First Amendment.
“I like not knowin’ what’s going to happen. I like makin’ memories. Sometime I do all this crazy s*** around my colleagues just so they can tell their friends I did it. Rather than talk about myself, just briefly, I want to just talk about my genre. Stand-up comedy is an incredibly American genre,” he said. “I don’t think any other country can produce this many comedians. Unbeknownst to many people in this audience, I don’t think there’s opinion that exists in this country that is not represented in a comedy club by somebody. Each and every one of you has a chance of bein’ in the room.”
“We watch you guys fight, but when we’re together, we talk it out. I know comics that are very racist, and I watch ‘em on stage, and everyone’s laughin’, I’m like, that mother f***** means it,” Chappelle continued. “Don’t get mad at ‘em, don’t hate ‘em, we go upstairs and have a beer and sometimes I even appreciate the artistry that they paint their racist opinions with.”
“Man, it’s not that serious. The First Amendment is first for a reason. The Second Amendment is just in case the first one doesn’t work out,” he added.
The comedian has ruffled feathers in the media for making jokes about media-protected groups. For example, Chappelle has been routinely hit by comedy writers for jokes about the LGBT lobby or transgenderism.
Currently, Yang is struggling in the polls. Providing election coverage for The Daily Wire, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer said earlier Tuesday that “it would be a fool’s errand to predict anyone other than Biden as the likely Democratic presidential nominee — at least until we start getting concrete results from Iowa, New Hampshire, and so forth.”
Hammer also highlighted wealthy Michael Bloomberg as “a candidate to keep a close eye upon.”
“Electoral prediction market website PredictIt now has Biden as its frontrunner, although Sanders is in second by a substantial margin. After a large gap, Warren, Bloomberg, and Buttigieg then all distantly follow. The Warren campaign collapse from its erstwhile frontrunner perch is truly something to behold,” noted Hammer.