Comedians have vastly different styles and sensibilities. Nowhere is this more apparent than at Montreal's annual Just For Laughs comedy festival, where one minute you're riding a speedboat of brainy one-liners from Jerry Seinfeld; the next, you're floating along with the intoxicating tales of Ron Funches.
Comedians are just as varied in their decisions of whether to talk politics on stage.
For professional jokesters, President Trump is either gold to mine or a grenade to avoid. Sometimes he's both. With impersonations by Alec Baldwin, Kate McKinnon and Melissa McCarthy, Saturday Night Live has turned the Trump administration into bona fide comedy canon. The Late Show's Stephen Colbert delights in poking fun at the powerful, like the time he asked Andy Serkis to read Mr. Trump's tweets in the voice of Gollum from the Lord of The Rings movies. More brazenly, Viceland's Desus and Mero lacerate White House staffers as they watch them in video interviews or speeches.
The philosophy at comedy video website Funny Or Die: tackle it head on. "I think comedy is at its best when it's addressing power and powerful institutions," says CEO Mike Farah. "Right now we have an individual who is representing an institution in ways that lots of people disagree with. And if we can use comedy to attack that power, and to make funny and smart observations about the world and the hypocrisy we're living in ... I think it's our responsibility."