“Adam Ruins Everything” — except this.
Comedian Adam Conover will take on the upcoming presidential election in a Sept. 25 live performance at Gowanus’s Bell House. The gig will still use the name of his aforementioned Tru TV show, but the funny-man admits people’s opinion of the showdown between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton can’t sink much lower, and instead he’ll actually be trying to make the 2016 race to the White House a little more palatable.
“I think it’s already in a pretty bad place, and people already feel like it’s been ruined,” he said. “We’re trying to give people a little more understanding and how it works and have them leave feeling a little more hopeful.”
Conover’s weekly television show is known for dropping humorous truth bombs on misconceptions about nutrition (vitamin supplements are a con), weddings (engagement rings are a scam), and forensic science (polygraphs are psuedoscience), and his live version will attempt the same during an hour-long history of elections peppered with stand-up comedy and pre-recorded funny clips.
The jokester is keeping the targets of his stage act more secretive than Donald Trump’s medical records on a private e-mail server, but did reveal that he plans to attack the idea that this year’s election and its widely hated candidates are uniquely awful in the long, sordid history of American politics.
“Donald Trump’s characteristics are hilariously found in the presidents of the past,” he said. “There are other presidents who have been that big of an a——. Thomas Jefferson was a jerk.”
He will also try to dispel the notion that the battle for commander in chief is the most important day in American politics. While voters are distracted by the multimillion-dollar, cable-news churnalism-fueled circus of modern presidential elections, he says they’re missing the local races that will ultimately have way more impact on their everyday lives.
“We act in this country as if there’s an election year once every four years. But the fact is there’s an election every year. Almost nobody votes,” he said. “Elections for state positions — important positions that affect our lives more than the presidency does but people don’t know and don’t vote.”
Conover wouldn’t publicly back any candidate on the ballot, but made some big Trump-style promises for audience satisfaction alongside a Hillary-style vow of bipartisan laughs.
“We want to create a show for anyone of any political persuasion, whether they are a Republican or Democrat, they can laugh and enjoy,” he said. “They are gonna learn and laugh a lot, and have their minds blown 20 times during the course of the show.”
“Adam Ruins Everything Live” at the Bell House [149 Seventh St. between Second and Third avenues in Gowanus, (718) 643–6510, www.thebe
