Jim Gaffigan Explains His Political Rant

For fans of a comedian who is known to work clean and avoid politics, the rant from Jim Gaffigan came out of nowhere last week. Gaffigan unloaded on President Trump on Thursday on Twitter, complete with expletives. "I don't give a f--- if anyone thinks this is virtue signaling or whatever,' he wrote, adding, "We need to call trump the con man and thief that he is." (And that's just a small sample.) The backlash has been strong, and now Gaffigan is back on social media with a lengthy Facebook post about the threats he's received and his rationale for the original diatribe, reports USA Today.

"To be clear upfront I don’t think anyone is going to let an actor or a comedian tell them who to vote for despite the fact that the current President is essentially both an actor and a comedian," he wrote, per People. "However, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I want to change some minds. Of course I do, I feel strongly about what is going in our country." He said it was "liberating" to vent the way he did, even it did bring many "quasi threatening or flat out threatening remarks." He blamed Trump on that front for stoking "hatred and violence." (More Jim Gaffigan stories.)