Trust Me

Kurt Braunohler spends his hour trying to convince the audience that he should not be trusted, specifically because he looks like a tall, friendly camp counselor who has everything figured out. To dismantle the unearned authority granted to white men like him, he offers a series of humiliating self-disclosures, such as a formative childhood encounter with a McDonald’s fruit pie, while urging other white guys to start lying about things like cats inventing parkour. It is a silly, self-deprecating strategy designed to make the audience question why anyone would look to him for guidance.

Filmed at Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon, the 2017 special arrived at a transitional moment in Braunohler’s career. Best known in the alternative scene for his grand-scale absurdist pranks and co-hosting the weekly variety show Hot Tub, this first hour-long special saw him integrating a weightier perspective into his material. The shift is most apparent when he pivots from jokes about satellite radio and redhead sex to a stark comparison of the police treatment of Dylann Roof versus Eric Garner, an unexpected swerve that anchors his lighter routines in something genuinely purposeful.