The longtime stand-up comic and entertainer told HuffPost that the two missed out on the chance to do the āonly thing they have to do.ā
āThey have to address what happened. People want to talk about it,ā she said in a phone interview last week. āYou canāt just ignore and throw it under the rug. You have to talk about what youāve learned, where youāve come from and where you are now.ā
In January, Ansari was accused of sexual assault by an unnamed woman, an encounter the comedian said was ācompletely consensual.ā
Handler added, āI think thatās the issue everyone has with it and why itās such a big deal. You canāt just come back and act like nothing happened ā you did a bad thing ā depending on which person youāre talking about. Itās about taking responsibility, ultimately.ā
Handler has mainly stayed away from performing since she quit her Netflix show, āChelsea,ā back in October 2017. She said sheās spent the last year trying to get both women and people of color elected into office.
She occasionally spars with the Trumps on Twitter, but told HuffPost that if she came face to face with any of them, she wouldnāt say a word.
āWhat would be the point of speaking to somebody like that?ā Handler said. āThere are children in cages ā there are 12,000 children at our border that have been separated from their families and [Trumpās] denying that people died in Puerto Rico. We have a monster running our country and his whole family is a bunch of monsters.ā
Handler added that she couldnāt care less about Donald Trump Jr., who recently shared a sexist, suggestive tweet in response to one of Handlerās tweets about him.
āIāll care about [him] when heās in jail,ā she said. Same goes for the president, who, the entertainer says, needs to be impeached and removed from office because heās not fit for the job.
āThey shouldāve removed him a long time ago for the way he uses his Twitter, the language that he uses and the violence that he invokes,ā Handler said. āHis cabinet has responsibilities to this country ā not to the Republican party.ā
Handler says she uses cannabis to cope with the current administration.
āDrinking when youāre angry is no fun so I needed another outlet,ā she said. āThere are so many times when I just donāt want to drink every night ā if I have a dinner or if Iām going out. Sometimes Iāll just take an edible and, you know, not drink. That was never part of my vocabulary before.ā
Handler is so passionate about her newfound, well, passion that sheās going on a seven-stop speaking tour in Canada with Civilized, a cannabis lifestyle publication. Sheāll discuss topics like weed, culture and political activism in a town hall setting, just before recreational marijuana officially becomes legal in October.
āIām always looking for an excuse to spend more time in Canada, so this is a great one,ā Handler said, later closing her interview with a plea. āIām waiting for an invitation for dual Canadian citizenship ā so get that out there too.ā