Arts & Entertainment
Caitlyn Jenner stands up for Trump on ‘The View’
the transgender activist admits she has met with the presidential administration
(Screenshot via YouTube.)
Caitlyn Jenner appeared as a guest panelist on Thursday’s episode of “The View” and defended the Trump administration’s first few months in office.
When discussing Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer during the election, Jenner chalked it up to the “dirty business” of politics.
“Politics is a dirty business. We could go over a million things that we don’t need to go over here because everybody knows about it,” Jenner says. “Hillary Clinton was out there looking for dirt on Trump. Trump was looking for dirt on Hillary. These are smear campaigns, y’know. 70 to 80%, it seems like, of the ads that are out there are not of what they’re going to do, it’s smearing the other person. So everybody’s looking for dirt.”
When it was brought up that Trump was possibly using Russia connections to make money, Jenner insisted that wasn’t the case and that Trump deserved a chance to prove himself.
“We have to get somebody in there who can straighten things out,” Jenner continued. “He’s shaken a lot of things up since he’s been in there and I think from that standpoint, that’s good. Let’s give the guy some time. What’s it been? Six months? In three and a half years form now, we get to decide again. And f it didn’t work out, let’s get him out and get somebody else in. If not, if by that time he’s lowered taxes, he’s helped the economy, he’s created jobs, he’s done all these things that are good for the country, then we can re-elect him.”
Jenner also revealed she has been speaking about LGBT issues with members of the Trump administration but remained tight-lipped about exactly who she has spoken with.
“I can’t talk about it,” Jenner says. “I try to keep it quiet.”
However, she did reveal that she has met with the Department of Education. She also has plans to meet with U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley to discuss international LGBT issues.
“We have our problems here and our issues here, but if you look on an international basis, they’d chop my head off in some countries,” Jenner says.
Watch Jenner’s appearance on “The View” below.
The 2026 Capital Pride Parade was held in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, June 20.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key, Robert Rapanut and Landon Shackelford)
Theater
‘Feeling Afraid’ explores life of a neurotic stand-up comic
Navigating sex, work, and possibly love in London
‘Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen’
Through July 12
Studio Theatre
1501 14th St., N.W.
$55-$102
Studiotheatre.org
Wordily yet rightly titled, solo show “Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen” dives deeply into the world of a neurotic stand-up comic as he navigates sex, work, and possibly love in London.
Busy arranging hookups and dates on “The App,” the 36-year-old gay funnyman juggles a full dance card; still he’s never been in a romantic relationship. While he’s willing to give love a shot, he’s not pressed about it. As he says, he harbors no fear of dying alone.
Currently making its American premiere at Studio Theatre, this darkly humorous Edinburgh Fringe import features terrific out English actor Steven Webb as The Comedian who’s about to explore what it means to spend all his time with one man.
At Studio’s intimate Mead Theatre, Kat Heath’s minimal set says standard comedy club (fluorescent tube lighting, the mic with a long cord, a single stool backed by a rose-colored curtain), but gay playwright Marcelo Dos Santos has conjured something much more than a live comedy set.
Yes, The Comedian bounces onstage in his red Converse high tops, jeans, and pink shirt with a huge mouth emblazoned on the back, but he delivers more than jokes. At times hilariously self-deprecating, then dark, and occasionally a lesson on what makes standup work, this is a layered, well-acted piece.
With Webb (a keen caricaturist of types and voices) playing all the parts while conducting The Comedian’s hilariously frenetic interior monologue, “Feeling Afraid” takes us through a summer of love. It seems after six chaste dates with The American, our nervous hero has found Mr. Right. The American is earnest, smart, hesitant to initiate sex. He’s also well built with a beautiful smile. And strangely, he’s been medically advised not to laugh aloud.
The Comedian delights in the joys of new love: dates, first kisses, sex, and then suddenly spending all of his time with the adored. Visits to art galleries become fun. Eating home cooked meals followed by grim documentaries is a thing. The Comedian is beguiled as his own boyish figure fills out, but something isn’t right. He can’t entirely relax.
Along the way we meet the Aussie doctor, our protagonist’s longtime hookup; a young runner with some exceptional body parts; the random third in a failed threesome; grumpy working comics, male and female; and an ineffectual counselor.
Webb gives a lightning-fast performance that boggles the mind (in terms velocity and virtuosity). He can be impish, very impish. He’s nervous energy incarnate, flashing jazz hands, grimacing but handsome when still. He’s likeable, a necessity when delivering a hilariously rude joke just feet away from two stone-faced audience members. (Perhaps they were laughing on the inside? At any rate, they stayed through the end the show.)
Produced by the team behind Fringe hits “Fleabag” and “Baby Reindeer,” small stage works that were developed into major TV screen successes, “Feeling Afraid” is funny for sure, and it’s also highly confessional, sexually explicit, and raw.
Written by Dos Santos during COVID lockdown, the piece was a smash hit in the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe before finding further success in London. Its depiction of a youngish queer guy navigating the big city rings entirely true. Like so much Fringe stuff, the one-man show is delightfully lewd and standup inspired.
One little moan: the show closes cleverly but too abruptly with its star dashing offstage without sufficiently basking in the admiration and applause of his thoroughly chuffed audience.
They say third time’s a charm, and regarding “Feeling Afraid,” I’d agree. After two performance cancellations (first for laryngitis and the second involving faulty air conditioning on an especially muggy June evening), I made my third trek to Studio where I found both the actor and AC in very fine fettle. And truly, Webb’s work was more than worth the wait.
The 2026 Baltimore Pride Festival, “Pride in the Park,” was held at Druid Hill Park on Sunday, June 14.
(Washington Blade photos by Linus Berggren)
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