David Spade wants to set the record straight after performing for pro-Trump billionaire Marc Benioff’s tech conference.
Spade responded Sunday on his Fly on The Wall podcast to criticism over his set at an annual Salesforce conference hosted by Benioff, who is facing his own backlash for supporting Trump and his National Guard takeover plans.
“It isn’t really a freedom of speech thing. I could say whatever I want, but do I want to get hired back?” Spade in response to complaints that his monologue did not touch on the criticism surrounding the Salesforce executive.
“Do I want the word in the corporate world to go, ‘This guy is too much of a wild card, he’s going to try to take your company down?’”
Spade faced criticism for performing after Kumail Ali Nanjiani and Ilana Glazer canceled due to “unforeseen circumstances,” which Spade said he later found out may have been “because of political things.”
“Unbeknownst to me,” the Salesforce CEO was in the midst of controversy at the time, Spade said.
“I heard the word Trump thrown around,” and “articles said these people stepped out, but David Spade, basically, gladly did” the job, he continued, trying to clarify his stance.
“When you’re doing these gigs, first of all, they take the edges off your act. You sign a contract and they send it ahead. ‘Hey, we don’t want you s–ting on the CEO. We don’t want you going political. We don’t want—just keep it nice and fun.’”
Spade was tapped to perform at Salesforce’s annual Dreamforce conference last week, after Benioff declared he “fully supports” the president and welcomed him to deploy the National Guard to San Francisco. “We don’t have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I’m all for it,” Benioff told the Times.
The Time magazine owner faced blowback for the comments, including a scathing board resignation from “Godfather of Silicon Valley” Ron Conway, who declared that he “barely recognized the person” he had “so long admired.”
Benioff later apologized for the National Guard comment, notably before Spade took the stage at Dreamforce, writing “My earlier comment came from an abundance of caution around the event, and I sincerely apologize for the concern it caused.” But Spade said he was caught in the crossfire anyway.
One particular article commenting on the comedian’s act for SF Gate “felt like a kick in the balls,” Spade said. The reporter “went a little out of his way to go, ‘I would love to hear these people really go after the system and punch up,’” when he noted his disappointment that Glazer and Nanjiani had been replaced by Spade. “Nanjiani and Glazer are a pair with differing comedic styles, unafraid of punching up at tech’s excesses and power structures,” the article reads, contrasting those comedians’ would-have-been performances to Spade’s “40 minutes of rambly, down-home storytelling.”
“I don’t know if that’s what they were there to do either,” Spade hit back. “I’m not there to punch up and make the focus me and have people go, ‘Holy s—.’”
Spade said he wouldn’t go after Benioff and metaphorically shoot himself in the foot in the process.
“If I’m doing a theater gig, you’re not going to take any bullets out of my gun. I might go after San Francisco and the crime. I might go after whatever because there’s no real boss. People are coming to see me.” For a corporate gig, however, “I have to kind of—if you’re a worker bee…when they sort of stipulate this, they can either not pay you…or sue you,” he said.
Spade concluded, “I’d met these people before. I had a perfectly good time there this time. Crowd was friendly, seemed to have a good time. We got out.”
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