Comedian Ramy Youssef had a simple response to conservatives melting down over his Sesame Street appearance — take it up with the president.
Youssef guest-starred on the children’s classic last week as part of Arab American Heritage Month, spending a few minutes with Elmolearning basic Arabic greetings. The segment was not intended to be threatening, but that wasn’t how it was received by the right-wing outrage machine, Variety noted Tuesday.
Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo took to The Ingraham Angle to sound the alarm and conjure a radically different future for Bert and Ernie.
“I wish ‘Sesame Street’ would stick to teaching kids about letters and numbers and leave the Arabic immersion to someone else. Next, Bert and Ernie will be praying five times a day on Sesame Street, facing east,” Arroyo said.
Appearing on The View, Youssef addressed MAGA backlash by noting that Trump himself signed off on an April 5 social media post about the Iran war with “Praise be to Allah,” a detail that conflicts with the conservative case against Arabic words on a children’s show.
“I feel for them, right? … I think they’re worried [about] Arabic immersion, and it’s got to be tough, because I think they’re supporters of the President. So imagine your president on Easter is tweeting ‘Praise be to Allah,’ and now Elmo saying ‘habibi’ feels threatening,” Youssef said.
The comedian noted he has spent years wading into genuinely divisive political territory without drawing this level of fury.
“There’s been a lot of languages on ‘Sesame Street’ and there’s been no backlash to those. So, it actually really did surprise me,” Youssef said.
He noted he has been outspoken in the past about highly controversial issues, and yet “Elmo saying habibi has set them off in a way that has never happened to me before.”
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