 Joining us is Tamer Katan. Yes, sir. And you are on the streets of Manhattan because things have gone really bad for you. No, you're waiting to go on. We just did John Fugelsang's show for Sirius XM. And I asked you to do my show. You said you had to go do a set. I said, why don't I talk to you before you go on? So you're on the streets of Manhattan. I'm back in the studio. Let me give you an introduction. Tamer Katan began his comedy career in Los Angeles and New York. He has performed everywhere for our troops in Afghanistan. You've performed at the American University in Cairo during the Egyptian Revolution. Yes, sir. My daughter was there. We talked about that. Wow. My daughter was, yes. You've been at the Edinburgh Fringe in Scotland where you received three four-star reviews from the International Press. You lived in London for a year. And you were most recently featured on Seth Rogen's Hilarity for Charity event with Todd Glass, Hannibal Bress, and you won the 2015 World Series of Comedy. Yes, sir. And now you're on the David Feldman show. And I'm more excited than anything else. I've been such a big fan of yours even before we met. So it's a real for me that we've become friends. Yes. And you were great today on the John Fiegel Seng show. And surprisingly, you have been raised Christian, Muslim, and Jewish. You identify as what? Episcopal, right? You know what's funny? I am not a religious person. I do believe in God, but I don't believe in human beings. So I just don't. You know, I believe in God the way I used to believe I was going to win the lottery in the office pool. Like because everybody was contributing a dollar, I'm like, what's going to hurt? Here's a buck. But I'm not going to give you a 10. So I have like a dollar's worth of beliefs. I'm not an atheist because I just don't think we're smart enough to know for sure. But I, but I, boy, do I not, a boy am I not a fan of organized religions. We'll get to Donald Trump in a second because he just withdrew from the Paris climate accords. And I know you're very happy about this because you're, you're not a fan of the planet, right? Oh, God. It's even it's sarcasm is even hard with this guy. You know what I mean? It's so tough. I, I, it's the craziest thing is normally when I hate somebody, I have a very specific reason why. And I know some people like hates a big word. It's the right size word for him. I, I think the stuff that he's doing, it's almost like a Greek tragedy. I, this really is one man who is so selfish, so hate filled that he's willing to let innocent people die, children die, poor people die, women's rights taken away, gay people and immigrants lives become exponentially more dangerous. All because he didn't, doesn't have enough character to take a joke. I think Obama made fun of him. And I think that Trump went insane. And I think all of this goes back to one thing. And it's all a revenge. It's all revenge. All right. Wait a second. What do you mean Obama made fun of him? Obama made fun of him at the, at the White House president. And he, he, he went up and made those series of jokes about the birther, the BS birther claims that Trump tried to make himself famous again with. And, and then Obama had an amazing speech, a hilarious speech and a good portion of it, the whole, the whole middle of it actually was making fun of Donald Trump saying, you know, you know, hey, Donald Trump, I even have a, not only do I have a birth certificate, I even have the video of my birth. They made, made fun of him, made fun of Fox News. And then compared his job to Trump's. And he said, you know, Trump, you did this amazing thing when you were, what leadership skills you have deciding between little John and, and Gary Busey and Gary Busey. Yeah. It's so funny. And I saw an entire room laughing and the core of the earth, which is his orange head. It was like watching a teapot bubble. He, he just, he cannot take a joke. He was shaking back and forth like he was standing in front of the wailing wall. It was, it was as if he had autism or some kind of disorder where he was rocking back and forth from the, from the anger that was, that was filling his body. I've never seen anything like it. He's a sick, sick man. And it's, it's dangerous. And yet we're so involved in our process that we can't just say, you know what? This is bullshit. This guy's obviously hurting the country. Whether it's intentional or unintentional, it doesn't matter. He's hurting the country and he's putting people, people's lives in danger. And we need to put a stop to this immediately. Yeah. And it's just, it's insane to me that it's happening. Especially as an Egyptian, because I left a country that imploded. You know, I see a clear distinction between Egypt and Egyptians. Egyptians are good people. The Egyptian government was garbage. And it, and it chewed its people up and spit its people out. But people forget, Egypt is not just a homeless man. It's a homeless man that used to be a CEO. Egypt used to say, we're number one and the whole world agreed. In America used to be able to say, we're number one. I think the Egyptians invented the number one. You are correct. You are absolutely correct. It's heartbreaking. It's really heartbreaking to see this happening here. Especially in a place where so many people invested dreams. Right. Right. Yeah. I hear you. I agree with you. Except I don't think he decided to run for president because Obama made fun of him. I think he runs for president. I think he appears in public for the same reason most comedians do. And it's, we're so dead inside. The only time we feel alive is when we're getting a reaction from people. Sure. And I think there's a lot of self loathing and loneliness. And he needs some kind of reaffirmation. I'm not so sure a vendetta against Obama as he would pronounce it is enough of a motivation. I don't know. But I guess I'm just trying to find the rationale behind the decision. Yeah. And it's tough. It's a really hard thing to understand any logic behind what he is doing outside of intentionally trying to hurt people. Yeah. Well, there's no excuse for domestic abuse. That's what they say. And this is domestic and foreign abuse because he's just pulled out of the Paris climate accords. Yeah. How do you, that I want to understand. We were talking about that with Fuglsang today. And you said it's an act of terrorism. Yes. And I think, literally, I do think it, the definition of terrorism is to scare people and make them feel unsafe. Yeah. Exactly. He is a, he is a terrorist because he knows terrorism is a good business. What do you mean? And he's, he's an opportunist. He puts money before lives. And I think that he sees terrorism as a form of control. Like even when I was a kid and I had a friend who had this really well trained dog. Everybody was watching this dog do every trick his, his, his owner told him to do. And all the other kids were impressed. I was looking at this dog going, don't stop it. You're, you're a beautiful, majestic animal. Stop doing what you're told all the time, just for him to handle you a couple pieces of bacon. And I feel like that's the way I feel like with these people that have this blind devotion to this man. Like the Republican Party reminds me of a battered wife where I'm like, why you deserve better than this. He's not, he's not on your side. He doesn't like you. He's hurting you and beating you. And they keep making excuses for it. Like, oh, it was my fault. The meatloaf was cold. It's, it's, it's, it's like a group illness. Well, maybe we shouldn't make cold meatloaf. Maybe we should, maybe we can placate him. It's our fault for not making dinner while wearing a mini skirt and high heels. Yeah, I agree with you. I think there's nothing you can do to get somebody to stop hitting you. And he just wants to smack you. And, and, and I think Hillary, when Bill was president, got that. She understood that. What's going on? I agree. What's going on? Sorry. Siren's going by. Sorry. It's the, the, the Sonic branding of New York City is the Siren. Oh, it's great. It's like the Nokia ringtone of New York City. Sorry. I knew that was going to happen. Now you were born in Egypt. Yes, sir. And Cairo. You were born in Cairo. I'm going to assume Nasser was already dead when you were born. Yes. Sadat was in, Sadat was the president at the time. And do you remember his assassination? I do. And where were you? Very much so. It was, I was in America. We'd come to America at that point. And I remember I cried for the first time. It was the first time I cried for a stranger. I remember I had, I had a lot of pride. It's funny because we always talked about in America, we're so progressive. But we talked about having a black president like it was a really big deal. And we had a black president in Egypt when I was four. So I remember I was really proud. Not just because he was a black man that was the leader of Egypt, but because he was a black man and he had a British wife who was a white woman. And it was just like this really, it was a time of such national pride. You know, I mean, after, we haven't had shit since the pyramids. Besides sex on the city flavor to hook up flavors. And then in comes, you know, Sadat and he wins the Nobel Peace Prize. He makes peace with Israel. He starts to make connections with the West. He starts to to disengage with the corrupt Russian government that was using Egypt as a shield against the U.S. In a lot of ways or fighting Israel for Russia. It was just, I was really proud. It made me feel like here is this man who really was somebody. He did what Trump claims to do. He really was someone who came in not as a politician, but for the people. And it was, I was so proud of him, even as a kid, I had a lot of pride for him. Yeah. And then he was replaced by Mubarak, who was kind of arrested. He was living in detention home. What do they call that? Not homeschooling. House arrest. House arrest. And now he's out. Now Mubarak is out among the people, right? Yeah. It's a really interesting thing because a lot of people say, how did Egypt go from such a liberal environment with Sadat to almost a monarchy with Mubarak? And people forget that Mubarak was sitting right next to Sadat when he got shot. So Mubarak, I mean, Mubarak was sitting right next to him. So he watched him get assassinated and he immediately became, he became a scared leader. And that's what changed everything. When you have a man that's full of fear back to your first point, you know, about fear, ruling by fear is a very dangerous thing for any country. And especially in America when that doesn't have to be the case. Do we know who shot Sadat? Was there some link between the people who shot Sadat and the Muslim Brotherhood? 100%. It was the Muslim Brotherhood. But here's the thing. When that happened, Mubarak kicked the Muslim Brotherhood out of government. They were no longer allowed in government. So what they did is then they went grassroots and guerrilla marketed and they went to all these really small impoverished and literate communities around Egypt to guerrilla market for the Muslim Brotherhood. So then when the Egyptian government collapsed and there wasn't strong forms of communication, guess who was ideally positioned to build a political party? It was the Muslim Brotherhood. Morris. So the Muslim Brotherhood actually turned their weakness into a strength because they were sent away as outcasts. And when they were outcast, they campaigned in a guerrilla marketing style. And that's how come they were able to thrive in a post-revolutionary environment. Now let me ask you about the Muslim Brotherhood when they were outcasts. When they were outcast, did they shake it like a Polaroid picture? Just, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm just an a-hole. They shook it like a hieroglyphic. So, but what's his name? The ophthalmologist or the doctor who was Osama bin Laden's right-hand man? Yeah, I didn't see season three of terrorism. So I'm not sure what his name is. But his name is Alawali or whatever. He's still alive. Yes. Yeah. And he, the Muslim Brotherhood was the precursor to Al-Qaeda. So didn't Osama bin Laden take a lot of his learning from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Well, since you're not sure and you don't have a computer in front of you, yes, he did. I think Muhammad Atta was from Egypt too, right? Yeah, I think that, yeah, there was a... He flew one of the planes into the... Yeah, there was too many Egyptians involved. Well, I mean, mathematically, you have to remember, there's 90 million people in Egypt. So when people say there were eight people or seven people from Egypt involved. But there were 89 million, 993,000 people that were involved. Do you go back there at all? No. You know, I went during the revolution and I had sort of a scary experience to be honest. You had a what? And so I haven't been back since. What kind of experience? Yeah, so I was performing at the American University in Cairo. Literally has the word American in it. And it was a famous theater that's been there for years. And when the show started, about the middle of my set, I started to feel really comfortable. People were laughing at some of my tester jokes, where I was kind of getting a feel for the audience and seeing how far I could go. And then when I started talking about having a Muslim dad and Jewish mom, I noticed a guy in the front row, the only guy that wasn't laughing. And he had this thing on his forehead that in Egypt we call as Zabiba. And Zabiba means raisin. So if you're a fundamentalist Muslim, sometimes you'll bang your head into the ground when you pray. So you get like a little scar. And it makes you look more pious. Like you pray so much that you have a scar on your forehead. So he had one of these things. And at one point in my set he stood up and tried to come towards the stage and security grabbed him and he made like a bunch of noise and was yelling and screaming. I actually went up to him at the end of the show when security was grabbing him. And I said, hey, listen, how about educate me. Tell me what it is that I... What is it that I did that was wrong? And he said, no, you're fine. You don't know any better. You're American. And I go, no, educate me so I know how to not upset you. Because that's not my goal. My goal was not to come here to upset you. My goal was to make you laugh. And I go, I mean that. And he goes, and I could tell like I really took him aback because he only knew how to fight. And when I wasn't fighting, it confused him. And then he said, you can't joke about culture anymore. And he walked out. And I was like, culture. And then as he's walking out and yelling out, I'm like, culture is too big. Wow. Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock think American colleges are politically correct. Right. Yeah. Let them play. How are you being received in America? I would think you self-identify on stage as Muslim. Yes. And I would assume that as long as you stay in the northeast or above the Mason-Dixon line, you're doing swell, right? You're correct. I've had two death threats both from Oklahoma when I was on the road in the south. What's that? What's that like to get a death threat? You want to hear something? Excuse me for one second. Oklahoma actually believes that Sharia law is being set up in Oklahoma, right? Yeah. Oklahoma where the only terrorist attack that ever happened was done by a white military man. Yeah. What was that? Timothy McVeigh. Wasn't that Timothy McVeigh? Oh, that's right. Yeah. So it boggles my mind and it shows you what fear does. Rationally, they should be afraid of white military men or people with too many guns. But instead, somehow they were manipulated to believe that Arabs are the enemy when no Arab has ever done anything in Oklahoma on a level of something that could be qualified as terrorists, a terrorist act, but a white military man had. It's just fear. Fear creates tribes and those tribes is what makes that dog obey. Right. It's identity because the strongest human drive is the drive to belong. And I think that's the real danger. I think the biggest piece of fake news is when politicians convinced Americans that white was a race. There is no such thing as the white race. But it was a way for rich white people to convince poor white people that they were the same so they would stop revolting against them for dying without owning any land. That's the real lie is that white is a race. Well, what do you tell these Jacksonian conservatives who voted for Donald Trump? They're starving for an identity. They look around and they see gays and Muslims and Mexicans and everybody has their own identity. Everybody's an aggrieved party. What would you tell somebody who thinks they're white in Oklahoma? They're out of work. Their kid is addicted to meth. They feel like they're an aggrieved party. Yeah. What is their identity? The thing that I would tell them is a thing that I say to any immigrant that I've met that's come to American was worried about losing their identity. And it's that my family to me is not just the family I was given. It's also the family that I've chosen. And the combination of the two makes me feel like a complete person. It makes me happy. And I think that's what I learned very early on in my youth is that I was neither Egyptian or American. I was just in the middle. And I wasn't an Arab American. And I get to choose to have that identity. I didn't need to lose anything in order to embrace something new. And I think the same thing has to happen right now. I think if you're feeling like you're not a part of America anymore, then that's on you. There are things that are happening in this country that do not have to do with race and culture and color. They're just made to feel that way because that's what politics has made us believe. Why does politics do that to the Caucasian? What do you call this aggrieved hillbilly? Well, it's the opposite of what the country is about, right? The word united is when citizens have power over government. And I don't think anybody on either side would disagree that we're not the most close to the most divided we have ever been. And I think part of that reason is because politicians now have more power than they've, you know, they're taking more power than they ever had. And the reason why they're taking power is because we're more divided. We have a vested interest to be united because it protects us from power-hungry mongers. It's united as our secret sauce. So it's up to all of us, even people that are on the liberal side, it's up to all of us to reach across the table and find common ground and look for people that serve both sides of this country well. We can't be divided like this anymore because it'll ruin the country. Let me push back a little just because this is a show and there always has to be a little conflict. Without conflict, we can't do a show. You described this fanatic watching you at the American University in Cairo. He had a, what's it called, a bida on his head? Zibiba is an Arabic word it means raisin. And that was his identity. Yeah, he has this little black mark on his forehead from almost like a callus on your hand. They get a callus on their foreheads from banging their head on the ground. So people all have an identity and I would assume at some point you, like Barack Obama, President Obama, struggled with finding out what your identity was because you were born in Egypt, your mother is Jewish, your father is Muslim. So you, like Obama, had to make a decision as to what your identity was, right? Yeah, correct. And I'll tell you, here's the funny thing. If racists believe that the country is more in danger because people, there are foreigners coming in and they don't really love the country, then treat them better. Do you know what I mean? Like I became very American. I've really, I've been on three military tours now to Afghanistan. I have tons of friends that are in the military now. Guys that email me from war zones, probably twice a month, and I'm very much in contact with. Being racist to someone doesn't make them love your common country more. It creates hate. It's that racism creates terrorism. That's what it, I spoke to this old man in Egypt and I said, what do you think causes terrorism? And he said, he said, oh my God, what was his language? It was about belonging, right? He said they would rather, oh, here's what it was. It's scarier to be alone than it is to die. That these kids, they would rather die and feel like they're a part of something than live and feel alone. Right. So we all want to be loved. Some of us want to be married. We want to be in a relationship. We want to be part of a team, part of something that's bigger than we are. We want to get out of ourself. I have a friend who's going through a crisis right now, and I keep saying get out of yourself. And being part of a tribe helps you get out of yourself. 100%. So let me get back to the... And having hope. Having hope. Believing that you have some control over your destiny. What do you say to the Trump supporter? Don't they need an identity? They do need an identity. And I say, here's what I said, and I said this to one of my friends who said that she's a gal from the south, and she's anti-feminism, quote, unquote. And I said, how can you be? It's just about equality. And she said, you know what, though? It's just that the people that are representative of feminism are people who make me feel like I'm not as good as they are for choosing to be a stay-at-home mom. And I said, I don't know how real that is, but I acknowledge your feelings. And I don't know how you got to that conclusion but acknowledge that feeling. And I think we just need to, as we evolve as a culture, we need to leave room for people that are going to evolve slower than us to not necessarily punish them, but to help them to pull them along with us and to show them how this is better for the... We need to start... We need to do what John F. Kennedy told us to do. We're all much more selfish than we were when he said, ask not what this country can do for you. Ask what you can do for the country. The best thing I think any of us can do for the country is to not hate our neighbors. Have you met my neighbors? These ears said it. Let's plug some gigs. Let's plug some gigs before your battery dies on you. Where are you going to be? I am at Broadway Comedy Club tonight. This Saturday, I'm at Gotham at 11 o'clock at the late-night show in the room downstairs. And then on my website and Twitter are the best places to go. Tamerketan on Twitter and tamerketan.com online anyway. Great. Come back. Thank you, sir. I will. Thanks so much for having me on. You're the best. You're the best. I'm such a big fan of yours. If you have any posters, I'd like one from my bedroom, please. Is it going to be right next to the Keith Garrett one? I don't know. I want you to do your best Bert Reynolds. Okay. From Cosmopolitan. You got it, pal. Exactly. Exactly. All right, buddy. I'll see you soon. Thank you. Thanks, David. See you soon. Bye-bye.