Credit: Unsplash

A spot of poor word choice put Mulaney in an awkward place.

The tricky thing about telling jokes about the president is that while you can totally make fun of them, you can’t hint at inciting violence against them, even by accident. With a few poorly chosen words, that’s what American comedian John Mulaney inadvertently did, as he explained during a recent interview on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

“In February, I did a joke that was not about Donald Trump,” Mulaney said. “The joke was about how it was a leap year, and leap year had been started by Julius Caesar to correct the calendar, and another thing that happened with Caesar was that he was stabbed to death by a bunch of senators because he went crazy. And I said I think that’s an interesting thing that could happen.”

As benign as the joke was, it was worded just poorly enough that a representative from the Secret Service had to open a file on Mulaney, something which, in hindsight, he found rather amusing.

“In terms of risk assessment, no one who’s ever looked at me thought I registered above a one,” he joked.

#JohnMulaney revealed that the Secret Service opened a file on him after a joke he did on #SNL https://t.co/HzqOZcwtdy pic.twitter.com/2ZzH7CS9sf

— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) December 2, 2020

He was questioned for a period about his opinions on the President, and when it was determined that none of his material was directly inciting violence against him, nor had he created any manner of criminal manifesto, he was let off with a slap on the wrist. However, as Mulaney explained, he had forgot to tell the agent interviewing him at the time that he and his wife had leased an apartment in Washington D.C. for a year for his wife’s work, and that the apartment was in close proximity of both the White House and Secret Service headquarters. This prompted another awkward conversation with the Secret Service, but it was quickly determined to be a coincidence and they let him off once again.

“I said I have been making jokes about him since 2007, so I have been making fun of him for 13 years,” Mulaney said. “They said if it’s a joke, then I am cleared by the Secret Service.”