The Tonight Show Welcomes Transgender Comedian Patti Harrison to Respond to President Trump's Military Ban

Jimmy Fallon cedes the spotlight in a preview of the NBC late-night institution's opening moments, airing Wednesday, July 24.

By Billy Nilles Jul 27, 2017 12:49 AMTags
Patti Harrison, Tonight ShowNBC/Andrew Lipovsky

As late-night TV hosts prepares to offer their takes on President Donald Trump's Twitter proclamation that he'd be banning transgender citizens from serving in the country's armed forces, Jimmy Fallon is ceding the spotlight to make room for a comedian from the transgender community to speak her mind.

During his monologue on tonight's episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the host will welcome transgender comedian and Tonight Show correspondent Patti Harrison to get her thoughts on how the community is reacting to the news. "As a trans person, it's hard to articulate exactly how I feel, but I guess if I had to describe it, I'd say, ‘Donald, you're so stupid. You are so stupid. You're lucky you're so hot,'" she tells Fallon in the preview clip below.

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"Now, I don't necessarily want to serve in the military, but I want the right to serve, you know," she continues. "It's like, I don't want to go to your baby shower, but I want the invite."

Fallon felt it was important to offer this platform to a transgender comedian for viewers to hear from directly, rather than just tell jokes himself, a source tells E! News. And as the preview proves, Harrison doesn't mince words.

"And yet, Trump says transgender people in the military would be a tremendous disruption. And I get it," she concludes. "If you constantly draw attention to yourself, spend all day distracting everyone and cost tax payers millions of dollars, the perfect job for you isn't the military. It's the president of the United States."

In a series of tweets posted early Thursday morning, President Trump declared, "After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you." A 2014 study estimated that there were 15,500 transgender people currently serving in the U.S. military.

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. on NBC.

(E! and NBC are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)