Comedian Chris James Mastered Prank Calling Right-Wing Radio Hosts

Vancouver-based comedian Chris James has a deeply informed view on right-wing media, specifically talk radio and call-in podcasts. He's developed this perspective from years of calling into right-wing media shows. It's an infinitely deep well of chuds, and James mines them every week, using a rotating cast of characters, and help from volunteers to camp on the phone lines. James sometimes spends hours—often with the assistance of collaborating callers—on hold, only for a minute-long payoff pranking the hosts on their own airwaves.

His show, "Not Even a Show," is a weekly compilation of these calls, streamed on YouTube and Twitch. The guests-slash-targets include an impressive cast of America's brightest minds, such as Rudy Giuliani, MyPillow's Mike Lindell, Laura Loomer, Lauren Boebert, Rush Limbaugh, Todd Starnes, and most recently, Marjorie Taylor Greene. James is perhaps best-known for his many calls to former Trump advisor turned supplement shill, Sebastian Gorka, and he even has a song celebrating their rivalry. James will also call in to radio shows to conduct his own show's cold open, and surprisingly enough, the hosts are often game to play along. 

Over the course of making "Not Even a Show," James learned how to edit: the show is well-produced, with lots of on-screen annotations, animations, and parodical musical covers. It's a lot of work. In the first two years of producing the show, a single nine-minute episode would take forty hours to assemble, James said. Now, his weekly episodes run for approximately twenty minutes, with a bonus 10-minute episode for his Patreon subscribers. "All told, it takes me about 20 hours," he said. 

VICE spoke to Chris James to understand what goes into a good prank call, and what he's learned from hundreds of hours speaking to right-wing figures. 

What was the genesis of "Not Even a Show"?
I live in Canada and I made a living as a stand up comedian. Even to have some success, especially in Canadian stand-up, it's all waiting on other people to tell you if you're good for that year. So I was like, "Hey, I'm going to do my own thing." 

I happened to notice Curt Schilling was doing a Breitbart show, a call-in show on Periscope at that time. There's really been a massive influx of people doing their Facebook, YouTube shows, but back then it was less. I knew him, obviously. He's a famous guy. I watched him play baseball. And I saw he was just talking about the craziest shit ever. So I started phoning him and bothering him. Then the next shows I called, I was like, "Do you like Curt Schilling?" And then if they said, yes, then I would start pranking them. And I just started moving on from there.

Have these prank calls changed or informed your idea of the right wing radio media ecosystem?
It showed me a lot of people that you don't want to think exist—you don't want to believe that these people with these points of views and these perspectives—are actually out there in droves. The sheer volume of it is what has been eye-opening to me. It's never-ending.

People say, "Why don't you call left-wing shows ever?" Because they don't fucking exist on the same level. There are some, obviously, but it is overwhelming how many of these [right-wing shows] there are and how popular they are, and how many people are listening and how effective they utilize these shows to get these really shitty messages out there.

I'm lucky enough to have friends who have a high level of knowledge on particular subjects that I don't. I'll sit down with somebody like Libby Watson, she deals a lot in healthcare, or Tim Faust. It is a comedy channel to make people laugh and it's meant to be silly. But I can get onto a show, like Dennis Prager's show, that has millions of people listening. I can get a message on there that's getting out to a lot of people. 

That's something that I've tried to focus on a little bit more lately: to get a message that I think will resonate with people who are maybe not so far gone and who are maybe younger, who are saying, "Which way should I go in this world? Left or right?" Resonate with them, be a little funny and be a little ridiculous, and not be fucking corny. It shouldn't be the case—it's not correct—but I think that's one thing when you're younger, there's something that's associated with left wing politics as being fucking corny. 

After these calls end, these radio hosts often think they've "won," driving home that we live in these two separate realities. The Ben Shapiro call is a good example. You annotate his response, so it's being fact checked in real time. But if you were tuning in from his show, you got your perspective, and then he lied.
This is completely fucked up. Usually, if I'm doing a serious call, it's often about healthcare, even though I'm in Canada and benefit from it. My friends and family and the people who support my channel live in America and it's something that's really important to me.

That clip, I put it on my channel to show how stupid Ben Shapiro is. Ben Shapiro clipped that and uploaded to his YouTube channel. It is the same conversation that we're having. We are not looking at different things. We are watching the same conversation, and my audience watches it and laughs at how stupid he is. And his audience watches it and laughs at how stupid I am. And I don't know what to do about that. I don't know that that is something that can be bridged. 

When I say that I'm saying things that could potentially influence or change somebody's mind, the people that I'm talking about are not the racist, far-right people who are watching it. [I'm talking about] young, confused people. I'm not interested in reaching across the aisle and making concessions to those [racist, far-right] people and trying to see eye to eye on things. I'm interested in explaining why their view of the world is discounting marginalized people. That does not mean that we say "Hey, let's find common ground with people who are racist and who don't fucking care about human beings," because I don't want to have common ground with those people. 

I've been watching clips from Twitter for a long time, but I recently started watching the full episodes. When I didn't know the radio host, I assumed it was Canadian radio. But then I saw one was in Shreveport, Louisiana.
None of them are Canada. Shit doesn't exist in Canada, there's just not talk radio in the same way, period. 

How many characters do you have? I know some of you've had to semi-retire based on you know, people outing them.
The one I had to semi-retire is the Fap Master, who actually came out of retirement. I'm looking at a clip for the bonus episode this week. The Fap Master is a character that calls into extremely homophobic religious shows that are video streams, and says that he's jacking off. The reason I stopped doing it is, he's still jacking off to somebody against their will. 

The reason I started doing characters was because I'm doing a show every week, and there's only so many prank calls you can do. I can't just call as myself. What am I going to be talking about? So I have to create these characters that have a singular focus. They give me a framework.

Butch is the newest one. He's a character who is one step below the real audience's intelligence. He's very confused about all this stuff, but he's very enthusiastic about wanting to talk about politics and getting involved in politics. But he knows nothing about it. That's the whole concept of that character. "Hey, this is your audience. Your bullshit that you're spewing, this is what you get now." 

Another one is Officer Steve. I used to have a character called Steveopath, which was just a psychopath, like, "Hello, how are you doing today? I hope that you're having a good time and I hope that you're enjoying your surroundings." Remember that guy from the New York Police Benevolent Association when he was giving a press conference, he was like, [holding up a badge] "It's still got some shine on it." He was screaming. It just popped into my head: Steveopath should be a police officer.

How do you decide who to call?
I'm trolling around [on YouTube and Facebook.] I sometimes will get suggestions. Rudy Giuliani is in the news this week, Marjorie Taylor Greene's in the news. Dan Crenshaw was in the news, so I'll call him perhaps. It's kind of random. I'll say, 'Hey, you know who I haven't called for a while? I haven't called Brian Kilmeade for a while, let's do that." Or "Hey, I know we haven't had Gorka on in a long time. Let's try to get Gorka."

How many times have you gotten Gorka on the phone?
We got Gorka a lot. Maybe 10 times. Him and his call screener—it is their big thing in the world—is to keep us off the air. He has the best call screener. Sometimes we'll have 20 people calling in, and he'll pick out every one of them. There's a certain type of person that calls into his show. And we are not that type. I tell the callers like when they're pranking, try to sound like you don't have any empathy. 

Most of the people who call into their shows are 50-year-olds or whatever, versus most of the people who are wanting to call in from my channel are in their 20s or 30s. His call screener called my call-in show to defend the honor of Gorka, and made a complete fool of himself. We have like a real rivalry with Gorka, a serious one. So we just got back on recently for the first time in a long time. 

The thing that is most striking to me is that these people—Dan Crenshaw, sitting Congressperson; Rudy Giuliani, lawyer to the President of the United States; Marjorie Taylor Greene, sitting Congressperson,—they will take a call from a random person who is offering up information to them. All three of them I have called them and said 'I am blah blah, random person, and I have information for you.' And they have all been ready and willing to listen to me and take that information in. It's funny, but it's also fucking scary. The fact that I'm calling Dan Crenshaw and saying 'I have information about the Stop the Steal initiative, about stealing the vote. And he said, 'Let's hear the information.' That's fucking scary for democracy. 

From the calls, you also get the sense the lights are not fully on for these people.
Rudy Giuliani should know my voice at this point. I've called him to his radio show and pranked him every single time about him marrying and having sex with his cousin. Every single time I mentioned that he had sex with his cousin and married her. I'm editing a clip for this week's episode where I called him to ask him if he's thinking about going back to do any of the old stuff he used to do in his career, like running for mayor of New York, or marrying his cousin. And he did indicate that he might think about running for mayor again. 

I called him and I said, I was calling from OEN. Like, OEN, it's not a real thing. But he's like, "Oh, I guess I'm doing a journalism interview now!" They're catastrophically stupid. I will say—this isn't the case with Rudy or Marjorie Taylor Greene—but one thing that I have noticed, that I genuinely believe, is a lot of these bigger hosts try to sound less intelligent than they actually are. Sounding intelligent in a certain way is not actually good for the audience they're trying to appeal to. I get that feeling with a Brian Kilmeade or with a Jesse Lee Peterson.

Do you have a favorite call, in terms of how it went, and the response you got?
There's been so many of them. So it's hard to say "favorite." The one recently to Marjorie Taylor Greene, is as good as you can hope for it to go. It's a really dumb prank, because only an idiot would fall for it. But that's why I used it on her.

Our most famous prank on the channel, it's a prank I did on Dennis Prager originally, and then somebody in the U.K. from the channel used it on Nigel Farage. It was in every publication in the U.K. He was on Good Morning Britain with Piers Morgan and they were playing the clip.

It was when the Brexit vote was happening. They say, "Yeah that I was a Remainer. And then I had a huge event that happened in my life that totally changed my mind." And [Nigel] says, "What was it?" And he says, "I was kicked in the head by a horse." 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

Chris James is on Twitter. "Not Even a Show" is on YouTube, Twitch, and Patreon. 

Follow Ashwin Rodrigues on Twitter.