George Lopez sat down with Shaquille O’Neal on The Big Podcast with Shaq and opened up about a real-life encounter with the Secret Service that stemmed from a joke he posted on Instagram about former President Donald Trump.
Lopez explained that the incident began when news broke that Iran had allegedly offered an $80 million bounty on Trump. Still in the car after celebrating with Cedric the Entertainer and his daughter at the Chateau Marmont, Lopez took to Instagram and posted: “We’ll do it for half.”
The response was immediate.
“I wasn’t even home yet,” Lopez told Shaq, recalling that his publicist called him almost instantly. Fox News ran segments calling for his arrest, and Lopez said one morning he walked past his television and saw a chyron stating that he should “expect a visit from the Secret Service early next week.”
Within five minutes, his phone rang with the same message.
The agents arrived at his home, and Lopez sat down with his attorney present.
“They said, ‘We’re here to see if you’re a threat to the leader of the free world,'” he recalled. The agents then referenced additional material, including a retweet of an image allegedly showing El Chapo holding a severed head resembling Trump.
When asked if he remembered posting it, Lopez played dumb. “El Chapo? That’s his name?” he said. “He’s not one of the Fantastic Four?”
They also brought up a joke Lopez had made about robbing and assaulting Trump after Trump called Mexicans cr**inals and r*pists, and another about the proposed border wall.
“If they build a wall, they better build it in a day, because if they leave the material out there overnight, it’s going to be gone,” Lopez had said in his act. When asked each time if he found his comments funny, Lopez gave the same answer: “When I did it, I thought it was funny, but right now I don’t think it’s funny.”
Additionally, Lopez told his attorney he wanted to offer the agents some context. “Culturally, what you assume is a threat in our culture is more of an estimate,” he told them. “You can find somebody to do it cheaper.” His attorney was not pleased.
The agents warned Lopez that a second visit could result in ten years in federal prison. “I was married for 17 years,” Lopez quipped to Shaq. “I could probably do seven. I don’t know if I could do ten.” Despite the humor, Lopez acknowledged the encounter had a real effect on him. “It did take a little bit off my fastball,” he said.
Lopez also revealed during the conversation that Trump had once been a guest on his show and was given a DNA test. When told that a percentage of his DNA was African-American, Trump chose not to come out. “He decided to hang back,” Lopez said.
