On Jan. 20, 2026, the White House posted a press release with the dubious headline: “365 WINS IN 365 DAYS: President Trump’s Return Marks New Era of Success, Prosperity.” For some Americans, each one of those “wins” felt more like “Failure, Despair.” One way to cope with the daily news is to bury one’s head, ostrich-like, in extreme forms of escapism. Another approach is to mock Washington, D.C.’s, current administration—manned by meat puppets—with a pointed sense of humor.
In Margaret Cho’s new show, Choligarchy, the comedian and activist claps back at those destabilizing 365 days—and counting. Her barbs, jokes and rebuttals, also posted on her social media accounts, haven’t gone unnoticed. During our phone interview, Cho told me she’s received death threats, a marked change from the past.
“People would be mad, but you didn’t have people wanting to just outright kill you,” she said. Cho makes sense of the hostility by reframing it. “Part of it is, when their views are threatened, it’s like you’re threatening their entire being and so they have to come back with murderous thoughts or trying to silence you with death.”
In a more welcoming locale, Cho will bring the show to Berkeley Rep for six performances in September. Knowing that she’s preaching to the choir here is reassuring. “I think it’s really important to talk to people who are in the same mindset as what you’re trying to do,” she said. “I do believe that we have the majority of people who think this way, and that we want to have our country back.”
Cho has always been interested in politics. A San Francisco native, she grew up in a more hopeful era before Harvey Milk was assassinated. “For somebody like Trump to come around—and it’s not just him, it’s the people who support him to get their agendas across, like a nationwide abortion ban. Every day it’s just something like that,” she said. “It’s just so scary. I don’t understand why they reject science or they reject women’s bodily autonomy.”
In Choligarchy, she doesn’t hide her head in the sand. “All I can do is have small triumphs in my own joke writing,” Cho said. “Which is, for me, just the smallest way that I can uplift my side of the world. The light that peeks through is jokes, and that’s what the show is.” She hastened to add that there’s a price to be paid for it, too. She recently made a joke about Lindsey Graham around the time of his death. Fox News and Ben Shapiro picked up her comment.
“I got literally thousands of death threats. They threatened my dog,” Cho recalled. Those threats felt real and serious enough that she considered moving out of her home. “I suddenly had no security. And I’m not somebody who has the luxury of the Secret Service,” she said. “These people are not rational. They believe in Trump so much it’s an identity.” Cho said the experience terrified her.
One of her coping mechanisms is a byproduct of her career on the road. “I move around very frequently, and so that kind of makes me feel pretty safe because you’re on the go,” Cho said. “When you’re basically living your life out of a suitcase, you’re employing aliases and you’re pretty stealth.”
But traveling from venue to venue hasn’t erased her fear of political violence. “The big example for me was Melissa Hortman when her dog and husband were murdered,” she said. Cho received a death threat with weird Photoshopped pictures of herself that were sent to her personal phone. “It’s really super alarming.”
At the core of Choligarchy Cho takes a pro-democracy stance, but she’s also trying to protect trans lives. During one of Trump’s speeches he called out her friend Dylan Mulvaney’s name several times. “I’m so scared whenever he says her name because it’s like an invitation to some crazy person or some follower to do her harm,” she said. “And I’m just really livid about that.
“The fact is that we’re under this terrible administration,” Cho added. “We have to get out. I don’t see a way out exactly, but I’m hoping that there is one. There is optimism, the rise in democratic socialism, which I love.”
‘Choligarchy’ plays at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Roda Theatre Sept.15-19. Tickets at berkeleyrep.org.
