This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam.

If you tune it to Saturday Night Live, the weekend after last fall's election, you may

remember the sketch.

A group of friends, all liberals, are gathered around their TV as states begin to report

voter tallies.

It doesn't go the way they expect.

OK, all she has to do is come back and win Wisconsin, come back in win Michigan, come

back in win Pennsylvania.

And some of the counties are the urban counties.

They're so black people vote, lay it.

Making jokes about politics, politicians, and voters is a tradition as old as America

itself.

Cartoonists portrayed King George as a tyrant and a buffoon during the Revolutionary War.

More than a century ago, Mark Twain wrote that fleas can be taught nearly anything that

a congressman can.

And in the 1960s, the Smothers Brothers used their TV platform to criticize the Vietnam

War much to the chagrin of network sensors.

And if you ever get a war without blood and your boy, I'll be the first to go.

But until then, Mr. Mac than Marron.

These days, of course, comedians have a new target, President Donald Trump.

Today, we thought we'd talk with one of those comedians, the Iranian-American Maz Jobrani.

For him, the Trump administration ban on travelers from seven nations, including Iran,

...