She quoted Anne Frank
the night Trump won.
He then moved the embassy.

November 9, 2016: she quoted a Holocaust victim.

On election night 2016, as results came in, Sarah Silverman posted one tweet. No caption. No comment. Just the quote: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” — Anne Frank.

Anne Frank wrote those words in her diary on July 15, 1944, while hiding from Nazi occupation in Amsterdam. She was 14. She was captured by the Gestapo on August 4, 1944. She died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in February 1945, three months before the liberation. Invoking her words to contextualize a U.S. presidential election result is a choice. It was reported by The Forward, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and multiple entertainment outlets as Silverman’s reaction to Trump’s victory.

Silverman is Jewish. She has spoken publicly about her Jewish identity throughout her career. The man she was contextualizing with Anne Frank’s dying words would go on to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, broker the Abraham Accords normalizing relations between Israel and four Arab nations, sign an executive order directing federal agencies to combat antisemitism on college campuses, and personally address the Israeli Knesset. The record is documented in § 04 below.

She wore an SS uniform.
A Jewish group called it the worst.

In March 2016, Silverman appeared on Conanon TBS in a full Hitler costume — SS uniform, fake mustache — ostensibly to satirize Trump-Hitler comparisons by having “Hitler” reject them. The sketch had Hitler conceding that “90 percent of what [Trump] says, I’m like, this guy gets it.” The Simon Wiesenthal Center, one of the largest Jewish human rights organizations in the world, called it “the latest — and for now, the most outrageous — incident” of Holocaust imagery misuse in the context of the Trump campaign.

“The latest — and for now, the most outrageous — incident of Holocaust imagery misuse aimed at Donald Trump.”

Simon Wiesenthal Center — March 2016, responding to Silverman's Hitler costume on Conan

Four months later, at the July 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Silverman — a declared Bernie Sanders supporter — took the stage alongside Al Franken and told the Bernie-or-Bust delegates in the crowd: “To the Bernie or Bust people, you’re being ridiculous.” The crowd erupted. Silverman added: “I will proudly vote for Hillary.” It became the defining one-liner of the convention.

She called for a military coup. Then she saw swastikas in the sidewalk.

On February 2, 2017 — the night Milo Yiannopoulos was disinvited from UC Berkeley amid riots — Silverman posted in all caps: “WAKE UP & JOIN THE RESISTANCE. ONCE THE MILITARY IS W US FASCISTS GET OVERTHROWN. MAD KING & HIS HANDLERS GO BYE BYE.” The Washington Examiner and Washington Times reported it as an apparent call for a military coup. She walked it back days later: “FEAR can motivate even peacenik snowflakes 2 incite violence & last night I felt it hard. Trying 2 keep in check bc damnit I love u America.”

Ten days later, on February 12–13, 2017, Silverman posted a photo of orange paint markings on a city sidewalk. Her caption: “Walking to get coffee saw these all over a sidewalk in the town I’m in. Is this an attempt at swastikas? Do neo nazis not have google?” The marks were standard utility survey markers, placed by workers before excavation. She was widely ridiculed. NBC Philadelphia, the Daily Caller, and others reported the incident. She did not delete the tweet.

The man she quoted Anne Frank about addressed the Israeli Knesset.

The documented record of the Trump administration’s actions on Israel and Jewish issues, compiled from primary sources:

She called Trump “America’s shitty boyfriend.”

In 2017–2018, Silverman hosted I Love You, Americaon Hulu — an explicitly anti-Trump political talk show that ran 21 episodes across two seasons. In it, she called Trump “America’s shitty boyfriend” and urged viewers to “leave his ass.” The show received strong critical reviews (93% on Rotten Tomatoes, Emmy nomination) and low viewership. Hulu cancelled it in January 2019. Silverman tweeted she was “heartbroken.”

She retired her comedy character. Trump “embodies it completely.”

After Trump was elected, Silverman publicly retired her signature comedy persona — the deliberately arrogant, ignorant, self-absorbed character she had deployed in stand-up and on The Sarah Silverman Programfor years. Her reason, as told to Rolling Stone: Trump “embodies that completely,” and playing the character was no longer funny to her because the archetype had become the president.

By 2024, Silverman had also reversed her position on celebrity political engagement. She told The Hill that she deliberately stayed out of the Kamala Harris campaign because “no one wants to hear from celebrities” on politics. This was a notable departure from 2016, when she addressed the DNC, wore a Hitler costume on cable television, called for a military coup on Twitter, and hosted a 21-episode anti-Trump show on Hulu.