Photo : Thos Robinson ( Getty Images for The New Yorker )

In a simultaneously dramatic and dismissive report, TMZ says that Maria Bamford has filed for a restraining order against Donald Trump, citing his comments and threats to plunge us into a nuclear war just to feed his pathetic ego. However, TMZ also theorizes that she’s “taking advantage of the political climate to promote her upcoming comedy tour,” as if that’s some unthinkable crime, and the story points out that she’s “a pretty huge stand-up comic” who has appeared on Conan, Arrested Development, and Maron—though there’s no mention of the fact that she actually had her own Netflix show for two seasons.


A glance at Bamford’s Twitter page shows that there’s more to this than the stunt TMZ dismissed it as, though. Back on April 7, she tweeted that she bought the necessary paperwork to file a restraining order against Trump and was wondering if anybody could help her out, later noting that she loves “to fill out paperwork and sit in buildings.”


After a few updates on the paperwork process, Bamford live-tweeted the process of filing the paperwork, during which she noted that it’s a dumb idea but that she will still “stupidly persist.”




She also explained that she printed out “all of his public threats of violence” as reasoning, but she was eventually turned away by slow-moving bureaucratic operations.


This morning, Bamford said that her request got denied, but that she would be able to attend a hearing about it in May (where, she admits, it will be denied again).


Bamford also offered an explanation for why she was doing this in another tweet, and it’s much more brilliant than simply an elaborate promotional stunt. Basically, she thinks the idea of filing a restraining order against Trump is funny, but just because it’s funny doesn’t mean Trump’s threats aren’t a legitimate concern, so she decided to simply “follow through” on the gag and see where it went. It’s political performance art, and even though nothing will come of this, at least Bamford got a chance to fill out paperwork and sit in a building.