Nothing screams August on Martha’s Vineyard like two high-profile seasonal residents with conflicting political views arguing on the porch of a tiny local general store.
“Curb Your Enthusiasm” star and comic Larry David reportedly bumped into former Harvard Law professor and defense attorney Alan Dershowitz at the Chilmark General Store, and David wasn’t having it, according to a report in the New York Post’s Page Six.
Dershowitz, who spends summers on the island widely considered a liberal enclave, has been criticized in the past for his ties to Donald Trump, specifically over his support of the former president during his first impeachment trial. Dershowitz has complained in the past that his friends on the island were “shunning” him because of his defense of Trump.
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On Wednesday, the local snubbing continued. This time with David.
“We can still talk, Larry,” Dershowitz reportedly said to David on the porch of the community market after attempting to greet him. Dershowitz and David used to be friends, Dershowitz later told Page Six.
“No. No. We really can’t. I saw you. I saw you with your arm around [former Trump Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo! It’s disgusting!” David reportedly responded.
Dershowitz told David that Pompeo was a former student of his at Harvard: “I greet all of my former students that way. I can’t greet my former students?”
“It’s disgusting,” David repeated, according to the paper. “Your whole enclave — it’s disgusting. You’re disgusting!”
Dershowitz then, according to the Page Six witness, took off his T shirt and revealed another T shirt underneath it. The front read: “It’s The Constitution, Stupid!”
David walked away, and Dershowitz reportedly drove off “in an old dirty Volvo,” according to the outlet.
Dershowitz later told Page Six that his wife bought him the shirt “because so many people misunderstood his decision to defend Trump.” He said he was wearing two shirts at the time because he was on his way to meet a friend when he ran into David, and had been planning to gift the first T shirt as a gag gift.
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During the general store encounter, Dershowitz told Page Six that David “screamed” and “yelled” at him, adding that the exchange “wasn’t funny at all.”
He adamantly criticized his former friend’s views.
“Larry is a knee-jerk radical,” Dershowitz told the outlet, “He takes his politics from Hollywood. He doesn’t read a lot. He doesn’t think a lot.”
“It’s typical of what happens now on the Vineyard,” he later added. “People won’t talk to each other if they don’t agree with their politics.”
Brittany Bowker can be reached at brittany.bowker@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @brittbowker and on Instagram @brittbowker.