As I mentioned in the Cafe Society section, I’m listening to the audiobook of Tim Alberta’s American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump and he speaks in there about Trump winning people over with his charisma and his humor.
I rea;lize that I am violently opposed to Trump and his designs, but I have never been able to discern any charisma in Trump, and it has been a frequent topic of discussion on this Board that the man has no sense of humor. To quote Mean Mr. Mustard from the "Has Trump shown the ability to think?: thread back on March 28:
There are plenty of other examples on the Board.
Out in the Real World, too, there have been articles in papers like the Washington post and in magazines going back to his first term asserting hat Trump never laughs and has no sense of humor. Here’s Harper’s from 2020:
Granted that people not politically aligned with him are going to be tougher sells that Trump is a devastating wit – it’s hard to laugh when the point of the joke is that he’s killing your favorite political program – just because someone is on the other side of the aisle doesn’t mean they’re not funny. William F. Buckley definitely had a wicked sense of wit and could turn a facile phrase. P.J. O’Rourke was hilarious. Dennis Miller was still funny after he joined the Dark Side, especially when he talked of things non-political.
But Trump? I’m hard-pressed to recall anything he said that was actually funny. But Alberta says that he is, and it’s his sense of humor that brings people in.
I have to admit, non of those quotes moved me at all.
So does Trump have a sense of humor, and 'm just missing it? Can your judgment be clouded by dislike of the figure? Or is his humor unrelatable because it is mean-spirited and/pr directed at what I think of as sympathetic figures?
He’s able to say and do funny things - he’s even good at it, in some circumstances. I recall, years and years ago, an appearance in a comedy sketch on Conan O’Brien (I think), in which he was doing some faux-promotion for some silly non-business (something silly like “Trump Fried Chicken”, by my memory), lampooning the way he attaches his name to everything and promotes it as if he’s promoting himself. What stood out was that the cue cards screwed up and he had no script (they explained after the sketch), so he improvised, and even without a script he did a good job lampooning his style and got laughs.
Another one, in 2016, was his physical comedy bit on the campaign trail, mocking the way Rubio (at the time, an opponent) drinks water. I laughed - stupid and mean spirited, but since the target was someone who sucked, I laughed at it.
He understands comedy to some extent, or at least he used to, IMO.
Yeah, every single one of those quotes is either self-aggrandizement, insulting others, or a combination of both. There’s not a shred of humor, even if you assume he’s being ironic, which I don’t believe he is at all.
I think the type of people who think he’s funny are confusing outrageousness with humor-- “oh no he didn’t just say that! Hilarious!”.
A key component of a truly good sense of humor is being able to laugh at yourself. Trump may be able to mock others and tell jokes at their expense in a heavy-handed way, but what suggests any self-deprecating ability?
Rush Limbaugh was much the same way. Never once heard him turn the tables on himself.
My brother in law, may he rest in pieces, was humorless unless it was at someone else’s expense. And even then it was a cruel humor, meant to be hurtful or denigrating. He was a racist misogynist and would have loved Trump as a fellow hater. Both of them epitomize the aberrant narcissist personality.
I remember the 2011 While House Correspondents Dinner at which Obama teased him about The Apprentice. He didn’t even manage a fake smile. Instead he was seething.
I hate Trump as much as anyone, and I agree that his inability to laugh at himself – or anything, really – is part and parcel with his deep psychological dysfunctions.
However, I do believe that, within the narrow sphere of being an insulting bully, he is occasionally funny in a way that sets him apart from other political figures.
The best example – and something that still makes me chuckle – comes out of one of his spats with Ron DeSantis. His advisors apparently wanted to play on Ron’s name, and Trump floated “Ron De-sanctimonious” a couple of times. It didn’t really stick.
So Trump abandoned it, and decided to start calling him “Meatball Ron.”
I don’t know why, but that just strikes me as funny. It doesn’t really have anything to do with policy or personal disagreements, but it nevertheless somehow encapsulates DeSantis’s greasy uselessness in a perfect epithet.
It’s an infrequent thing, to be sure, and it’s always, always punching down. But it does happen.
Yes, it’s clear that Trump really doesn’t like being the target of humor – the Press Corps dinner and his Celebrity Roast being prime examples. Trump has never attended a White House Press Corps dinner while in office – the only president to not attend (although he attended on some occasions when not in office).
He did do some things where he was performing and not totally in command – the 2006 Emmy “Green Acres” thing, his 2015 hosting of SNL, his forced cameo in Home Alone 2, his appearances at Wrestlemania – but to me these look awkward, not funny.
This is ‘canned.’ I’ve posted it somewhere here before:
Reagan had a sense of humor.
Both Presidents Bush had a sense of humor.
Clinton and Obama definitely had a sense of humor.
Biden has a sense of humor.
You know who does NOT have a sense of humor? Trump. He isn’t smiling unless he was strangling out a puppy or making fun of a journalist with a disability.
That’s bad. That’s telling and … bad.
I understand that he has – in the past – had some capacity for humor, but in recent memory … only if it comes at others’ expense.
Part of the problem in understanding Trump’s appeal is the use of the word charisma. People generally think of it as a positive trait, but it’s often applied to some of the worst people in history, like Jim Jones, Charlie Manson, Mussolini and you-know-who. I think the same twist applies to humor. I find clever jokes and silly gags funny. To someone else, mocking disabled people is a laugh riot. There’s no accounting for taste.
That is because you were taken in by that verdammte Democrat propaganda! Such filthy lies! They told lies! But nobody ever said a bad word about Barack Obama. Let me tell you this! And you’re hearing this straight from the horse. Trump is better looking than Obama! He’s a better dresser than Obama. He has more hair! He tells funnier jokes! And he could dance the pants off of Churchill!..uh, Obama!!
I’m familiar with the SNL fried chicken sketch, and present it below for your enjoyment.
I think Trump has LOST some of the humor and humanity he once had.
Also, I have read (but can’t confirm) that when SNL put out a release of whatever season that was, fairly recently, it was curiously scrubbed from the release.
This is just another example of meanness. Sure, he’s being mean to an absolute scumbag, but this still backs up the premise that he’s only funny when he’s attacking someone. Does that really qualify as a sense of humor? Or just effective bullying?
His charisma is lost on me, although I think that we have to admit that he is very appealing to a segment of society.
His humor is punching down. The kind of people who find him charismatic also find his humor funny. To them, immigrants eating on the floor in a concentration camp is funny. Making fun of the disabled is funny. They enjoy the suffering of others as a form of entertainment and he provides it.
Sure, yeah. That doesn’t really fix things. First off, it’s not that funny, and he’s clearly just reading lines someone else wrote. And it’s not really even mocking him, not so obviously that he’d notice it. It’s also incredibly short, so it’s not like he had a lot of time to figure out if he should be offended or not.
At least you have a nice sense of humour. I laughed, and I did not even know him.
Indeed, some of his nicknames are memorable. Shows that he is a gifted bully and an outstanding asshole (see → prolapsing. The treatment is called rectopexy. NSFW or during meals).
