My Hilarious President

Years ago, a lady I met in worship service accidentally gave me what could be insight into one of Donald Trump’s weirder relationships, his strange dancing duel with humor. I wrote about it before Fair And Unbalanced fell victim to Russian hacking.

I miss my elderly friend.

It has been years since she died. Her own final years were a sort of sacrament to emotional pain. I saw it at the earlier funeral as we honored her husband. They had been with each other longer than I had been alive. She managed to keep things together at her husband’s wake, for the most part. The briefest flash of fear and grief in her face stayed with me.

But painful life went on for her. I drove her to and from nearby places as her age took its toll.

Occasionally, she would smile. For the remainder of her days on earth, I never saw her laugh.

At first, I made the obvious assumption. It had to be the grief, the agony everlasting at the loss of her one lifetime partner. Only in retrospect did I see another possibility.

At gatherings after worship service, when someone told a joke or relayed some comedic situation, she first appeared just little lost, then would smile vacantly. I attributed it to her growing confusion at most everything. Alzheimer’s was eating at her cognitive abilities.

Only once did I hear her attempt to respond in kind to a gentle teasing jibe. She answered with a coarse insult. Those around her pretended not to hear, writing it off, I suppose, to age and dementia.

I wonder now if my friend ever understood humor. She knew what it was, of course, after a fashion. She knew that others enjoyed it. Her wan sort of participation may have come from an attention to social cues. Others laughed, and so she knew to smile.

It occurred to me a year or so ago that my President has something in common with the friend I still miss.

I do not recall any news clip, any televised appearance, any series of photos, anything that includes Donald Trump engaging in laughter. He smiles every once in a while. Even then, it is a grin of triumph, a smug appreciation of victory in his own zero-sum world, the smile of a winner who has forced someone else into losing.

In 2011, Donald Trump saw his birther attacks on Barack Obama vanish as definitive documentation showed Presidential citizenship. Barack Obama was not a secret immigrant, an illegal President. The Trump birther campaign had been a desperate venture at best. Those holding to what we once called racial conservatism were bitterly offended at the election of a black man. There was something wrong with the presidency because … well … there just had to be. The disappointment when President Obama turned out to be completely legitimate had to be profound.

At the Correspondent’s Dinner in the year 2011, President Obama did not rail against Fake News or corrupt accusations. He did not invent new nicknames for his attackers. He did not reveal the, as yet, classified information that would be formally announced the next day. He did not boast about what was then a secret.

He just poked fun at Donald Trump while Trump sat in the audience. The President spoke in some detail about a sales failure on The Apprentice. As the audience laughed at the gentle humor, he praised Mr. Trump for his acute business insight.

A journalist sitting nearby described Donald Trump’s reaction.

The rage was barely contained as the President, with subtle humor, contrasted responsibilities with mock praise.

That contrast became even more apparent the next day as President Obama made the announcement:

In retrospect, it seems clear that Donald Trump could not distinguish between those humorous jibes and bitter insults. As far as he could tell, he had been subjected to an evening of vicious attack.

In 2016, Donald Trump was campaigning to become President Donald Trump. He and opponent Hillary Clinton spoke at the traditional Al Smith Dinner, hosted by Catholic Archbishop Timothy Cardinal Dolan. Mr. Trump turned a friendly, applauding congregation of clergy into an angry audience, booing him, as he offered what he thought was humor.

He seemed a little surprised as the audience failed to laugh.

The crowd did not seem to understand that he was being funny.

The booing was unmistakable.

The audience had become a group. The Group became a crowd. The crowd was becoming a hostile mob. He bravely continued.

He was bewildered at the angry shouts. He turned toward Hillary.

I believed him. He really did not know.

When my President smiles, it seems like a study in gloats. I do not remember ever seeing President Trump actually laugh.

But years back, at one campaign rally, I did see him come close.

At a rally in Florida, he described his efforts to rid America of refugees from other countries, those migrants seeking sanctuary from violence and oppression.

That’s when the hilarity began. A voice came from the audience with the answer:

The audience roared their appreciation as my grinning President played along.

And he repeated himself as the crowd shouted and laughed along.

Appreciation for my President’s humor extends beyond that day’s rally. Several years ago, a State legislator in Kansas made a name for himself during a hearing on the practice of shooting feral hogs from helicopters.

He clarified later that it was merely conservative humor. He was just joking.

Some Trump supporters manage to suppress their laughter enough to sound deadly serious:

Perhaps such incidents serve as a reminder that deliberate cruelty, meant to be insulting and demeaning to those who appear vulnerable is less than humor.

It is certainly that to targets who grew up with frequent bullying.

[caption id="attachment_1671" align="alignleft" width="400"]From Business insider

Perhaps we can be reminded that humor can be used as a weapon painful to bullies themselves:

That bullies see their attacks on the vulnerable as devastatingly clever wit.
That they see humor directed at themselves as vicious attack.
That kicking down and kissing up can become an essential way of life.

Perhaps we can see what passes for humor for TrumpFolk as a character test of sorts.

… Or …

Firearms practice using as targets men, women, and children who are running away from danger…

…just doesn’t crack the rest of us up the way it does some of our conservative friends.