A president without humour is like artillery without fire power. And if Donald Trump becomes president, all the American artillery might as well be made museum artefacts. Trump arrived at the AI Smith dinner for Catholic charities on October 17—an event generally known for its light-hearted banter—armed to charm. However, his arsenal of jokes was woefully lacking. Instead, he did what he does best—pass off insults under the guise of humour. “We’ve someone in the White House who can barely talk, barely put together two coherent sentences, who seems to have the mental faculties of a child,” he said. “It’s a person that has nothing going, no intelligence whatsoever. But enough about Kamala Harris.” Predictably, no one laughed.
Worse, Trump does not do self-effacement. “Tradition holds that I’m supposed to tell a few self-deprecating jokes this evening,” he said. “So here it goes. Nope, I’ve got nothing.” Jokes apart, this is seriously worrying. A president who cannot take potshots at himself is a dangerous species. He lacks humility and thinks he is above ridicule. He cannot acknowledge his own humanity or admit his mistakes. Instead, he specialises in blame games and manipulation. Sounds like someone you know?
Some might argue that Trump is humorous in his own way. But, is insult humour really funny? Can you really laugh at someone calling their opponent a “wack job”, “dumb as a rock” and “real garbage”? Or who suggests that a commentator asked a tough question because she had “blood coming out of her wherever”? Or who boasts that he could shoot a man on 5th Avenue and his base would still love him?
A good joke is a work of art. It requires craft, and knowing how to push the line without overstepping it. It is more precision targeting—making sharp and witty observations about someone—than the kind of carpet bombing, or bland insults indiscriminately directed at his enemies, that Trump specialises in. Barack Obama was good at it. CBS called his humour “mordant, self-deprecating and deeply ironic”. Jimmy Kimmel once said that “Obama could probably be a comedian himself if he wanted to”. As good were the comedic deliveries of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
According to former American senator Bob Dole—author of Great Presidential Wit (I Wish I Was in the Book)—the four funniest former presidents were Abraham Lincoln, who had a “natural gift for sarcasm”, Ronald Reagan “who could be quite acerbic when he chose”, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Theodore Roosevelt. Of one long-winded orator, Lincoln observed, “He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met”. During the 1980 campaign, Reagan said that Jimmy Carter was supposed to go on CBS’s 60 Minutes and talk about his accomplishments, “but that would have left 59 minutes to fill”.
The thing with Trump is that he does not laugh. He probably sees it as a weakness. Perhaps that’s the reason why he has constantly castigated his opponent, Kamala Harris, for laughing too much. “Have you heard her laugh?” he said at a rally in Pennsylvania. “It is the laugh of a crazy person.” Then again, it might be too soon to dismiss this “crazy person”. Especially if she has the last laugh.
