The corruption of MAGA comedy

With Donald Trump winning the popular vote on his third shot, we need a fresh analysis of America’s prevailing political culture. Beyond sifting election returns, we must also attempt to see the world through MAGA eyes. They are the voting majority. 

We could start by parsing the jokes, gags, and laugh-riots that the president-elect and his allies crassly dispensed in the final weeks of the race. Much to the chagrin of his critics, Trump’s push to the finish was fueled almost entirely by edgy comedy, which has left many people feeling uneasy about our collective sense of humor.

The contrast between Trump’s policy ineptitude and his razor-sharp comedy is remarkable. Asked about his plans to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, Trump sputtered lamely about “concepts of a plan.” When pressed for a specific proposal on how to provide affordable child care to American workers, Trump rambled incoherently through an embarrassing list of non-sequiturs. The election results show us such stumbles can be excused. That’s because when it comes to lambasting his opponents and tickling the funny bone of the MAGA base, the incoming comedian-in-chief pulls from a seemingly bottomless well of zingers.

We learned in the final week of the campaign, for example, that it would be hilarious, for Trump and the MAGA faithful if Liz Cheney, “a very dumb individual,” were put in front of a firing squad because—wait for it—that would teach her a lesson about reckless use of force.

 At a rally days before the election, Trump brought the house down once again by declaring open season on members of the press. “Weaving” through an imagined assassination scenario, Trump explained that political violence sometimes has an unexpected upside: “To get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news, and I don’t mind that so much.”  In a video from the event, audience members can be seen roaring at the thought of a media bloodbath. One attendee shakes her head and covers her mouth to stifle an outburst. The gesture appears to be a mix of delight and disbelief, as if to say, “Tell me he did not just go there.”

But, of course, he went there. 

Transgressive laughter is the fundamental element of Donald Trump’s mesmerism. Trump is a jester inside the palace, playing at the role of king, but mocking the very idea of principled leadership in the process. Flouting the rules is his schtick, and it seems MAGA cannot get enough.

Though he rarely laughs, the laughter of others — women, in particular — is one of Trump’s many bizarre preoccupations. He mocked Kamala Harris for laughing too often and too heartily, just as he once attacked Hilary Clinton for “laughing at our expense” during the hyper-partisan Benghazi hearings. 

After Michelle Obama scorched his record (and character) at the Democratic National Convention, Trump struggled to stay composed. When the slings and arrows finally proved too much, he went on the attack: “I think we’re going to start having a little fun with Michelle.” The promise of sadistic pleasure, as he knew it would, elicited hoots and guffaws from the crowd. 

Philosophers, going back to Plato and Aristotle, have observed a link between comedy and cruelty. In the seventeenth century, Thomas Hobbes pegged laughter as the companion of scorn. He framed humor as an act of self-aggrandizement premised on the debasement of others. 

Eventually, philosophers arrived at the superiority theory of humor, according to which every joke is, at its core, a hostile attack designed to affirm the comic’s dominance and assure the subjugation of its target. 

Most people value humor. It provides relief from life’s hardships, drudgery, and setbacks. But laughter performs serious social and political work, too. It produces new lines of solidarity, but it also reproduces borders between us and them. Laughter is a sudden, spasmodic expulsion air, but, at the same time, it is adjacent to other, more concerning practices of expulsion and denigration. It can be something sweet or cruel, depending on the power dynamics that surround it.  

Sweeping declarations about the motivations of MAGA voters have proven to be useless. We know that his coalition of giggles and guffaws is far from monolithic. But MAGA humor is a crucial aspect of Trump’s allure, and it could be our best window into the mentality of the radical right. 

There is a reasonable argument to be made that the 2024 election outcome boils down to fundamental differences regarding what we, as a nation, find to be funny and what we take to be indecent. The post-election reaction from several factions of the left shows that MAGA’s crude and cruel comedy is changing our larger political culture. Liberals laughing about the continued destruction of Palestine under Trump or cracking up at the thought of Trump voters with family members potentially deported have caved to the dark side.

Political fences can be mended, if there is goodwill on both sides. Cultural rifts, on the other hand, can be impossible to bridge. American democracy cannot survive four more years of derisive laughter at the expense of our unity.