There’s a familiar explanation for the rise of Donald Trump that dispenses with ideology or sociology in favor of something more relatable in human terms: Let’s face it, the guy can be very funny. Or so some people believe. I’ve heard it often, including from folks who voted for him grudgingly or not at all. It’s a brand of humor that is not to everybody’s taste, to put it mildly. But it did seem uniquely well-suited for a nihilistic age of politics, in which old standards and restraints were obsolete. By these lights, Trump’s raucous irreverence, his fluency in mockery and insult, his defiance of liberal pieties, his willingness to say aloud things that many people think but dare not utter — all delivered with gleeful delight in his own showmanship — are an essential engine of his appeal. So this past weekend was a Washington mystery: How did one of the great performers of the age, the guy who is supposed to be funny, flop so vividly at an occasion — the rescheduled White House Correspondents Association dinner — in which presidents are judged precisely on their ability to be funny? Trump bombed because it was evident during his hour-plus remarks that he was winging it. Some of his lines were shadows of jokes that would have worked well with crisper delivery. This suggested that some collection of people had worked hard on his material — but Trump was plainly not part of that group. With a rambling, zig-zag tour of his own pet obsessions and grievances, the president seemingly believed that just Trump being Trump was enough to get the job done. The result was mild laughter here and there but one that cumulatively represented one of the most awkward shift-in-your-seat, check-your-phone, avert-your-gaze performances in recent decades of presidents coming to the dinner. Honestly, who cares? The annual dinner at best (and at worst) is a frivolous and inconsequential event. Trump’s clumsy patter, however, is actually a decent window into the larger state of his presidency and his movement in its late stages. Let Trump be Trump is the essence of the Republican strategy for the mid-term elections. Trump being Trump — a cascade of threats, actions, pronouncements of illusory ceasefires followed by new conflict — has defined the U.S. strategy in the war with Iran, the most consequential matter on the president’s agenda this year. Improvisation —… [TheTopNews] Read More.
3 weeks ago
