A couple of years ago I wrote a retrospective of the trump presidency describing how donald trump He used humor as a weapon. He won the Republican presidential primary by using insult comedy to attack his political rivals and humiliate racial minorities, women, and people with disabilities. He entertained his base by wandering around the stage and commenting on current events like a comedian. He put forward extreme and offensive ideas to present himself as an anti-establishment agitator, but was able to interpret them as a mix of hyperbole and jokes when they generated too much reaction.

Well, he just did it again. And the fact that many of his supporters dismiss his most extreme rhetoric as unserious is helping to pave the way for the erosion of multicultural democracy.

Trump’s third presidential campaign was the most extreme, hostile and extravagant yet. He used fascist rhetoric from textbooks. describe immigrants as “poisoning the blood of our country.” the use classic dictatorial tropes identify the left as “vermin” and “the enemy within” and promised cruel repression. He unleashed a slew of lies, repeating his claims that the 2020 election was rigged, that immigrants were eating pets, and that schools were secretly doing transgender surgery on children.

Trump also raised absurd ideas that undermined his own argument against Democrats. As he worked to lower prices, Trump also floated the idea of ​​replacing the income tax with revenue from general tariffs, an inflationary proposal that some economists say would effectively curb inflation. 130% sales tax on all imported goods.

However, once again, he couched most of his rhetoric in a comedic register, blurring the line between seriousness and irony, treating rallies like stand-up concerts, and constantly used jokes to connect with his followers (often using some quite strange parts).

Some of Trump’s die-hard supporters are happy to endorse Trump’s most ridiculous ideas. But a key reason he gets away with much of what he says is that many people perceive (or at least claim to perceive) the more offensive or extreme parts of what he says as unserious. In a New York Times/Siena College poll Weeks before the election, 41% of likely voters agreed with the statement that “people who are offended by Donald Trump take his words too seriously.” And a Data for Progress survey conducted in October found that less than 4 in 10 likely voters He thought Trump believed his most outlandish and extreme statements, including his claim that there were “very fine people on both sides” at the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville.

Trump’s ability to evade accountability for his more extreme rhetoric has also been reflected in reports on voter sentiment. When a New York Times journalist asked Trump supporters in October over his promises, such as filling the federal government with loyalists, going after his political opponents, carrying out the largest deportation operation in history or instituting tariffs that could shake the economy, said they did not believe in Trump’s claims. A 40-year-old Trump supporter from Detroit told the Times that he believed Trump’s promise to purge the federal government was “for publicity” and to “stir up the news.”

In some of my conversations with Trump supporters, I’ve seen a similar dynamic play out. They’ve discussed how they think it’s good for the economy or curbing immigration, but when you ask them about their more authoritarian rhetoric or their brutal commentary on the mistreatment of immigrants, they shrug and say something like “that’s just Trump.” . being Trump.”

Of course, it’s true that Trump wraps a tremendous amount of his comments in semi-ironic tone or uses cartoonish hyperbole to make some points he probably doesn’t really mean. But this does not mean that it is not a serious problem.

Without even getting into the essence of his rhetoric, Trump’s joking effect makes him a poor and irresponsible leader. A fundamental premise of representative democracy is that voters elect leaders who make clear promises and then try to keep them. If all of Trump’s rhetoric and political commitments are shrouded in a haze of “we don’t know if Trump really meant this,” then he is failing at the most basic level of delivering on popular government.

It is absurd that the public has to wait and guess to see whether he was serious or joking about instituting tariffs so large that they could send the U.S. economy into a tailspin, or whether he will apply smaller ones to protect a select few industries. . It’s also ridiculous that some of Trump’s more moderate supporters seem willing to take the risk that he was simply exaggerating about the lengths he would go to in wreaking havoc on the federal government to increase his power.

The bigger problem, however, is that Trump’s record shows that he should always be taken seriously. While any promise may or may not be literally true, his extreme talk about degrading democracy and treating vulnerable people poorly has always been directionally accurate.

Trump actually tried to capitalize on lies about the election and tried to lead a mob to overturn the election results. Trump actually refused to take a strong stance against white supremacists, and the United States saw a increase in hate crimes during his mandate. Trump actually oversaw a cruel family separation policy when it came to deporting undocumented immigrants. Triumph I really did it trying to use loyalists in the Justice Department to subvert democracy. According to his former Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, Trump actually asked if could shoot protesters – only to reportedly face resistance from his advisors.

Both Trump and his supporters benefit from his wry, winking tone and from being able to resort to the defense that any specific claims he makes might not be serious. Triumph manages to activate the extreme parts of its base although he reserves the right to say anything that is a joke if the reaction is too intense. And his apparently “moderate” supporters may try to justify their public support for him by selecting which of his positions seem most defensible and which they claim they are not responsible for because they were supposedly said in jest or as an act of pure provocation.

But after nine years of Trump in politics, four as president capped by an attempted self-coup, we know that there is no rule that Trump will not break, nor is there any idea too extreme for him to execute in reality. Anyone who assumes Trump is lying is the fool at the poker table.