When Donald Trump claimed Tim Walz is a “moron” and Kamala Harris was “born mentally impaired,” Lara Trump said he was “joking around.” In defense of what it means to joke around, I suggest Donald Trump is The Joker and he is not joking.
No politician ever has spent as much time attempting to shape his image as a strong, tough leader, a stern, deal-making billionaire, a stern father-leader and a really smart person.
Rodney Kennedy
Everyone else feels invited to the “naming” party as a result. From the right and the left, Trump characterizations have filled the media. Evangelical leaders breathlessly present Trump as Cyrus — “God’s anointed” — David, Solomon, even Esther. I have projected Trump as Saul — from whom God removed the anointing — and as Samson, the strong man with women problems.
From the left, Trump most often is compared to Adolf Hitler, King Lear, Vladimir Putin, Tony Soprano, a professional wrestling promoter and a con artist.
Scholars who study presidents rhetorically have argued Trump is a demolition expert, a low-grade fascist, a demagogue, a renegade populist, a rhetorical pervert, a serial liar and a Twitter president — simplistic, impulsive, uncivil. He is a rhetorical arsonist who will not hesitate to light the fire and burn down the house of democracy.
“He is a rhetorical arsonist who will not hesitate to light the fire and burn down the house of democracy.”
I have biblically and rhetorically depicted Trump as the incarnation of evil flying in the robes of a hypocritical, sold-out religious group loosely identified as evangelicals.
Nailing Trump to a particular persona presents extraordinary challenges. He is a Janus-faced politician. One day he is proclaiming he is the only one who can save the world. Like a caring father, he promises to make his children secure. Then the next day he is an authoritarian bully demanding police be given “one rough day” to wipe out crime. He is a chameleon.
My insistence on studying Trump as an evil character, a villain, opens the door to an array of character comparisons. To date, I have found no better movie/television character to describe Donald Trump than The Joker. According to communication scholar Paul Achter, in literary and television terms, “Trump is a shadow figure, a representative of our cultural unconsciousness, the unspoken ‘true spirit’ of life, a character whose actions offer constraints to the thoughtful and democratic people we profess to be.”
The Joker
The Joker represents the villain face of Trump. In the comic books and movies, The Joker is a criminal mastermind and the opposite of the superhero Batman. His persona and character are the antithesis of the hero. The Joker started as a psychopath with a warped sense of humor, but by the 1950s he was a comic figure. In the 1970s he became once again the darker version of evil.
The Joker has no superhuman abilities, but with an expertise in chemical engineering he produces lethal concoctions of various weapons. He wreaks havoc in Gotham City. He is a demolition expert.
Among the allies of The Joker are fellow supervillains Penguin and Two-Face and gangs like the Injustice Gang and Injustice League. These alliances usually disintegrate because of The Joker’s need for total control and desire for total chaos.
A movie titled Joker appeared during Trump’s term as president. The movie is a 2019 psychological thriller starring Joaquin Phoenix. The movie follows Arthur Fleck (The Joker), a failed clown and aspiring stand-up comedian who descends into mental illness and nihilism.
Joker won the Golden Lion at the 76th Venice International Film Festival. In the United States, the film grossed more than $1 billion. Phoenix won the Oscar for Best Actor at the 92nd Academy Awards.
The success of the movie has inspired a forthcoming sequel, Joker: Folie a Deus, released Oct. 4. My hope is Nov. 5 will not give us a sequel of Trump.
Trump, as a creature of television, knows Americans love their villains. His exaggerated lying, his constant defiance of decorum, his breaking of the rules, his living on the precipice of legal and financial ruin — are all part of the plot of the supervillain. At the same time, he is worshiped and adored by millions of supporters. Whether loved or hated, Trump remains a magnet for television ratings. He is the perfect dramatic figure for television.
Trump has attracted an array of other villains into his orbit for brief stays. Roger Stone, who looks like he just stepped off the set of Batman; Steve Bannon, who attempted to deconstruct the administrative state by dismantling regulations, repealing Obamacare, shredding trade agreements, shutting down the border and eradicating terrorism; and Michael Flynn, an evangelical extremist who tells preachers to preach the Constitution.
“As Trump spirals into incoherent mumbo jumbo in his rally speeches, he looks more and more like The Joker every day.”
As Trump spirals into incoherent mumbo jumbo in his rally speeches, as his lies become even more outlandish and his desire for revenge more transparent, he looks more and more like The Joker every day.
But he’s not joking
No matter how many times Trump supporters claim the former president is joking, the reality is Trump never jokes. His followers know he is not joking. They take him seriously.
“This is Donald Trump, and he has never tried to make himself out to be anyone other than who he is,” Lara Trump said in an interview with MSNBC’s Kristen Welker. “And obviously, he’s kind of joking around there with the crowd at a Trump rally when he says those things.”
Trump, speaking of Kamala Harris at a rally in Pennsylvania, said, “She is a very dumb person, and we can’t do that. We can’t do that. I don’t want to be rude.”
The idea of Trump joking is falling faster than the stock in his social media company. I’m sorry, but Lara Trump is peddling ideas not fit for sale.
Somehow Trump has managed to maintain support because his people keep insisting they like the way Trump talks. He comes across to MAGA as sincere, frank, honest and courageous. He says what they are all thinking, and he says it out loud.
This may be what we are missing about Trump’s power. He has an ingenious ability to understand the inner thoughts of MAGA and then he repeats those thoughts back to them. And MAGA is in awe at such a prophetic, powerful politician.
For an example of how Trump’s mind works in tandem with the MAGA mind, a Texas man named Gary Estes, after smashing up a signed Taylor Swift guitar, claimed he was joking around. He insisted there was nothing malicious about taking a hammer to a guitar while confirming he was a Trump supporter.
Sounding for all the world exactly like Trump, Estes said, “It was just a joke at an auction that we had to raise money for kids, right? And that’s all it was. There was nothing mean about it, nothing bad about it. It was just a joke that they were making up on the stage, and we just followed through with a joke.”
Joaquin Phoenx as The Joker in “Joker,” 2019. (IMDB)
Trump is not a comedian
One of the reasons Trump frequently attacks late-night comedians has to be his own insecurity and jealousy. He claims Fallon, Colbert, Stewart and other comedians are not funny. Trump fails to notice he is not funny. Like The Joker, Trump fails as a stand-up comedian. He can’t tell a joke.
“Like The Joker, Trump fails as a stand-up comedian. He can’t tell a joke.”
One of his lame attempts at being funny is his reading of a poem about a kind woman who took in a venomous snake and gave it shelter. When the snake bit the woman, Trump’s punch line: “You knew damned well I was a snake before you took me in.” He is not funny.
Trump’s tone and demeanor suggest sternness, militancy, violence and authoritarianism. The laughter at a Trump rally is not comedy; it is the jouissance of thousands of people joining Trump in demeaning, insulting and degrading fellow human beings.
Donald Trump pauses while speaking after officially accepting the Republican presidential nomination on stage on the fourth day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum on July 18, 2024, in Milwaukee, Wis. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Trump’s dark demeanor shows up in all his speeches. He paints the darkest, most apocalyptic picture of the United States ever depicted by a presidential candidate. In Trump’s view, America already looks like a bombed-out, Joker-controlled Gotham City. He speaks of “American carnage.” In his speeches, he rails about “disrepair and decay” and an impoverished country destroyed by gangs, illegal immigrants and drugs.
Trump’s face tells us he is not joking. Media scholars point out that a politician’s face is a major component of his message. Trump, for example, never looks down, as if such a move would make him look weak. Instead, Trump stares around in total seriousness aided and abetted by a variety of smirks, stares and glares.
In official photographs, Trump is presented as unsmiling, rigid, dominating, glaring. Mostly he smirks and sneers. This is not the face of a comedian but of a no-nonsense, completely in charge kind of person.
Prior to the 2020 election, Trump trumpeted if the election didn’t go his way, the economy would tank, Christmas would be canceled and America as we know it would be “finished.” Like the evangelical rapture that never occurs, none of Trump’s apocalyptic prophecies ever occurred.
“None of Trump’s apocalyptic prophecies ever occurred.”
When he lost the election, he told his followers on the morning of January 6, “If you don’t fight like hell, you won’t have a country anymore.” The Trump MAGA mob responded by invading democracy.
In the run-up to the 2024 election, Trump once again has trotted out his apocalyptic predictions of doom and gloom. He told supporters in Wisconsin if the Democrats win “we won’t have a country left.”
Sounding like a Pentecostal revivalist, he thundered, “The enemy from within is more dangerous than China and Russia. … I actually think our country is not going to survive.”
There’s no humor in the false apocalypticism of Trump and his evangelical cohorts.
He is not preparing the MAGA forces for a rapture, but for a revolution. He continues to rant about being a “dictator for a day” and sending his opponents to prison. When asked if his violent rhetoric alienates people, Trump spoke a rare truth: “I think a lot of people like it.”
Donald Trump is The Joker, but he is not joking.
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer in New York state. He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit.