Trump is a joke, and it's time we started laughing

The Lincoln Project has it right.

Recently, the group of Republican Never Trumpers, led by George Conway, has begun to release ads making fun of Donald Trump.

One uses Trump’s own words to lampoon his difficulty descending a ramp after a West Point graduation speech. Another makes fun of the meager turnout for his over-hyped rally in Tulsa. It even uses double-entendres to mock Trump’s frail masculinity:

“You’ve probably heard this before,” the announcer female intones, nearly snickering, “but it was smaller than we expected.”

“We’ve seen that you’re shaky,” she continues, and “can’t keep your polls up” (or was that meant to be “poles”?).

Then, it turns the tables on him by using his own pet phrases to describe him: “Sad. Weak. Low energy. Just like your presidency. Just like you.”

Comedy of terrors

Yes, people have made fun of Trump before. Stephen Colbert has done it. So have other comedians. Saturday Night Live has done it on a regular basis, with Alec Baldwin doing some hilarious impressions. But those were people who make a living poking fun at celebrities and politicians.

Until now, most of the rest of us haven’t done so.

The question is, why not? Are we scared of Trump’s wrath? Republican lawmakers sure are: You can almost see them shaking in their shoes for fear of being tweeted or primaried. Oh, the horrors! But what about the rest of us?

Maybe we’ve been too busy being horrified his vicious statements and his attacks on our institutions. Perhaps we’ve hesitated because we respect the office of the presidency, even if we don’t respect its current occupant. Or maybe we just don’t want to stoop to his level.

Q. Who would Donald Trump have portrayed if he had appeared on Game of Thrones?

A. Littlefinger.

But here’s the problem: By taking him seriously — whether it’s because he’s the president or because we don’t want to look petty ourselves — we make him appear credible. And he’s not. We shouldn’t treat him like he is. Remember, this is a guy who has suggested nuking hurricanes, having people inject themselves with bleach, and buying Greenland from Denmark. He should be laughed off the stage for suggesting any of this. Just think of the possibilities:

Maybe he wanted to buy Greenland because, “Oooh! It’s got ‘Green’ in the name and it’s really big. I could build a lot of golf courses there!”

Maybe he won’t wear a mask because he really believes in being transparent. On second thought, nah, he doesn’t. But we see right through him anyway.

He probably doesn’t want those Confederate statues torn down because he wants someone to build a statue to him, and he can’t stand the thought of it being torn down once some future generation figures out what a racist jerk he was.

And maybe he thought about injecting himself with bleach because, “Dammit, I fell asleep on the tanning bed again, and I don’t want to look quite that orange.” Well, he does need to lighten up.

But hey, so do we.

The best medicine

We’ve become accustomed to reacting with shock to everything this loser does, even though almost nothing he does is shocking anymore. Mostly, it’s either stupid or hilarious.

Now, some of the things he says and does — like putting children in cages, telling people to show up at a rally so they can catch a virus, stoking racism, and a thousand other things — aren’t funny at all. We shouldn’t be laughing at them. But we should be laughing at him, because he’s a joke.

Do you still think all that hand-wringing and trying to reason with him will do any good at all? If you do, you haven’t been paying attention. Laughter is, as they say, the best medicine. And in this case, it just may be the perfect cure.

One of the few times you shouldn’t laugh at the man is when he claims he was joking — which only happens after he says something seriously hurtful and doesn’t want to admit what a mean-spirited ass he is. No, don’t laugh then. That’s the time to say, with a straight face and the emotionless voice of a disapproving parent: “That’s not funny.”

“Sorry, Little Donnie. You’ve been a bad little boy, so you have to go to bed without dessert now. If you’re good, maybe you can have a little bit a little later. ... Oh, why are you crying? Did I say the word ‘little’ too much and hurt your little feelings?”

With Trump in the White House, it’s more like “Animal House.” But that’s an insult to John Belushi.

Laugh at Little Donnie, because he’s a laughingstock, and that’s what laughingstocks deserve.

To their credit, some people who aren’t comedians are doing so now. Anderson Cooper’s smirks and eyerolls are just what’s called for when Trump behaves (or misbehaves) like the buffoon he is.

And his supporters in Congress who, seemingly overnight, stopped making fun of him and started fawning all over him like little Gollum clones worshipping their “precious”? We should stop asking why they’re doing it and make fun of them, too. Who cares why they treat Trump as though he’s a candy cane on the Christmas tree they can’t wait to unwrap and lick? The only explanations they can offer are absurd, and the natural response to absurdity is laughter.

So laugh at them!

Laugh at how silly they’re making themselves look, and how eager they are to exchange their credibility for a little gold star on their essay from Good Ol’ Uncle Donnie.

Exposed

Bullies love to laugh at others but hate to get laughed at, because it robs them of their power. It strips away the pretense that they’re better than the people they’re mocking and exposes the truth of their own well-founded inferiority complex. It’s something they need to face, for their own good, but mostly for ours.

Many people (myself included) have long recognized Trump as a fraud and compared him, aptly, to the clueless git of a nincompoop parading around naked in The Emperor’s New Clothes. But we’ve missed what actually caused the emperor’s downfall. It wasn’t merely that the town recognized the emperor was naked. It was the fact that he lost credibility.

How would you react if you saw someone, who otherwise appeared to be perfectly sane, parading around naked while pretending to be clothed?

You. Would. Laugh.

Uncontrollably.

Then the others around you, who’d convinced themselves his charade was true, would start laughing, too. Pretty soon, everyone would be laughing, and the poor idiot would skulk away in disgrace because he’d have no other choice.

Until now, we’ve been scared to laugh at a naked buffoon named Donald Trump. We’ve been so busy being shocked at his nakedness that we haven’t allowed ourselves to laugh at the absurdity of it: to point our fingers, rear back our heads and guffaw until tears run down our cheeks at the sheer outrageousness of it all.  We’ve let him laugh at us and make a mockery of what our country stands for.

Maybe it’s time we return the favor, because we don’t deserve to be laughed at — and he does.

Heaven knows we can use the comic relief.