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Trump Is Losing the Humor War
The New York Times ^ | Aug. 17, 2024, 7:00 a.m. ET | Leif Weatherby

Posted on 08/17/2024 12:15:19 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum

Over the past decade, there’s one truth that liberals have been loath to admit: Donald Trump is funny. This aspect of his appeal prompts far less commentary than his far-right positions, his venality or his mogul’s bravado. But when you watch him at a rally, you can see he’s playing for laughs: jabbing at his opponents, doing crowd work, even being self-deprecating, sort of.

Cicero could write a treatise on Mr. Trump’s use of irony, as he’s proved himself a master of humorous misdirection. Liberals tend to think that irony is a type of wit that is aligned with progressivism. But for nearly a decade now, if you went looking for comedy in American politics, Mr. Trump would have been your best bet for finding it.

Now that magic is gone. Politics is about communication, and when Mr. Trump is on, his humor offers a clear outline of his worldview. These days, he looks lost. The fact that Mr. Trump is less sure-footed as a comedian may be a harbinger of a more significant uncertainty — an inability to land the punchlines because he can no longer identify the right setups.

Mr. Trump, a real-estate tycoon turned reality TV star, came to politics by way of humor. Whether it’s true or not that he decided to run in 2016 in response to President Barack Obama’s roast of him at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, there’s no doubt that Mr. Trump’s rise through the Republican ranks was partly thanks to his uncanny insult humor.

From the start, he evidenced an ability to pierce the veil of political politesse. “Low energy Jeb” Bush and “Little Marco” Rubio fell by the wayside as Mr. Trump marched toward the...

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Humor
KEYWORDS: 4dchess; fakenews; leifweatherby
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Rasmussen:

National poll:

Trump: 49
Cackles: 45


21 posted on 08/17/2024 12:33:45 PM PDT by Signalman (I am not a snob. Ask anyone who matters.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Tell us, Oh Noo Yawk jerk, what kind of humor a guy should have after

- Being terrorized by a corrupt FBI over the absolutely phony “Russia Collusion” hoax perpetrated by the unindicted Hillary Clinton

- Being Impeached for asking the corrupt kleptocrat dictator of Ookraine to report on the corruption of a well known American politician, now deposed and clearly guilty

- Conducting a brilliant campaign only to have the election clearly stolen in the most brazen fraud in US history

- Staging a rally that drew hundreds of thousands of supporters (which no “democrat” could possibly garner) only to have the FBI, the Speaker of the House and every other federal intelligence agency hijack it and stage their own invasion of the Capitol and then blame it on...him!

- Being Impeached yet again for said rally and ensuing riot when it was clearly staged by a covert plot to start such a riot

- Having your supporters hunted down by your political opponents and jailed with Draconian terms meted out by foreign “judges” who abused the law to the extent that the Supreme Court had to step in and throw out their abuse of said laws

- Having the disgusting, partisan “attorney general” of your opponent’s illegitimate administration try to set you up with an entrapment in collusion with a federal agency using yet again an inapplicable law to do so

- And when that had to be dropped because you were again a candidate for President, appoint an illegitimate partisan thug to invade your home (for the first time in American history) and get an indictment based yet again on a misapplication of an inapplicable law

And on and on and on and on....culminating with being shot in the ear likely by a patsy egged on to do it.

Trump’s supposed to be just a jokester after all that?


22 posted on 08/17/2024 12:34:10 PM PDT by Regulator (It's fraud, Jim)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
NY Slimes lost the "real news" war long ago.

'rat rag like the rest.

23 posted on 08/17/2024 12:34:46 PM PDT by RckyRaCoCo (Time to throw them out of the Temple...again)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

https://twitter.com/jason_howerton/status/1824569075441471999

I don’t know, but this is really funny.


24 posted on 08/17/2024 12:34:51 PM PDT by chalkfarmer (I)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

When you have to explain why a joke is funny you know it bombed.


25 posted on 08/17/2024 12:35:09 PM PDT by glorgau
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
than his far-right positions

What "far right" positions would these be?

That Trump is basically a Bill Clinton-era democrat is instructive at how far left the NY Times has veered.

26 posted on 08/17/2024 12:38:52 PM PDT by Drew68
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

There is something inherently funny about the New York Times opining about humor.


27 posted on 08/17/2024 12:39:33 PM PDT by cdcdawg (Flush twice. Biden is a particularly big turd.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

He is losing the “joy” war, the humor war, the polling war and most importantly the media popularity war. If it keeps up they will have to try again to kill him.


28 posted on 08/17/2024 12:41:50 PM PDT by webheart
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
"Trump is holding fire on Camilla until after the Democrat convention when it will be too late to swap her out."


29 posted on 08/17/2024 12:43:43 PM PDT by clearcarbon (Fraudulent elections have consequences.)
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To: Gaffer

I think the “New York Times” is losing its audience, and it shows.


30 posted on 08/17/2024 12:44:55 PM PDT by Empire_of_Liberty
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

NYT, All the Propaganda that’s fit to print.


31 posted on 08/17/2024 12:47:17 PM PDT by Fledermaus (Clay Bevis and Cuck Butthead are panty wadded, pearl clutching cowards. Rush deserves better.)
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To: No.6

“a daily drumbeat of complete inversion of truth”

This is exactly what the left has been doing. Trump is the funniest politician alive, so attack him on his humor. Trump is the strongest president in 70 years on the border and illegals, so attack him on supposedly stopping the border from being secured. Trump created a great economic boom, so attack him on his economic record and policies. Trump modernized the military and V.A. and loves the vets, so attack him on a made-up, disproven quote against soldiers. The media and Dems really have moved from spin to full-on inversion.

Hopefully, people will trust their own eyes, ears, and memories, but this election might be decided by a few percent who pay very little attention to anything and are swayed by narratives the media invents. So we have to keep countering our opponents, the media and the Dems, at all turns.

I would love to see Trump, Vance, and all the GOP folks saying over and over, “The media is running Kamala’s campaign for her” until people start noticing the intense bias.


32 posted on 08/17/2024 12:47:50 PM PDT by FenwickBabbitt
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
Who is this CLOWN writer?
33 posted on 08/17/2024 12:48:56 PM PDT by left that other site ("Providence" ain't just a city in Rhode Island.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

NYT is losing THE TRUTH WAR.

LEFT WING DEMOCRAT, COMMUNIST FAKE NEWS RAG.


34 posted on 08/17/2024 12:53:28 PM PDT by Pearfect (Ou can't beat the competition lock-in)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Yes, Kamala does cackle better than Trump.


35 posted on 08/17/2024 12:53:51 PM PDT by Kazan
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

“All Trump has to do is run videos of her from four years ago “Libs of TikTok” style when she was saying just the opposite.”

From the minute they decided she was going to be the Prog candidate I’ve been longing to see that exact ad, instead of (or at least in addition to) Trump calling her cutesy names. The Commie in her own words seems like an absolute no-brainer.


36 posted on 08/17/2024 12:55:23 PM PDT by Magic Fingers (Political correctness mutates in order to remain virulent.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Yet more fake news.


37 posted on 08/17/2024 1:07:19 PM PDT by FLT-bird
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Lefties think Trump lost his sense of humor? I can see how they would expect that, and hope for it, after years of harassing Trump, slandering him, trying to steal his assets through lawfare, trying to put him in prison, impeaching him twice, and then trying to kill him, but I think Trump has retained his sense of humor just fine.

If these lefty scumbags want to see someone who has lost his sense of humor after years of watching their commie shenanigans, they should spend a little time with me.


38 posted on 08/17/2024 1:09:33 PM PDT by fr_freak (So foul a sky clears not without a storm.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Commentary fabricated by the VERY NOT- Funny Horrific NY Slimes. To whom NOTHING In the world is funny— every f’n thing is some major social justice needed to be righted in terms of the Communist Comintern’s direction.

Watch now as Trump doubles down on the very appalling targets of ka-MA-la and the squarehead German Socialist-Leftist (aka, National Socialist German Workers Party— in Minnesota known as the Farm-Labor Democrat Party. The party of Hubert Humphrey. The real white Socialist “nationalists in name only”).


39 posted on 08/17/2024 1:10:21 PM PDT by John S Mosby (Sic Semper Tyrannis )
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Y’all remember what happened when Maureen Dowd made a joke about 0bama’s ears? Nobody was laughing except me.

(Insert CZJ picture here)

5.56mm


40 posted on 08/17/2024 1:17:23 PM PDT by M Kehoe (Quid Pro Joe and the Ho have got to go. )
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