Donald Trump Isn't Funny

The President Should Leave the Comedy to the Free Market

One day, during a break in the British House of Commons, Winston Churchill decided to use the restroom. As he approached the trough, his nemesis, Labour Party Prime Minister Clement Attlee, walked in, forcing Churchill to stand as far away from him as possible.

“Feeling standoffish today, are we, Winston?,” Attlee asked. “That’s right,” Churchill responded. “Every time you see something big, you want to nationalize it.”

Every generation has its genuinely hilarious politician. Ronald Reagan used to sit at his desk late into the night, jotting down one-liners on 3-by-5 note cards and adding them to his speeches. (Sample: “People who think a tax boost will cure inflation are the same ones who believe another drink will cure a hangover.”) After Reagan was shot in the chest by John Hinkley, Jr., the president looked around at his doctors and famously quipped, “I hope they are all Republicans.”

Donald Trump clearly sees himself in the mold of the world’s most humorous leaders. His MAGA base has already declared him to be the funniest president ever. One scholarly study (presumably from the University of Our Eyeballs) found that Trump was a popular candidate primarily because he was so entertaining.

But Trump’s act doesn’t actually rise to the level of recognizable humor. His schoolyard taunts are well-known to any eighth-grader; there are no clever turns of phrase, unique insights, or timely callbacks. Trump’s “jokes,” which can be served up by literally anyone, are simply verbal flatulence—funny only because they are deeply inappropriate to the serious situation in which he finds himself.

Take this typical Trumpian joke lobbed at 2024 primary opponent Ron DeSantis, which combines the hallmarks of the president’s humor—a childish nickname and a bout of unexpected honesty: “DeSanctimonious…he’s doing good—he’s falling like a rock!”

Nate Bargatze it ain’t. Nonetheless, Trump’s fans react to his tepid jabs in the same manner as the stoic Chrysippus, whose own joke spelled his demise. (After watching a donkey eat some figs, Chrysippus said, “Now give the donkey a drink of pure wine to wash down the figs,” prompting him to die in a fit of laughter at his own C-minus joke.)

But even worse, Trump and his allies are, like Clement Attlee, effectively trying to nationalize comedy. They effectively want the Trump administration to decide what’s funny and what isn’t. For instance, when Trump recently suggested canceling the midterm elections, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt brushed it off, saying he was just “joking.”

Oftentimes, when Trump finds himself in hot water, it is because he is trying to be sardonically irreverent, such as when he recently re-posted a video portraying former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as apes. In 2019, Trump suggested the recently deceased Democratic Rep. John Dingell was looking up at his memorial ceremony from Hell. In 2018, he accused Democrats who didn’t clap during his State of the Union speech of “treason,” a comment later portrayed by his press office as a simple lighthearted jab.

In the case of the insult comic Dons, “Rickles” > “Trump.”

And, of course, Trump himself spends more time critiquing comedians than virtually any media critic in America. The only difference is that if he doesn’t like a joke by Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, or Saturday Night Live, he can threaten to either revoke their broadcast licenses or block a valuable merger. The only jokes the president seems to like are the ones he tells.

It gets even worse when he outsources his jokes to other members of his administration. As Emma Camp noted recently at the Wall Street Journal’s Free Expression newsletter (for which I also now write), social media posts from Trump’s team are written by deranged edgelords who clearly think owning the libs is high comedy. They spit out racist memes that draw on historical white supremacist literature, then joke that “the memes will continue.”

But, in the words of Trump ally Elon Musk, the president should learn to “legalize comedy.” There are plenty of people in the private market telling jokes that are far better than those churned out by the executive branch.

Just as conservatives want comedians to stay out of politics, the reverse is true. The list of qualities Americans seek in their leaders shouldn’t include “sick clap-backs;” it should instead include things like “making sure America doesn’t fall into abject chaos.” Consequently, Trump should stick to presidenting and let the free market of comedy thrive.

How I Lost Weight

About a year into the Covid-19 epidemic, I was depressed and eating my feelings. Coincidentally, my feelings tasted a lot like pizza, Qdoba burritos, and ice cream. As a result, my weight ballooned, and I felt even worse.

At one point, I went to the dentist, and they refused to do any work on me because my blood pressure was too high. They suggested I go to emergency care immediately to get it checked out. As it turns out, not only was my blood pressure high enough to light Cincinnati, I was having terrible blood sugar readings. (Although on the bright side, if I was ever eaten by a bear, just imagine how lucky that bear would be - given my high blood sugar, it would be like eating the human equivalent of a Twinkie.)

Since then, it’s been a constant battle to lose weight and improve my health. And I dare say I have found something that really works. And I will not gatekeep it because everyone needs to get healthier, and fewer people need to take advice from people who snort cocaine off toilet lids.

Early this year, I just happened to read this piece in the Washington Post about the 5:2 fasting plan. Effectively, you fast two days out of the week - you can pick any days you want, and on those days, you eat under 600 calories (for men) or 500 calories (for women).

If you can will yourself to limit your calories just two days per week, you can eat normally the other five days. And weirdly, I haven’t found that I have been ravenous on the regular eating days - cutting calories two days per week seems to have shrunk my stomach, so even when I do eat normally, I get fuller faster. It appears eating more makes you want to eat more, and eating less makes you want to eat less.

So what does a fasting day look like? I start out with a Fairlife chocolate protein drink (150 calories), which then gets me to lunch, where I have a three-egg omelette with a little cheese and some ham (350 calories.) Then, at dinner time, I have a banana for dinner (100 calories).

In fairness, after six weeks, I’m getting a little tired of the omelettes, so I might switch that part of it up. But in the six weeks I’ve been eating that diet twice per week, I have dropped about eight pounds and my A1C readings are down significantly. Obviously, before trying a diet, consult your doctor and all that, but this one has worked for me. (All total, I have lost over 30 pounds from my Covid-Era high.)

Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure, I should note that the guy who invented the diet, British physician Michael Mosley, dropped dead last year at the age of 67. The coroner said he died of “natural causes.”

Last week, my National Review piece focused on Donald Trump’s odd habit of attacking non-politicians or media members. It’s common for politicians to harshly criticize other politicians or reporters, but it is really strange for presidents to savage those who aren’t “in the game.” I wrote:

Trump loyalists once understood that attacking civilians had generally been off the table. It’s why they took such umbrage at Hillary Clinton in 2016 deeming “half” of Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables.” Shots at Trump were all part of the game, of course — but Clinton turning her ire against his supporters was like an irate hockey player dropping his gloves, skating over to the seats, and starting to punch out the fans.

Nonetheless, Trump is willing to shout his disdain for rank-and-file Americans from the roof of the White House. Recall that he reposted an AI-created (we suspect) video of himself flying a fighter jet labeled KING TRUMP, from which feces are released on people protesting his actions below.

Just this week, Trump used social media to call U.S. Olympic skier Hunter Hess “a real loser” after Hess expressed “mixed emotions” about representing the U.S. given the trouble happening back home.

The previous week, I wrote about how ridiculous it is that the U.S. Government still maintains a “food pyramid” that purports to tell us what we all should eat:

The idea that the federal government should play a role in determining the food we eat only serves to stroke the egos of those who believe nothing worthwhile happens in the world without bureaucratic approval. What types of diets best serve individual citizens is one of the most-studied topics in human history, and most of that analysis has been conducted by private actors. There are infinite apps, websites, chat rooms, TikTok videos, workout plans, and the like that will get you where you want to go on your fitness journey, all thankfully operating outside the walls of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Leaving nutritional advice to a federal bureaucracy naturally politicizes its recommendations. It makes no sense that the health benefits of certain foods either increase or decrease depending on whom Americans elect as president and which people get appointed to head HHS.

In 1897, England’s Dr. Shadwell warned of the evils of bicycles: notably, they caused the disfiguring “bicycle face,” in which the rider contorts their face with a fixed and anxious expression, afraid they are going to crash or someone is going to throw something at them.

This week, Velocity Girl re-released a remixed version of their 1994 album Simpatico, one of the best power-pop albums from a decade that had a lot of great power-pop albums. Fire up your favorite streaming service and give the whole thing a listen.