'Dumocracy' in America: When the President becomes a punchline

TOI correspondent from Washington: Historians may someday conclude that US President Donald Trump’s greatest contribution to American political discourse was not immigration enforcement or peace treaty, or even a trade war. It may have been a painstaking seminar on how he coined the word “Dumocrats.“In several interviews and speeches over the past week, Trump has unveiled what he appeared to regard as a linguistic breakthrough on par with the discovery of fire. “You know why I call them Dumocrats?” he explained patiently about his enfeebled political opponents. “Because they’re dumb.” Then came the etymology lecture that included the priceless assertion that not many people know that the word dumb ends with a b. On more than one occasion, the president has carefully walked his audience through the spelling of simple monosyllabic words that three-year olds ace, as if introducing cave dwellers to the alphabet. He once explained that “see” is spelled S-E-E not S-E-A, and another time said he made the remarkable discovery that the US, as in the United States, is spelled “U-S” as in us. Late-night comedians have reacted as if Diwali, Christmas, Hanukkah, and the Super Bowl of jokes had all arrived together. One host observed that Trump was now explaining words the way a kindergarten teacher explains crayons to children. Another joked that America had somehow elected a president who could turn a two-syllable word into a graduate seminar.Yet this was merely the latest installment in what has become the longest-running comedy series in modern political history. While previous presidents occasionally generated a joke or two, Trump has transformed the presidency into an industrial-scale content factory for comedians. On some nights, while much of America sleeps, the president embarks on marathon social-media posting sessions that resemble a drunk uncle discovering touchscreen for the first time.One recent evening produced more than fifty posts in rapid succession. The resulting feed read less like communications from the commander-in-chief and more like somebody had handed a smartphone to a simian. There were posts about judges, about polls, about television ratings, about construction projects, and about people insufficiently grateful to him. He also posted AI generated images adding himself to Mount Rushmore, riding with George Washington, and presenting himself as a superhero. Somewhere around post number 47, even loyal followers appeared to lose track of whether America was winning a trade war, building a ballroom, invading a country, or merely arguing about renaming buildings.Trump’s construction obsession has become particularly noteworthy. He now discusses building projects with the enthusiasm of a retired contractor who has cornered you at a party. Updates on the ballrooms, reflecting pool, fountains, expansions, additions, improvements gush forth in a torrent, sidelining China, Canada, Greenland, even Iran.No account of Trump’s comedy output would be complete without his enduring fixation with cognitive tests, a subject he returns to with the persistence of a man who believes he deserves a Nobel Prize for identifying a camel in a picture book. Repeatedly boasting about acing the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, the president recites portions of the test as though recounting the moon landing. The joke, as several comics have pointed out, is that the test is not designed to identify geniuses but to detect signs of cognitive impairment and dementia. “It’s like bragging that you passed a breathalyzer,” one comedian quipped. Another compared it to a driver announcing he had successfully stopped at a red light. Then came the magnificent collapse of the Freedom 250 concert series to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. Organizers announced a lineup. The lineup promptly began escaping. Artists withdrew so quickly that the event started resembling a lifeboat drill aboard the Titanic. Several performers said they had not fully understood the political nature of the event as they fled.Trump’s response was characteristically modest. Why not replace the musicians with himself? After all, he argued, he attracts bigger crowds than Elvis and does so without a guitar. So he floated replacing the concert with a MAGA rally starring the one performer who never cancels: Donald Trump.