Donald Trump has always taken great care to style himself as a 1980s-style Big Important Man. He wears a costume: a navy suit, a bright red tie, his hair plastered into place, and heavy face and body makeup.
He rants, sneers, dances, promotes himself, and smears his critics with abandon, often in all-caps with typos. The entire presentation is farcical.
The Big Important Man act is taking over Washington.
Giant banners of Trump’s face are being draped over federal buildings. Cabinet officials glorify him in public meetings as a matter of routine. While in the Oval Office conducting official business, the president donned a MAGA-red hat that read “TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING” and threatened to send the National Guard to New York and Chicago. His rambling remarks included the possibility of renaming the Kennedy Center the “Trump-Kennedy Center.” He later said, referring to himself, that people “maybe like a dictator,” which is something he’s said before, and then claimed he was only joking.
Lots of Trump’s most dangerous statements are taken as jokes. Until they’re not.
Amid the chaos, it’s hard to know what could turn out to be real and what to ignore. How much is anyone really supposed to care about a silly hat? Does he really think he is right about everything? He has to be kidding… right? But we aren’t living in a parody of autocracy; our country is really becoming one.
Our plunge into absurdity and autocracy is not incidental. The constant mix of surreal and real makes it hard to discern the danger before our eyes. If, in the confusion, we see Trump as a clown with a bright red hat in place of a big red nose, then his bumbling threats can’t be serious, his abuses can’t be intentional, and his power grabs can’t be real.
Authoritarian kitsch has a disarming quality. Charlie Chaplin parodied it well in The Great Dictator.
Costumes and carefully curated images are part of the act. Benito Mussolini presented himself as a “new Caesar,” giving balcony speeches and parading troops in “fascio” uniforms. Vladimir Putin puts on a macho show.
Trump, like authoritarians before him, isn’t a single figure acting alone, though. The real power of Trump’s absurd autocratic brand lies in the cover it provides for the movement behind him. The unending preposterousness provides his allies — from lukewarm transactional supporters to devoted white-hot allies — with plausible deniability for autocracy to take root.
By now, we should have learned that nothing is too absurd to take seriously. Take, for example, Kash Patel’s confirmation as FBI director.
Before his nomination, Patel published Government Gangsters, a screed that included a list of “deep state” officials to be purged. In addition to defending January 6 rioters as “political prisoners” and floating the inane conspiracy that the FBI staged the insurrection against itself, he also churned out cartoon propaganda in the form of a children's book that featured a “Hillary Queenton” who schemed against “King Donald.”
The book was so obsequious that it was waved away. At his confirmation hearing, Patel insisted the list wasn’t an “enemies list,” and his easy denial gave Republican senators their alibi. All but two voted to confirm him.
Last month, Patel’s enemies list became operational. The FBI raided the home of one of the figures on his list, Trump’s first-term national security adviser, John Bolton. And Patel made sure to send a message. As the raid unfolded early that morning, he posted a notice on social media stating that the FBI was “on a mission.” Not very subtle.
Patel isn’t an outlier. There are many more unfit officials staffing Trump throughout the federal government who are helping him do what hesitant allies insisted would never happen, such as putting thousands of armed troops on the streets; shaking down law firms, universities, and media companies for billions of dollars; and seizing major stakes in U.S. companies.
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And the “jokes” keep coming. Here are some of his recent punchlines that, over time, could become policy:
BBC: Trump jokes he wants Powell to lower interest rates in tense exchange
Daily Beast: Trump jokes about building nuclear missiles during White House roof walk
Salon: In Zelenskyy meeting, Trump jokes about starting a war to halt 2028 elections
Who is laughing now?
Emily Nussbaum pondered this question in The New Yorker in 2017 when she asked, “How do you fight an enemy who is just kidding?” Eight years later, we still don’t have a definitive answer.
What should be apparent by now is this: Whatever line there may have been between Trump’s absurdity and authoritarianism has collapsed.
They’re the same. He isn’t joking. Stop acting like he is.
We are NOT amused. ☹️☹️☹️
Reach out to as many House reps as you can about the Epstein files. This is bigger than a “I only represent my constituents” issue.
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Goodtrouble) as a resource to call/email/write members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Reach out to those in your own state, and those in a committee that fits your topic. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly. We deserve better ❤️🩹🤍💙