Donald Trump and the 'fun' factor

Laughing all the way to victory.

(Donald Trump, smiling)

If you’ve ever been to a Donald Trump campaign rally, the first thing you notice is how much like a carnival it is.

People are hocking various Trump-related paraphernalia. There’s loud music blaring. People are, generally, speaking, in a good mood — ready to party.

It doesn’t feel ANYTHING like a normal political rally. It is, in a word, fun.

Which brings me to the new New York Times/Siena College poll on the state of the 2024 Republican race.

The headline is simple: Trump is blowing the doors off the rest of the field. He’s at 54% to 17% for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. No one else gets above 3%(!) of the vote.

Everywhere you look in the poll, Trump is dominating. He’s winning women and men by large margins. He’s winning voters with college educations and those without. He’s winning Hispanic voters.

It’s an absolute, across-the-board crushing.

Why? What explains it?

Buried down in the lower half of the poll is a hint.

Voters were asked whether the word “fun” better describes Trump or DeSantis.

A majority — 54% — said it described Trump best. Just 16% said it better described DeSantis.

It’s easy to dismiss a poll question like that — Fun? We are talking about politics here! — as frivolous.

But, I actually think there’s real insight in it about Trump’s support — and why it’s lasted as long as it has.

Trump is, first and foremost, an entertainer and provocateur. He says and does things to freak out the squares and, yes, to make people laugh.

Watch any of his rallies and you’ll see this. People love the nicknames. They love the asides. They love when he just riffs.

It’s what they’ve come for. And it’s what differentiates him from other politicians.

Remember back to the 2016 race. The initial frontrunner was Jeb Bush, who was running a serious and adult campaign. He put out policy papers. He was respectful to his rivals. He talked about how his past experience in politics prepared him to run for president.

It was, everyone thought, how you do it.

Then along came Trump — full of bluster and insults. He labeled Bush “low energy” and mocked him for how seriously he took everything. And people laughed. And laughed.

And he crushed Bush — and all other comers — in the Republican primary.

The general election was more of the same — Hillary Clinton putting out policy proposals and generally taking the whole thing seriously while Trump blasted her as “Crooked Hillary” and asked Russia to release her hacked emails.

Clinton, like Bush, tried to label Trump as un-serious.

“Every day that goes by, this just becomes more and more of a reality television show,” she said. “It's not, it's not a serious presidential campaign.”

Trump laughed all the way to the White House.

I’ve thought a lot about this. And I really believe there is an IDGAF undercurrent — or maybe over-current — to Trump’s support.

His supporters think it’s hilarious that he is, effectively, giving the middle finger to, well, just about everyone. It convinces them that they can trust Trump because, after all, no one who was bought and paid for by the establishment would even consider saying some of the stuff he says.

Support for him isn’t dutiful. It’s passionate. Because he is passionate and, yes, because he makes his supporters chuckle.

Now, to my mind, there is an element of laughing all the way to political Armageddon here.

Objectively, Trump attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election was dangerous for democracy. Objectively, his two indictments — with a third seemingly on the way — suggest some level of inappropriate behavior (or at least behavior that skirts the line of what’s appropriate.)

And the job of president, of course, is not one that is a joke. It’s quite literally the most powerful gig in the world — and not one where you should say things like your nuclear button is “bigger & more powerful one than [North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s] and my Button works!” (Remember that one?!)

But, if ever people believed that voters wouldn’t elect Trump because he wasn’t serious enough for the job, 2016 should have cured that view.

There are a significant number of voters for whom politics and the whole political system is an utter joke. They love that Trump embraces and epitomizes that reality.

He is in on the joke. And he makes them laugh. For lots of voters, that’s enough.