It’s never just a joke

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s closing rally in New York on Sunday doubled down on the campaign’s hyper-nationalism and xenophobic rhetoric. “America is for Americans and for Americans only,” said longtime aide Stephen Miller, as Trump vowed to “launch the largest deportation program in American history” on day one if elected to a second term mandate. But it was one of the event’s opening acts, a stand-up comic maddened by his use of explicitly racist jokes, that struck the rawest nerve in a country long plagued by white nationalism and recurring flirtations with fascism.

Many equated Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden to the 1939 Nazi event held at the same venue. One stark difference was the carnivalesque tone of the Trump event, which was filled with MAGA celebrities from Hulk Hogan and Dr. Phil to right-wing comedy podcasters, all invited to balance out the more serious, explicitly fascist messages on the agenda.

Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, a cultural surrogate known for shock comedy in line with Trump’s rhetoric, was tapped to provide the kind of racist humor Trump is currently unable to deliver in this tight presidential race. Under the guise of free speech and the guise of an “equal opportunity offender,” Hinchcliffe carried out a noxious routine targeting diverse racial communities. He mocked Latin American migrants and the birth rate, joked about black people carving watermelons instead of pumpkins for Halloween, ridiculed Palestinians and Jews — jokes that have since gone viral. “Republicans are the party with a good sense of humor,” he joked.

Hinchcliffe’s racist joke about Puerto Rico, in which he simply derided it as a “floating island of garbage”, has gained the most traction and could cost Trump a significant number of votes in the fight. The Trump team publicly distanced itself from Hinchcliffe’s abysmal performance following public outcry on social media. “I have no idea who it is,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity two days after the event. “Someone said there was a comedian who makes jokes about Puerto Rico or something… I’ve never seen him, never heard of him and don’t want to hear of him.” But Hinchcliffe was taking issue with Trump’s own history of making racist comments, often couched as humorous remarks.

Divisive humor has played a central role in Trump’s rise to power. For the past eight years, Trump has cast himself as the insult-comedian-in-chief in interviews, at rallies and during stump speeches, all in the service of consolidating a base around an ideology rooted in social division, mockery and dehumanization. Trump harmonizes humor and deploys it with intent. It acts as an easy conduit for the discriminatory and racist policies they seek to implement. By ridiculing his opponents, he aims to convince voters and seize state power.

Trump’s primary appeal comes from his ability to build solidarity among people who feel left behind by the ravages of global capitalism and the nation’s changing demographics, angered by the loss of access to resources and opportunities to which they feel singularly entitled. This includes the inability to freely enjoy the kinds of everyday racist and offensive jokes that once helped soothe white nation-building pains, now banned because of “political correctness,” “DEI training,” “nullification culture’ and ‘awakening’. .” Such terms are mobilized by conservative leaders to galvanize public support among white voters to repeal the social, political, and cultural changes produced since the Civil Rights era.

Racist humor has long been a powerful vehicle for normalizing white supremacy, as the legacy of the blackface minstrel attests. Civil Rights activists fought for decades to eradicate it from public life, but racist humor remained prevalent as a forbidden private pleasure and re-entered mainstream public life.

As a result, a form of dehumanizing humor that was once as American as apple pie, then rejected, has emerged today as one of the primary vehicles for Trump’s brand of populist politics. Racialized communities and women of color are central targets at his rallies. This includes black women in his own party. He misogynistically disparaged opponent Nikki Haley, whose parents moved to the United States from India, as a “very overrated bird brain” at an event in Sioux City, Iowa in 2023, and called- a “Nimbra” to mock his ethnic identity in the Republican primaries. His signature use of nicknames is meant to humiliate and deflate political opponents and amuse and unite his supporters. Collective ridicule can be a powerful drug.

Since July of this year, Trump has adopted a clearer stance as a politician-comedian. He gathers the pleasure of jokes to do the dirty work of dehumanizing people and groups he sees as a threat to the fascist world order he is working so hard to create.

“Joe Biden has become mentally ill. Sad. but i’m lying Ka-MAH-la Harris,” he joked at a rally in Pennsylvania in September, “honestly, I think she was born that way.” Laughter erupts from his unusually dry delivery of the punch line. At another rally in Pennsylvania and several in late 2024, Harris’ own laughter was turned into an object of ridicule and justification for her disqualification for the highest office. “Did you hear her laugh?” Trump is kidding. After a beat, he snarls, “That’s the laugh of a madman!” The joy of other it can be a real pain.

While he might be the “Teflon Don,” dodging felony convictions and avoiding prison, there are lines Trump cannot cross in public, including as jokes, with the political stakes as high as this election. But Hinchcliffe’s comic relief could prove significant in an election in which Trump has sought to shore up support among non-white voters, although white voters remain the core of his base. Trumpism uses the veneer of a multiracial coalition to deny the issue of racism in the MAGA camp. This is similar to how he uses humor and comedians to downplay his issue of fascism. In both cases, “it’s just a joke.”

What Trumpian humor and rhetoric unleashed will not go away under a Harris presidency, as the supposed “post-racial” Obama era has made clear. Enjoying divisive humor is not only mainstream again, it’s also emerged as a political punch line. One that will likely inspire future Trump hopefuls to turn humor into the political arena: to use fascist glee to mask fascist power.

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