No Joke

Following the the weekend fundraiser for Donald Trump in Palm Beach, Florida, New York Jets owner and multi-billionaire Woody Johnson honed his skills at stand-up. Appearing on Jesse Waters' Fox News show, Johnson remarked

It will be a safer, better pace. There will be less crime. He's extremely compassionate. People don't know that. He's extremely funny. I think people are starting to appreciate his sense of humor. And, uh, he just impressed all of us once again. I think that the overwhelming thought was, yea,  this is just the beginning for us. Everybody in that room was ready to step up hard.

Woody Johnson: Trump is extremely compassionate. People don’t know that. He’s extremely funny. People are starting to appreciate his sense of humor pic.twitter.com/cA0Xb2zX43

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 9, 2024

And they allegedly did step up hard, to a reported tune of over fifty million dollars donated by a group justifiably confident that a President Trump would cut its taxes substantially.

A President has virtually nothing to do with crime, though if Trump unleashes local and state police as he promises, crime may drop a little in the short run and increase considerably in the long run, as a view of police as the enemy of the neighborhood is reinforced.

Johnson may not have recognized the irony of his his claim that the 45th President is "extremely compassionate." Evidently oozing compassion is the President who willfully separated children of immigrants from their parents; referred to deceased American veterans as "losers" and tortured prisoners of wars "suckers;" significantly curbed access to food stamps for hungry Americans; implemented policies which eliminated health insurance for hundreds of thousands of children; and told police "when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, just just seen them thrown in, rough. I said 'Please don't be too nice. When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just seen them thrown in, rough. I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice." And who could forget this demonstration of compassion for handicapped individuals?

If Donald Trump were compassionate, he wouldn't now be the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee, would not have become President, and would not even have been his party's nominee in 2016. The lack of compassion is his brand- he alone will figuratively bash in the heads of liberals and, as the 1/6/21 insurrection displayed, perhaps physically. I am your retribution.

Nonetheless, Woody Johnson's portrayal of Trump as compassionate crime-fighter, soft but tough, was not his most dangerous assertion. Worse, if voters are to buy the act, is his assessment of Trump as "extremely funny. I think people are starting to appreciate his sense of humor." Let us not forget one of the most telling of Trump's comments when in a rare burst of honesty on June 23, 2020 the President

insisted he was serious when he revealed that he had directed his administration to slow coronavirus testing in the United States, shattering the defenses of senior White House aides who argued Trump’s remarks were made in jest.

“I don’t kid. Let me just tell you. Let me make it clear,” Trump told reporters, when pressed on whether his comments at a campaign event Saturday in Tulsa, Okla., were intended as a joke.

“We have got the greatest testing program anywhere in the world. We test better than anybody in the world. Our tests are the best in the world, and we have the most of them. By having more tests, we find more cases,” he continued.

Administration officials as high ranking as Vice President Mike Pence have scrambled in recent days to clean up Trump’s statements from his weekend rally, where he reprised his dubious logic regarding testing rates before an arena of supporters.

“When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people,” Trump said during the rally. “You’re going to find more cases. So I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please.’”

I don't kid. Die-hard Trump voters know that; it's one of the reasons they're not Haley or Pence or Tim Scott or Doug Burgum voters. They're confident he says what he will do and will do what he says. He's authentically loud, mean- and serious. 

When Donald Trump says he'll be a dictator on Day One. Steve Bannon asserts "this is just not rhetoric. We're absolutely dead serious." Kash Patel, undoubtedly on Trump's short list for Attorney General, states "yes, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who rigged presidential elections.." And Trump himself has made clear his intention to weaponize federal law enforcement and prosecute political opponents, Joe Biden and others.

Take Donald Trump literally and seriously. He's not joking.

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