Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of Left Podcast. This is a sample of our recent bonus episode usually only available to members.

These episodes are comprised of our crew of researchers, Amanda, and myself all getting together

for a roundtable discussion on topics that we find interesting. So here's a few minutes for free so you can

know what all the fuss is about.

All right, so today we're playing on having a lot of fun. We're going to talk about humor and

we're starting with the article, the comedic trick Trump uses to normalize his behavior.

His supporters love it.

Critics call it a sign of his autocratic tendencies.

You can just hear the audience right now going,

boo!

That's not the kind of humor I want to talk about.

And so the point is to try to, I mean people have been trying to understand Trump supporters since 2015, right?

And it has limited usefulness, but I still argue it's useful.

Like, you gotta understand what's going on,

what you're up against, etc.

And humor is a huge part of it.

The author of this piece talks about how, you know, he's been to lots of Trump rallies

and the thing that sort of like rings in their ears the longest is the laughter

which if you're not in on his jokes or you think he's a maniac rather than in any way funny. It's hard to imagine laughing at anything he says,

unless you're laughing at him for being absurd, but the people who go to this rallies, like just have a grand old time,

just love it and laugh uproariously throughout and understanding why is like really important to

understanding how autocracy can rise and people can laugh along the whole way.

...