Donald Trump’s dark game: when real humor becomes a political test

Political humor today is a lot like those jokes that start out light and then stick. You hear them, you laugh, maybe you shrug. After a while you realize that that phrase keeps spinning in your head, like a song listened to distractedly on the radio. US politics increasingly works like this. Speak through irony, use laughter as an emotional thermometer and see what happens.

A study published in The European Journal of Humor Research put this feeling under the lens, looking at the way Donald Trump and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez use humor in public discourse. Two distant figures by vision, both very comfortable with jokes as a relationship tool.

When laughter stops clarifying and starts testing

Before we get further into the discussion, we need to distinguish between the different forms of laughter, because not all of them arise in the same place nor do they produce the same effects. Satire, for example, works when it looks at power from the outside. Observe, distance yourself, name what already weighs in the air. Laughter comes later and often brings relief. He clarifies. It makes a collective sensation shareable, such as the emotional tiredness that accumulates when the news becomes too much.

Political humor, on the other hand, follows another trajectory: it is born within power, part already oriented. The joke is exploited and launched as a signal. The public’s reaction becomes an indicator. In Trump’s case this mechanism emerges forcefully in his rallies. The jokes come often, at a rapid pace. The audience laughs together, recognizes each other, lowers their emotional defenses. In that space the idea passes more easily, because the body has already said yes, long before the head.

The dark play and that subtle feeling of always being one step ahead

Researcher Beer Prakken calls this mechanism “dark play”, a game that lives in the shadows: the joke comes disguised as a joke. Laughter measures the environment. The message remains. No one feels the need to clarify too much.

This type of humor works as a silent test: the audience’s reaction indicates how far you can go. Laughter signals welcome, while silence signals discomfort. In both cases something is moving. The idea enters the public space and begins to circulate with a naturalness that reassures those who propose it.

The analysis also concerns social media. Trump uses less humor on Twitter than at rallies, and when he does the tone often remains aggressive. Ocasio-Cortez also uses irony, especially online, where the joke accompanies complex topics with immediate and recognizable language.

There is also a passage that the study intercepts well and that in recent years we have seen scroll across our screens almost without paying attention: the memes about Greenland. Jokes, absurd images, modified maps, Trump transformed into an improvised explorer. Everything begins as irony, circulates as a collective game, becomes a shared language. In that light flow, however, something remains. The idea of ​​a territory treated as an object, of a geopolitical gesture told as a gag, enters the public space without weighing too much.

Laughter makes familiar what is not familiar. Memes work as an extension of dark play: images that make you smile, gauge reactions, create complicity and keep a possibility open. Here too the body laughs first, the head comes later. And in the meantime the border shifts a few millimetres, with the naturalness of a shared joke.

The study shows how this process strengthens the sense of belonging to a group. Those who remain outside perceive it immediately. Political humor acts like this, in a soft and everyday way, as happens in personal dynamics when a phrase said in jest says much more than it seems.

This study tells the story of the United States, and describes a language that we recognize very well: laughter as a key to access, an emotional shortcut, a safe space where ideas and reactions can pass.

Political humor enters homes through a screen and becomes part of everyday conversations. Listening to this language helps you understand how common sense is built, one smile at a time. The jokes pass. The emotions remain. And they often drive much more than long speeches.

You might also be interested in: