Donald Trump’s silent despotism

A video from yesterday has gone viral, a sensational clip in which Trump flits about like a puppet, inaugurating the refurbishment of the White House helipad with the usual pride of a property developer and builder, around the ceremonial ribbon, two dozen jubilant workers in regulation yellow high-vis vests and a couple of officials in grey are crowded together; the scene is decidedly surreal; the president moves his lips but nothing can be heard – the audio has been cut by the broadcaster in protest at the exclusion of certain publications from the press pool covering the presidency, Trump, in fact, considers them hostile and ‘fake’; and instead of the little speech, there is a roll of drums in protest. Thus, the silenced despotism, the boycotted boycott, the censored censorship, provide the parodic little scene Orwell spoke of when he credited Chaplin’s ‘The Great Dictator’ with showing that tyrants are, in reality, nothing but worms. The expressions on the courtiers’ faces in the video are priceless: the silent interplay of the enormous scissors cutting the ribbon amidst a ballet of hands grasping at them; the king’s lips moving in vain; the applause of convenience rewarding indistinguishable phrases, drowned out by the drumming soundtrack as a sign of parody and scorn.

The Trump presidency is the greatest show on earth, as Barnum’s Circus used to describe itself: crowds, noise, chaos, orchestrated disorder, instinct, freaks, a touch of madness, a mix of grotesque politics, hyper-television and Greco-Roman wrestling. Trump certainly has a sense of humour; one need only think of when, whilst receiving Mamdani in the Oval Office, he suggested that Mamdani reply to a journalist who asked whether he still considered the president a fascist: ‘Tell him yes, come on, it’s easier’. His talent for comic surrealism, in the style of Monty Python, lies in repetition, improvisation, the element of surprise, and sketches that flow into one another; and from this perspective, Trump towers over the global stage. His exaggerated behaviour forces those who view him seriously into the role of the conformist, prim and proper figure.

The absurd and farcical state of this permanent ‘Barnum’ is the only semantic substance standing between us and the apocalyptic destruction of the world’s oldest constitutional democracy. He attempts to silence the press and television, and even revokes correspondents’ press passes; however, he is unlikely to succeed, as there is a judge who will prevent him from doing so. Moreover, his arrogance will likely elicit derision and a united boycott from all news publishers, including the right-leaning Fox. Yet the fact that he cannot succeed does not prevent him from trying to infuse the ordinary and extraordinary wooden language of institutions with the thrill of the comic, the absurd, the incredible, so if instinct tells him, the naked king, to stage a ballroom and then a triumphal arch stuffed like a bonbon with drones, snipers and explosives, there you have it: the tailor-made garment that clothes the grotesque king and allows him to entertain the powerful and the people for the next two or three hours.