A UNIFIED THEORY OF TRUMP TROLLING:

Yesterday, in my Sunday Smiles essay, I mused about Trump’s “own the libs” style of trolling.

It drives the liberals nuts, which can be very entertaining to watch, but I think a lot of MAGA converts who were initially reluctant to support Trump for cultural reasons are made extremely uncomfortable by his constantly trolling liberals. . . .

What’s the point, they wonder. Is it presidential? Doesn’t Trump have more important things to do? Is it unnecessarily provocative?

Obviously, what set off my musings was the recent controversy about Trump’s tweet in which he put up an AI-generated image of himself in Papal garb. Liberals went insane. Again.

A year or two ago, these same people applauded when the FBI labeled traditional Catholics “domestic terrorists,” regularly call priests pedophiles (I could write essay after essay about the fact that government-employed public school teachers abuse more children in any given year than priests did in 70 years and liberals work assiduously to prevent kids escaping the public schools), and bash the Church due to its pro-natalism and anti-gender-ideology stances.

But whatever. . . . Trump’s greatest allies are his opposition, who overreact to everything he does and go to ridiculous extremes because he violates the norms they claim (and often do) hold so dear. Liberals will go to the mat to defend wife-beating, human-trafficking MS-13 members rather than agree with Trump on anything, and that reveals them to be insane. . . . Trolling the liberals keeps his base excited, not so much because they love the trolls–some do, some don’t–but we can all unify in defending Trump against the insane attacks. The hypocrisy of the left keeps getting exposed, and the trolling Trump does keep the liberals in a perpetual state of lighting their hair on fire.

Also, it’s funny. And it’s not just about firing up the base. The left has ruled through an unjustified sense of entitlements, and an unearned moral and intellectual deference. Treating them like Groucho treated Margaret Dumont is a very effective way of undermining those characteristics, and of demoralizing the left. He’s constantly hitting them with some variant of Cousin Vinnie’s “You was serious about that?” leavened with doses of “Everything that guy just said is bullshit.”

And you know, he’s loud, he’s uncouth, but everyone is always rooting for Cousin Vinnie.