Pam Bondi’s recent appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee was so combative as to border on the absurd. In this week’s episode of Saturday Night Live, Amy Poehler and Tina Fey took it over the top. That kind of satire may be just what we need to expose the senselessness of the Trump administration.
During the cold open on SNL, Poehler’s Bondi told the Senate panel that she spells her name with an “i” because “I ain’t going to answer any of your questions.” The sketch parodied the U.S. Attorney General’s actual performance, in which she used ad hominem attacks against the senators rather than respond to inquiries. As Poehler stated, “Before I don’t answer your questions, I’d like to insult you personally.” That joke hit close to home for an attorney general who seemed determined to make a mockery of congressional oversight.
Fey then joined the sketch as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, wearing a baseball cap and wielding a machine gun. When asked why she would laugh at the last scene of Old Yeller, the classic film in which a dog gets shot, Fey responded, “Dogs don’t just get shot. Heroes shoot them.” The joke was a reference to Noem’s admission in her autobiography that she shot and killed an 18-month old dog named Cricket. The bit landed because of the ruthlessness with which Noem performs her duties in immigration enforcement.
The sketch was a good reminder that one of the most powerful weapons against an authoritarian is humor. After all, one of the greatest threats to Nazi leaders was the popularity of Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 comedy film that poked fun at Hitler, The Great Dictator.
Historian Timothy Snyder has explained that satire can expose the hypocrisy of an authoritarian leader. When a tyrant makes obviously false claims, we can accept or reject them. Or we can laugh at them. Mockery brings attention to lies in ways that combative argument sometimes cannot. Before the fall of the Iron Curtain, Eastern Europeans used humor to undermine communists. In Turkey, protesters use memes and jokes to point out the absurdity of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s propaganda. Authoritarians love a good fight, but they hate to be humiliated.
Here in the United States, laughter can be a powerful force. Political cartoonists like Thomas Nast, Patrick Oliphant, and Herbert Block lampooned the leaders of their times. As far back as the 1870s, Nast shaped public opinion regarding the corruption of Boss Tweed and the Tammany Hall political machine with his cartoons in Harper’s Weekly. Earlier this year, Ann Telnaes submitted to her editors at the Washington Post a cartoon depicting media and tech titans laying bags of money at the feet of a golden statue of Trump. Among the pictured gift bearers was Jeff Bezos, owner of the Post and Amazon. Telnaes resigned when editors refused to publish the drawing, apparently fearing repercussions from the president or their boss. Such is the power of a cartoon.
Humor works when it reflects truth and elevates it to its absurd conclusion. In addition, comedy sketches and viral posts reach a broader audience than ordinary political commentary. The viewers watching SNL are likely a different audience than Meet the Press. Winning over hearts and minds requires reaching people where they are.
Today, the most vicious mockery often lives online. The Trump White House understands the power of humor, at least cruel humor. Trump’s administration has used trolling and memes to attack political opponents. By belittling his targets, Trump encourages others to join in on the sneers. The official X account of Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently posted a video of a protester facedown and handcuffed on a flatbed handcart with the words, “PORTLAND – Refuse to walk? We’ll give you a ride.” It’s funny only if you enjoy watching others suffer.
As historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat explains:
Authoritarians do have their own twisted sense of humor. Most of them are sadists, so they enjoy humiliating people, including their sycophantic enablers. Benito Mussolini loved to make fun of anti-fascists who had “repented” to reduce their prison sentences; he would read their confession/conversion statements out loud in Parliament, mocking them for having capitulated to him.
Trump behaves similarly, whether he is humiliating his GOP lackeys on television or mocking a disabled reporter. The point is to cultivate cruelty in his followers. Getting them to laugh with him means, at least in that moment, that they are not laughing at him — being ridiculed is the thing strongmen most fear.
Laughing at the tyrant, of course, undermines his authority. Humor reveals his weaknesses and attacks his vulnerabilities. When the president rages that “radical leftists” are taking over the streets of Portland and Chicago, images of protesters wearing chicken suits create a powerful visual rebuttal.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has taken to mimicking Trump on social media. Many of Newsom’s posts use Trump’s own all-caps style, such as one regarding redistricting that stated “DONALD ‘TACO’ TRUMP, AS MANY CALL HIM, ‘MISSED’ THE DEADLINE!!! CALIFORNIA WILL NOW DRAW NEW, MORE ‘BEAUTIFUL MAPS,’ THEY WILL BE HISTORIC AS THEY WILL END THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY (DEMS TAKE BACK THE HOUSE!). BIG PRESS CONFERENCE THIS WEEK WITH POWERFUL DEMS AND GAVIN NEWSOM — YOUR FAVORITE GOVERNOR — THAT WILL BE DEVASTATING FOR ‘MAGA.’ THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! — GN.” A recent Newsom post used an AI-generated image of Trump as Marie Antoinette, and the words “NO HEALTH CARE FOR THE STUPID PEASANTS, BUT LOOK AT THE QUEEN’S GOLDEN OFFICE!! (GOLDEN BIDET NOT PICTURED).” Making fun of Trump on social media is a risky move for a politician who might himself want to run for president, but Newsom is betting that mockery is the best way to expose the lunacy of Trump’s words and actions.
When Fey portrayed Sarah Palin, running mate to John McCain during the 2008 presidential campaign, she exposed the VP candidate as inexperienced and unprepared to govern. Let’s hope her rendering of Noem can have the same effect.
