Have you ever noticed that Donald Trump never laughs? I used to worry that in spite of getting his way most of the time, Trump wasn’t having much fun. Sure, he was trying. But it was almost as if he didn’t know how.

Trump did tell a lot of “jokes”. For example, after he publicly invited Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails (and they did), he insisted he had been joking. I personally didn’t see the humor in that, but okay. Then, he suggested people treat Covid by injecting themselves with disinfectants. If anybody had tried that, they would probably have died. When reporters were alarmed at this, he claimed he had only been taunting them with sarcasm.

In 2017, Trump told police, “Don’t be too nice” when making arrests and that they could whack suspects’ heads against the patrol car’s door frame when guiding them into the back seat. He later insisted this was obviously “a joke”.

I saw Trump speak in Iowa City when he first campaigned for president. Everybody in the crowd seemed polite and attentive. This was Iowa after all. Then out of the blue, he said if we saw anybody protesting to “knock the hell out of them” and he’d pay the legal fees. Was he serious? Nope. Another of his jokes. But who jokes this much about hurting people?

Dictators. Who can forget Joseph Stalin’s famous joke, “Death solves all problems. No man, no problem”? That was a real knee slapper—except for the mass executions. Then there was Uganda’s dictator, Idi Amin who quipped he eats human flesh “because it is more salty than leopard meat.” Was it true? You could probably take that with a grain of…well, you know. North Korea’s Kim Jong-il came up with the one-liner that famines are “a good way to get rid of the lazy.” (North Korea’s version of DOGE?)

In 2020, when Trump hinted to the people of North Carolina they should vote for him “twice”, his press secretary claimed Trump had been “clearly joking.” And the year before when he announced, “Maybe I’ll just stay in office forever,” he mocked his critics for having “no sense of humor.”

Sure, it’s a sign of power when you can get away with dismantling your government and crashing the economy. But you’re not a real dictator until the free press goes along with every crazy thing you can think of. Hattian immigrants are eating our pets. Gosh, that’s terrible, sir. California is having electricity blackouts every week. Not one reporter challenged this obvious lie. When Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker that he brought down the price of gasoline to $2/gallon, she let it slide as if it was actually true. He claimed eggs are now 94 percent cheaper—which would make them 38 cents a dozen. Now Trump tells us his tariffs are making Americans rich and still nobody has the nerve to say what every economist knows—that no country can tax another country and that Americans are paying the tariffs.

Trump must be tickled that his press corps have become so tame. He may be scowling on the outside. But on the inside, you know Trump is finally laughing his head off.