Dave Bautista's attack on Trump on Jimmy Kimmel's show wasn't just about jokes

If you watched Wednesday night's episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” You've probably seen Dave Bautista's NSFW sketch in which he attacks Donald Trump's tough guy persona.

As funny as it was, I think the value is far greater than a few good laughs.

The Marvel movie star and former World Wrestling Entertainment superstar has endorsed the Harris-Walz campaign after supporting the Biden-Harris campaign in 2020. His latest attack on Trump's bravado is timely, considering the MAGA movement's attempt to woo male voters using far-right podcasters and youth peer pressure.

Charlie Kirk says you're not a man if you vote for Kamala Harris. Dave Bautista disagrees. I guess the choice is yours, America.

From the only logical setting for such a performance – the center of a boxing ring – and with the sound of a rock guitar in the background, Bautista confronted the hypermasculine Id head-on:

Guys, we need to talk. Many men seem to think that Donald Trump is a tough guy. It's not him.

I mean, look at him: He wears more makeup than Dolly Parton. He whines like a baby. And the guy is afraid of birds.

The last line is a reference to this video, for your information. The segment continues with more taunts that seem to get under Trump's skin.

For example: “Look at that stomach. Like a garbage bag full of buttermilk.” Trump enjoys insulting other people's physical assets and has a disturbing obsession with praising his own body. So I can't imagine that this sentence will go over well with him.

There are also lines about Trump's postponement of the Vietnam draft because of bone spurs and his admiration for Vladimir Putin. Bautista concludes by listing the things Trump fears – including ridicule.

“Most of all, he's afraid that real, bloodthirsty American men will find out that he's a weak, chubby toddler,” the actor says, concluding with a flurry of, shall we say: colorful Insults, including a reference to Trump's infamous “Access Hollywood” remark about women.

Check out the clip here:

As I watched the sketch, I was reminded of what experts on authoritarianism—like Ruth Ben-Ghiat—have written about the value of comedy in diminishing dictatorial figures. As Ben-Ghiat wrote in August:

Authoritarians have their own twisted sense of humor. Most of them are sadists, so they enjoy humiliating people, including their sycophantic elite enablers. Benito Mussolini loved to make fun of anti-fascists who had “repented” to reduce their prison sentences; He read their confessions/conversion statements aloud in Parliament and mocked them for capitulating to him.

Trump behaves similarly whether he is humiliating his Republican lackeys on television or mocking a disabled reporter. It's about cultivating cruelty in his followers. Getting them to laugh with him means, at least in that moment, that they won't laugh at him – being ridiculed is what strong men fear most.

It's not lost on me that this kind of mockery could be punished with a penalty in a few months if Trump is elected president. Finally, as president, he ruminated that federal authorities were taking action against “Saturday Night Live” for making fun of him. It's not a stretch to think that Trump, having effectively received broad immunity from conservative Supreme Court justices, would feel more empowered to punish his comedic critics.

That's one reason I think we shouldn't underestimate the value of Bautista's mockery. Ultimately, it will take more than jokes to avert a second Trump presidency. But humor may It could be a powerful way to expose Trump's hypermasculine persona for what it is is: a trick intended to woo broken men.

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