The man voted "Least Edible" by Cannibal Magazine

-six years in a row. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

-A-- And I know, I honestly know

that the prospect of talking about Trump yet again

feels exhausting.

We're all so tired of him, every room in America

should have a sign on the wall that counts

the number of minutes that it's been

since someone brought up his fucking name.

-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING) -But-- But that is the thing.

Trump's presidency is like one of his handshakes.

It pulls you in, whether you like it or not.

He's had so many terrible moments this year,

you probably forgot about many of them.

Remember when he creepily told the French president's wife

-that she was in good shape? -(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

Or-- Or when his tacky golf resort was touted

on the States Department website?

Or, when he shoved the prime minister

of Montenegro out of the way, at a NATO event.

Look how proud of himself he is!

-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING) -Look how proud he is!

You should at least have to know that Montenegro is a country

before making a move that says, "Suck it, Montenegro."

And there were also quieter but no less alarming moments

like when he explained how hard he's been fighting

to bring "clean coal" back without appearing to understand

what that actually is.

It's just been announced

that a second brand new coal mine

where they're going to take out clean coal,

meaning they're taking out coal,

-they're gonna clean it, -(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

is opening in the state of Pennsylvania.

-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING) -Listen, is it possible

that Trump is well-versed in and is referring to

flue gas desulfurization, fluidized bed combustion,

and selective catalytic reduction?

Sure, it's possible,

but let's agree it's considerably more likely

that he thinks you just take a bunch of coal

and scrub-a-dub it with a big ol' sponge.

-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING) -Oh, yeah, that's right.

I'm saying the president fundamentally doesn't understand

what he's talking about, and you know what that means.

-We got him! -(AIR HORN BLARING)

-♪ (PRESIDENTIAL THEME SONG PLAYING) ♪ -We got him! We got him!

I got him-- wha-- I didn't get him?

-Did I not get him? -♪ (MUSIC FLUBS OUT) ♪

I thought-- I thought-- I thought we got him.

I thought-- I thought we got him that time.

Well, that's fair-- okay.

What? You think I don't hate myself, too? Alright!

-(AUDIENCE CHEERING) -The point is--

The point is tonight... let's pull back

from the daily Trump-induced chaos

and take a look at the norms that his presidency

has violated, and not the obvious ones,

like the fact that he never released his tax returns,

or that his own daughter and son-in-law

work in the White House, although, admittedly,

I am using the word "work" there so generously

that I should be able to deduct it

as a charitable donation on my taxes.

Or-- Or that instead of putting his assets

into a blind trust to help reduce conflicts of interest,

he simply showed America

that he has many large stacks of paper,

presumable containing the sentence

"I can't believe I'm getting away with this,"

printed 750,000 times.

No, instead, we're going to talk about Trump's assault

on something even more basic, the norms governing

how our leaders engage with us,

and how in turn, that affects the way

that we engage with one another.

It's why even the notion of "getting him"

can feel so hopelessly futile.

And let's first stipulate that it definitely doesn't help

that so often what Trump says is complete nonsense.

We often read transcripts of Trump's speeches,

and it's something that everyone should actually do

once in a while, because when you strip away

his blindly confident entertaining delivery

and just read his words, it is staggering

how incoherent he is.

Here is a word-for-word reading of a speech

where he talked about the Iran nuclear deal.

(MONOTONE VOICE READS ON-SCREEN TEXT)

-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING) -(READING CONTINUES)

-(AUDIENCE CACKLING) -Holy shit.

That is not a functional use of language,

that is a drunk driver crashing a pick-up truck

-full of alphabet soup. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

Trump's actual speech patterns

sound like when you write a long text

by choosing only the predictive text

your iPhone suggests for you.

Seriously, we wrote a message like that,

starting with the words, "the nuclear,"

and here is what we got.

(MONOTONE VOICE READS ON-SCREEN TEXT)

-(AUDIENCE CACKLING) -That makes exactly as much,

and potentially more sense, then Trump's speech

about the Iran nuclear deal, meaning an iPhone

would be a more coherent president of the United States.

But with Trump, we are familiar enough

with his speech patterns that you get the basic gist

of what he's trying to say.

The real damage isn't in how he says things,

but from three key techniques that he uses to insulate himself

from criticism and consequence.

And if we are not extremely careful,

all three could have serious impacts

that far outlast his presidency,

and let's start with the first one.

Delegitimizing the media.

Now, Trump has been attacking the press

since he declared his candidacy,

and in a broader sense, he's been waging war

on the very concept of truth

ever since he first turned to his mom and said,

"Dada," and she said, "No, I'm mama,"

and he said, "Fake news," and shit his pants.

-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING) -Now--

the difference now is, he's crying fake news

as President of the United States,

and he is openly proud of it,

to the point that he recently tried to take ownership

of the term itself.

The media is... is-- really the word--

I think one of the greatest of all terms

I've come up with is "fake."

I guess other people have used it perhaps

over the years, but I've never noticed it.

-(AUDIENCE GROANING) -He just took credit

for inventing the term "fake news,"

which, for the record, he did not,

meaning what he just said

was technically "fake" fake "news" news.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

A-- And you can imagine him saying, "Well,

I'm not the first politician to criticize the press.

What about Hillary Clinton?

What about Barack Obama?

What about Bernie Sanders?

And that actually brings us to Trump's second technique,

something called "whataboutism."

It's the practice of changing the subject

to someone else's perceived wrongdoing.

Now, Trump does this all the time,

most famously when he was asked

why he hadn't forcefully condemned the neo-Nazis

in Charlottesville, and this was his response...

What about the alt-left that came charging

at the-- as you say, the alt-right?

Do they have any semblance of guilt?

What about the fact they came charging--

that they came charging with clubs in their hands,

swinging clubs?

Do they have any... problem?

Well, actually, no, because a Nazi killing someone

with a car is so heinous,

any other issues that might be up for debate,

under any other circumstances, kind of have to wait their turn.

You can be wearing Crocs with socks,

but if you're using those socked-Crocs

to kick Hitler in the balls, do you know what?

I'm suddenly not so fucking focused

-on the footwear. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

Now-- Now this technique of saying "what about..."

is actually an old Soviet propaganda tool,

and the reason it is dangerous is because it implies

that all actions, regardless of context,

share a moral equivalency, and since nobody is perfect,

all criticism is hypocritical

and everybody should do whatever they want.

It is a depressingly effective tool,

which is why, on Trump's favorite network,

you hear it all the time.

The mainstream media focused on the Trump campaign

and allegations of collusion with the Russians.

But what about the Democrat's possible ties to Moscow?

FEMALE ANCHOR: Former national security adviser

General Michael Flynn,

investigated for his private meeting with Russia,

but what about Hillary Clinton?

The media wants to call into question the credibility,

uh, and the trustworthiness of this administration, uh,

but what about Benghazi? What about the blatant lies

that the Obama administration told us?

What about the fact that Ben Rhodes bragged

about lying to the media and the public

-about the Iran deal? -HANNITY: Great point.

What about the fact that Jonathan Gruber

basically said the American people were stupid?

Okay, stop, stop, stop, because here is the thing,

none of the errors those people may have made in the past

excuse the Trump administration's actions.

A defense attorney could not stand up in court and say,

"Maybe my client did murder those people,

but I ask you this... What about Jeffrey Dahmer?

-What about Al Capone? -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

What about the guy from the Silence of the Lambs?

I rest my case here, people. I rest my case."

The problem with whataboutism is it doesn't actually

solve a problem or win an argument.

The point is just to muddy the waters

which can make the other side mad,

and that actually brings us to Trump's

third technique... trolling.

Now trolling itself has been around for years.

It's basically 80% of what happens on the internet.

It's-- it's when a YouTube commenter

says something willfully provocative

like saying, "I've aged like an apple core in a dumpster."

or that I "look like a fucking pickle with glasses."

Now, it doesn't matter whether they mean any of that,

the point is just to get a reaction

and to hurt my feelings which, by the way,

it absolutely does.

But-- But Trump... Trump may well be the first ever troll

to be elected president. And that's right,

I said elected.

Remember tenth president, Sprinkles Fuzzwizard?

He assumed office after William Henry Harrison died

and if you're thinking, "Hold on,

Sprinkles Fuzzwizard was not America's tenth president"...

Really?

Who was America's tenth president?

Exactly. Let's assume I'm right.

The point is, as a troll, Trump often does things

that have no effect other than

to piss off his perceived enemies.

Like when he tweeted this wrestling GIF

of himself body slamming CNN,

or attacked Mika Brzezinksi by saying she was,

"bleeding badly from a face-lift,"

or, as we mentioned earlier tonight,

called a leader with nuclear weapons

"short and fat."

And Trump even once retweeted a claim

that he was the most superior troll

on the whole of Twitter, calling it

"a great compliment."

Which it is not, because sometimes

when you do something that makes a lot of people mad,

it's because, and bear with me here,

-you're a dick. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

If you-- If you sneak into someone's house

and urinate in every heating vent

and they get mad at you, you're not an epic troll