Trump’s inauguration speech was, unsurprisingly, surreal. “I was saved by God to make America great again.” With those words, Donald J. Trump kicked off his second term, sounding like a cross between Kevin Spacey and Homelander: A narcissistic sycophant believing himself to be the pre-ordained saviour of the nation. But as the applause and jeers settled, one thing became clear. Trump 2.0 isn’t just about governing – he’s about performing. In this era of political absurdity, the biggest question isn’t what he’ll do next, but where the line between satire and reality lies.

“Donald J. Trump kicked off his second term sounding like a cross between Kevin Spacey and Homelander”

Within 30 minutes of Trump’s inauguration, the White House website brandished some new changes. Immediately, you are thrust into a 30-second long video of Trump, with all the fighter jets, American flags, and eagles you could imagine. Three words underscore the page: “America is Back”.

The hallmark of the land of the free, the US Constitution, has always been clearly accessible on the White House website. Now, at the time of writing, you will be greeted with: 404 Page Not Found. This admission, however, is only the tip of the iceberg for a revitalised Trump.

Look no further than one of his first Executive Orders as the 47th President of the United States. Claiming to defend women from “gender ideology and extremism” and “restoring biological truth”, the US government now officially defines a male as “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.” I may be no doctor, but surely that means everyone is a woman? Trump may have accidentally found a solution to gender equality.

From the White House website’s unapologetic facelift to executive orders that feel more like SNL skits, Trump’s second term is confusing governance with spectacle.

Yet, admittedly, I do love political satire. In the bureaucratic misery of it all, comedy does have an important place in giving a cold, sobering aspect of social life warmth. It can be a way to engage people oftentimes disaffected from politics, giving them a space to come together. This can, and has, brought together people in times of great polarisation. Spitting Image took the 1980s and 90s by storm in Britain, creating memorable caricatures of senior political figures from Gorbachev to Thatcher.

“In the bureaucratic misery of it all, comedy does have an important place”

For all their wacky faces, however, there was a point to be made, a social commentary that had an overarching message. It may have been absurd, but its messaging served a purpose. That purpose was illuminating the injustices of reality for what they are – plainly and hilariously. The satire we are watching unfold in front of our eyes holds some of these qualities, but I truly cannot see a punchline. No meta-commentary or unique angle on politics, just spectacle.

Political absurdity has become so normalized that comedians are left scrambling to outdo the ridiculousness of real life events. You can’t mock what’s already a mockery, leaving satire in the unenviable position of competing with the 24 hour news cycle for shock value. But maybe the reason politics feels like satire is because satire, at its core, holds up a distorted mirror to society, exaggerating flaws for comedic effect. And right now, reality itself feels like it’s been cranked up to eleven.

“You can’t mock what’s already a mockery”

Outside of the USA, the far-right German AfD Party recently claimed Hitler was a communist on a talk with Elon Musk hosted on his platform, X. This is an act of blatant nonsensical historical revisionism, one that comes amidst the Party’s push towards remigration (technical code for racially motivated mass deportation schemes). The shock factor of their most wild actions distract from the AfD’s broader agenda, the systematic erosion of democratic norms and the implementation of xenophobic policies cloaked in bureaucratic jargon. By fixating public discourse on outrageous distortions of history, the AfD deflects attention from the slow normalization of extremist rhetoric, repackaged in sanitized language to make radical measures, such as ‘remigration’, seem palatable.

The direction politics has been headed for a while now is towards a realisation that reality has become satire. This didn’t start with Trump – representative democracy always demands an element of performance. When this performance translates into a darker underbelly of politics, however, the parody begins to sour. More than just the exaggerated, distinctive gestures of the charismatic leader, policy has transfigured into a shell of what it can be. Politics has and can be transformative, tangibly improving people’s lives. If we continue down this rabbit hole, however, we might not see light at the other side.

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