When it comes to political comedy or satire, the left only tolerates it from their side. As soon as someone makes a joke they don’t like, they bring out the cancel culture mob. This phenomenon is easily observable when the leftist media tries to cover President Donald Trump, which is what Ali Velshi did on Monday’s episode of The 11th Hour on MS NOW when he and Vox correspondent Zack Beauchamp took issue with Trump joking about running for president a fourth time at his recent rallies and the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
“It's a joke, but it's not a joke,” Velshi said, putting on his frowny face.
Beauchamp answered by accusing Trump of using jokes to insert his sinister agenda into the political mainstream:
I mean, this is a way in which something that was once in the mainstream or, sorry, excuse me, once out of the mainstream of politics is taken into it, right? You repeat it so many times as a joke. It's, 'oh, no, I couldn't possibly be serious about this. I would never do this.' And then it moves into - it becomes a normalized thing for people to accustom themselves to.
He said Trump was essentially playing footsie with a presidential run as a way to normalize an unconstitutional act in the public’s minds. And yet, he admitted Trump had been favoring the not-running side:
Now, in this case, I actually don't think it's working.
It's very interesting, right? Because Trump has been doing this 2028 trial balloon for a while, and a bunch of people in his own party have already come out and said they don't believe it could happen, like they don't believe it's Constitutional because it obviously isn't, right?
And even Trump has said at times, 'I don't think I'm going to do it.'
So part of me thinks that even he recognizes that this is a ridiculous gambit, given, like, what the Constitution says. The text is very clear.
So, which is it? Is Trump some evil genius, lowering the people’s guards with humor so he can slip in an unconstitutional third term, or was he joking, which was the whole point of the WHCD?
“He thinks that he should be able to do whatever he wants,” Beauchamp said. “And so he likes the idea of being able to say, 'I can do this, I can run again. And what are you going to do? Who's going to tell me I can't?'”
If Trump likes the idea of being able to say something, that’s just the First Amendment. Trump can say anything he likes with his freedom of speech, but that doesn’t mean he’ll do everything he says. Trump often doesn’t do the things he threatens to do in a serious context. And this line about running again in 2028 definitely wasn’t exactly in a serious context.
Sometimes it can be hard to tell if Trump is being earnest. This was not one of those times. So, how should the media respond to this? They should just laugh it off and not let Trump get under their skin so easily.
The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:
MS NOW's The 11th Hour
7/27/26
11:08:00 p.m. Eastern(...)
ALI VELSHI: And for his part, Trump is showing little interest in convincing anyone of anything. His efforts are all aimed at seizing and holding on to power.
[Cut to first video]
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I'm a little bit upset because in two and a half years you may have a different president. May.
[Cut to second video]
TRUMP: I won three times. Now I'm going to do it again. Thank you. I'm gonna do it. Should be easy.
[Cut back to live]
VELSHI: Joining me is Zack Beauchamp. He's a senior correspondent at Vox. He's the author of The Reactionary Spirit: How America's Most Insidious Political Traditions have Swept the World. Zack, thanks for being with us.
You know, when you saw Donald Trump put that 2020 hat on, it was at the White House Correspondents Dinner redo on Friday night. He claimed he was joking.
But, you know, he sells that merchandise. It's a thing people wear. I've seen people with that hat and carrying those signs, Trump 2028, which, according to his math, would be four elections, I think, that he's won because he's won three, he said.
It's a joke, but it's not a joke.
ZACK BEAUCHAMP: Right. I mean, this is a way in which something that was once in the mainstream or, sorry, excuse me, once out of the mainstream of politics is taken into it, right?
You repeat it so many times as a joke. It's, 'oh, no, I couldn't possibly be serious about this. I would never do this.'
And then it moves into - it becomes a normalized thing for people to accustom themselves to.
Now, in this case, I actually don't think it's working. It's very interesting, right?
Because Trump has been doing this 2028 trial balloon for a while, and a bunch of people in his own party have already come out and said they don't believe it could happen, like they don't believe it's Constitutional because it obviously isn't, right?
And even Trump has said at times, 'I don't think I'm going to do it.'
So part of me thinks that even he recognizes that this is a ridiculous gambit, given, like, what the Constitution says. The text is very clear.
On the other hand, I think he really would like to win again, right? He thinks that he should be able to do whatever he wants.
And so, he likes the idea of being able to say, 'I can do this, I can run again. And what are you going to do? Who's going to tell me I can't?'
Right? And so it's really interesting--
[Crosstalk]
VELSHI: So, he's got - but he's got the same numbers - he's got the same numbers everybody else does, right?
He's running in the mid to low 30s in terms of popularity, which is not uninteresting given that a third of Americans don't vote.
I mean that's - mathematically, Donald Trump could win an election.
But all the things he's doing right now aren't the actions of somebody who's trying to win an election. The gerrymandering, the SAVE America Act, the mail-in ballots, that's all stuff that's designed to keep people who you think don't vote for you from voting for you--
BEAUCHAMP: No, it's--
VELSHI: --or for voting for somebody else.
BEAUCHAMP: --it's a totally bizarre strategy, right? Because he could be doing things that could help shave on the margins.
Like, if you look at authoritarians in other countries in similar circumstances, they don't just try to throw the election. What they do is they try to run up the vote as much as they can in legitimate ways, and supplement it through the things that might rightly be called cheating, right? Gerrymandering, as you just mentioned, trying to disqualify people from the ballot, et cetera.
Trump is, is like, it's like he's only interested in half of that formula. Because the policies that he's pursuing on, like a sort of substantive level, are tanking his approval rating.
