Trolling as Policy

By Abe Greenwald

Monday, March 17, 2025

 

At one time, the intransitive verb troll was understood foremost to mean, as Merriam-Webster has it, “to fish by trailing a lure or baited hook from a moving boat.” Today, excepting fishermen, we broadly understand trolling to mean something like… to irritate one’s foe. Using that definition, we can say that American politicians have been trolling their opponents and enemies since long before Donald Trump entered, and changed, politics. And ever since Trump announced his 2016 run for president, our politics has become a lot more trolly. But a couple of stories exemplify a newer and more unfortunate trolling trend introduced by Trump and growing among those on the Trump-loyal right: The trolling is threatening to overtake the politics altogether.

 

Today at 12:35 a.m. Trump posted on Truth Social: "The 'Pardons' that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen." He asserted that Biden was unaware of the pardons to which is name was affixed, and he went on to call Biden “Crooked” and the “Worst President in the History of our Country.”

 

Also today, five Minnesota state senators are introducing a bill that aims to officially and legally make Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) a mental illness. According to the bill, TDS sufferers might experience "Trump-induced general hysteria, which produces an inability to distinguish between legitimate policy differences and signs of psychic pathology in President Donald J. Trump's behavior."

 

Legitimate policy, huh? This is the literal transformation of policymaking into trolling.

 

For all we know, these political burlesques could prove to be popular, which would make them more frightening and more frequent. So far, at least, Trump’s ramped up trolling hasn’t cut into his momentum in the polls. According to an NBC News poll released this weekend, more Americans say the country is on the right track than at any point since 2004.

 

The Democrats, of course, are on their own trolling journey. But they’re not in power, so their trolling remains just that: trolling. They call Trump a liar and have taken to using a lot of curses when mentioning him.

 

Note that when Democrats are in power, they don’t waste this kind of time trying to rub it in. They go straight at their targets and, to the contrary, attempt to give their own policy extremism the appearance of unquestionable legitimacy.

 

Trump and his crowd seem to enjoy looking illegitimate. Consider how Elon Musk behaves. The pink-slip email questionnaires sent to federal workers, the social-media boasts about ramping up lay-offs, DOGE’s wild and sloppy-seeming mistakes—the trolling, at least some of the time, is clearly the point.

 

Speaking of Musk, didn’t Trump tap him to reduce waste? At some point today, Minnesotan tax dollars will be spent on considering legislation that makes Trump-hatred an illness. And at some point down the line, tax dollars will be spent on investigating and adjudicating the non-scandal of Biden’s autopen. Trump has already said it’s a matter for the courts to take up.

 

To some extent, the hijinks and the craving for illegitimacy are understandable. The failure and ultimate fraudulence of what was portrayed as legitimate American politics over the past four years are profound. The Biden administration didn’t strengthen political norms. It made a mockery of them. So, too, did the Democrats more broadly in covering up Biden’s decline and Kamala’s Harris’s vacuity. They lowered the bar to the very bottom, and there are more than a few Americans who can no longer even spot it.

 

MAGA adherents also love to welcome and co-opt the insults that the left throws their way. When Hillary Clinton described Trump-supporters as “deplorables,” they wore the title proudly. And, of course, they won.

 

Which brings us back to the original definition of troll: “to fish by trailing a lure or baited hook.” Trump and his followers are trolling in both senses of the word. They’re infuriating their enemies and hoping to catch them. Because Trump Derangement Syndrome, while not a mental illness, can be a debilitating political ailment. All these stunts are bait.