Guilfoyle, resembling a send-up of Evita Peron, doubled down on the AYFKM oversell of her current boss and possible future father-in-law: “He built the greatest economy the world has ever known,” she said, at a time of double-digit unemployment. “America, it’s all on the line,” she added. “President Trump believes in you, he emancipates and lifts you up to live your American dream.”

Such is the rhetoric of recently transformed autocracies, not mature republics.

I am never the target audience for this stuff, and it wouldn’t be the first time I have misjudged the public appetite for Trump’s shtick. But populism has a long history of making promises rarely deliverable by good ideas, let alone cronyist, l’etat c’est moi, big-government protectionism.

Donald Trump is campaigning against an American carnage he vowed four years ago to reverse. He’s running against socialism after jacking up federal spending in three years as much Barack Obama did in eight. And he’s telling the same jokes as king that he killed with as jester. Good management requires more than cracking wise, promoting sycophancy, and seeking scapegoats. And Americans have a little bit more on their plate right now than resentment toward coastal cancel culture and “cosmopolitan elites.” As a fellow eccentric ideologically promiscuous entertainer once sang, that joke isn’t funny anymore.