When Trump does make jokes, they tend to be flattering to his self-image. “Why do you want to leave your current job?” Jimmy Fallon of “The Tonight Show” asked him in a mock job interview during the 2016 campaign. “Because,” Trump replied, “I’m sort of looking to make a lot less money.”

Or they are cruel — and not necessarily meant as jokes. “Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over?” he told an audience of police officers last year. “You can take the hand away, okay?”

Why is Trump so humor-averse? There are people who are unfunny because they are witless: Think of Second Lt. Steven Hauk, the Bruno Kirby character in “Good Morning, Vietnam.” And people who are unfunny because they are joyless: the Sgt. Major Dickerson character.

But Trump, I suspect, isn’t unfunny. He’s anti-funny. Humor humanizes.