Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both spoke at the 71st Al Smith dinner in New York City on October 20^th. At the same event some years earlier, George W Bush joked that his wife had given him some advice: “…this is a big deal, George. A lot of important people are going to be there tonight so whatever you do don’t try to be charming, witty, or debonair. Just be yourself.”

The Al Smith dinner is a place for humor. A place where presidential candidates poke fun at themselves. Donald Trump understood this. He just didn’t care.

Early in his speech he said:

“You know, they say when you do this kind of an event you always start out with a self-deprecating joke. Some people think this would be tough for me, but the truth is … I’m actually a modest person. Very modest. It’s true. In fact many people tell me that modesty is perhaps my best quality. Even better than my temperament.”

The jokes about himself stopped there. There rest of the speech was directed at Hillary.

Case in point. Before his final statements, Trump said:

“I don’t want this evening [to end] without saying something nice about my opponent. Hillary has been in Washington a long time. She knows a lot about how government works. And according to her sworn testimony Hillary has forgotten more things than most of us will ever, ever, ever know. That I can tell you.”

It was a good way to sum up the presidential campaign. With all three presidential debates behind them, this would be the last stage they would share before one of them would be crowned President of the United States of America. One a war criminal. The other an asshole.

To say that Donald Trump is an asshole is not to say anything you may not know. But I don’t give him this label to insult. Donald Trump is an authentic asshole and we shouldn’t reject this label when we want to understand what is occurring in the sphere of US politics.

To be an asshole is to be one who breaks with common conceptions of ‘politeness’ and ‘decency’ for no other reason than to satisfy him or herself. Such a description underlies the many Trump statements that have become famous:

Rosie O’Donnell has a “fat, ugly face.”

Mexico is sending us its rapists.

“[John McCain]’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

And of course: “Grab ‘em by the pussy.”

Donald Trump doesn’t play by the rules. He didn’t before he ran for president. And he hasn’t started to play by the rule during his campaign. He doesn’t really play by any rules. According to Adam Curtis’ new documentary film, HyperNormalisation, this is a strategy. A tactic picked up from Putin’s political bag-of-tricks. To confuse your opponent, you should behave unpredictably.

Not only does Trump not play by the rules of decency, but he also doesn’t play by the rules of politics. Nor does he play by the rules of an ethic or ideology. Instead, he operates by rules that governed the Wild West, but without the context of existential threat. Trump imagines himself in a type of social lawlessness.

While Bernie Sanders doesn’t play the political game of taking corporate campaign contributions, you can read him from his ideology. You can predict where he is going. Trump is no Bernie in that respect – among others. Trump is also not a kind of right-wing libertarian. Such a position would be too constraining.

But is Adam Curtis right? Is Trump really a strategic genius? Maybe his assortment of scandals and antics before and after his entry into politics were part of one giant ruse. I, personally, disagree with this assessment. Rather, I think he’s an asshole.

But not an ordinary ‘wannabe’. We all know those wannabe-assholes. Those guys that go a step too far in a conversation in order to be that guy-that-goes-too-far. The person that does that ‘bad’ thing because it’s a ‘bad’ thing. That’s not Trump. He doesn’t care. He just ‘tells it like it is’. Historians looking back at the twenty-tens will see no coincidence in the rise of Trump and the prevalence of #nofilter.

The authenticity of Trump’s asshole-ness is shown yet again in the Al Smith dinner. At this comedic event Trump decided to continue the presidential debate that were supposed to have concluded. According to the campaign cycle calendar this was supposed to be a moment of pleasantry. After all, the debates aren’t really supposed to mean anything. You’re not actually enemies. You are just supposed to have slightly different takes on maintaining global hegemony.

Like I said, Trump doesn’t care. Not because we’re facing two existential threats in the forms of climate change and nuclear annihilation and maybe we shouldn’t be joking. No, he doesn’t really care about that either. (He’s called for more climate change and is pretty cavalier when it comes to weapons of mass destruction.)

Trump just does Trump. And so, instead of making fun of himself like he’s supposed to, he attacked Hillary with ‘jokes’.

Hillary is different. When it was Hillary’s turn at the podium she said ‘I understand I am not known for my sense of humor. That’s why it did take a village to write these jokes.’ Hillary played the game. She swung at Trump and at herself in equal measure. Her jokes were delivered as naturally as her debate responses. It was clear that she’s not a good actress. But she’s still trying to act. And that’s what people don’t like about her.

For Trump, it’s his authentic asshole-ness that a large percentage of the public likes. Regardless of what he says, the base is behind him because they can tell that he means what he says. Where you might hear a crazy person talking, someone else hears a man running for president who is – finally! – genuine.

Clinton joked at the dinner: “I’ve had to listen to Donald for three full debates. And he says I don’t have any stamina. That is four and a half hours. I have now stood next to Donald Trump longer than any of his campaign managers.”

“But Donald, we have so much more in common than, actually, you may realize…. The Republican National Committee isn’t spending a dime to help either one of us.”

Throughout Donald was smiling and laughing. It looked genuine. After all, what he heard Hillary say was: ‘Donald’s the boss and fires who he wants’ and ‘Donald can do what he wants and doesn’t have to cave in to those slimeball politicians’.

But maybe that’s the issue. Maybe what we need to understand is that we don’t all hear the same things. When I say ‘authentic asshole’ you might read it as an attack. Another person can read it as a badge of honor.

Right now, in America – and increasingly around the globe – people are getting tired of hearing something they know isn’t real. They know it isn’t real because they’ve heard it before. Populism is on the rise from both the political left and right partially because people are hearing some form of authenticity. It doesn’t have to be factually accurate, just consistent with the person’s actual beliefs. But when people hear authenticity, elite institutions hear obstinacy. Obstinacy is a threat because politicians are supposed to bend to the will of the elite institutions.

For Trump, his authenticity makes him unpredictable to elites. His asshole-ness makes him undesirable to the left.

However, in an odd turn of events I found myself agreeing with Trump when, in response to Clinton during a debate, he turned to her and said: ‘You’re the puppet.’

He’s an asshole, but an authentic one. And though it rarely happens, this time he was also factually accurate.

Our job is to fight both the assholes and the puppets.

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