Seeing Trump and his acolytes lose so spectacularly is powerful schadenfreude for millions across the globe

The last couple of days have been very bad for Donald Trump. Of course, in Trump’s usual style, he is denying that the Republican loss at the midterms has anything to do with him – but we all know it does. While I fear the Democrats will not use this decisive moment to exercise some ambition and take meaningful action, the goings-on of the last couple of days have been undeniably fun to watch.Seeing so many conservatives lose in such a spectacular way has blessed millions across the globe with powerful schadenfreude. It is a much needed moment of relief, an experience of positivity to rejuvenate our ailing nervous systems (or whatever biology does). Sometimes you just need to see some terrible people have a terrible time. For me, it’s just been the icing on a cake I’ve been dining out on for the last couple of months: watching Trump supporters watch Trump describing other men’s bodies in detail.I’m talking about the hardcore Donald Trump fans, the ones dedicated enough to still place themselves on the public-facing side of his campaign. The ones doing the real work: standing behind him on international television. They are the ones who love him the most. These hard-working, hardline, gun-toting, red-blooded American men and women (the two genders) were recently forced to stand behind Trump and smile and applaud as he described Republican senator John Husted in ways that would not be out of place in a Heated Rivalry novel:“I examined his ass … and then I looked at his shoulders. I looked at his feet. I looked at his hand. I looked at his jawline. Studied him. He’s got a jawline.”In even more wonderful news, in this instance, sex did not sell – Trump’s man crush suffered a crushing defeat in the midterms. But Trump is still president, and we don’t know where things will go from here. We have to find humour where we can in this world, and to me, the fact that in order for these Maga people to stand strong behind their man, they must appear to enjoy him sexually objectifying strong men, is really funny. It couldn’t be more satisfying. These are people who have spent years insisting on the narrowest, straightest possible definition of masculinity. They have the strongest opinions about what a man is, how a man should behave, what he should wear, who he should love, and presumably how much interest he should or should not show in another man’s juicy ass.At a rally in Oklahoma last month, these same people stood there as Trump randomly talked about “big, strong, handsome Oklahoma studs” he had seen outside, and brought a couple of them on stage to examine, as if they were horses. I like to imagine his supporters being privately mortified, and questioning everything about themselves as they stood there. And the tests of their loyalty just keep getting better: in addition to his ongoing tour of man-meat monologues, last week Trump came out and said football was boring – in front of a crowd of Trump supporters who undoubtedly mostly love football. In a country struggling to afford fuel and groceries, where many find comfort in the sport, I find his bald-faced indifference to the people who idolise him extremely funny.Of course, all of this has led to many jokes about Trump “being gay” or his “alleged dementia revealing he is bisexual”. His penchant for musical theatre and his laser focus on beautifying his ballroom with gilded gold or whatever have only added fuel to the fire. (I do think the world would be a much better place if he had followed his true calling of becoming a Mr Hollywood type entertainment reporter, standing on the red carpet making cutting remarks about celebrity outfits with Joan Rivers. Alas, we have this version.) But it’s not actually about love for other humans at all: it’s a total inability to stop treating them as objects for his amusement. I also suspect, in a way I find unfortunately relatable to me, that he got laughs for it once and now doesn’t know when to stop doing callbacks.Trump’s supporters have spent years deriding men who aren’t as cartoonishly masculine as they would like. Now they have to stand behind a soft-handed, lame-duck president who thinks football is boring, and who can’t stop talking about spectacularly built men and ballrooms. They have been clapping and smiling and hopefully dying a bit inside.I don’t know what Trump will be like from this point forward, or what parts of the anatomy he might move on to over the next two years. I do know that these people have already seen what years of this man and his party has done, how pathetic he is, the horrible things that have happened under his watch. Yet they’ve continued to show up. I suspect many of them will continue to stand with him long after the midterms. I hope for a better future, but in the meantime I’m going to get even more satisfaction out of pointing and laughing at them now – it was already fun before Trump got kicked in his not-supple, not-sexy ass.