The American people love low humor and they had a lot of fun last week with Mr. Trump and the whole (unverified) story about (alleged) prostitutes in Moscow hotel rooms performing (unverified) bodily functions for his amusement as recorded by (so we hear) the Russian KGB, accounts of which (unsubstantiated) were leaked to the media.

Amazing, how much wordplay can be made from the act of urination, and all over Facebook and Twitter, people were passing puns like water — I saw a half-dozen posts referring to the Republican potty — all of it highly amusing to Episcopalian and papist alike, which made a big splash from Peoria to Pismo Beach, and when you’re in all the papers as a person of particular predilections, it’s hard to do your business as president-elect.

The story line was that (maybe) the Russians trapped him in a compromising situation (Disgraceful!) and could threaten blackmail and thereby gain leverage (No way!), but how do you blackmail a playboy and showman of whom the general public has such abysmally low expectations? Give me a break.

“Does anyone really believe that story?” he asked. The answer, apparently, is yes. Comedy demands plausibility; we don’t tell blonde jokes about bald people. There is justice here: an old birther and anti-vaccer who maintained that the Clinton e-mail kerfuffle was worse than Watergate gets blindsided by an (unverified) scandal involving (possibly) scantily-clad girls in hotel rooms.

At his news conference, he denied all, of course, but it was noteworthy to see him stand at a podium with the sign “Office of the President Elect” on it and a phalanx of American flags behind him. President-elect is not an office; it is a man waiting to take office. The sign belongs in the Smithsonian along with Lucy’s “Psychiatric Help 5¢”. Normally a politician would make do with one American flag. A dozen flags gives an imperial tone to the occasion and makes you look like you need propping up. We can discern patriotism by what you say and do: we don’t need a drum majorette and baton twirlers.

He has not taken the oath yet and already he is becoming hard to bear. Maybe that’s what it was like in Spain under Franco. People simply ignored him, took long walks, enjoyed the sunshine, learned about riojas, avoided having political opinions. Same with Pinochet of Chile and other leaders who wrapped themselves in flags. People who were crazy brave suffered imprisonment and worse but confirmed cowards like you and I were able to lead fairly normal lives. Humor helped, just as it did back in middle school. And if the Glorious Leader was caught peeping in the girls’ bathroom — hey. As Ronald Reagan said, “There you go again.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump is a playful fellow for a man approaching the Oval Office. Dubya was no genius but he had a high sense of decorum and he tried very hard to look serious. A week away from inauguration, He Who Knows Things Other People Don’t is gloating and glowering, swaggering, twittering, ever restless, saying things today that he will contradict tomorrow. Maybe this is a good thing. You promise to do waterboarding “and worse” and you satisfy the sadists and then waterboarding is out, gone, done, and you make the humanists feel better. You eat your cake and you get more cake.

Consistency is overrated. It’s so 1950s. The game has changed. The point now is to command attention. You wake up in the early morning hours and you send out the word: “I have a gun and I am prepared to shoot someone walking down Fifth Avenue and I don’t care who it is.” And that’s news: TRUMP THREATENS TO SHOOT RANDOM PASSERBY. And you let that float in the air and then you tweet: “The dishonest press says I intend to shoot someone. Fake news. Do they have no sense of irony whatsoever? Pathetic.” You do this every day and you hold the power of public attention. Who cares about raising or lowering interest rates? The Bureau of Labor Statistics? YAWN. A treaty with Iran? WHO THEY? Health insurance? Don’t sweat it. We’ll think of something.

It is the era of the Unpredictable President. Instead of a bully pulpit, you have the Executive Whoopee Cushion. Let congressional committees pore over the 1,200-page documents with the footnotes and appendices. What the Big Guy has to say is: ppppppppppppppppppp.

Garrison Keillor’s column is distributed by the Washington Post News Service.