Of his torrent of digs at Donald Trump, perhaps James Comey’s most curious is “I’ve never seen him laugh. Not in public. Not in private.” Comey even went hunting on YouTube and didn’t find any clips.

CNN’s Trump-Grump at large Chris Cillizza did find a clip. Trump busted a gut at a campaign rally when an unexpected dog-like noise disrupted his speech and an audience member shouted it was “Hillary.”

Two quick points:

1. It is not surprising that Cillizza would find something ominous in that.
2. It is surprising that a CNN talking head would have better luck investigating the matter than the guy who was top cheese at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

That’s a joke. Did you laugh? When writing about the Comey quote Monday, I said, “Trump made hundreds of millions of dollars telling people ‘you’re fired.’ He laughed all the way to the bank.”

Did you chuckle? Likely not if you read the joke yesterday. Laughter can be a funny business.

Why Doesn’t Trump Laugh?

I don’t why Donald Trump tends not to laugh. Clearly, he has a great sense of humor. I saw him at Liberty University do a 10-minute spontaneous riff on Liberty’s football program that would have left Comedy Store audiences rolling. His rallies are one-part politics, three-parts stand-up. Face it: We’ve got in the White House a cross between Samuel Adams and Sam Kinison. I suspect part of the reason late night comedians hate him is because he’s better at their jobs than they are.

Laughter is a funny business.

However, Trump having a great sense of humor doesn’t necessarily equate to Trump finding it easy to laugh. Sure, we can go the Pagliacci route. The clown who makes everybody laugh, but is sad inside. Depression is a familiar story among comedians. We’ve seen it from the late great comic superstar Robin Williams to side-splitting Christian comedian Chonda Pierce.

James Comey has his own idea. In his book he writes, “I suspect his apparent inability to [laugh in public] is rooted in his deep insecurity, his inability to be vulnerable or to risk himself by appreciating the humor of others, which, on reflection, is really very sad in a leader, and a little scary in a president.”

Thank you, Dr. Phil. Though I would note that George Washington wasn’t one to laugh either, but he did have a wry sense of humor, and enjoyed with a smile the humor of others. Not that George Washington was any sort of leader.

My own experience suggest a less dysfunctional route for the President than Comey suggests.

“That’s Funny”

I rarely laugh. If I had a dime for every time my genuinely hysterical wife said, “You don’t think I’m funny,” I could buy Trump Tower. An agent who saw her on stage declared Rusty a combination of Charlie Chaplin and Lucille Ball. I’d toss in some Carol Burnett and a touch of Joan Rivers. (See her video “Secret Hollywood Beauty Secrets” if you don’t believe me.)

She kills me. Yet I rarely laugh. The reason is pretty simple. For decades I wrote and produced comedy. Day after day had to assess comedy material. Are any of these scripts funny? Did this produced bit come out right? Has this stand-up cut been properly edited? Is this line I wrote any good? That line? What’s a funnier word? “Tush” or “kiester”?

What happens is the analytical brain takes over from what is normally an impulsive response. What should by all rights make me laugh instead comes out as an assessment: “That’s funny.”

Think of it. Why do you think it’s called a belly laugh? Partly because it comes from a deep place inside you. Not your brain. What one professor called “Your Thinker” versus “Your Knower.”

Similarly we say we “burst out laughing.” That speaks of something sudden, unexpected, spontaneous.

You hear from those who know him that Trump is a great processor of information. My guess after watching Trump is he processes that which is humorous as input to be analyzed. Close your eyes. Imagine you say something hysterical to Trump. Does he laugh? Or does he nod with a smile and say, “That’s funny!”?

The Guard is Down

What made Trump laugh? Contrary to Cillizza’s assertion, it likely wasn’t that it was a joke at Hillary’s expense. Honestly, do you know how many Hillary jokes the man must have heard in 2016? No, it was that it was unexpected, when he was caught off guard. Rarely do we laugh when we have our guard up.

This is part of the reason most conservatives won’t find a Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert monologue about Trump funny, even if the jokes are quality. The obvious malice and bias throws our guard up. It would have to be downright hysterical before we’d go, “Yeah. (chuckle-chuckle) Got me.”

The perfect example? Tiny Fey’s classic impersonation of Sarah Palin. Or Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer.

Kimmel and Colbert would get a lot more laughs from a broader range of people if they’d drop the malice. In fact, there’d be a lot more laughter in America if we all dropped the tension. Dropped the guard. Dropped being on edge for the slightest offense.

Are colleges really better off, when comedians as middle-of-the-road as Jerry Seinfeld won’t even appear on campuses anymore? Is the health of CNN hosts any better, for treating every Trump utterance with the dour seriousness of a cancer diagnosis?

Laughter, the Bible insists, is the best medicine. A better translation is “a cheerful heart.” Like tantrum-tossing toddlers we are refusing to take our medicine.

The Cheerful Heart

So here’s my challenge today: Let’s take to our day with a cheerful heart. A heart so cheerful its beat drowns out our thoughts of offense. And beats our defenses to the punch. For those of us who process the humorous in our head and not our heart, Shakespeare says: “Frame your mind to mirth and merriment which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.”

He also said something about “with mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come,” but these days wrinkles would be a deal breaker.