There are legitimate frustrations behind reactionaries' anger. Even if you don't personally share them, it would behoove you to understand them. The Tea Party era is when the movement really started listing towards populist-expedience-grift, but that doesn't automatically indict its leaders per se - especially if they're now on a topic you might care about.
And yes, I know it's unfair to ask you to do the work of understanding and addressing frustrations that aren't your own, when reactionaries won't even do this work - instead throwing their support behind a con man like Grump and declaring it's all one big joke. But someone has to, right?
"Clown show" kind of implies a limited scope and general harmlessness, no? The legacy of that "clown show" is currently selling our country's institutions for scrap value, so that term would seem to massively undersell its actual effects.
And yes, I know it's unfair to ask you to do the work of understanding and addressing frustrations that aren't your own, when reactionaries won't even do this work - instead throwing their support behind a con man like Grump and declaring it's all one big joke. But someone has to, right?