"Dilbert" Cartoonist Scott Adams

One out of every three Americans can’t spot a joke – especially, when it comes from President Donald Trump or Fox News – “Dilbert” Cartoonist Scott Adams says.

In a commentary video on Periscope, Adams, creator of the “Dilbert” comic strip, says he honestly believes a third of Americans can’t identify a joke – without help from someone else:

“Alright, so, I’ve been saying this for a while that, as a professional humorist, I mean this completely serious - there’s no joke coming - that about a third of the country doesn’t even recognize a joke. Doesn’t know you’re kidding. “And they can only tell you’re kidding if they see somebody else laughing, or you say, “Ha, Ha” or “JK” or something after the joke. They actually can’t tell.”

Adams says he first realized that a third of Americans are humor-deprived once he started taking comedy seriously:

“I never noticed until I became a professional humorist and told jokes in public and looked at the people in the audience and would see a third of them just sitting there looking around like they didn’t even know that they’re at a comedy situation.”

Earlier in the video, Adams argued that many Americans don’t realize that many of Trump’s more outrageous comments are meant to be entertainment and shouldn’t be taken literally.

Adams closes by citing liberal media’s overreaction to a satirical comment by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson as further proof a third of Americans can’t recognize a joke:

“So, when you see how many people didn’t understand - that Tucker Carlson claiming that the president could look at the sun without damage - didn’t know it was a joke. Didn’t know it was a joke.”

Earlier this week, Carlson joked about a picture of Trump staring at a solar eclipse without protective eyewear:

“In a move that’s not a complete surprise, he looked directly at the sun without any glasses – perhaps the most impressive thing any president’s ever done.”

When liberal media reported that Carlson was serious, the Fox News host responded by mocking them with even more outlandish claims, to see if they could tell he was just kidding.