Like more than a few Americans, I used to read President Donald Trump’s tweets with trepidation. No modern president had ever expressed himself publicly in this manner, and the universal reaction seemed to be a mixture of horror and consternation.

Now I find that the tweets I see tend to make me laugh rather than wince. Unlike his stately predecessor’s feed, which read as if drafted by a lucky intern, Mr. Trump’s tweets could not possibly have been composed by anyone but Mr. Trump himself, or by someone with a good ear for Trumpspeak. Best of all, the fury and indignation they inspire are very nearly as entertaining as their memorable content. Like the old New Yorker cartoons of plutocrats listening in silent rage to F.D.R. on the radio, or inviting their friends to join them at “the Trans-Lux to hiss Roosevelt,” Mr. Trump seems to have the chattering — or in this case, sputtering — classes where he wants them.

Moreover, the president has a genuine gift for this sort of thing. Even his famous nicknames — “Crooked Hillary” Clinton, “Sleepy Joe” Biden, Stormy “Horseface” Daniels — while occasionally puerile and sometimes cruel, deftly capture something essential in their subjects. And the fact that Mr. Trump takes such evident pleasure in the torment, and his critics respond like Pavlov’s dogs, seems to fortify the bond between Mr. Trump and his enthusiasts. When Franklin Roosevelt exclaimed that his political enemies were “unanimous in their hate for me, and I welcome their hatred,” admirers swooned. Mr. Trump’s admirers are equally enchanted when he declares that Representative Adam “Pencil-Neck” Schiff’s impeachment proceedings are “illegal, invalid and unconstitutional.”

What’s the difference? Less than you might think.

There is no question, of course, that Mr. Trump is a dramatically unconventional commander in chief. He is not our first divorced president (Ronald Reagan) nor the first to have been harried by allegations of a sex scandal (Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland, et al.). He is a “reality-TV star” just as Reagan was a “B-movie actor” and Harry Truman a “failed haberdasher.” Still, he is the only president to have arrived in the White House without experience of public service or political office — the last comparable major-party nominee was Wendell Willkie (1940) — and his manner is a striking departure from one English journalist’s rule that the public prefers its politicians to resemble either clergymen or undertakers.