I watched a video of Mr. Trump saying:
It's not the Democratic party. It's the Democrat party.
I don't get the sarcasm because I don't know the difference between them.
What I understand is:
Democrat is a person and many persons are called Democrats (plural).
Democratic is an adjective.
Trump's point here is that (he believes that) the members of the Democratic party are not behaving in a way so as to support the primary meaning of "democratic", which is
relating to or supporting democracy or its principles.
(definition via Oxford)
Instead, he implies, it is now acting primarily to advance the well-being of its own members.
In other words, he is saying that the Democratic Party is a party for supporting Democrats, not a party for supporting democracy.
When I studied linguistics, a difference was pointed out to us between an "intellectual" meaning and an "emotional" meaning. This was for translation purposes. Example: wrongly translating "école maternelle" by motherly school instead of maternal school. "Motherly" is associated with love, but not with a school. The same goes for "democratic" (emotional) and "democrat" (intellectual, not involving your sensibility). Democracy prevails in the western world, so Republicans may well purport to be democratic (adepts of democracy), whereas a "Democrat" is a member of the Democrat party. I hear this confusion day in day out on CNN and other media.
