Just how dumb is this guy?
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2024
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Whatever the answer to that question is, the real answer is "dumber than that."
He's a not really that dumb, he's a narcissist. Like, as a legitimate, detrimental mental condition.
Trump cannot backtrack and admit he is wrong, even if it's a small goof. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Dorian%E2%80%93Alabama_controversy
I know people like this in real life, and it's really sad, but also really annoying/grating.
To be fair, he’s ALSO very dumb: https://www.truthorfiction.com/trump-was-the-dumbest-gddamn-student/
This is really reductive.
I think coverage of him before 2015 is much more enlightening. One I always point to is the Market Foolery podcasts on Trump, where (TL;DR) he tries to sell private real estate to his public company at highly inflated prices, and hyping the market to buy into this technically-not-illegal scheme.
Thing is, he's good at that kind of scheme. It worked! It wasn't illegal, just basically selling a turd. The Motley Fool saw through it (and met him in person to discuss it, which is what the podcast is about) and made the only short of their career, but still, people drastically underestimate Trump's ability to "sell" ideas that benefit him, to their detrement.
The guy is one of the dumbest people alive. He isn't good at anything but fooling dumb people. He is the king of the dumb people and there are more than we thought.
It's not reductive. It's factual. Quit polishing a turd. He's a moron. He can't even fuck a porn star and pay her without being caught. He's so dumb he can't hide investment lies without being caught. He can't plan to overthrow the government without documentation.
I know 5 year olds with more wit and social navigation.
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But also dumb
His VP pick has children who are both white and Indian, but he still can't comprehend Harris can be black and Indian.
To be fair, Trump and most of the MAGA base probably don't view the Vance kids as white at all.
The half-assed way Vance "defended" his wife to his party was sickening.
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He's "look directly at the sun during an eclipse without eye protection" dumb. Plus he's old, sleepy, and a felon.
More predictable than dumb, in that in any given situation the man will pick the absolutely worst choice available. Every single time. Even when that choice hurts him.
When his options are (a) pick the right choice, (b) pick a bad choice, ( c) do nothing, or (d) pick something you didn't even fathom because the idea was just so bad that even the biggest moron would dismiss it out of hand, he will go with D. Every single time. Even if it hurts himself. Thankfully, the man can't get out of his own way 95% of the time, and I firmly believe that making even something resembling a rational choice even on the most basic of options would cause him physical pain.
Profoundly dumb. But also super weird. And he hates being called weird.
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I honestly think the more likely explanation is that he doesn't realize Kamala Harris and Nikki Hayley are different people. They're both just "that woman I'm running against" to him.
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It doesnt matter. Every Trumpet in my office is eating this up. I pulled up a picture of her Jamaican dad. Their answer was "Jamaicans aren't black." I really dont know how to respond to that.
Some other notable Jamaicans: Bob Marley, Usain Bolt, Grace Jones. I suppose your coworkers would say they're not black either?
The sky is yellow if it upsets a lib
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Go to google maps, get them to select a random street view in Jamaica. Ask them to describe the people they’re seeing.
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If being half Black means you cannot be Black, then Obama was a White man.
The racists are trying to appeal to both black and white voters here. They used to say that things like:
"What do you get when you mix clean water with dirty water?"
"Dirty water"
Now they're saying that people of mixed heritage aren't anything. That they're the Other.
Harris grew up in Oakland in a Black neighborhood. As usual the racists are cruel but here they're spreading an obvious lie designed to erode her standing among black voters
I hope she gets one of those "black jobs"...like President.
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Don't beat them with their own arguments! It just confuses them...
Okay I'm starting to really believe that trump was a puppet carefully managed since the 2016 election that slowly fell apart as he actually got power and became president and fired literally everyone who didn't lick his boots. Seriously almost forgot how almost all of the news for like a year was like, some tweets and trump fires someone or attacks them (the latter never stops) I digress
He is so clearly floundering for the first time. This fucker has never had bad press until now. He isn't different or anything, just suddenly some people are realizing and agree the emperor isn't wearing clothes. That cost him so much powerful support. I speculate the evangical Republicans, who are still a major contribution to conservative politics today, are withdrawing their resources and efforts this election cycle to regroup and plan how to handle the next 2 years to the best of their advantage.
Well, no. He's been floundering since he fucked up COVID. That was something he could bluster his way through. Republicans could see their friends and family dying.
That's why he lost. He's bad at being president. Plus old and weird.
How many conservatives do you know that admit the severity of covid after the fact, even after losing loved ones?
Their heads are firmly buried in the sand. It's a non-factor of that voting demographic.
My sister is adamant my dad didn't die of covid despite you know, getting covid and dying in the hospital a few days later. And the death certificate states the cause of death as Covid. Oh, he most likely caught it in her bar which she reopened as soon as the WI supreme court ruled that lock down doesn't apply to bars.
I have a conservative friend whose father died from covid which absolutely devistated her. She's from a small rural town she used to love but cannot stand it anymore because everyone she knew there was like "god's plan" blablabla without offering any real sympathy. So there are a few running around out there, but by far the minority.
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These hopes were quickly dashed in the course of Trump’s interview with the National Association of Black Journalists Wednesday afternoon, in which the candidate claimed that, for years, Vice President Kamala Harris “was Indian all the way, and then suddenly she made a turn and she became a Black person.”
Oh, so Trump is accusing her of what he is guilty of. He would change his ethnicity from Swedish to Irish to German depending on who was around.
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I guess he’s free to say whatever the fuck he wants if his party think they’ve got the electoral votes rigged in their favor? https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-swing-state-officials-election-deniers-1235069692/
This is why he keeps saying “we don’t need the votes” at almost every rally
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Let me guess, the black genes are only 3/5 as powerful as her Indian genes?
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"we're hoping he doesn't act like a crazy racist and sexist person, we can't control him"
- says person working for uncontrollable crazy racist and sexist person.
“As you can see, my opponent is a total fraud.
She even changed her name from Nikki to Kamala”
My guess is that his evangelical supporters see JD Vance as a betrayal creating a rift in the party between god bros and corporate/tech bros. He was depending on hatred of Biden to keep his groups aligned.
That and the dominion lawsuit tempered fox news so they can't parrot his most sensational claims.
I think he desperately doesn't want her to get the black vote, so he's trying to tell everyone that she's not black. It's not going to work and it just makes him look like an idiot and bigot. And this is his best and most polite, practiced attempt. *Also half black Obama was black enough for him [pops popcorn].
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Here's what I don't get, regardless of if your black or indian, if you grew up in america with dark skin you likely have faced all the same struggles that any black voter would care about.
Edit: Assumptions got challenged, read replies.
So even if he was right (he's not, he's what physicists would call "not even wrong"), so what? Are racists any less racist to indians than african americans?
I don't get the playbook here, non-racists would just be confused and racists would still be racists.
Here’s what I don’t get, regardless of if your black or indian, if you grew up in america with dark skin you likely have faced all the same struggles that any black voter would care about.
No, that's very much not true, except maybe on a very superficial "some bigot called me a slur" kind of level. Indian-Americans are disproportionately wealthy and highly-educated; African-Americans are disproportionately the opposite. African-Americans have been subjected to institutional racism for centuries that is still ongoing because of the extreme wealth disparities it created (e.g. even after theoretically abolishing redlining decades ago, houses in black neighborhoods still don't appreciate in value at the same rate ones in white neighborhoods do... except when the neighborhood gentrifies and forces the black people out). Meanwhile, the bulk of Indian-Americans arrived after the Civil Rights Act, Fair Housing Act, etc. and had the means and opportunity to move straight into middle-class white neighborhoods and assimilate.
That's not to say that Indian-Americans don't face "struggles:" discrimination against Indian-American tech workers in particular is definitely a thing, especially motivated by a "the H1-Bs turk err jerbs" sentiment. (Meanwhile, Black engineers are treated either normally or at worst, as a curiosity, because there are so few of them to begin with. Pop quiz: why are there so few of them to begin with...?)
So, no: while it's true that all minorities are subject to discrimination, the type and extent of that discrimination varies greatly between different minority groups. The struggles are not the same.
Getting back to the real question you asked: the reason Trump wants to treat Harris as Indian, not Black, is to try to delegitimatize her in the eyes of Black voters as being some kind of elite that doesn't actually understand their struggle.
Huh, very valid points. I guess I was assuming casual racism that would come from only appearances and assumptions. But you are right that economic class heavily impacts the discrimination a person faces and that's specifically where african americans have been hit the hardest historically.
Thanks for providing more context.
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He's weird.
many GOP strategists, including in the Trump camp, worried that attacks on Harris’s race and gender […] would pose a serious liability for the campaign
Do they seriously understand their base that badly, or is this just optics? "I hope his completely unexpected racism doesn't alienate our voters who are totally not racist we swear this is so bad we're so worried oh no"
The base isn't going to be put off by it, but that's not who they're worried about. Every election is divided by independent swing voters and yes, some of them do care.
The 33% that constitutes Trump's base probably likes him more after every racist outburst, but they alone don't win national elections.
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Recently, a major topic of discussion has been how fast the Democratic campaign went from weak to enthusiastic.
Stories like this one remind me how fast the Trump campaign went from scary to amusingly pathetic.
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Could someone please return Trump's big balloon? It's about that big. Refer to the picture, about that size. Maybe a little smaller, maybe a little bigger. It could have been a beach balloon or ball.
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those in his party who consider racism a losing electoral strategy
I thought weaponized racism was literally a requirement for their party
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I was hoping for a throwback to “Obama isn’t black” where the image took a colourpicker to say Trump’s darker
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