…a perfect, brilliant, beautiful statement that I make…
Doesn’t anyone else notice how often he makes these cringily exaggerated statements, and more to the point, recognize how clearly they illustrate the staggering depths of his delusions?
That’s still the thing I most notably don’t get about Trump - the man is obviously profoundly mentally ill, so why and how is he even taken seriously? How in the world is it even possible for such a painfully obvious gibbering lunatic to not only run for public office, but quite possibly win?
Because his supporters don’t care if he’s a gibbering idiot as long as he tells them their particular deplorable -ism is perfectly valid and fine. He gets the racist votes because he tells them that they’re right and all the non-white people are inferior and out to get them. He gets the Christian votes because he tells them that the US has, is, and always will be a Christian nation that should be run by their particular flavor of Christianity and btw all the non-Christians are out to get them. He gets the homophobe and transphobe votes because he tells them yes, LGBTQ+ is a choice, they’re all perverts, and they’re all out to get them and their children.
Basically he tells everyone that’s on the wrong side of history who have been told that they are terrible people for decades that they are in fact not terrible people, that they’ve been right all along, and that it’s all a conspiracy by liberals/democrats/minorities/homosexuals/satanists/whoever to get them, and they eat that shit up. As long as he keeps spouting support for their particular prejudices he’ll keep getting their votes, because they rather elect a gibbering moron who validates them than someone sane and competent that tells them their prejudice is wrong.
Well…
You’re absolutely right, and that was very well-written to boot. But it’s not the part that perplexes me. I likely just did a poor job of explaining myself.
I fully expect his intellectually and/or psychologically compromised supporters to fail or refuse to recognize his glaringly obvious insanity. As you note, he affirms their prejudices and tells them that the condemnation they so deservedly receive is actually some sort of evil conspiracy, and they grovel at his feet, lapping it up.
But that just accounts for a portion of his supporters and none of his opponents, and it’s that remainder I wonder about - all of the people who are certainly rational enough to recognize his glaringly obvious derangement for what it is, but somehow just don’t, or won’t.
I have this recurring experience in which I read an essay or article from some more or less neutral site or even an oppositional site in which someone relates something that Trump said, then parses and analyzes it, as if it’s a legitimate statement of supposed fact rather than the deranged ranting of someone who’s painfully obviously profoundly mentally ill, and I can’t even see how they managed to make it that far - how they didn’t just stop halfway through relating whatever it was he said and throw their hands up and say, “This guy is a fucking lunatic!” Because he so blatantly obviously is.
That’s what I don’t get.
I think the good ol’ Alt-Right Playbook can shed some light on that one.
I linked to the specific part of the video that explains the particular point I want to make, but I recommend watching from the beginning anyway. Also, the extra-short TL;DR is basically that the Democratic party is structurally predisposed to continually give the benefit of the doubt and assume good faith, even when it is not only blatantly undeserved but also being actively exploited by their opponents.
When things like this don’t make sense there is a tried and true method that usually sheds some light on it: Follow. The. Money.
I don’t claim to have some knowledge of some deep state actors or even understand the nuances of late stage capitalism. But, I do understand some writer, reporter, or publisher not wanting to have to explain to their family that they’re moving to a van down by the river because they wouldn’t write an article that didn’t explicitly call bullshit on some billionaires people-based checkers game. It is easy to compromise on a story, then another.
That’s just my hypothetical for this comment, but extrapolate to everything else we’re seeing that just seems batshit insane and yet is being reported on as nothing more than slight variations on business as usual or two sides with slightly different ideological views. You start to feel like the only sane person in the asylum and it drives you mad.
That’s more or less the theory I keep coming back to, but I can’t even entirely wrap my head around that one. It’s sort of like a really complex conspiracy theory in that it presumes a particular contrived course of action from seemingly too many people.
I can absolutely imagine some number of writers, editors and publishers self-servingly treating the obviously insane blathering of a lunatic as if it’s legitimate just to further their own careers, and I can absolutely imagine some additional (and likely greater) number of them doing so to protect themselves from retribution. I can even imagine some number who are themselves insane in a way that aligns enough with Trump’s insanity that they treat him seriously sincerely.
But all of that still doesn’t seem enough to account for the near-universal failure to even comment obliquely on how deeply mentally ill Trump so obviously is. Just as with a complex conspiracy theory, I can see the possibility on a limited scale, but it all seems to fall apart if one tries to expand it out to the scale that would seem to necessarily be the case.
And yeah - I keep ending up feeling like the only sane person in the asylum.
You shouldn’t underestimate people’s tendency to just do what they’re told and not rock the boat. Network head likes Trump interviews because it generates views, which attracts advertisers. Trump is a petulant child and will refuse to do interviews with any network that points out he has the mental capacity of a child. So the network head mandates that nobody is allowed to question Trumps mental state for fear of him refusing future interviews. Since their boss said so, the network talking heads just go along with it.
As for the politicians, they can’t recalibrate to the reality that is Trump. They’re used to playing political chess with their equals and along comes the pigeon known as Trump to walk all over the board knocking pieces over and shitting everywhere. They literally have no playbook to deal with him. Normally this would be where the “referee” steps in which depending on context would be a debate moderator, the Supreme Court, or Congress, but the debate moderators won’t touch him because of the previously mentioned reasons, the Supreme Court has been stuffed with puppets that have a vested interest in protecting him, and Congress is so deadlocked and dysfunctional they can’t even pass legislation with bipartisan support nevermind impeaching him.
Trump is the perfect storm of everything the US political system was never designed to counter. Every single check that was supposed to prevent this sort of thing has either been subverted or just plain failed because the supposition it was built on was faulty. He has highlighted that far too much of the US political apparatus has functioned purely by convention and concepts of fair play and as soon as someone came along that didn’t give a shit about any of that it all crumbled.
How in the world is it even possible for such a painfully obvious gibbering lunatic to not only run for public office, but quite possibly win?
“Quite possibly”? I don’t know if you’re American or how closely you follow our politics, but… he did win the presidency, in 2016. Definitely disheartening and embarrassing for our country.
It was exactly the shitshow everyone expected: He was impeached twice, but never removed from office. He pulled out of international climate deals, and the strategic nuclear one with Iran. His administration was corrupt, ineffective, fumbled the COVID-19 response, and catered to giant corporations at the expense of working Americans. The fact that he was our president is pathetic, but the worst part is it could happen again, but now with his fascist intentions and planned political revenge…
He lost the general election by over 3 million votes. The EC needs to be abolished.
If the Superbowl had some committee that overturned almost 20% of the results of the game, the US would be burning shit to the ground. Why do we accept that roughly 20% of all presidential elections have been overturned by people we cannot vote for?
Remember: this is the guy some people here want you to NOT vote against. Don’t listen to them.
I’m actually surprised he got those words out.
They must have fixed his teleprompter.
Double-dose of adderall.
That implies that he remembers how to read.
Then he should act as if he isn’t cognitively impaired.
He is, very clearly, cognitively impaired. Someone pull up the fucking nuclear quote, or the soliloquy about Elton John’s organ. I’d do it, but I’m just fucking exhausted by how fucking stupid everything has become.
Someone must have explained to him what those words mean.
Has he tried not being Cognitively Impaired?
Don’t fight uphill, me boys! But it was too late. Wow.
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We can’t get the boat to float. The battery is so heavy.
Aircraft carriers,.oil tankers and container ships. Shit, how do they do it? Magic? Explain, Mr. MIT professor ancestor, I mean Mr. Convicted Felon Traitor Rapist.
Fill the batteries with water so they’re more in tune with the ocean.
Okay but what if there’s a shark?
Then you can pet it and feel how smooth it is
As a veteran scuba instructor, I have touched dozens of sharks with my bare hands. Every one had very rough skin, like medium sandpaper.
I don’t know what to tell you, I’m petting a shark right now and it’s like touching silk. In both directions, couldn’t be smoother
Indeed. Placoid scales are a defining feature of Elasmobranchs.
that’s why they swim so smooth in the ocean.
that or a few million years of evolution
If you told me an AI generated this random ass speech, I would tell you to go back to the drawing board.
Where did you get this transcript from?
Whaaattttt hahahah is there a recording of this?
Yup! It happended during a rally. Google Trump boats and sharks.
Edit: why the downvotes?
This made my day 🤣
Ok. I’ll just call him stupid then.
This thumbnail looks like a cutscene from Robot Chicken
The real question is sharks or electrocution.
We can capitalize on his greatest fear… Electric Shark Boats
I imagine it’s because he thinks cognitively impaired means something to do with sprockets in a pear.
lol he should seriously stop being so arrogant.
Hey, he’s aced multiple dementia tests, okay? Multiple! Heck they were easy! Of course, he lied. But.
It’s one thing that Trump believes that telling an elephant and Giraffe apart makes him a genius, the truly horrible thing is that a lot of Americans agree, and are prepared to elect him president of USA.
I never said that. I never used the words “cognitively impaired” on him. I always call him things like “demented nitwit” or “stupid idiot”, but never, ever “cognitively impaired”. Because I think he would be challenged to understand those long, multi-syllable words. Which were probably not coined by him, but someone of his team.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Donald Trump complained at a rally that he’s portrayed by the media as being “cognitively impaired” if he says “one word slightly out.”
At a rally in Philadelphia on June 22, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee compared his press coverage with that of President Joe Biden, who he said could “fall off the stage” without receiving a similar treatment from the media.
In March, Trump, 78, secured enough delegates to be his party’s presumptive nominee following a string of primary victories, likely setting up a rematch of the bitter 2020 contest against Biden, 81.
Biden’s and Trump’s ages and their propensity for making gaffes have sparked concern about their mental agility and ability to serve a second four-year term.
Trump said at the rally, referring to the media: "If I blow it up here, though, they—actually, they take a perfect, brilliant, beautiful statement that I make.
Newsweek contacted representatives of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign for comment by email outside usual business hours.
The original article contains 515 words, the summary contains 164 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
