This only tells us dumb people are in Mensa.
You were smart to get out.
Mensa is a money grab from people who want to pretend they are smart. Which tells us why it is dominated by conservative/libertarian types.
Two words… Rich Kotite 
That is sure as shit getting you a warning, Velocity. Take your racism elsewhere if you must have it.
That said, this is really more a complaint/rant in disguise and I’m moving it to the Pit.
I just said “His claims to be a super-duper dealmaker that rose from nothing are obviously bullshit,” and referenced a wikipedia page that cited that very article. You’re not adding anything new.
Even accepting the most pessimistic figures from his political adversaries at face value, that means Trump turned $413 million into $4 billion. You don’t do that by being a moron.
Fair point.
Fine, not a moron. Just a totally corrupt and amoral conman who got rich by stiffing his contractors, cheating (bigly) on his taxes, and laundering money for the Russian mob.
Trump is a savant as a conman. A moron in everything else.
And that bit him in the ass when American banks decided to not deal with him anymore and he turned to Russia. Russia saw an idiot they could manipulate and possibly turn into a benefit.
A bit of a gamble, but worth it to Russia. Trump was not an ace of spades up their sleeve, but a 3 of clubs. Worked out rather well for them.
Trump has repeatedly committed bank fraud by misrepresenting his net worth. Most American banks have refused to do business with him due to his multiple bankruptcies and fraudulent financial statements. Only foreign banks with dubious motives and investors continued to do business with him.
As to Trump’s net worth as reported by magazines like Forbes, here is an article that explains how the numbers are entirely unverified.
I know a few Trump supporters who aren’t stupid.
But, they are, to a man, willfully ignorant.
But, most of them don’t care if Trump is a stupid liar - they only care if he his saying the things they want to hear.
My take on the perfectly intelligent friends and relatives who support Trump (many, in my red state)… It may sound trite, but these are folks that get most, if not all, of their political information from years/decades of watching Fox news and from consuming other CEC media. They are conditioned to support Republican interests, even when the head of the party is a deeply flawed individual in Trump.
They rarely hear about the absolutely bat-shit things Trump says and the rest is normalized, minimized, glorified but professional spin artists. Still, there must be a lot of head in the sand posturing as well as the unwillingness to change to change deeply held beliefs in the face of confounding evidence.
Trump supporters in general evidently have deficiencies in critical thinking capacity compared to non-Trump fans. This does not automatically mean Trump backers are conventionally stoopid - they instead lack sufficient mental bullshit filters in comparison to the rest of the populace. This is something that needs to be addressed early and often in the educational process.
Not to interrupt a Canadian back-patting moment, but a multicultural population does not ensure a lack of bigotry. London is touted as one of the most ethnically diverse cities on the planet, yet it still has widely publicized problems with racism, most recently exacerbated by the coronavirus outbreak. Toronto has problems with bigotry as well.
We apparently need a corollary to Gaudere’s Law.
Yes.
Missed the edit window. Gaudere last posted here on 5/30/2015: https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=18402524#post18402524.
Did I say anything about “ensuring a lack of bigotry”? Did I assert that Toronto had no “problems with bigotry”. If you wish to be disingenuous and suggest that that Toronto has anything close to the hardwired and systemic racial intolerance that so many places in the US have, then fuck you.
So you know my Brother in Law?
Very nice fellow. I get along with him fine and we have fun. Not stupid and CEO of a company. Trumps policies (deregulation) are gonna help him. I guess he refuses to see the long game. He’s gonna be a grandfather soon, so I hope that changes his mind.
But the first thing you said, you goalpost-moving fuck-knuckle, was:
Do you understand the difference between 1 million and 413 million?
Second, you can actually be a moron and turn $413 million into billions, especially if you have decades to do it. In fact, a few years ago, some financial magazines reported that, if Trump had simply taken the money his father left him and stuck it in a low-cost index fund, he probably would have had about the same amount of money that he had made through his deal-making. One calculation suggested that if he had taken the approximately $1 billion he had in 1988 and put it in an index fund, he’d be worth about $13 billion now.
Cite? He claims he is worth $4B, but I believe that he is likely under water and that is why he is fighting so hard to conceal his actual financial situation. I cannot prove that but you cannot refute it either.
Investing the money in index funds would’ve done better. I think $1 invested in the S&P back in the 1970s would be worth $150 today. Trump did far worse than the stock market.
Also there is speculation he isn’t even a billionaire, his net worth may be in the mid 9 figures.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/top-ten-reasons-to-doubt-trump-is-even-a-billionaire
Trump may be good at marketing, but he isn’t good at business. Mitt Romney appears to have been good at business. Michael Bloomberg is good at business. Trump is not.