Having read a bit about Teddy Roosevelt, he had some Trumpian traits - he sucked the oxygen out of the room, and everything was always “the best” or “the greatest”.
Of course, their differences are legion. For one, Roosevelt wrote books. It’s not clear that Trump has ever actually read one.
One of the comments was “his base would abandon him if he read a book”.
I’ve told this anecdote before, but during a back-and-forth with a Trumpster on social media, one “insult” he threw at me was “Why don’t you go read a book.”
The guy was one of the dumbest people I’ve ever known (someone else once described him as being about as smart as a bag of hammers) and he takes pride in his willful ignorance. In his world, Trump is the greatest thing that has ever happened to this country.
Oof.
Well, Trump can barely read. The author of The Art of the Deal, Tony Schwartz, doubts Trump has read a book cover-to-cover in his entire adult life.
A humorous presentation of the evidence:
A Totally Real, 100% Valid Theory
A more serious look at Trump’s literacy (admittedly from a progressive site):
I stopped watching after ‘Vanity in the Bonfires’ because a) hilarious enough, and b) even 80s Trump is a sickening sight, now…
Reminds me of my former boss, who was the same way.
I’m honestly not sure which if the two should be more insulted by the comparison.
The thing is, he did actually at least sound a little smarter back then. I think he was a lightweight who has also lost a lot of brain power over the years.
If you had kept watching you would have heard contradictory bullshit and utter evasiveness. Or, to put it in Republican terms, telling it like it is.
If it weren’t so true, I’d laugh myself silly over this game. (If that link doesn’t work for you, try this one.)
Well, to be fair, I have read that half the adult population has never read a book in their life, outside of school work. I suspect that’s the main pool from which Trump voters come.
Data point: I have a cousin who does not read well (dyslexic) and is an ardent Trump supporter. He is also a contractor. When I asked him how he could vote for a man who has a lifetime habit of stiffing contractors he. of course, did not believe it.
how did he get contractors to work for him with that history? I guess there are a lot in NYC so he always found someone to take his jobs?
I like that in that game, Trump is simply a totally random effect that all of the players have to react to.
I may be wrong, but I have the impression that at a certain point he no longer hired contractors and built buildings, but simply licensed his name on buildings constructed by others.
That may well be true, but Trump is the fucking President of the United States and he may be semi-literate. I imagine most of the population that never reads books are blue-collar types who don’t read books for pleasure, but they probably read magazines and newspapers and webpages.
Even my auto mechanic friends have to be able to read and comprehend technical manuals and such to do their jobs effectively, especially with cars becoming more and more sophisticated. One guy was kinda complaining to me years ago how he now had to learn software to do diagnoses of modern engines: “Ya gotta plug the damn thing into a computer terminal to see what’s been going on”.
Trump can barely be bothered to read his daily intelligence reports and even then they have to be a single page of bullets points and he doesn’t even read them every day, by most accounts. I’ve read that before Trump, these were usually several detailed pages. Trump can barely handle a teleprompter.
Holy Toledo!
As an aside, I saw this cartoon the other day:
A veteran angel is giving newbie a tour of Heaven. He points to the barn and says “That’s where we keep the cow.” He then points to the lake and says “And that’s where we keep the mackerel.” Pointing next at the outhouse, he says “Well, you can probably guess what we keep in there.”
Toledo?
Mrs. Falwell?
the 45th president?
Poop?