I do a martial art, and our gradings for rank are conducted by a panel of judges. They expect people to make mistakes during the grading, but as I tell my dojo: “It’s often not the mistake that fails you, it’s how you react to the mistake.”
If you get flustered, a small mistake compounds into a bigger mistake, and then you’re done.
And that’s what I see here. Sure, “re-be-ducing” corrected to “be reducing” is a small error, but the “Oh, god, I did it again…” sad-sounding sigh that says he knows he screwed up, and that he knows he’s starting to lose it.
I agree, and I did say upthread that the weird pause and sigh was worse than the syllable flip, and that it reminded me of a thing he’s been doing that I’ve heard is a coping tactic that people in the early stages of dementia often adopt-- when they lose their train of thought they do a quick change of subject, hoping that the gaffe is not noticed. That might have been what trump was about to do: “re-be-du…sigh…but I’ll tell ya folks, we got to get back to building the wall!”; except he managed to get back on track in that particular instance.
I always like the “if you had one in five chance of winning the lottery, would you buy a ticket” for non-ticket-buyers - okay, so most people think winning the lottery is fantastic, and I don’t feel that way about Trump. But it is a very big chance, as you said. And I, who don’t live in a state with a lottery, and haven’t bought a ticket but maybe twice ever and not in over a decade, would certainly make the trip to neighboring state to buy one, even if odds were only 1 in 5.
My Trump cultist FB friend posted a picture of Letitia James with two Trump Towers arranged in an ‘L’ shape on her forehead. I replied with the meme somebody made of James saying ‘I grabbed him by the assets. When you’re AG they let you.’ She said the Left fails at memes, and I reminded her that it’s a take on what Trump (I called Him her Messiah) said. Here response:
who cares, I’ve said a lot worse things, I assure you and you probably have, too!
Here is a woman who’s been vocal about rape and sexual assault. But when Trump admits to it, it’s ‘Meh. Who cares?’
My mother defends Trump because he never said to inject bleach into your system to fight COVID but said disinectant instead. It’s like trying to defend Trump by saying he’s not a rapist he just sexually assault someone which isn’t the flex they think it is.
It’s almost too on the nose: the grift, the pandering, the utilization of the silly religious mythology of the nation’s founding. But good to see that it contains both testaments (we all know Trump is equally an old and new testament guy), and the sequel to Corinthians.
This was in response to my request for an explanation for the claim that the democrats are partially to blame for Trump.
This sounds, to me, like the sort of political correctness that the republicans peddled to obscure actual substantive discussions that were taking place.
For example, I assume that by TPP, you mean the trans pacific partnership. That was an agreement to strengthen the U.S. markets in Asia other than China, thereby reducing their economy hegemony in the region. It made obvious sense, but was killed solely on the attitude that anything a democrat (and Obama specifically) had done was bad.
And defund the police was a discussion point. At times, it coincided with sensible proposals to shift some functions away from the police force (I.e. can we use mental health counselors for non-violent calls for help? Do we need to fund crossing guards through the police budget?)
If people were arguing for eliminating all police, then those people represented a fringe element. They always exist. The elimination of policing was never a serious policy proposal.
And if people truly decided to vote for Trump - despite his obvious status as a con artist loser - because they didn’t like certain slogans…well that’s just a special kind of snowflake. And a lost cause anyway.
Fortunately, and despite the best efforts of Fox News and its ilk, most people aren’t so easily frightened.
Moving this from “Is Trump Confused” thread, as suggested by moderation, to discuss the idea that Trump is the product of both major U.S. parties:
As a centrist, I would like to agree if I could. But so long as ours remains a free country, there is no way to prevent far-left people from making statements, just as is true for far-right statements. And defund the police did not come from the Democratic Party, besides that it predated the 2016 Trump nomination. Joe Biden says that most police are good.
I found the following article supporting your POV, and I will link to it even though I cannot fully buy it:
