# It's the perfect Trump conspiracy theory! **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 2, 2017, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-the-perfect-trump-conspiracy-theory/790360 "2017-07-02T15:32:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim_r.mortiss/32/142_2.png) [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_R.Mortiss)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-the-perfect-trump-conspiracy-theory/790360/21 "2017-07-05T05:11:30Z")
> [@BeepKillBeep](#): > > Prior to the election of Trump I might have agreed with you; however, all the evidence suggests that Trump is not that bright and very ignorant. So apparently, a large number of American voters are quite willing to elect an ignoramus. So you think he manipulated a population of over 300 million Americans into electing him by dumb luck? I highly doubt it. I’m not saying his VOTERS are smart. I’m saying that HE was smart enough to manipulate them into electing him, and that took more smarts than all the other Republican and Democratic candidates combined could muster. I’ve lived in Chicago most of my life. I’ve seen it dozens of times. Politicians here (and now Trump) realize that (a) voters are morons, and (b) you can get their votes by saying stupid things, and (c) you don’t have to deliver what you promised to keep their votes. It’s worked for two generation of Daleys, and now it’s working for Trump. Note that I agree with the vast majority of Trump’s policies, and I’m glad that he’s President, but I don’t think most of his supporters are smart enough to realize what he is doing or why it is necessary. They are sheep that he is manipulating, to our national benefit. God Bless President Trump! ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-the-perfect-trump-conspiracy-theory/790360/22 "2017-07-05T12:35:09Z")
> [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](#): > > So you think he manipulated a population of over 300 million Americans into electing him by dumb luck? I highly doubt it. I’m not saying his VOTERS are smart. I’m saying that HE was smart enough to manipulate them into electing him, and that took more smarts than all the other Republican and Democratic candidates combined could muster. > > I’ve lived in Chicago most of my life. I’ve seen it dozens of times. Politicians here (and now Trump) realize that (a) voters are morons, and (b) you can get their votes by saying stupid things, and (c) you don’t have to deliver what you promised to keep their votes. It’s worked for two generation of Daleys, and now it’s working for Trump. > > Note that I agree with the vast majority of Trump’s policies, and I’m glad that he’s President, but I don’t think most of his supporters are smart enough to realize what he is doing or why it is necessary. They are sheep that he is manipulating, to our national benefit. God Bless President Trump! “Manipulation” is a pretty highfalutin’ word for just **lying**. Anyone can do it. However, it does take a special kind of person to lie every time he opens his mouth. You may be glad he’s President, but it can’t be about policies, because he doesn’t have _policies_. Policies require the ability to comprehend The Big Picture and put your thoughts together about it in a coherent way. He can’t do that, and he proves it every day. So why ARE you glad he’s President? \<_curious_\> “God bless President Trump”? No. To **hell** with President Trump. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-the-perfect-trump-conspiracy-theory/790360/23 "2017-07-05T23:42:34Z")
He’s doing everything within his power to bring hell here. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-the-perfect-trump-conspiracy-theory/790360/24 "2017-07-06T12:47:26Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > More specifically, you end up with Linoleum Blownapart. Yes, brilliant. If I wasn’t happy with my current username I’d be sorely tempted to change it. ---
**Author:** ![BeepKillBeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9e8a1a/32.png) [@BeepKillBeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeepKillBeep)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-the-perfect-trump-conspiracy-theory/790360/25 "2017-07-06T13:03:28Z")
> [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](#): > > So you think he manipulated a population of over 300 million Americans into electing him by dumb luck? No, I’m saying you don’t have to be that bright to manipulate some of the Trump voter. Basically, the ones still supporting him, i.e. the 36-38%. I can understand why somebody maybe voted for Trump to protest the system, but to be supporting Trump at this point makes little sense as he has fully revealed that everything he said about “draining the swamp” is a lie. He has no intention of doing any of the things a protest voter might have liked to see. The election is one piece of evidence for Trump’s intellect, but there’s much more evidence to suggest that he is very ignorant and not that bright. Overall, then it is more sensible to conclude he’s not that bright. With respect to the election, what seems likely is that he had a competent group of people that could manipulate enough people into voting for Trump. People like Bannon, who is an ass of a person, but a very good manipulator. Trump was a very suitable vessel for them being susceptible to manipulation himself due his narcissistic personality. ---
**Author:** ![edwardcoast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/cab0a1/32.png) [@edwardcoast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/edwardcoast)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-the-perfect-trump-conspiracy-theory/790360/26 "2017-07-06T15:02:31Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > The simpler and more likely explanation is that he has no plan. He’s simply an idiot who’s not fit to shovel shit from one place to another. Everything about him says that he’s just too stupid to know how big of an idiot he really is. Unfortunately, to about 35-40% of the country, Trump is what “smart” looks like. Exactly. This whole “Make America Great Again” is some idealized fiction of old TV shows. It has to be, because Trump doesn’t read anything unless it is about him. So he sits around and watches TV for hours every day even now and sadly he doesn’t even understand most of it. The idiots elected a cartoon character from a reality TV show. He is no deal maker. The Art of the Deal was co-authored, and that co-author said that he wrote the book and Trump only read it. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-the-perfect-trump-conspiracy-theory/790360/27 "2017-07-06T15:26:19Z")
> [@edwardcoast](#): > > Exactly. > > This whole “Make America Great Again” is some idealized fiction of old TV shows. It has to be, because Trump doesn’t read anything unless it is about him. So he sits around and watches TV for hours every day even now and sadly he doesn’t even understand most of it. > > The idiots elected a cartoon character from a reality TV show. > > He is no deal maker. The Art of the Deal was co-authored, and that co-author said that he wrote the book and Trump only read it. The author of _The Art of the Deal_ knows Donald Trump inside and out: > [@](#): > > Why does President Trump behave in the dangerous and seemingly self-destructive ways he does? > > Three decades ago, I spent nearly a year hanging around Trump to write his first book, “The Art of the Deal,” and got to know him very well. I spent hundreds of hours listening to him, watching him in action and interviewing him about his life. > … > > Early on, I recognized that Trump’s sense of self-worth is forever at risk. When he feels aggrieved, he reacts impulsively and defensively, **constructing a self-justifying story that doesn’t depend on facts and always directs the blame to others.** > > The Trump I first met in 1985 had lived nearly all his life in survival mode. By his own description, his father, Fred, was relentlessly demanding, difficult and driven. Here’s how I phrased it in “The Art of the Deal”: “My father is a wonderful man, but he is also very much a business guy and strong and tough as hell.” As Trump saw it, his older brother, Fred Jr., who became an alcoholic and died at age 42, was overwhelmed by his father.\* > … > > Trump’s worldview was profoundly and self-protectively shaped by his father. “I was drawn to business very early, and I was never intimidated by my father, the way most people were,” is the way I wrote it in the book. “I stood up to him, and he respected that. We had a relationship that was almost businesslike.” > … > > To survive, I concluded from our conversations, Trump felt compelled to go to war with the world.\*\* It was a binary, zero-sum choice for him: You either dominated or you submitted. You either created and exploited fear, or you succumbed to it — as he thought his older brother had. This narrow, defensive outlook took hold at a very early age, and it never evolved. “When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now,” he told a recent biographer, “I’m basically the same.” His development essentially ended in early childhood\*\*… > > [Source](https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/05/16/i-wrote-the-art-of-the-deal-with-trump-his-self-sabotage-is-rooted-in-his-past/?utm_term=.11013043e360) The bold part (added) says it all. Trump knows that he is the same now as he was in first grade. He is at war with the world (and now that he has his finger on the nuclear button, that will have dire consequences for us all). This is an incredibly fascinating article, and it explains Trump completely. \*Note that Trump is not the firstborn–he had an older brother, a Junior, no less. But that brother was “weak” in Trump’s eyes and could not take the heat generated by Fred Senior. Trump (in his own eyes) has proved and is proving himself a better man and has triumphed over the weak firstborn. Lest anyone accuse me of armchair psychology, let me point out that this isn’t psychology, it’s literature, i.e., pure romantic myth. Those of you who are into historical and fantasy literature will recognize the plot immediately. Trump sees himself as having done nothing less than pulled the sword from the stone. ---
**Author:** ![Grestarian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grestarian/32/3227_2.png) [@Grestarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grestarian)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2017, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-the-perfect-trump-conspiracy-theory/790360/28 "2017-07-13T03:26:07Z")
> [@BeepKillBeep](#): > > With respect to the election, what seems likely is that he had a competent group of people that could manipulate enough people into voting for Trump. People like Bannon, who is an ass of a person, but a very good manipulator. Trump was a very suitable vessel for them being susceptible to manipulation himself due his narcissistic personality. This! The first and most important lesson in my high school civics class was that an office-holder is the frontman for a group of power traders who groom a charismatic figurehead. That figurehead may or may not have started out with principles and ideals and ethics and honor, but through the grooming process learned to compromise for the sake of attaining office and learned to be comfortable being a commodity/product in order to get into a position of leadership (and, if the constituents are lucky, he wanted to get into a leadership position in order to do something he thought was good for his constituents). But benevolence is not intrinsic to business or leadership. Nor, for that matter, are positive ethics. This is not a new idea. Plato wrote a couple millenia ago that anyone ethical enough to play the game of politics (with its intrinsic manipulation and compromises) was already too corrupt to be considered worthy of office; anybody principled enough to stick to what’s best for the Republic wouldn’t deign to run for office. And the game has gotten worse since television was paired with politics. Kennedy and (believe it or not) Nixon made use of their good looks to help win the Oval office, and soon enough it was an obvious choice to pick a seasoned movie star as a figurehead who could be handed great scripts to recite – and he even supported the manipulators’ ideals of Nationalism, anti-communism, and Christian Zeal; blind faith supported by great manipulation. Celebrity politicians became rather commonplace after that: actors Sonny Bono, Clint Eastwood, Jesse Ventura and comedian Al Franken…now we’ve got a “reality” game-show TV star as our President. He was accustomed to cheating, lying, manipulation, and ethical compromises well before he started The Apprentice; his behavior in the Oval Office is merely more of the same. And I wouldn’t necessarily blame The Donald for 100% of the crap we’re seeing. Yeah, he was willing to do whatever it takes to call himself The Prez\* but I tend to think the puppeteers behind him are the greater evil. —G! Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made. [COLOR=White]…–Otto von Bismarck[/COLOR] \*Just like Reagan was willing to do whatever it takes to vanquish the Big Red Scare, and look where that’s landed us now! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-the-perfect-trump-conspiracy-theory/790360.md?page=1)