Not that I implicitly trust the Iranian goverment, but they haven’t devolved to the North Korean level of executing three generations for one person’s offense yet.
Longer answer: Yes, what kind of fucking stupid question is that?
Even longer answer: I get it, though. It’s not just intelligent people but even average people assume others have interiority and some sort of rational and critical thinking skills that would, even if only occasionally, stop them and say “hey, wait, is that true? Does that even make sense?” But there’s little to no interiority at all in Trump. Almost pure id driven by his basest impulses to eat, fornicate, and domineer over others. This may have been less true in the past when he was merely stupid but now that he’s still stupid but also clearly declining mentally with age, there’s not a lot of ‘there’ anymore to even hope for better.
But most of us, particularly on the Dope, upon encountering such a person, instead of admitting the existential horror of a person with no inner life, are instantly repelled and deny such a person exists, and instead try to find convoluted explanations that involve a conscious, fundamentally rational human being than some shambling homunculus that only approximates an intelligent being.
Yeah, as an intelligent to average person with plenty of interiority myself, I guess this is where I fall in my difficulty to grasp that he really is that stupid and devoid of any self-reflection whatsoever.
Though, I don’t think it’s all that off base to suggest that there could be an element of trolling to his performances. As stupid, sundowning and un-self-reflective as he may be, he is, it’s been said by others, not just me here, that he has an almost feral ability to detect weakness in others and exploit it. He has a primal instinct for bullying. So I think that some part of his decaying brain may be enjoying the fact that his stupid, ridiculous, absurd stories drive his detractors crazy.
But it seems to be that he believes it is his brilliance that drives his detractors crazy. That they cannot see the things that are obvious to him about windmills and magnets and whatever else.
So, yes, performative, but less in a troll sense and more in a clueless, deranged “Look upon my works, ye not-so-mighty, and despair” sense. He does not have the self-awareness to comprehend they are utterly unimpressed by his pronouncements. Or rather, unable to comprehend they are baffled that anybody could be so clueless and devoid of any intellect.
Oh, you’re defintely correct there. We see it in his Tweets where he constantly tweaks his enemies by refering to them as “low IQ” or calling them silly names like “Dumocrats.” In his first address to Congress during his 2nd administration in March 2025, Trump deliberately trolled the Democrats several times. Trump seeks adulation, and his base just eats it up when he trolls his enemies.
And @smithsb --Today I saw another version in which it’s Kristi Noem informing the trio about the dog’s accident—adding, of course, that she intended to shoot the dog.
Really, with this Cabinet (past and present), it would be possible to make a joke with a line for each member. They each possess their own particular infamy.
For each of the existing 982,827,836 jokes about Patel’s being a drunk, there is now a new joke combining the booze with the animal-attraction.
They bring this on themselves.
I think this may be accurate.
And after all, it’s always a prerogative (and proof) of power to do or say crazy things and force everyone around you to smile and nod their agreement.
Yeah. I’m watching CNN right now, and they’re covering Trump’s press conference at the White House live. Apparently, if I’m understanding correctly (and with Trump, that’s not necessarily a given), he believes in the First Amendment and freedom of the media, but he doesn’t like them telling lies. So he’s banning them because they don’t write or broadcast the truth. The truth according to Trump, of course.
A lot about how much money he got from ABC and CBS for their “lies,” and now he’s going after the BBC for allegedly “putting words in his mouth.”
Copies of the New York Times and the Washington Post are still in the White House, but they’re totally fake news, and they might not be there someday.
Forget that concern, how about just wasting a lot of the most expensive, hardest to build planes in the world?
The schedule to deliver F35s is already years-long, and the Saudi military is notoriously corrupt and incompetent. Let them continue to waste the planes they already have, and give these ones to someone who knows how to use them.
This doesn’t bother me that much. He never answered any of their questions anyways, and now they don’t even have to worry about “losing access” if they go hard at him. So maybe they’ll finally grow a spine and call a lie a lie.
