How would science fare under Donald Trump?


Liberalismisamentaldisease

Donald Trump has some management advice.

If you are careful when finding employees, management becomes a lot easier. I rely on a few key people to keep me informed. They know I trust them, and they do their best to keep that trust intact.
Good people equals good management and good management equals good people. They have to work together or they won’t work together for very long.

I’ve heard this sort of thing before, and there’s truth to it. The president of the US can’t possibly know everything and do everything, so they should surround themselves with smart advisors to fill in the gaps in their experience.

But what if they are a terrible judge of people?

Then they’re hopeless and shouldn’t even be considered for the position. Donald Trump has given us a crystal clear picture of his judgement. He’s willing to consider making Michael Savage the head of the NIH. Michael Savage, the raging, racist, conspiracy theorist radio shock jock.

You might want to consider Savage’s position on medical and scientific matters before giving him the job. Media Matters has documented a huge collection of his statements.

Savage On Autism: “A Fraud, A Racket … In 99 Percent Of The Cases, It’s A Brat Who Hasn’t Been Told To Cut The Act Out.”
Savage Slams PTSD And Depression Sufferers: “Weak,” “Narcissistic,” “Losers.”
Savage Told Listeners Not To Trust The Government On Flu Shots.
Savage: Obama Wants “To Infect The Nation With Ebola.”
Savage Falsely Blamed The 2014 Surge Of Undocumented Children From Central America For Spreading A Deadly Strain Of The Enterovirus.
Savage: Lesbians Are “Jealous That They Don’t Have An AIDS Epidemic That They Can Cash In On.”
Savage Theorized Liberals Like Sen. Bernie Sanders Have Been Driven To “Insanity” Because Of Seltzer.
Savage Was Fired From MSNBC After He Said A Caller Was A “Sodomite” And Said He Should “Get AIDS And Die.”
Savage: Arabs Are “Non-Humans” And “Racist, Fascist Bigots”; “Kill 100 Million” Muslims.
Savage Has Pushed Paranoid And Conspiratorial Rhetoric About President Obama.

It took me a minute to figure out what one of those was about: who is Seltzer, and how is he driving liberals insane? It turns out he was referring to seltzer, carbonated drinks with little fizzing bubbles of CO2. Those damage your brain.

I can’t even imagine how the institutions of science would survive with people like Savage in charge. Maybe he should start a little smaller…just put him in as head of the NIMH and see how well they “work together”.

Comments

  1. says

    Savage Slams PTSD And Depression Sufferers: “Weak,” “Narcissistic,” “Losers.”

    Perhaps it’s just the PTSD messin’ with my brain, but I’m pretty sure that narcissistic doesn’t go with weak and loser.

  2. blf says

    How would math fare under Trump?

    Not to mention his head is recursively inserted into his arse; that is, it(the head) is solved so far up the arse it(the head) has come out of his own mouth, gone around, and been shoved up the arse, again. And again and again. And more agains. Whole new branches of biomathematics and biophysics have had to be invented to describe the phenomenon, with numerous papers having to be rewritten every day as he achieves yet more twisted bizarre shoves or prat assings (the terminology is not settled yet — there is also no agreed symbol yet, albeit ☣(biohazard) and ⧞(infinity negated) seem to be popular suggestions).

  3. Big Boppa says

    I’m glad you cleared up that one about CO2. I thought he was claiming that people were gettin’ all jumpy and jivey from listening to too much Brian Setzer music.

  4. says

    On his radio program on December 3, while repeating the falsehood that Obama is bringing in 100,000 Syrian refugees who are “mostly” young men of military age, Michael Savage informed his listeners that “one percent of ten” is equal to one. No wonder most of his reasoning is off by at least one order of magnitude.

  5. moarscienceplz says

    I guess all that Coke, Pepsi, and Dr. Pepper that southern conservatives drink doesn’t affect their brains because they have none to be affected.

  6. says

    I postulated in a different thread that Trump’s minions have trained themselves to feed him only what he wants to hear. It’s a survival tactic on their part.

    That’s, in part, how Trump ends up “knowing” that the Mexican government “sends the bad ones over,” and that, “If you’re from Syria and you’re a Christian, you cannot come into this country, and they’re the ones that are being decimated.” He got the decimated part right, but it is not just Christians who are being decimated, and there is no special immigration prohibition against Syrian Christians.

    Syrian Christians have been admitted as refugees in recent months. There’s nothing in U.S. law or regulation that discriminates against Christian refugees.

    Not to mention that Trump claims some of the comments about women repeated by Megyn Kelly at the first Republican debate were wrong. “Well, some of the things that she said, I didn’t say, okay?”

    Actually, Trump said exactly what Kelly mentioned, and it’s clearly documented.

    You would think that in cases where it’s stuff he has actually said, and not “facts” his staff has fed to him from questionable sources, he would be able to refrain from lying.

  7. Ogvorbis: failed human says

    Savage Slams PTSD And Depression Sufferers: “Weak,” “Narcissistic,” “Losers.”

    I’ll cop to all three. With caveats, of course.

    Not to mention his head is recursively inserted into his arse

    blf, would that make him a human Klein Bottle?

  8. says

    I’m embarrassed to say that I used to listen to Michael Savage while I was an undergraduate and retained vestiges of my parents politics. The scientist that I worked under was a woman from the Ukraine who was an excellent role-model for what I wanted to be as a scientist. One day I was listening to him on the radio and she remarked “That man has a black mouth!”.

    In retrospect that was spot-on.

  9. ck, the Irate Lump says

    He’s the perfect person for the job if you want the job to include the state murdering political opponents. It’s not far from what Savage currently says and moving to suggest that the people he considers “diseased” be removed from society.

  10. says

    Clearly, the New World Order is taking a leaf out of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams, where it is revealed that Zaphod Beeblebrox is the President of the Galaxy precisely because he is the candidate most unsuited for the job,in order to distract attention away from the real power who are running things behind the scenes.

    Funny thing is, Alex Jones appears to have swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker.

  11. says

    Michael Weiner actually has a PhD in ethnobotany, or some such. He wrote several books on the subject. No, this doesn’t make him qualified to run the NIH, but it’s amusing. He was into the counter-culture during the ’60s and hung out with Alan Ginsberg among others. People who knew him then say his current radio personality is a complete sham, just a way to make money.

  12. zibble says

    Savage Was Fired From MSNBC After He Said A Caller Was A “Sodomite” And Said He Should “Get AIDS And Die.”

    Why the hell was he on MSNBC in the first place? Is this what counts for “balance” – upperclass center left liberalism vs intensely dishonest fearmongering batshit ?

  13. rubaxter says

    Trump’s advice it so trite as to be useless, just like his banalities that always involve getting the ‘best’ people to do the ‘best job’. Nothing he says is actionable. And, does his advice on the kind of people he prefers not sound like he endorses the snitch mentality?

    The only way Trump would not gut Science is if he was embarrassed by someone he’s trying to sell property to on the subject. It’s all ego with him, like thinking the greatest compliment he can pay his daughter is he’d like to date her. A creep all ’round.

  14. ck, the Irate Lump says

    rubaxter wrote:

    The only way Trump would not gut Science is if he was embarrassed by someone he’s trying to sell property to on the subject.

    I’m not sure he could even in that scenario. Remember that this is a man seems to have a meltdown every time someone tells him that he’s wrong, and went bankrupt running a casino. I have zero confidence that he’s even remotely capable of appraising the competence of others. Under your scenario, we’d probably have lots of funding for biblical flood geology, numerology, and alchemy, but virtually nothing for real sciences.