Trump was asked about his foreign policy strategy.
I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things. I know what I’m doing, and I listen to a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people, and at the appropriate time I’ll tell you who the people are. But my primary consultant is myself and I have, you know, a good instinct for this stuff.
Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god. I’m gibbering. The nation with the largest military in the world is considering putting this putz in charge.
Trump does not have a very good brain
.
Is it really likely to be that much worse than “bomb everybody we don’t like the look of, hand out lots of guns to a random assortment of fanatical killers who might be sort-of vaguely opposed to whoever we’ve decided to get rid of this week, whilst remaining completely and aggressively ignorant of the details of the local politics”? Because I have to say that doesn’t really seem to have been working out so well…
By “I listen to a lot of people,” note that he actually means “I flip through the news channels occasionally.” I’ve read that numerous conservative foreign policy experts have written to him and offered to give him free advice, and he has turned them all down.
Paraphrasing Trump:
The rest of the world looks on, incredulously, at this spectacle of lame-brained stupidity endorsed & committed by a segment of the American public.
I imagine this is similar to the situation when Hitler was seeking power in Germany.
Yes… Yes, he has definitely “said a lot of things.”
So have I. I’m pretty damn sure I’m not qualified on foreign policy, and the only thing I’d want to do with a massive, overblown military is dismantle it.
He has a decent brain. It processes and integrates information, coordinates movement, and is even capable of basic language.
Abstract but rational thought is just an extra feature. So is a consistent representation of reality beyond the immediate physical environment.
*Finishes NdGTing on CNS topics*
Actually, Hitler was quite widely admired, until he started annexing bits of other people’s countries…
He is now a caricature of himself. Good luck USA, good luck world!
Exactly my reaction.
I actually am shocked so many Americans are this bad. Is nobody actually giving this any thought? For all the usual things and all the unforeseen things, good and bad, a president is involved in over a four-year period, they earnestly want to put forward this guy as their representative?
At least Trump is using his brain, G.W Bush made gut decisions. (This is in no way to be considered an endorsement).
Can’t you (i.e. the American people as a whole) apply some sort of minimal intelligence test to candidates for the Presidency?
I’m pretty sure that anyone who says “I have a pretty good instinct for this stuff” – when referring to a major issue like foreign policy – doesn’t.
Alright, who left open the portal to Bizarro World?
It’s like he has no filter. Thoughts bounce around that orange head of his and just spill out of his mouth, uncontrolled. There’s no internal censor. This is a guy who said, of his own daughter: “Yeah, she’s really something, and what a beauty, that one. If I weren’t happily married and, ya know, her father…” No internal voice pipes up and tells him “you know what, you really shouldn’t say this out loud”.
Dunc #8, you may be correct for all I know.
He did make the trains run on time, I believe, but that would’ve been after he came to power.
He was also popular with members of the British aristocracy, so I’ve heard, even after he took over.
I guess he was admired by any mean-minded asshole who didn’t give a shit for anything but their own interests. That seems to be the demographic that Trump appeals to.
Moggie, #14
And that’s precisely what Americans like about him: the whole “OMG he just sayz what he thinks!!1”
That’s Mussolini you’re thinking of, and it’s not actually true: http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/historicalmyths/a/Did-Mussolini-Get-The-Trains-Running-On-Time.htm
I’m visualizing future White House press briefings:
(Press Secretary Kardashian steps up to the podium)
“OK, here’s who we bombed the shit out of this week…”
doubter, #18: That would actually be an improvement on the current situation in some ways… At the moment, you just bomb the shit out of people and then carry on as if nothing has happened. Holding press conferences to announce who has had the shit bombed out of them would at least acknowledge the issue.
“Trump does not have a very good brain.”
He does you know. He keeps it in a jar and looks at it EVERY day.
@rumleech
Is it the brain of Morbius?
If so, the situation just got even worse.
Hitler didn’t get nearly as much TV coverage.
dick @15:
Prior to his obvious interest in invading his neighbors being exposed, Hitler was admired in Western Europe and America as a leader who could prevent the further expansion of Communism out of Eastern Europe.
As far as Trump’s brain goes, Abby Someone.
Hitler at least wasn’t a drooling idiot. I’m not sure which is more dangerous.
@quotetheunquote
What good would that do? It’s their voters we should be worried about. And Trump is at least as intelligent as the people who fall for his antics.
A more relevant question is, who thought it would be a good idea to bestow so much political power to just one person, any person, for 4 years? The US presidential system makes no sense to me. It’s practically asking for a Donald Trump to come along and screw things up.
@14, could you picture that filterless brain speaking during tense diplomatic times?
Worse, tRump in control of our nuclear arsenal.
If I was Putin, I’d have a boat off of the Maryland-Virginia coast, as he approached the podium for inauguration, the missiles fly.
10 minutes isn’t a lot of time to get anywhere near safe.
Forget talk of jeb? as “Bush lite”, Trump would be “Bush lighter fluid.”
The Wall Street Journal published an article that discussed the primary votes so far, the Republican candidates, and the possibility of a brokered convention. The article included this sentence: “By the way, Hillary Clinton’s primary vote total so far is 8,646,551, according to the RealClearPolitics count. Mr. Trump’s is 7,533,692.”
Of course, the facts, and the real world sometimes make Trump really angry (angry with a side of hurt feelings), so he took to Twitter for revenge.
The Wall Street Journal has not responded.
Cross posted from the Moments of Political Madness thread.
Trump, the sensitive bully. He has a thin skin and he never lets go of a grudge.
Trump won in every state but Ohio on Tuesday. What does he tweet about? Mostly Megyn Kelly. He is prolonging his petty she-hurt-my-feelings fit and vendetta.
The quotes are from Trump’s Twitter feed. Kelly was slated to be one of the moderators of the Republican debate in Salt Lake City, the event that Trump said he would not attend.
The Economist Intelligence Unit has placed Donald Trump among its top ten global risks.
Politico link.
Trump has a tendency to exaggerate. He can’t control it.
Associated Press link.
I wonder if he envisions himself having two chairs during various cabinet meetings, one for President Trump and one for Secretary Without Portfolio Trump:
Secretary of State Christie: “Mr. President, should we move against the new tariff on champagne exports to the US that the French just put in place?”
President Trump: “I’m very bright, I’m sure I have something great to say about this. Secretary Trump, give me something yuge!”
*Trump moves to the chair on the left*
Secretary Trump: “This is a disgrace to America! If they don’t want to sell us cheap champagne, we’ll build a wall around France to teach them a lesson!”
*Trump moves to the chair on the right*
President Trump: “Great idea! Secretary Christie, get on the phone with Valls. Tell him to meet me in my villa on the Riviera in two days. I want to tell him in person that he’ll be paying for a wall. And tell the crew to buy up as much champagne as we can fit into Air Force One. The Trump casinos, hotels and clubs will be selling champagne so cheap that we’ll put those other fuckers out of business! It’ll be yuge!”
Secretary Christie: *mumbling under his breath* “I hope he lets me have a case…”
alkisvonidas: The US government is based on an idealized version of the UK government in the late 18th century, with the President taking the place of the King. Accordingly, the President does all the sorts of things that were expected of an 18th-century british king, such as leading telling Parliament (Congress) what to do, leading the armed forces, negotiating treaties, and running the day-to-day business of government. Meanwhile, Parliament (Congress) is beholden to all sorts of vested interests and spends much of its time embroiled in partisan squabbles. Notice that the UK reformed its government and now no longer concentrates as much power in a single person (at least in principle), whereas the US is still using its fossilized 18th-century model. (That’s not to say that the UK government doesn’t have its own issues.)
I seem to recall that a few years ago, someone was giving advice on constitutional models to some transitional government (Libya?) and did not list the US constitution as an example to follow, on the grounds that a lot of more modern and more well-written constitutions have been enacted since 1945. Predictably, a bunch of people from the “The USA is the Most Bestest Country in the World” crowd lost their sh-t..
Dunc @ # 8: … Hitler was quite widely admired…
Maybe by the readers of various tabloid papers and listeners to demagogic radio.
For about six months after Hitler took office, no other nation officially recognized his regime of coarse thugs and bigots – until the logjam was finally broken by the universally accepted arbiters of all morality in the relatively newly created independent state known as The Vatican™ via the oh-so-special treaty called the Reichskonkordat, through which the Nazis gained international respectability for the bargain price of unlimited priestly access to German children.
At least Bush cleared the shit out of his gut periodically.
Granted, it was usually all over the people of another nation.
#15
If the people in this video clip are anything to go by, he also has support amongst people who seem to be decent, eloquent, affluent. well-read and well-educated, but who just also happen to be completely devoid of any critical thinking faculties whatsoever. Watch the clip and weep. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWlUgI4cB4M
In the same sense that someone held in a psychiatric institution against that person’s will and force fed medications to the point of drooling docility is a “good patient”.
Sorry, that was meant to express disagreement. Hopefully it was clear from context.
I do not know what to make of anything that guy says. The one skill that he has that is clear is a considerable skill in self-promotion. . He has clearly figured out how to garner masses of free media coverage with his entertaining off the wall antics. He has the advantage over his competition he can sound very confident and clear and open, like he is not soft peddling anything. Does he really believe all of what he says, some of it or any of it is anybody guess? What will he do if elected? everyone is doing their own projection of that.
I for one would not want to find out.
uncle frogy
I will take stupid evil to smart evil any day, though we shouldn’t rush to any conclusions about Trump’s cephalic fortitude.
Barack Obama is smart; but unquestionably so is Ted Cruz, and so were Reinhardt Heydrich and Martin Heidegger. Authoritarian movements have a tendency to be staffed by brilliant men and to valorize intellectualism in pursuit of their Cause. If you can take “I’m beating them because I hate them” and dress it up into “I’m beating them because it’s the only rational course of action,” you’ll always have a job in the halls of power.
Lynna @ 30:
If this was Discworld, there’d be a line at the Assassin’s Guild.
I’ve seen comparison of teh trum-prat, his campaign, and/or his hypothetical presidency, to not only Hitler, but also Mussolini, Franco, Silvio Berlusconi, and Jean-Marie Le Pen. Rather “illustrious” group, that…
I myself compare his horrorthetical presidency to the current antics of the Polish “government”, which has, in just a few months, already moved against freedom of the press, independence of the judiciary, closed borders to Syrian refugees, and other nasty things (generally supported by, and sometimes at the behest of, the child raping cult). Except teh trum-prat would have access to nuclear weapons, a fecking huge military, a world reserve currency, with a much larger economy. But also, hopefully, there are much stronger institutions…
Whose brain is it?
Abbie something.
Abbie something?
Abbie Normal.
I have Asperger’s, and a lot of people know (now) that one thing about “my” people is we frequently have no filters, no internal voice* that even realizes it should tell us ‘you know, you really shouldn’t say that out loud’. You know what absolutely no one in the history of ever (offline, in my so-called ‘real’ life) likes about me? Yeah. I think the problem with Chump’s groupies is more “OMG he just sayz what I thinks!!1” They just think very …badly.
*Little voice, you have one job. And it’s not staring at butterflies in my head while I try to interact with others.
I still remain unconvinced that Trump is a bumbling buffoon that somehow managed to garner a huge following, rather than a calculating dude with a lot of good analysts that tries to play to a previously untapped voterbase.
I think it’s much better to assume malice rather than stupidity when it comes to blatant fascism and racist rabble-rousing, rather than laughing him off like this is a Charlie Chaplain parody of a presidential run.
I agree with Vivec @ 45. I don’t think we can tell if Trump is a “bumbling idiot” or not. Reason: He’s a professional performer, a “reality TV star”*. He’s always on. We don’t know what he’s really like, but he is definitely always calculating and playing the same character: brash, obnoxious, bombastic, arrogant, etc. It’s fun to make fun of him because he’s a joke…a very bad joke. Dismissing him as improbable or not serious is dangerous. In fact, that’s one reason he’s beating the socks off the other Republican candidates including stalwarts like Jeb! No one took him seriously. Wrong. They (the powers that are the real GOP) will either rip apart the Republican party to stop his nomination or let the chips ride, and rebuild for the future.
* This is one of my favorite recent inventions, along with “YouTube star.”
I have a very good brain.
It’s an excellent brain.
It’s an amazing brain.
Everyone loves my brain.
I get constant comments telling me how fabulous my brain is.
My brain gets the best ratings.
No one has a brain great as my brain.
I also have the best steaks.
They are excellent steaks.
They are amazing steaks.
Everyone loves my steaks
……etc
If he gets elected it will be like “The Purge – Shit Floats to the Top”
As if to prove the point: The Daily Trail: Inside the conservative anti-Trump strategy meeting. This group of conspirators are talking serious business here. “Iacta alea est”* as Julius Caesar might say.
* That’s the Suetonius version. Plutarch says it in Greek. No matter. It’s almost certainly fiction. Both were written, supposedly, 150 years after the event…the earliest manuscripts are 9th century for Suetonius, and 10th/11th century for Plutarch. A lot like the Bibles. Great stories, perhaps, lousy history.
@Vivek I remain unconvinced that malice exists. Like, malice in the sense of, “I wish to do evil.”
@50
I mean malice in the “does bad things not by coincidence” sense.
Whether or not trump actually wants to do bad things, wants to better himself and doesn’t care about the bad effects, or legitimately thinks his actions are beneficial for everyone is kind of irrelevant to the point I’m making. I don’t think trump is just bumbling around saying the first thing that comes to mind, I think he’s a calculating dude making calculated actions to appeal to a voterbase to get in power.
roachiesmom@44:
That dovetails neatly into Vivec’s thesis that this is much more calculated than it appears.
I suspect Trump is not very bright, but he’s bright enough to be a dangerous and calculating ass — rather like Dubya.
On the topic of bombastic assholes who “say what they think” and win elections: Rob Ford is apparently not long for this world: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/rob-ford-condition-1.3498155
Liposarcoma, tumours in multiple places, not responding to chemo.
Liposarcoma. That’s a nasty one.
Poe’s Law applies here. I honesty do not know if this is a parody. Has Mother Jones started running parody news? I will put my money on this not being true. April Fools’ Day is close enough, so maybe this article is a pre-release ahead of that.
If only there were a way to get independent confirmation. Like, I dunno, maybe watching the video embedded in the article?
#54 numberobis
That totally sucks. The former mayor is (and was), in my opinion, a truly nasty piece of work, and had appallingly bad policy ideas, but I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.
RIP Rob Ford: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/rob-ford-1.3489457