Trump time capsule

An excellent, ongoing series in the Atlantic:

Things a Real President Wouldn't Say

They add remarkably stupid and demonstrably untrue things said by Trump as he says them. What's amazing is that they're up to 8 whoppers, and they only started 11 days ago (!)

In a way, this is part of the problem. Some of these things could sink a normal candidate, at least partly because they're far more rare with other candidates, and the press has something to focus on (sometimes, with past candidates) for weeks. With Trump, a new one comes out so often that the press doesn't have time to focus on how bad (and sometimes, downright dangerous) it is, before he (and then they) are on to the next one.

It's a good read; not only for the factual info, but because it's written in a pretty lively way. A couple of my favorite snippets from the various items:

(From #5):

"As a first approximation, it is fair to assume that Donald Trump does not know anything about public policy. Anything. Including about the issue that is the main point of his campaign. It is almost impossible to convey how far this is outside the range of even the least-brilliant or dutiful “normal” politicians. Instinct always matters, but going purely with the gut is the route to sorrow in public affairs.

For comparison, please check out this previous item on why Sarah Palin, the closest apparent comparison, actually was much better informed than Trump. We are entering the realm of “Chauncey Gardner,” the simple-minded gardener whose blurtings are treated as meaningful, in Being There. This is the person who would be making judgment calls as president, including about the use of force and nuclear weaponry. This is the person the Republican party is preparing itself to accept."

(From #4):

“'I’ve been known as being a very smart guy for a long time. I don’t consider myself birther or not birther but there are some major questions here and the press doesn’t want to cover it,” he said.

Side question: Is there anyone you know who actually is very smart, who goes around saying “I’ve been known as being a very smart guy for a long time”? In my experience there is no surer marker of not, in fact, being smart than this kind of barroom brag."

(Note: you have to keep clicking on "read more" in each item to read the whole thing, but well worth it.

 

<We are in the most advanced technological time in human history, with literally every fact at our fingertips, and yet we will avoid information that clashes with our world view.>

Yep. You said a mouthful. Like you, I try to avoid that and even force myself sometimes to read conservative tomes and sites. Not the wacko stuff (although I'll even do that sometimes to see what they're thinking).

Years ago I used to subscribe to both the National Review and the Nation. I always wondered what my mailman thought about that.

What I'm hoping is that these things, if they don't matter to his followers (and clearly they don't) will still matter to undecideds/moderates. They do still exist.

 

Oh, he lost them already, don't worry about that portion of the vote.

The MLK thing was designed to flatter a certain portion of the white vote. Those people who in many cases weren't alive when King was, or were very young, or willfully misremember their own past (and I'm related to people like that). They've convinced themselves that King was "one of the good ones" and they are totally down with him (even if some of the older ones were anything but - again, I'm related to some people in this camp and though I was young, I remember what they said about King at the time!), and contrast him to black people today, who they still don't like, and say to themselves "if only those people were like King was. See, I'm not racist. I like MLK!"

And then many even convince themselves that THEY'RE more like King, and that in fact white people are the "truly oppressed" these days.

Study Finds White Americans Believe They Experience More Racism Than African Americans

"Moreover, the study finds that the majority of Caucasians believe that anti-white racism is a “bigger problem” than what African Americans face."

Think about that for a second. A majority of Caucasians (!!)

"Tufts Associate Professor of Psychology Samuel Sommers, PhD is the co-author of the article “Whites See Racism as a Zero-sum Game that They Are Now Losing,” from the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. He comments that “It’s a pretty surprising finding when you think of the wide range of disparities that still exist in society, most of which show black Americans with worse outcomes than whites in areas such as income, home ownership, health and employment.”

(snip)

"Both groups reported roughly the same things for the 1950s, with neither believing Caucasians experienced much racism at all during that turbulent decade. Both similarly agreed that at the same time, there was substantial racism against African Americans. Both groups also agreed that racism against African Americans has steadily decreased over time. But here’s where the study gets interesting. Caucasians surveyed believe that the discrimination faced by their African American neighbors has decreased much more rapidly than the African American respondents. Furthermore, they believe that while African Americans now have it better, they – the Caucasians surveyed – have taken their place as the primary targets of discrimination.

“These data are the first to demonstrate that not only do whites think more progress has been made toward equality than do blacks, but whites also now believe that this progress is linked to a new inequality – at their expense,” Norton and Sommers explain."

So this explains part of the King reference. Pandering again to aggrieved whites, who in some cases have reason to be aggrieved, but encouraging them to blame the wrong people.

The other explanation is that Trump actually seems to have pictured himself filling the Mall in DC, as King famously did, and his ego couldn't stand the fact that only about 5,000 people showed up. He actually initially claimed that "they" had (somehow) prevented 600,000 people from attending. No word on who "they" was, or what mechanism "they" used to somehow keep every one of these additional 595,000 people from making their way to the Mall.

(Trump): "I mean, look at today. They say you have 600,000 people here trying to get in."

Who says that?? Again, "they." This is a very common Trump construction. HE's not saying this, put "they" are, or "many people" are... In reality, of course, no one but Trump himself was saying that, and he clearly pulled that figure out of his nether regions, as even the famous King speech which did fill the Mall was only about 200,000 - 250,000. When called on this by just about every press outlet, Trump later claimed he was "joking." If you watch the clip, he clearly wasn't. Another lie. He really thought he could fill the place.

(Trump again): "I thought this would be like Dr. Martin Luther King where people were lined up from here all the way to the Washington Monument," he said. "But unfortunately they aren't allowed to come in."

"Aren't allowed." Obviously, a pure lie. But one that again speaks to some vague sense of grievance he could use with the scant 5,000 who did show, and those fans of his watching on TV.

 

Just a reminder: this excellent Atlantic series is ongoing, meaning that you can click on the link in the OP, then click on the red "click here for newer notes" link at the top of that page, and read the ones added since you last checked in.

Just a sample here, about Trump's demonstration of the fact that he knew all about the zoo gorilla news story, but had never even heard of the term "Brexit."

"Many average U.S. citizens can be perfectly functional and happy despite not having heard of the “Brexit” — the proposed British exit from the European Union — just as many average citizens can do just fine never having heard of the “nuclear triad” on which U.S. deterrent strategy is based. But (and it’s embarrassing to spell this out) please remember that (1) anyone who has actually read an international-business story in the WSJ, the FT, the Economist, the NYT, and so on in the past year would have seen the term, just as anyone who had read about the modern military would have come across the “triad”; and (2) anyone responsible for U.S. international business and strategic dealings, and for understanding the macro forces on the U.S. economy in the year ahead, should be aware of this serious potential change in a regional economy even bigger than that of the U.S."