The Trump Presidency | Biden Inaugurated

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Interesting, what makes you think so?

I was going to say I tend to think the opposite but @Wednesday at Stoke just said it better than I could.

Mainly the contrast between his unbelievable inarticulacy and the fact he’s been able to achieve what he’s achieved. I’m not saying he’s a very intelligent man. Just not the complete half-wit you’d think he is from his incoherent ramblings.
 
Mainly the contrast between his unbelievable inarticulacy and the fact he’s been able to achieve what he’s achieved. I’m not saying he’s a very intelligent man. Just not the complete half-wit you’d think he is from his incoherent ramblings.

I think that's the benefit of being rich though Pogue and being able to employ smart people round you.
 
Mainly the contrast between his unbelievable inarticulacy and the fact he’s been able to achieve what he’s achieved. I’m not saying he’s a very intelligent man. Just not the complete half-wit you’d think he is from his incoherent ramblings.

What do you think is his crowning achievement, other than ofcourse becoming the president of the USA? I'd say its his ability to project his last name as a brand synonymous with opulence and wealth. He was fortunate enough to be a real estate scion at a time when America was building at a rapid pace.

He has had multiple harebrained schemes to profit off of his brand and most resulted in law suits, bankruptcies or worse. You could argue that the process of building his brand was his biggest achievement and he got there in his relative youth by spreading himself thin across page 6 news, reality shows and beauty pageants. It requires a certain kind of skill, the same kind that the Kardashians have built for themselves but does that doesn't in any way meaningfully correlate with intelligence. He's just been willing to stoop to a level consistently lower than most people of his wealth and recognition have been willing to pull themselves.
 
I don't know why people latch onto those quotes so much. Call me naive, but I look at those quotes as a man who's proud of his beautiful daughter which was not worded in the most eloquent of ways.
Interviewer: what do you have in common with you're father?
Ivanka: i would have to say golf and real estate.
Interviewer: and what would you have in common with Ivanka?
Trump: i would have to say sex.

Get out of here pal. Anyone that speaks about their child in sexual terms like he has is a fecking creep.
 
Mainly the contrast between his unbelievable inarticulacy and the fact he’s been able to achieve what he’s achieved. I’m not saying he’s a very intelligent man. Just not the complete half-wit you’d think he is from his incoherent ramblings.
I think Trump is astonishingly good at three things. Talking shit, trolling, and getting his own way. And it proved incredibly effective.

Whether he's intelligent or not is another matter, but he's definitely not as stupid as he makes out.
 
Mainly the contrast between his unbelievable inarticulacy and the fact he’s been able to achieve what he’s achieved. I’m not saying he’s a very intelligent man. Just not the complete half-wit you’d think he is from his incoherent ramblings.
Up to this point his "only" remarkable achievement is becoming president in my mind (I used quotation marks because it's obviously a astonishing achievement regardless of what one thinks of him). I witnessed how that happened though, he essentially told everyone who he thought might vote for him what they wanted to hear. He told people to blame others for the problems they have, and those others were always people far removed from the ones he was talking to. He campaigned against Washington because people felt disconnected from it, too far away (both physically and mentally) to know what is true and what isn't. Now that he IS Washington he blames the EU, Germany or China, because just like Washington, those are far away and his voters don't know or care about what is true or not.

I honestly think his thoughts and his words are one and the same.
 
I think that's the benefit of being rich though Pogue and being able to employ smart people round you.
Beat me to it. Being rich and able to get good staff, can get you to the White House it seems. No matter if you're sleezy, a crook or an odious cnut. It's enough, unless you're a woman, or a minority.
 
I don't see how you can arrive at him being smart. He's embarassing himself on a regular basis, gets caught in contradictions and lies almost every single day, has a ridiculous turnover in subordinates and has impeachment looming over his head. :wenger:

I think the simplest and most logical explanation is that America is ready for someone like him, that half of its population is embracing his quasi-facism out of stupidity and/or indifference/greed, that people there just don't care about what's true or what's right/fair/humane as long as they think their team(!) is winning. There is no need for him to be intelligent, because people in America are immune to facts or intelligent arguments, they believe what they want to believe and his ramblings align with that. In a normal/healthy society you can't just deflect everything by sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling fake news/lock her up/illegals/witch hunt, yet for Trump that's an effective strategy.
 
Up to this point his "only" remarkable achievement is becoming president in my mind (I used quotation marks because it's obviously a astonishing achievement regardless of what one thinks of him). I witnessed how that happened though, he essentially told everyone who he thought might vote for him what they wanted to hear. He told people to blame others for the problems they have, and those others were always people far removed from the ones he was talking to. He campaigned against Washington because people felt disconnected from it, too far away (both physically and mentally) to know what is true and what isn't. Now that he IS Washington he blames the EU, Germany or China, because just like Washington, those are far away and his voters don't know or care about what is true or not.

I honestly think his thoughts and his words are one and the same.

See that first paragraph is at odds with the “I know nuclear” “stable genius” simpleton you’d think from his interviews. You have to give most of the credit to his team, no doubt, but building/leading a good team is, again, at odds with him being the absolute half-wit he often comes across as.
 
I think people severely underestimate Trump. He's a scumbag, but he's been able to consistently get away with things that would have sunk any other politician 10 times over. Tax, Supreme Court, North Korea....he'll claim it all as his success irrespective of where it is or not.
 
See that first paragraph is at odds with the “I know nuclear” “stable genius” simpleton you’d think from his interviews. You have to give most of the credit to his team, no doubt, but building/leading a good team is, again, at odds with him being the absolute half-wit he often comes across as.
Fair enough, I wasn't thinking of the more extreme examples, I was thinking about his usual speeches. He's smarter than " I know nuclear" but I've seen him call himself a "stable genius" multiple times now and am certain he means it.
 
I don't see how you can arrive at him being smart. He's embarassing himself on a regular basis, gets caught in contradictions and lies almost every single day, has a ridiculous turnover in subordinates and has impeachment looming over his head. :wenger:

I think the simplest and most logical explanation is that America is ready for someone like him, that half of its population is embracing his quasi-facism out of stupidity and/or indifference/greed, that people there just don't care about what's true or what's right/fair/humane as long as they think their team(!) is winning. There is no need for him to be intelligent, because people in America are immune to facts or intelligent arguments, they believe what they want to believe and his ramblings align with that. In a normal/healthy society you can't just deflect everything by sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling fake news/lock her up/illegals/witch hunt, yet for Trump that's an effective strategy.
Spot on. Trump is merely a symptom/manifestation of a significant core of US culture. Ie, an embrace of sensationalist, inward, partisan, nationalist exceptionalism.

All Trump has had to do is pay lip service to the usual diatribes associated with this core, while vacuously taking the fight to this conjured up collective boogeyman known as the ‘liberal elite’.

It’s depressing how easy and predictable it all is. I suppose it’s fitting that a reality TV personality was the one to champion all this.
 
I think people severely underestimate Trump. He's a scumbag, but he's been able to consistently get away with things that would have sunk any other politician 10 times over. Tax, Supreme Court, North Korea....he'll claim it all as his success irrespective of where it is or not.
But he didn't do it by doing anything extraordinary smart. He gets away of the tax because there's no actual law that forces him to publish them, the supreme court had been a long time effort by republicans (blocking Obama from nominating one), in Singapore he betrayed people his voters seemingly don't care about (South Koreans).

I fail to see how any of that makes him intelligent?
 
But he didn't do it by doing anything extraordinary smart. He gets away of the tax because there's no actual law that forces him to publish them, the supreme court had been a long time effort by republicans (blocking Obama from nominating one), in Singapore he betrayed people his voters seemingly don't care about (South Koreans).

I fail to see how any of that makes him intelligent?
Never said he was intelligent. He's just smart to take credit for others work and keep his fan base mostly happy. Somehow he's able to get away with it.
 
He's less incompetent than we (his detractors) make him out to be, but he is infinitely less competent than his supporters make him out to be.

He's an ignorant cnut with some business sense and no scruples backed by intelligent cnuts with a lot of business sense and even less scruples. Lacking a moral compass makes for efficient decision making.
 
Tbh I think questioning whether he's as dumb as he seems is a coping mechanism for witnessing some of this feckwittery (at times you can't believe what you're seeing/hearing). Yes, he's as dumb as it seems, your senses are not misleading you. It is what it is.

Change dumb to stupid or ignorant if it sits better with you.
 
I don't know why people latch onto those quotes so much. Call me naive, but I look at those quotes as a man who's proud of his beautiful daughter which was not worded in the most eloquent of ways.

I'd imagine millions of parents are proud of their daughters without feeling compelled to invoke the idea of dating them.
 
Trump is just a very good conman who was born into wealth and with very little moral compass. He's not dumb but he's in no way smart. He just can read people and uses his power to make people bend to his will and uses those people skills to charm the unaware.

You can't hear him talk for more than 5 minutes and come away thinking he's in some way a smart person. Well not now anyway. He was definitely more sensible in his youth.

And yeah, no one who talks about his daughter that way on multiple occasions hasn't thought about having sex with her.
 
Interviewer: what do you have in common with you're father?
Ivanka: i would have to say golf and real estate.
Interviewer: and what would you have in common with Ivanka?
Trump: i would have to say sex.

Get out of here pal. Anyone that speaks about their child in sexual terms like he has is a fecking creep.

Please show me a source to these quotes. A copy/paste returns nothing, so let's see the full context and not your paraphrasing.
 
He's less incompetent than we (his detractors) make him out to be, but he is infinitely less competent than his supporters make him out to be.

He's an ignorant cnut with some business sense and no scruples backed by intelligent cnuts with a lot of business sense and even less scruples. Lacking a moral compass makes for efficient decision making.
I think this is the most accurate description of him that I've read so far. There's a middle ground somewhere.

I hate the man, but he's doing a lot of stuff "right".
 
Anyone notice that the Donald didn't do his usual handshake bollocks.
 
Putin just stated that Russia did not meddle in the US election.

Case closed. The 13 Angry Democrats can end the Witch Hunt.
 
'Putin said: “Where did you get the idea that Trump trusts me or I trust him?”'

Doh. Tough luck, Donald.
 
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