Pet Political Peeve

[NanceGreggs]

When Trump says something ridiculous, unhinged, and totally insane, it drives me up a wall when someone immediately attempts to explain that he's acting in furtherance of some elaborate scheme that we are all just too politically naive to understand.

Trump is not "crazy like a fox" - he's just crazy. And so are the idiots who still support him.

Trump is not a mastermind - he's losing his mind, or what's left of it.

Trump is not playing chess while we dumb Democrats are playing checkers - he's playing his MAGA-naughts for every penny they're willing to fork over.

"He knows exactly what he's doing!" No, he doesn't. He's doing what he thinks will line his own pockets - and that's where his "brilliance" ends. It's not about a means to a political end - it's about a political means to raise enough cash to keep his head above the financial tidal wave that's engulfing him.

I expect to hear the Trump spawn describing how Daddy was "playing" the dictators he was kow-towing to. I expect to hear his GOP enablers Trump-splainin' his idiocy as political brilliance.

What I don't understand is anyone who has an ounce of political savvy promoting the idea that there is some deeper political meaning in the statements that a dementia-ridden con-man utters on a daily basis.

There is no "there" there. And trying to read some behind-the-scenes political strategy into the ravings of a lunatic is as covfeve as it gets.

[brush]

1. Totally agree. Thanks, Nance, for laying it out clearly.

[Walleye]

2. He just said "Putin always wanted Ukraine we talked a lot about it"

Why didn’t he do something about it? Has he talked to him recently about it?. The reporters never ask these things. Of course he never gives interviews to real reporters. But they do love to trumps playing after he’s done. Are we ever gonna cut out this malignancy from our country?

[Maine Abu El Banat]

3. Well said

My friend!

[Tommymac]

4. TFG is a 1% patsy in many ways. He is a moran. Problem is smart people are still using him

to advance their own agendas.

It's the smart ones using TFG's misguided followers that are the real danger now.

[Dirty Socialist]

5. That bugs me too!

A couple of people I know claim the same thing from Trump. I have been able to talk one of them down on those claims.
BTW, does anyone remember the comic strip “Henry”? It was an incredibly simplistic strip about a mute boy. Some people joked that there was an underlying profundity that goes completely over everyone’s heads in each episode (there obviously wasn’t one).Trump is the same way. One person who used to be close to Trump said Trump says exactly what he means, and there is no underlying subtle message to be discerned.
Trump = Henry. I just wish Trump was mute so he can STFU.

[gab13by13]

6. Donald Trump is not stupid,

he is mentally ill. He is still the leader of the Putin party, he just won the CPAC straw poll. Donald Trump is a Russian asset who got himself elected president of the United States, if he truly were a blabbering idiot he would have been indicted by now. He has broken many laws in plain sight but prosecutors like Alvin Bragg drop prosecuting him because they claim it's too hard to prosecute Trump because they can't prove his criminal intent, and half of the members here at DU agree with Alvin Bragg, that tells me that Trump knows what he is doing.

Are you sure if he runs in 2024 that he won't get re-elected? I felt for sure he wouldn't be elected the first time, I'm not making the same mistake twice. Donald Trump needs to be held accountable before the next presidential election.

Let's also not forget that Donald Trump has the MSM on his side.

[NanceGreggs]

7. Donald Trump IS stupid.

The fact that the GOP has tried to make him look like less than an idiot than he obviously is doesn't make him smart.

[agingdem]

18. let's go back to the beginning..2015-2016

Mika/Joe/Andrea/Chuck et al.....they knew Trump was deranged, stupid, corrupt/corruptible .. a sexual predator/deviant...vengeful, cruel, crude, pathologically self-absorbed, a chronic liar, delusional, a sociopath..they knew what he was (they socialized, they found him amusing), but because of their obvious hatred for the Clintons, Hillary in particular, they took their friend, a debauched showman, polished him up and "sold" him as the real deal, someone who would grow in office (funny, that)...

The GOP reveres their guy Trump, a vacuous venomous pus filled boil because he is who they are...white hate-fueled greedy racists terrified of losing their dominance/relevance in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural embrace-all America...

[LakeArenal]

23. Being stupid and being mentally ill are not mutually exclusive.

[samplegirl]

8. Junior is already saying his

Dad was playing the dictators. He calls Daddy trump like it’s his bestie.

[PJMcK]

9. Good points, Nance. Trump is stupid and demented

The worrisome part is how many Americans think Trump is smart, rich and handsome. There are millions of them!

It’s frightening that so many people have such poor critical thinking skills that they can be conned by an obvious fraud like Trump.

[gab13by13]

11. A much more worrisome part to me,

is people who still underestimate Trump. Does being an obvious fraud make him stupid?

One doesn't need critical thinking to see Trump as a fraud, as a criminal. as a sexual assaulter, most likely a rapist and yet knowing all of that he became president of the United States and is still the leader of the Putin party.

We even have our DOJ defending the office of the presidency in E. Jeanne Carrol's defamation suit against Trump. She has the dress with the evidence yet he doesn't have to provide a DNA sample. He has convinced our DOJ that defaming a woman who accused him of raping her is an official duty of the presidency. The man is brilliant. He is able to commit crimes in the open and never be held accountable.

Even Alvin Bragg said it would be too hard to prove criminal intent against Trump when he inflated and deflated his assets at his own whim. The man is brilliant, he has prosecutors convinced it's too hard to hold him accountable, or in the case of Stormy Daniels, DOJ just dropped the cut and dried case that Robert Mueller had provided them and no one, I mean no one cares but a small minority of people.

[jimmy the one]

10. my pet peeve - religious hypocrisy too

Why or how he draws religious support is what has confounded me, since he was pro-life most of his life especially as a democrat. He has broken 8 of the 10 commandments, has disavowed ever asking forgiveness from any God (“I am not sure I have.. I don’t think so,” .. “I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.)

Trump once declared in a 1999 interview that “I am pro-choice in every respect."

1. I AM THE LORD THY GOD: THOU SHALT NOT HAVE STRANGE GODS BEFORE ME.
-- which god is greater to trump? himself, or money? He might have an out though, they aren't strange to him.

2. THOU SHALL NOT TAKE THE NAME OF THE LORD THY GOD IN VAIN.
-- kind of a pass, not many haven't at some time or another.

3. KEEP THE SABBATH HOLY.
-- christianity today: Trump was not a regular churchgoer before he was elected president. Maybe he prays when he's waiting to putt, eh?

4. HONOUR THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER.
-- Yay! He does! I guess if your father leaves you 61 million dollars, 'you da greatest!'. Maybe only gets half a point tho - politico: Trump reveres his father but almost never talks about his mother.

5. THOU SHALT NOT KILL.
-- YAY! Number Two he has kept. Buuuut, he's bragged about doing it on 5th avenue, eh?

6. THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY.
-- bragged about doing this on the bus tape I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn't get there. And she was married. Odds are he has many times over. Including when his wife was at home with a baby.

7. THOU SHALT NOT STEAL.
-- he's been fined millions for defrauding people via his foundation and fake university. As well as cheating people out of full payments for services done.

8. THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS AGAINST THY NEIGHOUR.
-- cough spittle. He does this almost on a daily basis many times over.

9. THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHOUR'S WIFE.
-- See #6 above.

10. THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHOUR'S GOODS.
-- see #7 above.

[jaxexpat]

12. So true. Profoundly, undeniably, unavoidably, conclusively and unequivocally true.

That so many don't get that is why we can't have nice things.

[Sherman A1]

13. One wonders

Why some folks are worrying about anything TFG says?

Is he living in their brains rent free?

[Atticus]

14. Agree. Trump has the attention span of a gnat, the self-discipline of a 3-year-old, and the

"morals" of a Komodo dragon.

While some try to "explain" one outrage, he commits three more.

[gab13by13]

15. Yeah, Trump is so stupid,

be blatantly violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution. He never produced his taxes, he never divested his businesses.
He even used bogus financial numbers to be allowed to lease the DC Hotel next to the White House where visitors of Trump felt compelled to stay. Brilliant. I will bet money that he will be allowed to sell his lease now and make a handsome profit, and Jimmy Carter had to sell his peanut farm.

Trump has the RNC paying his legal fees right now, brilliant.

Trump got taxpayers to buy golf carts for his own private golf course and then charged the secret service to use them, brilliant.

Trump even was allowed to employ family members in the White House and when they couldn't pass the security clearances he simply waived them, brilliant.

Allowing him to get away with all of this is what is stupid.

How many people here at DU complained when Trump wasn't indicted for the Stormy Daniels payoff? The only reason Mueller didn't indict him was because Mueller believed the DOJ memo that one can't indict a sitting president. That was the same reason that Mueller never indicted Trump for obstruction of justice, but he did lay out the evidence that was never used.

The American people are the real suckers.

[vlyons]

16. Trump is very stupid

The only thing that Trump is smart about is knowing that there are plenty of other corrupt assholes, who are easy to seduce with a con man's BS on how to make an easy $$$. And the knowledge that there are plenty of assholes that he can manipulate with fear and hate mongering.

That's it.

[Septua]

17. I believe it's the narcissism...

..that defines him. He is textbook 'narcissistic personality disorder' on top of having unexceptional intelligence or intellect.

https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/narcissism-symptoms-signs

[sop]

19. Simply because moral, rational, intelligent, reality-based people cannot understand why Trump's

supporters continue to worship the man, despite abundant evidence he is nothing but a corrupt, immoral, lying, greedy, self-serving bullshit artist, why the MSM slavishly cover his every absurd utterance and incendiary lies, and why he hasn't been held to account by authorities for his many, many crimes, does not mean he is stupid or suffering from dementia.

Trump isn't some latter-day Machiavelli, playing three-dimensional chess while everyone else is playing checkers. Still, he does have the sort of animal cunning and single-minded focus one usually sees in sociopaths and successful career criminals.

Believe what you will about Trump, but without a doubt the man is a highly skilled con man. He hasn't managed to pull the wool over so many people's eyes and stay one step ahead of the law his entire life by being stupid and careless. And blithering idiots suffering from dementia don't get elected POTUS.

[Septua]

20. "Believe what you will about Trump, but without a doubt the man is a highly skilled con man"

I don't even give him credit for being 'highly skilled' at running cons. What he learned early on is the power of propaganda on people with weak minds or people simply wanting to believe what he says. And the people who think he's the savior of the country are mostly people who want white majority rule.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

21. He is a sadistic narcissist

And he has dementia but also to russia and the gop hes a useful asshole hell roll right over if he is flattered. And if a promise of money and being a member of the ogliarch club he will give away our nations secrets.

A useful asshole.

The most weak and coddled.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

22. TFG has been showing signs of senility for a while

[PufPuf23]

24. Trump is vile and ignorant and a symptom of USA's problems

We focus on Trump too much.

Better for us to ignore him. Just wish he would shut up.

Trump means harm but he is massively stupid and random, reacting to what is immediately to his face.

Put him in a padded room for the crazy of can't or won't make an arrest.