Trump's Dumbest Comments Thread

[_Kevin Graham]

"'You do know you just attacked a Gold Star family?' one adviser warned Trump.
Trump didn’t know what a Gold Star family was: 'What’s that?' he asked."

"Why can’t we use nuclear weapons?" —reportedly asking a foreign policy adviser three times during a meeting why the United States couldn’t use its nuclear weapons stockpile

"[Vladimir Putin] is not going into Ukraine, OK, just so you understand. He’s not gonna go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it down. You can put it down." —apparently unaware that Russia had already annexed Crimea in a 2014 intrusion into Ukraine that left thousands dead, July 31, 2016

“I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things." —when asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” whom he talks with consistently about foreign policy, March 16, 2016

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I always love a good Trumpisms thread...

/u/PoppinKREAM posted a few today (I removed the redundant quotes already covered here).

In an interview with TIME Magazine in 2017 President Trump slammed the new crown jewel of the U.S. Navy, aircraft carrier USS Gerarld Ford, for having an Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) catapult. While there's reason for criticism it's difficult to discern what the President meant in his somewhat confusing ramble.[3]

I said, “You don’t use steam anymore for catapult?” “No sir.” I said, “Ah, how is it working?” “Sir, not good. Not good. Doesn’t have the power. You know the steam is just brutal. You see that sucker going and steam’s going all over the place, there’s planes thrown in the air.”

It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. And I said — and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers. I said, “What system are you going to be—” “Sir, we’re staying with digital.” I said, “No you’re not. You going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good.”

That's the man that half our country decided should be the Commander in Chief. Jesus Christ, baby Jesus, please glorious baby Jesus, with your golden fleece hair, and your cherub wings, baby Jesus please keep us safe from our own choices. Well, at least he respects the CIA, no?

And who can forget his incessant lie of having the largest inaugural crowd in history?[4] During his first day as President he visited the CIA headquarters and went on a tirade in front of a wall dedicated to the men and women who died in the line of service.[5]

“I love you. I respect you,” said the president, who ten days earlier likened U.S. spies to Nazi Germany for their role in publicizing an intel dossier packed with allegations that Russian intelligence services have compromising information on him.

...“I have a running war with the media,” Trump said. “They are among the most dishonest human beings.”

He repeatedly referenced the magnitude of his election victory. “Probably almost everybody in this room voted for me,” Trump said. “We’re all on the same wavelength, folks!”

At one point, Trump regurgitated parts of his stump speech about how the United States “should have kept the oil” after invading Iraq. “Maybe we’ll have another chance,” he added. Aside from being physically impossible to sequester billions of barrels of underground oil, that would constitute a breach of international law. U.S. troops are currently embedded with forces of the country that Trump suggested again invading.

The amazing thing about Mr. Trump and his endless faux paus seem to be that his base is utterly unphased by this. It's easy to call them stupid and whatnot, but I think it's just cultural and the idea that he's going to advance their interests. They view Trump as the Porter Rockwell to Joseph Smith, so to speak.

One thing I've noticed about partisans is their tacit okey dokey'ness with people who are willing to punch up or down at their opponents. They can turn a blind eye to someone like Mr. Trump, or say, an anarchist who attacks people with bike locks. Granted, and this is the worrisome part, those anarchists? Yeah, they don't command our armed damned forces, nor do they have, I dunno, the ability to literally destroy the world.

So. Yeah. Trump. When I get a chance I'll deep dive Google for more fun quotes from our President.

- Doc

[_Lemmie]

How about his 4th of July speech? I don't know if it counts here, because apparently a teleprompter "malfunctioned" and told him to say how amazing it was that Washington's army crossed the Delaware, fought the enemy, manned the AIR, as well as took control of all the AIRPORTS, and then celebrated when dawn broke and the flag was still there. Or something. That's one cognizant teleprompter.


"Our Army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do, and at Fort McHenry, under the rockets' red glare, it had nothing but victory. And when dawn came, their star-spangled banner waved defiant," Trump said during a speech on the National Mall.
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/newspoli ... ar-AADUnHA

The hashtag REVOLUTIONARY WAR AIRPORT STORIES tweets are hysterical.

My favorite:

Abigail, it's hot as hell in Philadelphia. My desire for a quick trip to Boston is thwarted by a connecting flight through Atlanta. It's as if the world has turned upside down.

Yours, John.

#RevolutionaryWarAirportStories

— Diane@hpochocolate1 (@hpochocolate1) July 5, 2019

The lovely song from the Musical 1776 ("saltpeter, John..... pins, Abigail....") is forever ruined for me.

[_Jersey Girl]

Psssst Lemmie. My favorite response. Of course.

On Sunday night, Mick Jagger paused his band’s show at Massachusetts’ Gillette Stadium to take in the perfect New England summer evening. He said he hoped everyone had a great July 4th weekend — and added that the Fourth had always been a “touchy holiday for us Brits.” “In fact, the President made a very good point in his speech the other night,” Jagger deadpanned. “He said, ‘If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us.’”

[_Jersey Girl]

In response to the OP. I personally don't have time to copy every single word of jibberish that's ever come out of the man's mouth or phone.

Covfefe,
Jersey Girl
;-)

[_Maksutov]

Psssst Lemmie. My favorite response. Of course.

On Sunday night, Mick Jagger paused his band’s show at Massachusetts’ Gillette Stadium to take in the perfect New England summer evening. He said he hoped everyone had a great July 4th weekend — and added that the Fourth had always been a “touchy holiday for us Brits.” “In fact, the President made a very good point in his speech the other night,” Jagger deadpanned. “He said, ‘If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us.’”

[_Jersey Girl]

Psssst Lemmie. My favorite response. Of course.

On Sunday night, Mick Jagger paused his band’s show at Massachusetts’ Gillette Stadium to take in the perfect New England summer evening. He said he hoped everyone had a great July 4th weekend — and added that the Fourth had always been a “touchy holiday for us Brits.” “In fact, the President made a very good point in his speech the other night,” Jagger deadpanned. “He said, ‘If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us.’”

Mak that is on youtube. His delivery was superior! This is the third time he's trolled Trump in the current tour.

[_moksha]

"Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go."
-- Barack Obama

Ha ha! Obama said 57 instead of 47. He should have said he knew "all the best States" including pooh-air-toe-reeko.

[_Jersey Girl]

ETA Jagger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u40YXbXQZlw

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

How about his 4th of July speech?

Here's a super awesome breakdown, by a teacher, on what went wrong with Trump's 4th of July speech and why Trump commits these kinds of errors when speaking:

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comme ... ntext=1000

[–]FalseDmitriy

Illinois 10.4k points 6 days ago*62322

So I'm pretty sure I know exactly what happened here. I haven't seen anyone else post about this, but as a teacher who works with struggling readers, I know that highly literate people (including most general-level teachers) have a hard time understanding how someone like this approaches written text, since for many of us reading comes so naturally. From my perspective it's pretty easy to see why Trump said this weird thing, given what we know about him. We know:

Donald Trump does not read well. Like most of the students I work with, he avoids reading both because he wants to avoid being embarrassed, and because reading costs him a lot more mental energy than for proficient readers. We know from lots of different reports that his staff does not give him anything long or complex to read, because of this avoidance.

For this reason, when Trump does have to read something out loud, it is clear that he is not processing the meaning of what he is saying. For a struggling reader, all their concentration goes into pronouncing the words out loud, and simultaneously processing the meaning is very difficult. We see this when is giving a prepared speech and mispronounces a word in a way that makes no sense. A proficient reader would immediately stop and self-correct. Trump often doesn't, because he is not processing what he is saying. Other times I know I've heard him notice his mistake, but instead of correcting it, he covers it up with a bit of lame word-play, pretending that the mistake was intentional. I can't think of any specific examples of this, but I know I've heard him do it. (Edit) snatchi found some examples: "through their lives... and though their lives." "authority... and authoritarian powers." "They sacrifice every day for the furniture... and future of our children." It's Trump's go-to move when he misreads a word.

There are other times when he reacts to a line in his speech like he hasn't heard it before. He noticeably stops and inserts a comment of his own before going back to the reading. He does not know how to gracefully glide between reading and impromptu speaking, since reading is so unnatural for him.

Trump also has a relatively small vocabulary. Remember his remarks about "the oranges of the Mueller report." He was parroting something that he had heard before, but not having a firm grasp of the word "origins," he used a more familiar word instead, because that was how his mind remembered the word.

The speech he was giving made heavy use of language from "The Star Spangled Banner." For many struggling readers, this would be helpful, since it would rely on familiar chunks of language that would reduce the mental load of reading it. However, we've seen that Trump does not know the words to the anthem. He has tried and failed to sing along with it but couldn't fake it very well.

Keeping all that in mind, let's look at what he said:

Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do, and at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, it had nothing but victory.

Based on my experience, here's what I think happened, step by step.

Our army manned the air

Here I think it's likely that Trump skipped a line on his teleprompter. The line was probably "manned the ramparts," and later on I'm guessing there was a reference to "bombs bursting in air." We all do this sometimes, but struggling readers do it a whole lot more. And furthermore, when a proficient reader makes this mistake they can quickly self-correct, but someone like Trump, who is not totally processing the meaning of what he is reading, can get totally derailed when they do this.

it rammed the ramparts

Trump seems to have noticed that "manned the air" was a mistake, and he went back to do the line over. But he got "manned" and "ramparts" mixed up, so it came out as "rammed." But he's immediately fallen into another pit: the word "ramparts." He doesn't know what it means. It's a very uncommon word that most Americans only know from this line in "The Star Spangled Banner." Trump, however, doesn't even know that, since he has never learned the words to the song. So I think that at this point, already a little flustered from covering up his last mistake, he thinks he has misread another word. "Ramparts?" I must have misread something, he thinks to himself.

it took over the airports

This is a repair strategy that Trump has used in the past. Mess up a word? Pretend it was the first in a sequence of rhyming or similar words and carry on from there. What's a word he knows that sounds like ramparts? Airports. And "air" was already on his mind from just before, when he accidentally read "manned the air." So they manned the ramparts, they took over the airports. He's hoping that nobody will notice. It's worked before.

it did everything it had to do

This sounds like an impromptu comment that he inserted into the written text. It uses the simple and non-specific language that he is known for in his impromptu speeches. The comment bought him a second where he could find his place after getting completely lost before.

and at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, it had nothing but victory.

And now he's found his place again. He's back to the written speech that uses lines from "The Star Spangled Banner." He might not even realize how ridiculous his last few sentences have sounded, since again, he's not really able to process the meaning of what he is saying.

My kiddos who are in this situation have a hard time. I and their other teachers have to work really hard to help them learn strategies to overcome these difficulties with the way they process written text. It requires just as much hard work on the kids' part. I strongly suspect that Donald Trump never went through this process and remains in a not fully literate state. Usually we're afraid that someone who graduates with this level of reading ability will have very limited career prospects in the future.

So, it's basically like Bach and Sugenius screwed, had a kid, it grew up, and then screwed Ajax and they had a kid. That kid is Trump.

- Doc