Donald Trump is proving heās racist and stupid with his latest post.
In a Truth Social post Thursday morning, Donald Trump appeared to suggest, again, thatĀ presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris isnāt really Black, ramping up his identity-based attacks to the horror of those in his party who consider racism a losing electoral strategy.
Earlier in the week, many GOP strategists, including in the Trump camp,Ā worriedĀ that attacks on Harrisās race and genderāwhich seemed all but inevitable considering Trumpās history of racism and misogynyāwould pose a serious liability for the campaign. āWe hope he doesnāt act like a crazy racist and sexist person, but we canāt control him,ā a source close to the campaignĀ toldĀ The Washington Post.
These hopes were quickly dashed in the course of Trumpās interview with the National Association of Black Journalists Wednesday afternoon, in which the candidateĀ claimedĀ that, for years, Vice President Kamala Harris āwas Indian all the way, and then suddenly she made a turn and she became a Black person.ā
Just how dumb is this guy?
Whatever the answer to that question is, the real answer is ādumber than that.ā
Also acceptable: not as dumb as the people who vote for him.
Dumber than that.
Heās a not really that dumb, heās a narcissist. Like, as a legitimate, detrimental mental condition.
Trump cannot backtrack and admit he is wrong, even if itās a small goof. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_DorianāAlabama_controversy
I know people like this in real life, and itās really sad, but also really annoying/grating.
To be fair, heās ALSO very dumb: https://www.truthorfiction.com/trump-was-the-dumbest-gddamn-student/
This is really reductive.
I think coverage of him before 2015 is much more enlightening. One I always point to is the Market Foolery podcasts on Trump, where (TL;DR) he tries to sell private real estate to his public company at highly inflated prices, and hyping the market to buy into this technically-not-illegal scheme.
Thing is, heās good at that kind of scheme. It worked! It wasnāt illegal, just basically selling a turd. The Motley Fool saw through it (and met him in person to discuss it, which is what the podcast is about) and made the only short of their career, but still, people drastically underestimate Trumpās ability to āsellā ideas that benefit him, to their detrement.
The guy is one of the dumbest people alive. He isnāt good at anything but fooling dumb people. He is the king of the dumb people and there are more than we thought.
Itās not reductive. Itās factual. Quit polishing a turd. Heās a moron. He canāt even fuck a porn star and pay her without being caught. Heās so dumb he canāt hide investment lies without being caught. He canāt plan to overthrow the government without documentation.
I know 5 year olds with more wit and social navigation.
Iād be interested to see your take on his prowess as a trickster as mentioned in the parent comment.
Weād be really mad at someone who designed a 3D printed nuclear bomb and used it on our families. They might be socially inept and bad at geography and have no grasp of international affairs, so kinda dumb in some ways. Theyād definitely be very evil. But when it came to nuke engineering, theyāre evil & not dumb.
I donāt worry Iām glorifying the impeached ex-president when I say āheās good at fraud.ā He has said and done many evil things, including some cunning ones. Heās dumb in some areas. Am I really polishing a turd right now by acknowledging a horrible horrible person isnāt entirely an idiot in every facet of his life, rather only most of them?
Maybe 45ās narcissism is indeed the bigger headline. Narcissistic, evil, morally an idiot, cunning at (smart at executing) certain scamsā¦ if we just say ānope bad at everything, 100% dumbā weāre underplaying how dangerous he can be, no?
Iād be interested to see your take on his prowess as a trickster as mentioned in the parent comment.
In my opinion, itās because our systems are woefully inadequate to address even the dumbest of huckster schemes. Heās not some brilliant dude for pulling it off. He just has no morals, no ethics, and no shame. And heās spent a lifetime instinctively removing anyone who does from his presence.
āThere is no greater danger than underestimating your opponent.ā ā Lao Tzu
Your not acknowledging his strengths, which have absolutely gotten him this far. Thatās a deadly mistake, one the Democrat part has already made far too much.
His strengths didnāt get him this far. His daddyās money did.
Heās not my adversary. Heās an asshole I would rather not exist and is the epitome of stupidity. He doesnāt have strengths. He bought fame and sucks at life. I donāt need to acknowledge him as anything other than the scum that represents more scum. And you sound like you support him more than you dislike him.
I donāt support Trump. I donāt think thereās anything that could happen that would make me vote Trump instead of literally any Democratic candidate. Even that aside, I really hate narcissists.
But youāre living in a bubble if you donāt want to acknowledge how he got this far, and you lash out any one that tries to break it. Way too much of the Democrat party does. Itās how they lost, and could lose again.
Another commenter pointed out that heās so fucking stupid he stared directly at the sun when an eclipse happened. Yeah heās not very smart.
And most likely someone else came up with that scheme.
I donāt think so. Itās classic Trump and fits his long pattern of behavior, of not quite lying in the technical sense while selling some kind of snake oil.
Couldnāt be a pattern of the people he hires and ethics heās happy to not have? This isnāt evidence that heās smart
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But also dumb
His VP pick has children who are both white and Indian, but he still canāt comprehend Harris can be black and Indian.
To be fair, Trump and most of the MAGA base probably donāt view the Vance kids as white at all.
The half-assed way Vance ādefendedā his wife to his party was sickening.
I missed this, was it from the convention? Is there a particular quote?
āObviously, sheās not a white person, and weāve been accused, attacked by some white supremacists over that. But I just, I love Usha.ā
ā JD Vance
āI know sheās not white, but I love her anyway. And I know thatās a personal failing of mine, and I apologize for itā
- what he implied
Donāt want to offend the white supremacistsā¦ they need those votes!
Conservatives are all about traditionā¦
Heās ālook directly at the sun during an eclipse without eye protectionā dumb. Plus heās old, sleepy, and a felon.
More predictable than dumb, in that in any given situation the man will pick the absolutely worst choice available. Every single time. Even when that choice hurts him.
When his options are (a) pick the right choice, (b) pick a bad choice, ( c) do nothing, or (d) pick something you didnāt even fathom because the idea was just so bad that even the biggest moron would dismiss it out of hand, he will go with D. Every single time. Even if it hurts himself. Thankfully, the man canāt get out of his own way 95% of the time, and I firmly believe that making even something resembling a rational choice even on the most basic of options would cause him physical pain.
Profoundly dumb. But also super weird. And he hates being called weird.
Weird, Old, Loser, Fatā¦the alpha W.O.L.F.
Wildly overweight limp fuck?
Itās just a weird thing to say and a weird stance to double-down on.
Heās starting a rhetoric. He gaslights and soon thereāll be a bunch of Americans caught up in her origins and misleading representation of race. And youāll wonder, āHow the fuck did that actually stick?ā
Yep, itās just the new talking point from their supreme leader. It was āSleepy Bidenā before, now itās āopportunistic race swapping Harrisā (he is better with stupid names so he might come up with something more catchy, but that is the general direction).
They will gobble it up like all the shit they parrot all the time.
I had a realisation. Might be true; probably isnāt. But I have the feeling Trump read The Art of War.
Many of his actions seem to come straight from that book, but from a person that didnāt comprehend it appropriately.
Will there? Maybe the racist ones who would never be voting for her anyway. Good, let them waste their time with it.
Dude literally doesnāt understand that people come from two parents
How dumb is there?
All of itā¦just all the dumb
Not dumb, in the sense that he knows 70% of his base doesnāt give two shits about anything, and 10% want to see vulgar stuff because itās entertaining.
This is the guy who has mocked developmentally disabled people on national TV more than once, prior to winning the 2016 election, and Iām basing his reasoning after that. His fanbase is beholden to his callous asshattery
No, heās legitimately dumb. He knows how to play a crowd, and covers it up a bit by rambling unlike Biden, but heās been observably senile since like 2018, look at how disconnected his speech gets when he goes off script and starts a thought off with something he half-remembered from the news, something grandma would send you on FB, and ends it with something that hasnāt been accurate since the 80s.
If you watch his CPAC speeches and stuff, itās almost like thereās a conspiracy of silence around showing how bad it is. You just get wacky stories that arenāt too believable from dem-alligned media, and āeverythingās fine, the 79 year old is the most stable genius everā from conservative media.
The recent interview with the black journalists association missed the perfect opportunity to ask him to draw a clock.
Heās dumb, but about as dumb as a rat that figured out how to reach the cheese in the maze. Heās kind of bumbling around and took an unintentionally Socratic approach towards reaching what he wanted. Thereās some rationality to all of it
He knows how to play a crowd
If they already like him, sure. He lost the ability to be entertaining to anyone else a long time ago.
This is what we call an ān+1ā problem, as far as I can tell
If you know you might lose a fair fight, but you also know it doesnāt matter if you can leverage mob violence, you stoke the flames.
He has to be careful with that or his supporters might not be energized to vote.
Oh how the turntables
I honestly think the more likely explanation is that he doesnāt realize Kamala Harris and Nikki Hayley are different people. Theyāre both just āthat woman Iām running againstā to him.
If thatās true it would be sad if it wasnāt just so damn funny
Usually itās the other way around, but with him? Yeah.
im waiting for the white supremacists to cope with defeat by inventing a new conspiracy theory about indian women ruling the US
It doesnt matter. Every Trumpet in my office is eating this up. I pulled up a picture of her Jamaican dad. Their answer was āJamaicans arenāt black.ā I really dont know how to respond to that.
Some other notable Jamaicans: Bob Marley, Usain Bolt, Grace Jones. I suppose your coworkers would say theyāre not black either?
The sky is yellow if it upsets a lib
And theyād piss straight up just to turn that sky yellow
Doubt they drink enough water, so itās probably orange, appropriately enough.
They wonāt be black until they try to enter the US. At which point theyāll be angry violent blacks coming for American jobs, even if theyāre only on vacation.
Bob Marley is a bad example because his dad was white, so he must white as well /s
Go to google maps, get them to select a random street view in Jamaica. Ask them to describe the people theyāre seeing.
ā¦dafuq??
There are cultural differences between Afro-Caribbean people and āblackā (ADOS) Americans. The trump fans might be trying to use that to drive a wedge in the Democratic Party.
But thatās like the difference between Scottish and Irish people. They are basically the same in English history, lesser people to be conquered. Meaningless when it comes to racism.
I donāt know that many MAGA folks with that nuanced a view of race.
Yeah I was worried Iād sound insensitive by posting that. But honestly, to this specific group, I want to just say O now skin color doesnāt matter.
The die-hard Trumpets are a lost cause. But stuff like this should hopefully start to peel away the other people that he actually needs in order to win.
Yeah, I donāt really see it helping, the people who belive him arenāt less likely to vote for someone that isnāt black. Thereās no trumpers saying āoh I really.wanted a black woman as president, guess Iāll have to vote the racist guy insteadā
Which is a complete waste of time on Trumpās part. Sheās visibly not white AND a woman, so them not voting for her is built-in. It only has the potential to lose him some edge case voters, not gain any.
If being half Black means you cannot be Black, then Obama was a White man.
The racists are trying to appeal to both black and white voters here. They used to say that things like:
āWhat do you get when you mix clean water with dirty water?ā
āDirty waterā
Now theyāre saying that people of mixed heritage arenāt anything. That theyāre the Other.
Harris grew up in Oakland in a Black neighborhood. As usual the racists are cruel but here theyāre spreading an obvious lie designed to erode her standing among black voters
I hope she gets one of those āblack jobsāā¦like President.
Canāt have mixed people, they might break the whole divide and conquer thing that theyāve perfected in the last little while.
Donāt beat them with their own arguments! It just confuses themā¦
Okay Iām starting to really believe that trump was a puppet carefully managed since the 2016 election that slowly fell apart as he actually got power and became president and fired literally everyone who didnāt lick his boots. Seriously almost forgot how almost all of the news for like a year was like, some tweets and trump fires someone or attacks them (the latter never stops) I digress
He is so clearly floundering for the first time. This fucker has never had bad press until now. He isnāt different or anything, just suddenly some people are realizing and agree the emperor isnāt wearing clothes. That cost him so much powerful support. I speculate the evangical Republicans, who are still a major contribution to conservative politics today, are withdrawing their resources and efforts this election cycle to regroup and plan how to handle the next 2 years to the best of their advantage.
Well, no. Heās been floundering since he fucked up COVID. That was something he could bluster his way through. Republicans could see their friends and family dying.
Thatās why he lost. Heās bad at being president. Plus old and weird.
How many conservatives do you know that admit the severity of covid after the fact, even after losing loved ones?
Their heads are firmly buried in the sand. Itās a non-factor of that voting demographic.
My sister is adamant my dad didnāt die of covid despite you know, getting covid and dying in the hospital a few days later. And the death certificate states the cause of death as Covid. Oh, he most likely caught it in her bar which she reopened as soon as the WI supreme court ruled that lock down doesnāt apply to bars.
I have a conservative friend whose father died from covid which absolutely devistated her. Sheās from a small rural town she used to love but cannot stand it anymore because everyone she knew there was like āgodās planā blablabla without offering any real sympathy. So there are a few running around out there, but by far the minority.
I know several people that sort of leaned moderate republican that are now just democrats. It really depends on their news
Personally, all the moderate conservatives I knew abandoned the republican party long before covid hit, but I can see that being the last straw for a few. By the time covid came along, the only conservatives I know that were still Red voters stayed red after covid
A better way to put it is that heās stuck on defense for the first time. His usual tactic is to lash out at anyone that attacks him to force them on defense. Swapping candidates put him completely off balance. His attacks arenāt landing and only make his position worse.
I disagree strongly. He lost a lot of support but he did not lose support on this level, with this tone. Itās like the ones who were scared to say a single critical word are now scared to say a single supportive word. He is a political leper
When he lost 2020 and fucked up his image beyond repair. The insurrection and being twice impeached and losing court case after court case both with the election fruad, stormy daniels, and all other smaller charges that I may not know or recall. He is losing face and he was abandoned by the family. I truly believe he lost the support of religious/evangical leaders and thatās the big reason attitudes are changing.
Of course this is all opinion and based on my experiences and how I perceive them. I wonder though if anyone else has had ties to people who consumed likeā¦ Christian media and what sort of changes they have seen in attitudes toward trump this year vs last year.
More āHaphazardly guided by fox newsā but yeah.
The Sarah Palin gambit blew up in their face again.
These hopes were quickly dashed in the course of Trumpās interview with the National Association of Black Journalists Wednesday afternoon, in which the candidateĀ claimedĀ that, for years, Vice President Kamala Harris āwas Indian all the way, and then suddenly she made a turn and she became a Black person.ā
Oh, so Trump is accusing her of what he is guilty of. He would change his ethnicity from Swedish to Irish to German depending on who was around.
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I guess heās free to say whatever the fuck he wants if his party think theyāve got the electoral votes rigged in their favor? https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-swing-state-officials-election-deniers-1235069692/
This is why he keeps saying āwe donāt need the votesā at almost every rally
Well if itās rigged in his favor, well then gee golly, I donāt have to go into town on election day and vote for him!
I was going to vote for Trump, but now that I know heās going to win no matter what Iāll just stay home!
He was begging Christians for votes recently.
Let me guess, the black genes are only 3/5 as powerful as her Indian genes?
Combined together they form - The Kamalatron!
āweāre hoping he doesnāt act like a crazy racist and sexist person, we canāt control himā
- says person working for uncontrollable crazy racist and sexist person.
āAs you can see, my opponent is a total fraud.
She even changed her name from Nikki to Kamalaā
My guess is that his evangelical supporters see JD Vance as a betrayal creating a rift in the party between god bros and corporate/tech bros. He was depending on hatred of Biden to keep his groups aligned.
That and the dominion lawsuit tempered fox news so they canāt parrot his most sensational claims.
I think he desperately doesnāt want her to get the black vote, so heās trying to tell everyone that sheās not black. Itās not going to work and it just makes him look like an idiot and bigot. And this is his best and most polite, practiced attempt. *Also half black Obama was black enough for him [pops popcorn].
Letās say for a second hypothetically that Kamala is just Indian but still calls herself black. Do we all for a second think that the black community would just be fine with some old rich white dude policing their identity anyways?
Well, if we are playing this straight, he didnt even answer the question he was given. They were asking him about why black people should vote for him, and he responds that Kamala is actually Indian.
I know he normally talks like this, but come on thats absurd right?
Downright weird if you think about it.
so heās trying to say to everyone that sheās not black.
God damn it, what weird timeline this is.
Hereās what I donāt get, regardless of if your black or indian, if you grew up in america with dark skin you likely have faced all the same struggles that any black voter would care about.
Edit: Assumptions got challenged, read replies.
So even if he was right (heās not, heās what physicists would call ānot even wrongā), so what? Are racists any less racist to indians than african americans?
I donāt get the playbook here, non-racists would just be confused and racists would still be racists.
Hereās what I donāt get, regardless of if your black or indian, if you grew up in america with dark skin you likely have faced all the same struggles that any black voter would care about.
No, thatās very much not true, except maybe on a very superficial āsome bigot called me a slurā kind of level. Indian-Americans are disproportionately wealthy and highly-educated; African-Americans are disproportionately the opposite. African-Americans have been subjected to institutional racism for centuries that is still ongoing because of the extreme wealth disparities it created (e.g. even after theoretically abolishing redlining decades ago, houses in black neighborhoods still donāt appreciate in value at the same rate ones in white neighborhoods doā¦ except when the neighborhood gentrifies and forces the black people out). Meanwhile, the bulk of Indian-Americans arrived after the Civil Rights Act, Fair Housing Act, etc. and had the means and opportunity to move straight into middle-class white neighborhoods and assimilate.
Thatās not to say that Indian-Americans donāt face āstruggles:ā discrimination against Indian-American tech workers in particular is definitely a thing, especially motivated by a āthe H1-Bs turk err jerbsā sentiment. (Meanwhile, Black engineers are treated either normally or at worst, as a curiosity, because there are so few of them to begin with. Pop quiz: why are there so few of them to begin withā¦?)
So, no: while itās true that all minorities are subject to discrimination, the type and extent of that discrimination varies greatly between different minority groups. The struggles are not the same.
Getting back to the real question you asked: the reason Trump wants to treat Harris as Indian, not Black, is to try to delegitimatize her in the eyes of Black voters as being some kind of elite that doesnāt actually understand their struggle.
Huh, very valid points. I guess I was assuming casual racism that would come from only appearances and assumptions. But you are right that economic class heavily impacts the discrimination a person faces and thatās specifically where african americans have been hit the hardest historically.
Thanks for providing more context.
Valid points indeed, but I think this strategy might not work in his favor, because anyone who had to endure any kind of racial discrimination based on something like skin color will be offended by these attacks. The old white man simply doesnāt have any legitimacy to comment on someone being too black or not black enough. Itās disgusting and weird.
It wonāt. He only understands racism from a white perspective and is trying to apply that elsewhere, which is why itās extra ridiculous.
I think heās thinking itāll go something like:
Potential black voters in swing states: āKamala is half Indian?? Hell no, Iām not voting for her! As everyone knows, all people are racist pieces of shit towards anyone who doesnāt align exactly with the ethnicity they are, so Iām staying home!ā
Heās weird.
many GOP strategists, including in the Trump camp, worried that attacks on Harrisās race and gender [ā¦] would pose a serious liability for the campaign
Do they seriously understand their base that badly, or is this just optics? āI hope his completely unexpected racism doesnāt alienate our voters who are totally not racist we swear this is so bad weāre so worried oh noā
The base isnāt going to be put off by it, but thatās not who theyāre worried about. Every election is divided by independent swing voters and yes, some of them do care.
The 33% that constitutes Trumpās base probably likes him more after every racist outburst, but they alone donāt win national elections.
Iāve seen a lot of people raise doubts about whether there really are significant amounts of swing voters this time 'round, and Iād sort of tend to agree ā if not for any other reason than it seems bizarre that somebody could be vacillating between Trump and Harris
Totally, Trumpās not really trying to win any more voters, everyone has already made their decision. Heās mudding the waters and hoping he can discourage people from voting in general to hurt Harris.
The only way he can win is if a majority of people donāt vote. If you donāt vote, itās accepting a second Trump presidency.
The only way he can win is if a majority of people donāt vote. If you donāt vote, itās accepting a second Trump presidency.
If everyone voted, and especially if everyone under 40 voted, the Republican party would lose in a landslide. Thereās a reason that the Republicans are so big on voter suppression.
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Campaigning these days is not about convincing anyone to vote for one candidate or the other. Everyone who might conceivably vote will have known who theyād vote for before the campaign season even began.
The campaign is about convincing the people who would vote for you that they actually should show up to vote instead of staying home or just going about their day. As a bonus if you make your opponent look like a big enough clown, maybe you can demoralize the oppositionās voting base so they donāt bother showing up to vote.
This is a big part of why Republicans always want to make it as hard as possible to vote: The people who tend to vote Republican have perverse incentives (lower taxes, ban abortion, etc) so theyāre generally much more motivated to get out and vote despite barriers than the typical Democratic voter who just wants a sane government but probably feels like sanity is never delivered on no matter who wins.
That might be true but democrats do have perverse incentives to vote this time. Women werenāt an out group last election.
There are enough swing voters to deliver a Democratic victory in 2012, Republican in 2016, Democratic in 2020, and either way in 2024.
I agree with you that it seems ridiculous. The policies and personalities are completely different so itās difficult to imagine people who canāt decide between the two.
But I think you have a lot of people who are disaffected with politics in general, who think all politicians are the same, who probably donāt pay too much attention to the news, who make up this bloc. And they probably vote in a reactive way, if at all - a referendum on a bad economy or whatever news breaks through to them. Maybe itās only 10% of voters, but thatās the margin that decides all these elections. And they are potentially swayed by a constant drumbeat of negative Trump news, especially that he now no longer faces an opponent with their own significant visible flaws.
There are far more ignorant people than you could ever imagine.
I didnāt think there are undecideds, but there are fringe people on one side that he can lose and some on the other side who will secretly vote for him.
The more of a pig he is, the closer to the election, the more likely it is to turn out the vote against him. Conservatives vote no matter what typically. Enthusiasm on the left decides the election
