this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2024
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The Republican front-runner made another gaffe as he tried to explain away all his other ones.

Donald Trump’s recent memory failures sure do look like some kind of cognitive decline. In the last few months, Trump has mixed up President Joe Biden with former President Barack Obama, slurred his words, bragged about his favorite type of violent death and that he calls corn “non-liquid gold,” insisted you need voter ID to buy bread, and confused his GOP competitor Nikki Haley for California Representative Nancy Pelosi, claiming that the former failed to act during January 6.

But during a campaign rally on Wednesday, Trump had a new excuse for all that, claiming all of his short circuits are actually just sarcastic jokes.

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[–] PwnTra1n@lemmy.world 148 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I was just pretending to be an idiot

[–] Candelestine@lemmy.world 59 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Everything is pretend to him. Even the importance of human life. If you think he cares about words, you're sorely mistaken.

We should stop excusing blatant malice as some kind of mistake. He cares about words as much as Hitler actually cared what the word Aryan meant. They recognize that the definitions of words are established by people, so they can make them mean whatever the fuck they want them to mean. They ... give ... no ... fucks. And I mean literally. None of the fucks. Not words, not human rights, not the sanctity of life, none of it. Only power.

edit: Oh, and they think you're fucking stupid for actually caring about dumb shit like "what words mean" when we can exercise power over that.

[–] Gork@lemm.ee 18 points 9 months ago

If you think he cares about words, you're sorely mistaken.

"I have the best words."

[–] Instigate@aussie.zone 2 points 9 months ago

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

  • Jean-Paul Sartre
[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 63 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Trump—who is just four years younger—has desperately been trying to reframe the narrative, accusing Biden of being “too incompetent” but “not too old.”

Trump certainly demonstrated his own competence in that speech, didn't he?

[–] Gork@lemm.ee 45 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you're a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 32 points 9 months ago (1 children)

And he was fucking elected after that. Christ.

[–] Gork@lemm.ee 14 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I heard that particular copypasta was notoriously difficult for translators to translate into other languages due to how completely incoherent it was.

[–] Skua@kbin.social 41 points 9 months ago (3 children)

"As a translator of political discourse, you also have the duty to write readable texts: so what am I to do? Translate Trump as he speaks, and let French readers struggle with whatever content there is? (Not to mention the fact that I will be judged on the vocabulary I choose — sometimes the translator is blamed for the poor quality of a piece.) Or keep the content, but smooth out the style, so that it is a little bit more intelligible, leading non-English speakers to believe that Trump is an ordinary politician who speaks properly — when this is obviously not the case?"

  • Translator Bérengère Viennot in an interview with the Los Angeles Review of Books
[–] Kiernian@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I believe this is what "[sic]" is for.

[–] Lesrid@lemm.ee 3 points 9 months ago

His speech would look like the SSX Tricky announcer. Sic! Sic! Sic! Tight! Tight! Tight!

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[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

I am not at all surprised.

[–] TexasDrunk@lemmy.world 13 points 9 months ago

Someone was arguing on Reddit that Trump was a great public speaker back in 2020. This was while Trump was saying Biden is too old and can't talk. I took no stance and just quoted that entire speech.

I'm not going back to Reddit to find out exactly what he replied, but I remember it was unhinged and uncomplimentary towards both myself and my lineage. This dude was big mad, but at least he didn't try to defend that speech.

[–] neptune@dmv.social 8 points 9 months ago

I love how this copy pasta has parenthesis in it. Like the whole thing isn't some sort of error riddled nested jumble of parentheticals.

Top level discussion: nuclear technology in global political. First level aside: my uncle is really smart. Second level aside: conservatives are judged to be stupid. Return to top level discussion of geopolitics. Return to the first level aside to complete the idea that the smart uncle taught him about nuclear technology. New first level aside on a specific prisoner trade. Second level aside on how women are smarter "now" than men. Return to the first level aside on how we lost out on the prisoner trade.

🤷

[–] spider@lemmy.nz 4 points 9 months ago

My head hurts after reading that.

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Only to the "facts should matter" crowd. Other audiences come up with their own interpretations, regardless. :-|

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, but those others would believe him if he claimed that Biden was a platypus.

[–] Nougat@kbin.social 3 points 9 months ago

PLATYPUS 2024

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

~~No they wouldn't~~, which doesn't matter bc they'd actually go along with it regardless, thus making no functional difference whatsoever.

They do what they are told, no matter how nonsensical it may seem, even to themselves.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Exactly. So I'm not thinking about them. I'm thinking about the sliver of people who can be swayed either way that will end up deciding this election.

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 2 points 9 months ago

Good call.

I'm not sure anyone is even thinking about the candidates themselves at all anymore. Same for Harris & Biden - both sides have given up on a "good" and especially "popular" candidate. The entire focus is now on what we - both sides - can extract from them. Zero thought given to a situation like if Russia were to send nukes in the air and a decision has to be made within seconds, who's going to try to wake up the octogenarian to ask them what should be done? Well all know that someone else will be making the real calls, and we're giving up choosing directly who that will be.

So for like 80-90% of us, the masks are off: we already know that we will just pick a "side", bc that's all that we are allowed to do. Those very few people in the middle though... yeah that's going to be interesting, to see what they do. I think even most of them will end up picking a "side" rather than a candidate by the end of it all, but we'll see.

[–] dharwin@kbin.social 51 points 9 months ago

A narcissist is never wrong. NEVER. Their fragile self-image can't stand up to the reality of making mistakes like the rest of us.

[–] crusa187@lemmy.ml 41 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Ah yes, the time-honored defense of “…it’s just a prank bro!”

[–] Son_of_dad@lemmy.world 32 points 9 months ago (1 children)

"I'm only pretending to be a senile moron"

[–] BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 months ago

Good job then trump, you really pulled on over us. Can't wait to see what persona is hiding behind his incoherent exterior.

[–] billiam0202@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago

*Social experiment.

In this case, "How much of a befuddled moron can you be before the magic (R) actually starts to matter?"

And I suspect we'll never find the answer to that.

[–] Passerby6497@lemmy.world 28 points 9 months ago (3 children)

and that he calls corn “non-liquid gold,”

Isn't “non-liquid gold” just........ gold?

[–] Jax@sh.itjust.works 5 points 9 months ago

One could make the very technically true argument that gold can be melted, but I would laugh at that person. I would not laugh with mirth, I would laugh with disdain.

[–] jaemo@sh.itjust.works 5 points 9 months ago

True playas keep their gold in Bose-Einstein condensate form.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

Was he looking for the word illiquid? I'm not investing in corn futures but I'm going to laugh really hard if it gets a bump today

[–] Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world 26 points 9 months ago (12 children)

What if he is just drunk? Maybe he has been lying about being a teetotaler this whole time.

[–] deft@lemmy.wtf 27 points 9 months ago

he's on uppers they all are

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago

The fanciest teetotals I know are all secret pill poppers.

[–] SupraMario@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

One can hope it's micro seizures....we can all hope he croaks before Nov.

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[–] aesthelete@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

His verbal diarrhea always contains strange bursts of solid matter in it...in this case:

SPIDEN!!!!

[–] wjrii@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

In this one, tiny, insignificant case, I'm going to give our asshole criminal buddy Trump the benefit of the doubt. This looks more like a transcription error and he really said, "that's Biden." The level of general evil insanity from Trump remains deeply troubling of course.

“But when I say that Obama is the president of our country bah bah bah, they go, ‘He doesn’t know that Spiden [sic], he doesn’t know.’ So it’s very hard to be sarcastic.”

[–] aesthelete@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

I watched the video clip and the interpretation was correct IMO. 🤷

He may have intended to say "it's Biden" but "Spiden" is what actually came out. So it's "Spiden [sic]".

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Man, the Qultists must be on cloud nine trying to "decipher" his latest ramblings.

[–] PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com 2 points 9 months ago

Not a Qultists, but from that video, it's clear he was just saying "she will never be running for vice president" for the fourteenth time in 2 minutes.

[–] Heavybell@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago

I am no fan of Trumpelstiltskin, but the non-liquid gold thing seems like the kind of dumb joke I'd make. I think that one doesn't belong on the list of dementia symptoms, unlike the other things.

[–] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Members of the Democratic Party have to be nearly perfect specimens of humanity; members of the RepubliQan party only need to yell loudly and look "strong" to smooth brains. They are allowed to be as awful and as incompetent as the dregs of society; it doesn't matter at all.

[–] GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

Democrats fall in love , Republicans fall in line.

[–] MxM111@kbin.social 7 points 9 months ago

He is either interposer or interloper or one of the three.

[–] Nomad@infosec.pub 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I was pretending to be one of those deaf mutes

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