Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/02/29/trump-makes-excuses-for-getting-melanias-name-wrong.html
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Of all the ways Donnie could have handled this, he chose the dumbest.
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I said this the other day in another post on this specific issue, so I’ll say it again here. Trump was very clearly referring to Mercedes Schlapp in that speech. He looked right at where she was sitting, with her husband, when he said it. And Mercedes Schlapp is not just “another man’s wife”. She is a Senior Fellow in CPAC, and she was Trump’s Director of Communications for awhile during the Trump Administration. She’s a garbage human and a full on Trumper, but she is not just the random wife of some random guy, and it makes complete sense, in context, for Trump to call her name out in that speech. This is not making excuses. This is just what happened.
Trump says 100 batshit insane nonsense every fucking day. There is no shortage of it. We do not need to make up new ones up that aren’t true.
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This is the ultimate evergreen comment.
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“Marla, Melania, so many wives, so many names. Who can keep track of them? I just call them all Malaria.”
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Ditto.
He definitely is having a lot of glitches lately, but that wasn’t one of them.
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I agree, but his stream-of-consciousness speaking style didn’t exactly provide the context that might have clarified who or what he was talking about either.
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That’s true, but there have been many people, including Keith Olbermann, who clearly is no friend of Trump’s, pointing out from the moment this happened that Trump was clearly not referring to Melania when he said Mercedes. This story should not still be getting repeated days later.
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What danimagoo said. And also, people shortening the clip or purposefully making a false description of the clip doesn’t help things either.
This reminds me of the time Biden was repeating a Trump comment about air ports in the Revolutionary War, and people clipped it to sound like HE was saying those things. But if you watched the 10 seconds before, it was clear that he was quoting Trump. 
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He lies a lot but he isn’t lying here. He isn’t saying he was talkiing ABOUT another man’s wife. He is saying he was talking TO a woman who was in the front row.
Criticise him for the countless insance things he says instead of making stuff up.
Yeah, he could have pointed that out in his response. Instead, he blathered on about low ratings, evil opponents, crowd sizes, and another man’s wife.
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What is worse is doubling down on it with a second post after the truth has been posted in the comments.
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Yeah, Joe Rogan got fact checked in real time by his own producer when he pulled that shit.
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Do the MAGAs even really love this guy, or is it just their hatred of others?
I’ve been reading Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s 2020 book Strongmen–How They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fall. It’s a fascinating but chilling book laying out how authoritarian leaders from the post-WWI days to the present made their way to the top. I strongly recommend it.
One point she makes is that the followers of a strongmen really do “love this guy.” He is their savior from the awfulness he assures them is all around. He has near-magical powers. He is ordained by [insert favorite god here] to return them to their fantasy past.
Ben-Ghiat quotes two memoirs of people present at Hitler’s rise. One “experienced ‘intense happiness’ immersing herself in the ‘national community’ through the League of German Girls [the female wing of the Hitler Youth].” Another "disliked politics and politicians but made an exception for Hitler, who she saw as ‘the savior that Germany needed.’ " To his worshipers the strongman is incapable of error. When an error is reported, the report is just another lying attack by the forces of evil upon their victim-in-chief, the man who has taken upon his manly shoulders all the grief and grievances of his flock.
I haven’t finished the book yet. Its title suggests there is a way out, but Ben-Ghiat’s analysis of the rise of Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Pinochet, Putin, Gaddafi, Duterte, and on and on shows that every one of them used precisely the same techniques to debauch their nations, the same ones now practiced by Trump. What’s more, in the current strongman revival the same people keep popping up as advisors, strategists, and apologists whatever the country, whatever the purported ideals. Its damned scary.
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I wonder if there is something deep in our lizard/monkey brain that needs to pick a leader and just follow them. Something that higher reasoning can interrogate but can get away from us under particular conditions.
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I’m not a behavioral anthropologist so. 
It seems to be a repeated, cross-cultural behaviour, so is it something in the water?
Especially when there’s so much more of substance to criticize.
Trying to bend things for a cutesy ‘gotcha’ wastes time.
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Yes. I’d argue that’s more down to any particular individual and historical context, rather than “human nature”… Because just as many people question or reject top-down authority. I think we do ourselves a real disservice when we attempt to explain away human behavior to “evolution” because it indicates that there is no chance for change. If there is not chance for change, then we’re fucked. I refuse to give into that idea that our worst impulses are inevitable. YMMV.
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