What, you mean Mickey D farts don’t get your love engine started?
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Trump thought he could treat the virus like he treated his bankers, like he treated his contractors, like he treated his wives and girlfriends, like he treated the whole fucking Republican Party. He would bluff his way through. All he had to say was that this building was the tallest and the best, and it was! All he had to say was that he was a billionaire, and he was! All he had to say was that if you crossed him, he’d kill you with tweets, and nobody ever crossed him! All he had to say was that the virus was “going away,” that we had it “under control,” that the number of cases were “going to zero,” and all of that would come true!
Trump could bluff his way through marriages, sexual abuse allegations, bankruptcies … hell, he could even bluff his way into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But he couldn’t bluff the virus. He doesn’t owe the virus any money. He hasn’t left the virus sobbing in some Reno hotel suite with no one to turn to. He can’t divorce the virus and remarry another, younger, prettier virus. He can’t slather the virus with orange pancake makeup and spray it into submission with swoops of combover cotton candy and fool everyone into believing it wasn’t really there.
salon.com/2020/04/11/donald-trump-has-tested-positive--for-the-bullst-virus
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Maybe not a chump?
Chomsky on Democracy Now! Friday April 10, 2020;
Actually, the clips that you played before are part of a very clever strategy. Whether this is consciously planned or just intuitive, I don’t know. But the pattern of simply making one statement today, contradicting it tomorrow, coming out with something else the next day is really brilliant. It means he’s going to be vindicated. Whatever happens, he’ll have said it. You shoot arrows at random, some of them are going to hit the target. And his technique with the Fox echo chamber and the worshipful base simply tuned to Fox, Limbaugh, etc., they’re just going to pick whatever happened to be right, and say, “Look, our wonderful president, the greatest president we’ve ever had, our savior, knew it all along, and here was his statement.” Can’t miss.
From the transcript, video in the second segment:
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That’s not even wrong.
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Yeah, I’m going to have to disagree with Noam there. Trump’s just a firehose of bullshit, always has been, always will be.
There is nothing clever about pointing that at the wall and declaring whatever sticks to be thoughtfully placed art.
That’s just a lie. And not a very good one either.
The clever bit was setting up the Fox echo chamber in the first place, that’s what took cunning and an understanding of how to manipulate people’s bias and beliefs. Once you’ve got that, it doesn’t matter if you tell them dumb, easily disproven, lies because they’ll believe pretty much whatever you say.
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That’s not really true either, because the network was set up to prop up boring candidates - but it was vulnerable to grifters feeling their way through a populist crowd by seeing what words caught on and riding that wave. And Trump is a self-centered ignoramus, but he’s clearly skilled at bullshitting his way through life and his lack of brain power continually helps him since he never even has to pay attention to anything he says himself and reads the room.
That’s why Chomsky calls it an instinct in the interview, it’s how he was a household name whose claim to fame was being a mediocre businessman in New York. The network was not set up for him to profit from, but he found a way to push Ted Cruz out of the way and take the spotlight.
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He’s proud of himself for being such a screw-up that there is a national declaration of Presidential Disaster for all 50 states. Makes me wonder if whoever named it was touching the side of his nose knowingly.
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“Presidential Disaster” is pretty accurate.
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I know, right? Someone was giggling to themselves when they put the words together like that for him to read.
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Really not hard for a virus to outsmart antibiotics. Virus/=bacteria, FFS.
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One of the things that stresses me most in the current situation is knowing that Trump and his Republican accomplices are in control of the Federal Government and do not have the safety of the people of this country as their highest priority. Trump seems to be only interested in getting reelected and getting admired by a racist and hateful segment of the population, and his Republican accomplices are only interested in perpetuating a society of haves and have nots, making sure that the haves get richer and the have nots get screwed. All those idiots taking about the consequences of continuing the lock-down, with their fake concern about the lives that could be lost as a consequence of the recession, are just using it as an excuse to allow for the continuing enrichment of the already rich and powerful.The reason why people gets desperate during an economic downturn is because we don’t have an adequate way of taking care of the needs of people in that situation. Everybody should have health care and an income to cover their basic needs independently of their employment status or ability to find work. The best way to reduce the stress of a good segment of the population during this crisis would be for Trump and his accomplices to step down and allow competent, decent, and compassionate people to be in charge of the Federal Government and of those State Governments controlled by GOP idiots. That would greatly reduce not only my level of stress but, more importantly, the number of people that are going to suffer and die in this situation.
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