Right. They just use buzzwords as shorthand for the conspiracy theory. If you’re part of the small group who understands what it means, you get it. If you’re not, you ignore it. He would often make offhand references to Hillary’s “30,000 deleted emails,” as though that’s self-explanatory. And then whenever actually pressed by the press, he will just say “you know what I’m talking about,” either because he doesn’t understand the conspiracy theory himself or realizes trying to explain it would make him sound even dumber.
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SMBC summed it up pretty well here in this cartoon:
“If that requires his followers to believe absurdities that make us look stupid to outsiders well then hey, that simply increases the salience of my in-group identity.”
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You mean like covfefe?
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I think I just found the title for my novel.
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Acid test?
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Wasn’t that Fawn Hall?
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Forget it. They’re radioactive these days.
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To appeal to his base, of course. Results involve a lot of saltiness.
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can’t wait for trump to run against reagan.
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Trump vs Washington: whoever wins becomes the First President of the United States?
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When they hear Turmp’s speech, I fear they will act precipitately.
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It’s acid and bleach, and to make matters worse, it’s also boiling, freezing, and an incredibly strong reducing agent.
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So, we have people somehow speaking languages that nobody speaks, and an acid that destroys everything within 10 miles that is somehow held in containers made of … something.
It’s getting pretty colourful in that world of his.
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Though there seems to be this increasing middle ground thanks to outlets like Newsmax, of people who don’t know the full conspiracy theory, but might perk up a bit when certain words are uttered because they have a vague sense that there’s some sort of real story that involves those elements, even if they’re not fully sure what it is.
I’m pretty sure he doesn’t understand them. In between basically not giving a shit (as long as there’s a conspiracy theory that exonerates him, that’s mostly what he cares about - details start clashing with things he does know, so ), and his various cognitive issues that prevent him from understanding, remembering or coherently describing what he’s heard, his comprehension just isn’t there.
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I lean more towards “he never really thought of ‘truth’ or ‘facts’ the way normal people do.” I believe information to him was always something he could use, and its veracity or his belief in it was something he considered irrelevant.
ETA: Put another way: I don’t think his decline in his ability to discern reality is what we’re seeing. We’re seeing a decline in his ability to sound convincing.
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Sure, that’s what starts him off, for example, adopting a conspiracy theory that involves him doing things he knows he didn’t do. But accepting just the vague idea of it is enough - it exonerates and valorizes him, so it’s “true” (for his notion of “true”), and he doesn’t have to know the details. But he also can’t remember things, or understand what was actually being claimed in the first place either. So there’s this information that he thinks he can use - but only the general outline of it (and even that is often wrong) remains in his head - or at least in the retelling, where he is becoming less coherent.
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It’s acid and bleach, and to make matters worse, it’s also boiling, freezing, and an incredibly strong reducing agent.
And a dessert topping.
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