Donald Trump is proving he’s racist and stupid with his latest post.
In a Truth Social post Thursday morning, Donald Trump appeared to suggest, again, that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris isn’t 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, worried that attacks on Harris’s race and gender—which seemed all but inevitable considering Trump’s history of racism and misogyny—would pose a serious liability for the campaign. “We hope he doesn’t act like a crazy racist and sexist person, but we can’t control him,” a source close to the campaign told The Washington Post.
These hopes were quickly dashed in the course of Trump’s interview with the National Association of Black Journalists Wednesday afternoon, in which the candidate claimed that, for years, Vice President Kamala Harris “was Indian all the way, and then suddenly she made a turn and she became a Black person.”
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Just how dumb is this guy?
Whatever the answer to that question is, the real answer is “dumber than that.”
Also acceptable: not as dumb as the people who vote for him.
Dumber than that.
He’s a not really that dumb, he’s a narcissist. Like, as a legitimate, detrimental mental condition.
Trump cannot backtrack and admit he is wrong, even if it’s a small goof. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Dorian–Alabama_controversy
I know people like this in real life, and it’s really sad, but also really annoying/grating.
To be fair, he’s 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, he’s good at that kind of scheme. It worked! It wasn’t 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 Trump’s ability to “sell” ideas that benefit him, to their detrement.
The guy is one of the dumbest people alive. He isn’t good at anything but fooling dumb people. He is the king of the dumb people and there are more than we thought.
It’s not reductive. It’s factual. Quit polishing a turd. He’s a moron. He can’t even fuck a porn star and pay her without being caught. He’s so dumb he can’t hide investment lies without being caught. He can’t plan to overthrow the government without documentation.
I know 5 year olds with more wit and social navigation.
I’d be interested to see your take on his prowess as a trickster as mentioned in the parent comment.
We’d 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. They’d definitely be very evil. But when it came to nuke engineering, they’re evil & not dumb.
I don’t worry I’m glorifying the impeached ex-president when I say “he’s good at fraud.” He has said and done many evil things, including some cunning ones. He’s dumb in some areas. Am I really polishing a turd right now by acknowledging a horrible horrible person isn’t entirely an idiot in every facet of his life, rather only most of them?
Maybe 45’s narcissism is indeed the bigger headline. Narcissistic, evil, morally an idiot, cunning at (smart at executing) certain scams… if we just say “nope bad at everything, 100% dumb” we’re underplaying how dangerous he can be, no?
I’d be interested to see your take on his prowess as a trickster as mentioned in the parent comment.
In my opinion, it’s because our systems are woefully inadequate to address even the dumbest of huckster schemes. He’s not some brilliant dude for pulling it off. He just has no morals, no ethics, and no shame. And he’s spent a lifetime instinctively removing anyone who does from his presence.
“There is no greater danger than underestimating your opponent.” ― Lao Tzu
Your not acknowledging his strengths, which have absolutely gotten him this far. That’s a deadly mistake, one the Democrat part has already made far too much.
His strengths didn’t get him this far. His daddy’s money did.
He’s not my adversary. He’s an asshole I would rather not exist and is the epitome of stupidity. He doesn’t have strengths. He bought fame and sucks at life. I don’t 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 don’t support Trump. I don’t think there’s anything that could happen that would make me vote Trump instead of literally any Democratic candidate. Even that aside, I really hate narcissists.
But you’re living in a bubble if you don’t 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. It’s how they lost, and could lose again.
Another commenter pointed out that he’s so fucking stupid he stared directly at the sun when an eclipse happened. Yeah he’s not very smart.
And most likely someone else came up with that scheme.
I don’t think so. It’s classic Trump and fits his long pattern of behavior, of not quite lying in the technical sense while selling some kind of snake oil.
Couldn’t be a pattern of the people he hires and ethics he’s happy to not have? This isn’t evidence that he’s smart
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But also dumb
His VP pick has children who are both white and Indian, but he still can’t comprehend Harris can be black and Indian.
To be fair, Trump and most of the MAGA base probably don’t view the Vance kids as white at all.
The half-assed way Vance “defended” his wife to his party was sickening.
I missed this, was it from the convention? Is there a particular quote?
“Obviously, she’s not a white person, and we’ve been accused, attacked by some white supremacists over that. But I just, I love Usha.”
– JD Vance
“I know she’s not white, but I love her anyway. And I know that’s a personal failing of mine, and I apologize for it”
- what he implied
Don’t want to offend the white supremacists… they need those votes!
Conservatives are all about tradition…
He’s “look directly at the sun during an eclipse without eye protection” dumb. Plus he’s 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 didn’t 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 can’t 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, Fat…the alpha W.O.L.F.
Wildly overweight limp fuck?
It’s just a weird thing to say and a weird stance to double-down on.
He’s starting a rhetoric. He gaslights and soon there’ll be a bunch of Americans caught up in her origins and misleading representation of race. And you’ll wonder, “How the fuck did that actually stick?”
Yep, it’s just the new talking point from their supreme leader. It was “Sleepy Biden” before, now it’s “opportunistic race swapping Harris” (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 isn’t. 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 didn’t 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.
How dumb is there?
All of it…just all the dumb
Dude literally doesn’t understand that people come from two parents
Not dumb, in the sense that he knows 70% of his base doesn’t give two shits about anything, and 10% want to see vulgar stuff because it’s entertaining.
This is the guy who has mocked developmentally disabled people on national TV more than once, prior to winning the 2016 election, and I’m basing his reasoning after that. His fanbase is beholden to his callous asshattery
No, he’s legitimately dumb. He knows how to play a crowd, and covers it up a bit by rambling unlike Biden, but he’s 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 hasn’t been accurate since the 80s.
If you watch his CPAC speeches and stuff, it’s almost like there’s a conspiracy of silence around showing how bad it is. You just get wacky stories that aren’t too believable from dem-alligned media, and “everything’s fine, the 79 year old is the most stable genius ever” from conservative media.
The recent interview with the black journalists association missed the perfect opportunity to ask him to draw a clock.
He’s dumb, but about as dumb as a rat that figured out how to reach the cheese in the maze. He’s kind of bumbling around and took an unintentionally Socratic approach towards reaching what he wanted. There’s 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 “n+1” problem, as far as I can tell
If you know you might lose a fair fight, but you also know it doesn’t 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 doesn’t realize Kamala Harris and Nikki Hayley are different people. They’re both just “that woman I’m running against” to him.
If that’s true it would be sad if it wasn’t just so damn funny
Usually it’s 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 “Jamaicans aren’t black.” 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 they’re not black either?
The sky is yellow if it upsets a lib
And they’d piss straight up just to turn that sky yellow
Doubt they drink enough water, so it’s probably orange, appropriately enough.
They won’t be black until they try to enter the US. At which point they’ll be angry violent blacks coming for American jobs, even if they’re 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 they’re seeing.
…dafuq??
There are cultural differences between Afro-Caribbean people and “black” (ADOS) Americans. The trump fans might be trying to use that to drive a wedge in the Democratic Party.
But that’s 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 don’t know that many MAGA folks with that nuanced a view of race.
Yeah I was worried I’d sound insensitive by posting that. But honestly, to this specific group, I want to just say O now skin color doesn’t 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 don’t really see it helping, the people who belive him aren’t less likely to vote for someone that isn’t black. There’s no trumpers saying ‘oh I really.wanted a black woman as president, guess I’ll have to vote the racist guy instead’
Which is a complete waste of time on Trump’s part. She’s 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:
“What do you get when you mix clean water with dirty water?”
“Dirty water”
Now they’re saying that people of mixed heritage aren’t anything. That they’re the Other.
Harris grew up in Oakland in a Black neighborhood. As usual the racists are cruel but here they’re spreading an obvious lie designed to erode her standing among black voters
I hope she gets one of those “black jobs”…like President.
Can’t have mixed people, they might break the whole divide and conquer thing that they’ve perfected in the last little while.
Don’t beat them with their own arguments! It just confuses them…
These hopes were quickly dashed in the course of Trump’s interview with the National Association of Black Journalists Wednesday afternoon, in which the candidate claimed that, for years, Vice President Kamala Harris “was Indian all the way, and then suddenly she made a turn and she became a Black person.”
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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Okay I’m 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 didn’t 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 isn’t different or anything, just suddenly some people are realizing and agree the emperor isn’t 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. He’s been floundering since he fucked up COVID. That was something he could bluster his way through. Republicans could see their friends and family dying.
That’s why he lost. He’s 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. It’s a non-factor of that voting demographic.
My sister is adamant my dad didn’t 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 doesn’t apply to bars.
I have a conservative friend whose father died from covid which absolutely devistated her. She’s from a small rural town she used to love but cannot stand it anymore because everyone she knew there was like “god’s plan” 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 he’s 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 aren’t 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. It’s 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 that’s 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 like… Christian media and what sort of changes they have seen in attitudes toward trump this year vs last year.
More “Haphazardly guided by fox news” but yeah.
The Sarah Palin gambit blew up in their face again.
I guess he’s free to say whatever the fuck he wants if his party think they’ve 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 “we don’t need the votes” at almost every rally
Well if it’s rigged in his favor, well then gee golly, I don’t have to go into town on election day and vote for him!
I was going to vote for Trump, but now that I know he’s going to win no matter what I’ll just stay home!
He was begging Christians for votes recently.
“we’re hoping he doesn’t act like a crazy racist and sexist person, we can’t control him”
- says person working for uncontrollable crazy racist and sexist person.
Let me guess, the black genes are only 3/5 as powerful as her Indian genes?
Combined together they form - The Kamalatron!
“As you can see, my opponent is a total fraud.
She even changed her name from Nikki to Kamala”
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 can’t parrot his most sensational claims.
I think he desperately doesn’t want her to get the black vote, so he’s trying to tell everyone that she’s not black. It’s 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].
Let’s 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 he’s trying to say to everyone that she’s not black.
God damn it, what weird timeline this is.
Here’s what I don’t 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 (he’s not, he’s what physicists would call “not even wrong”), so what? Are racists any less racist to indians than african americans?
I don’t get the playbook here, non-racists would just be confused and racists would still be racists.
Here’s what I don’t 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, that’s very much not true, except maybe on a very superficial “some bigot called me a slur” 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 don’t appreciate in value at the same rate ones in white neighborhoods do… 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.
That’s not to say that Indian-Americans don’t face “struggles:” discrimination against Indian-American tech workers in particular is definitely a thing, especially motivated by a “the H1-Bs turk err jerbs” 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 with…?)
So, no: while it’s 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 doesn’t 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 that’s 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 doesn’t have any legitimacy to comment on someone being too black or not black enough. It’s disgusting and weird.
It won’t. He only understands racism from a white perspective and is trying to apply that elsewhere, which is why it’s extra ridiculous.
I think he’s thinking it’ll go something like:
Potential black voters in swing states: “Kamala is half Indian?? Hell no, I’m not voting for her! As everyone knows, all people are racist pieces of shit towards anyone who doesn’t align exactly with the ethnicity they are, so I’m staying home!”
He’s weird.
many GOP strategists, including in the Trump camp, worried that attacks on Harris’s race and gender […] would pose a serious liability for the campaign
Do they seriously understand their base that badly, or is this just optics? “I hope his completely unexpected racism doesn’t alienate our voters who are totally not racist we swear this is so bad we’re so worried oh no”
The base isn’t going to be put off by it, but that’s not who they’re worried about. Every election is divided by independent swing voters and yes, some of them do care.
The 33% that constitutes Trump’s base probably likes him more after every racist outburst, but they alone don’t win national elections.
I’ve seen a lot of people raise doubts about whether there really are significant amounts of swing voters this time 'round, and I’d sort of tend to agree – if not for any other reason than it seems bizarre that somebody could be vacillating between Trump and Harris
Totally, Trump’s not really trying to win any more voters, everyone has already made their decision. He’s 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 don’t vote. If you don’t vote, it’s accepting a second Trump presidency.
The only way he can win is if a majority of people don’t vote. If you don’t vote, it’s accepting a second Trump presidency.
If everyone voted, and especially if everyone under 40 voted, the Republican party would lose in a landslide. There’s a reason that the Republicans are so big on voter suppression.
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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 it’s difficult to imagine people who can’t 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 don’t 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 it’s only 10% of voters, but that’s 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.
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 they’d 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 opposition’s voting base so they don’t 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 they’re 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 weren’t an out group last election.
There are far more ignorant people than you could ever imagine.
I didn’t 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
