The Republican front-runner made another gaffe as he tried to explain away all his other ones.

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.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    61·
    10 months ago

    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
      43·
      10 months ago

      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.

        • Gork@lemm.ee
          13·
          10 months ago

          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
            40·
            10 months ago

            “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
              • Lesrid@lemm.ee
                3·
                10 months ago

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

            • Billiam@lemmy.world
              1·
              10 months ago

              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?

              I mean, that’s what we English speakers (Trump’s allegedly first (only?) language) have to do, so why should the French be any different?

      • TexasDrunk@lemmy.world
        12·
        10 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.socialEnglish
        8·
        10 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.

        🤷

    • OpenStars@startrek.websiteEnglish
      91·
      10 months ago

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

        • OpenStars@startrek.websiteEnglish
          2·
          10 months ago

          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.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
            2·
            10 months ago

            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.websiteEnglish
              2·
              10 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.