Donald Trump the Megathread part II - Mod Warning updated in OP 12/2/26

Wonder what the Trump family would have been doing day to day if he'd stayed and they were all serving in the German military in WW2

Probably shot for desertion.

Well if Trump is simply a moron how does he get elected not once but twice.. 21 men in history have done so. Trump one of them.

How are you defining “moron”? Psychology and clinical evaluation from the 19th century coined by the eugenics movement?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/moron-idiot-imbecile-offensive-history

Or simply as an “idiot” in common parlance, not in the old uk legislative terminology used in UK law such as the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act?

https://education-uk.org/documents/acts/1913-mental-deficiency-act.html

Because to me a person does not get elected as POTUS not once, but twice if they are simply a “moron”. They have to have some skill or talent to firstly receive a nomination, to win a nomination, and finally defeat their opponent to win office.

Yeah but that's not really why he got elected and retains a base of tens of millions of people.

Ultimately, he is in tune with what a lot of Americans are thinking, particularly the extremely religious and/or poorly educated. @Quin_Dub said earlier that there are studies that link extreme religiosity with underdevelopment in regions of the brain associated with critical. Without having seen links, I would say that this is almost certainly true.

In the early twentieth century, the US was fairly equal in economic terms. In the thirties, they got the New Deal from FDR and under Johnson they got the Civil Rights Act and the Great Society Reforms. The problem is that these Antitrust and pro-equality measures attracted condemnation from conservative and business circles. In 1971, Lewis Powell, a soon to be Supreme Court Justice, issued the "Powell memo", a call to arms to business to organise and defend itself. In academia, there were the Chicago School economists like Milton Friedman arguing for libertarian economics, ie business should be allowed to do as it pleases. Reagan then went on to win two terms and enact what we would now call a neoliberal agenda.

American conservatism is a hybrid offering of social conservatism for the working and middle classes mixed with an economically libertarian package for the wealthy and corporations. The poors get austerity, racism and family values while the rich get low taxes and business gets that along with cuts in regulation.

Conservatives' greatest trick has been to phrase everything in binary, simple rhetoric. Trump has learned this lesson well. He uses simple words and analogies, picks simple enemies and always keeps his base fired up. All the while, he's rinsing them and all the while they fail to notice it. Obviously, that's where the intelligence ends. All Trump really did was to drop the facade of decency you'd expect from Republicans like Marco Rubio or Mitt Romney. He's still reaping insane rewards for virtually nothing. And all the while, Americans still don't ask questions.

This the sort of smooth brained individual that he appeals to.. zero critical thinking skills, easily conned. And there's millions of them.

Archive version

Rory McIroy 2nd from right for winning consecutive masters…?

America needs much stronger guardrails to stop sleazebags like Trump from becoming president. A few more of these and the country will go bust. It’s already in serious trouble on the debt front, a problem that could suddenly explode.

As to Trump’s talents I would say: dreadful entrepreneur, accomplished salesman, excellent criminal.

Guy in the left is like a 3D printed "stonks" meme

It's not just that Trump is or is not a moron: it's more a question of how many of the nearly 80million who voted for him in 2024 are morons.

I still remember this vividly

He really is the idiots vision of a strongman.