From his mouth to our ears - my, how they burn!

[thewayne]

"Ninety-nine percent of [the Covid cases revealed by testing] are totally harmless."
-- Trump

"We'll be happy to debate the efficacy of masks with you when this is all over and you come in to sell your dead grandmother's clothes. Masks required."
-- sign in vintage clothing shop in Phoenix

I never cease to be amazed at his ability to make shit up.

Comments

[elayna]

I'm amazed at his ability to make shit up but also horrified that so many people still respond positively to him, no matter his inanities and lies and blustering. I despair that his approval rating is higher than 1%.

[dewline]

Some of them have said flat out: "He's our murder weapon."

[thewayne]

Last night I read an article giving a detailed background into the Boogaloo movement.  I remember when I worked for the police dept in the '90s and we had the militia movement.  Seems like we always have to have some group of idiots who have to dress up and run around with rifles, just itching to kill someone.  And now we have someone on Pennsylvania Ave. who sanctions it.  I remember when He said something in one of his regular tweet rampages and a message was seen in one of the Boogaloo FB groups that said 'Boiz, did he just say it was time to boogaloo?!'

[thewayne]

He has a number of people who voted for him in the first place, the question is whether they are in key constituencies and whether people opposing him will come out in this places.  That was one of the biggest problem in the last election: too few people coming out to vote and him getting elected by a minority of the country.

[dewline]

His stupidity, how it burns the world...

[elf]

If 99% are harmless, why have 5% resulted in death in the US?

(99% is not a real number to him. It means "lots, almost all, so much that what's left is negligible." He doesn't believe numbers actually mean anything; he uses the words that have the emotional impact he wants.)

[thewayne]

He has stated publicly that he makes numbers up.  He's said that if he thinks his properties are worth more on one day, he gives bigger numbers.  And this has him in trouble with the City and State of New York for tax purposes as he's given one set of numbers, lower, to tax assessors and higher numbers to bankers for borrowing purposes.  I think these are among the many suits that are filed and pending him getting out of office. 

His followers seem to have a firmer grasp on what those percentages represent than he does.

[silveradept]

At this point, it seems like the responsible thing to do is completely ignore him and his cronies and only mention things if they are actually factual.

To make this work, however, we'd have to systematically take off the air/print/Interwebs anyone who reported or treated any of his lies as a truth. Otherwise his base still gets to live in their bubble.

[thewayne]

Interestingly, he has said he's abandoned Faux Newts for reporting "inaccurate and fake news polls", and is taking his custom elsewhere.  It'll be interesting to see how this trickles down to his still insanely loyal but somewhat diminishing base.

[silveradept]

Well, if the merest whiff of reality intruding is enough to get him to abandon his most devoted base, there won't be anyone who can keep up the necessary illusions and stop the intrusion of the truths, even if he thinks they're not very noble.

It certainly explains why he wants to do rallies now and very specifically do rallies that ignore the reality of a virus that infects people in proximity to each other.