Trump, August 2017: A great day at the White House!

nice to see it get rebuked so quickly. he rattles off quotes like this in every interview..."so and so called me to tell me how great of a job I did", when it's like...nobody who doesn't work for him ever talks about him like that in public, it's clear that these conversations are all Art of the Deal bullshit that obviously never happened, but (until now) he hasn't really gotten called out on it.

The trend in the answers to "do you think Donald Trump is intelligent" is most interesting thing in the Q poll. pic.twitter.com/8sZXvhJZnV

— Joel Wertheimer (@Wertwhile) August 2, 2017

Look at this week's "strongly approve" number https://t.co/2g9Un0bz6L pic.twitter.com/oha00tenKM

— Ariel Edwards-Levy (@aedwardslevy) August 2, 2017

xp what I'm sure many think is more interesting is that 74% of people thought he was intelligent in the first place. "YUHH FIYAD!" That's what the majority of Americans have known him for.

WTF @ he fact that the number of people saying 'yes, Donald Trump is intelligent' hasn't fallen below 50%!!!!!!!!!!!!! Fuckit, I'm gonna get in on that gas huffing thing I'd been dissuaded from trying. Ho one will know the difference, apparently.

Misspellings would suggest I have begun my huffing in earnest.

the absolute numbers there are sad, but "rich = intelligent, got elected president = intelligent" is a pretty easy mistake to make if you're not paying attention

well, being rich is merit-based (SMAHT) in many ppl's deranged minds xp

where is the "do you think voting for Trump reflects well on your intelligence" Q/A

100% yes on that one, I would imagine.

I feel like, of all the positive personal qualities in that poll, "intelligent" is the one I'd be MOST likely to ascribe to Trump. Cunning is a kind of intelligence. The ability to ad lib in front of a crowd is a kind of intelligence. Look at Huckabee's humiliatingly awful attempts to produce Trumpesque tweets and you can see that what he's doing requires a certain cognitive skill.

Trump is deeply and aggressively ignorant but I think that's different from being unintelligent. I think he just hates knowing things and hates people who know things and has kept himself ignorant on purpose.

I was all set to pooh-pooh any news about changes in Turmpian polling, because (a) most polls said he'd lose and (b) his floor has seemed pretty stable since May. Think of all that's happened, and look at the stability of this graph:

http://i.imgur.com/RScNlIi.jpg

That said, there does seem to be some change this week. So maybe it's sinking in. More dramatic in caek's post than here, because caek is posting separate tracks for strongly.

well, repeal/replace failure happened

just read that Heller's challenger next year put out a "Repeal & Replace Heller" ad lol

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/344903-dem-ad-repeal-and-replace-dean-heller-over-healthcare-vote

I feel like, of all the positive personal qualities in that poll, "intelligent" is the one I'd be MOST likely to ascribe to Trump. Cunning is a kind of intelligence. The ability to ad lib in front of a crowd is a kind of intelligence. Look at Huckabee's humiliatingly awful attempts to produce Trumpesque tweets and you can see that what he's doing requires a certain cognitive skill.

We're talking about a country where most people's primary educations are from McDonalds ads.

The ability to ad lib in front of a crowd is a kind of intelligence.

But he can't do this at all; he simply repeats the same phrases with different subjects and direct objects over and over. I'd bet that if you did a frequency analysis of his speeches, he doesn't have a working vocabulary of more than 500-600 words.

Blasting through every single establishment safeguard to be elected president is a pretty significant achievement. He was insightful enough to match his (mostly vile) message to the concerns of the moment, so much so that he was able to win despite a series of profoundly reckless mistakes during the campaign. I'd say this means he is "smart," sure.

He's a weird guy, extremely ignorant, and at this point seemingly mentally ill in some way, but he isn't devoid of ability.

he's not intelligent

he's dumber than Dubya

I've been vacationing for a week, has this been mentioned?

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/07/31/trump-launches-real-news-show-to-combat-fake-news-hosted-by-hi/23058709/?a_dgi=aolshare_facebook

I remember throughout the primaries remarking that Trump was one of the most effortless and gratuitous liars I'd ever seen, it was just second nature to him in a way I've never seen with anyone else. He's not without some sort of skill.

http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/debates2016/

The Windbag Index is a compound measure that characterizes the complexity of speech. A low index is indicative of succinct speech with low degree of repetition and large number of independent concepts. A large number—ooh,look at Trump—corresponds to a stream of repeating words.

http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/debates2016/windbag.png

He can't ad lib at all.

The Economist/YouGov graph is interesting because it shows confluence of strongly approve and approve. People aren't shifting en masse from approval to disapproval; they're shifting from strongly approve to merely approving. Because those numbers are typically combined in an overall net approval, this shift could be comparatively invisible to people just looking at aggregators.

Also vocabulary size isn't everything. His rallies showed he could read a crowd and hold their attention for hours. I definitely couldn't do that.

None of this matters though. I hate that I know so much about this person.

lol

xp

you guys are citing all these things he can do, none of which reflect intelligence.

keep it up though, he loves praise!

man xposts

maybe i'm crazy but i have absolutely no problem seeing someone from BSA organization calling Trump and telling he did a "fantastic job", whether they want to admit it, or if everyone in the leadership was aware of it or not.

I can show you a fuckton of people who can hold a crowd's attention for hours that are certifiable morons

xxp I too can hold the attention of angry, hungry raccoons by throwing garbage at them for a sustained period. That doesn't make me smart.

stop equating wealth/success with intelligence

I was looking at that chart going "... Kanye?" before I realized what had happened

Guys, seriously, let's not get ahead of ourselves on praising the Don's smarts. If he hadn't had any number of people leading him by the hand through the minefields of his own making, dude would be living in Grey Gardens right now wrapped in a shit-stained towel.

If we spent hours going through each quality a person could have, we'd probably find Trump doesn't have a single redeeming quality at all. Which I know isn't common, but that's the guy who's president now.

His rallies showed he could read a crowd and hold their attention for hours. I definitely couldn't do that.

I can confirm from observation over the weekend that a dachshund puppy also possesses this ability.

I'm just really curious what skill people think it takes to get a crowd of angry, racist white people to listen to someone castigate minorities and chant "U-S-A! U-S-A!" It's trivially easy. Try it at your next sporting event.

He fulfills an important role of celebs: giving millions of people the chance to feel superior to him. The gloomy face and the antique adolescent hair, the mannequin wife and the clueless children of privilege, the sheer pointlessness of flying around in a 747 to say inane things to crowds of people — it’s cheap entertainment for us, and in the end it simply doesn’t matter.

We Will Survive This, Garrison Keillor

I'm just really curious what skill people think it takes to get a crowd of angry, racist white people to listen to someone castigate minorities and chant "U-S-A! U-S-A!" It's trivially easy. Try it at your next sporting event.

step 1: be white
step 1a: if you aren't white, make sure you let the white crowd know how much better than you they are
step 2: flatter the shit out of the crowd
step 3: pick a marginalized group and scapegoat the shit out of them
step 4: more flattery
step 5: more scapegoating
step 6: encourage violence
step 7: promise that you can singlehandedly remake the world in your own image
step 8: more scapegoating
step 9: more flattery
step 10: say something super racist/sexist but in vaguely coded language so the audience can feel smart for "deciphering" it (this is a specific form of flattery)
step 11: monetize the shit out of these morons

This seems like a useful resource for those of us in liberal mass media bubbles:

Hamilton 68: A dashboard tracking Russian propaganda on twitter

President Donald Trump may tap U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry to replace former Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, who took over as White House chief of staff this week, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday. Bloomberg, citing three people familiar with deliberations, said others were also being considered for the post.

White House officials had no immediate comment. Asked about the Bloomberg report, an Energy Department spokeswoman said Perry was content in his current job. “While Secretary Perry is honored to be mentioned, he is happy where he is and very focused on carrying out the mission the President gave him when he was chosen to lead the Department of Energy,” Shaylyn Hynes said in an email.

Rick Perry did an absolutely horrible job of securing the border. He should be ashamed of himself. Gov. Abbott has since been terrific.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 21, 2015

dunno which is more terrifying, Perry being in charge of nuclear stockpile or being in charge of national security

what's the difference

well they do overlap

one has the authority to imprison/kill people tho

i know it's lookist af but without knowing another thing about him i would not feel comfortable leaving children alone with Stephen Miller

Others reportedly being considered for DHS include Rudy Giuliani, Kris Kobach, and Tom Cotton.

The Stephen Miller press conference is a dumpster fire. He and Jim Acosta are insulting each other.

^^I just decided I'd heard enough, turned it off

why would stephen miller hold a press conf

Others reportedly being considered for DHS include Rudy Giuliani, Kris Kobach, and Tom Cotton

Giuliani will never make it through the Senate. Cotton would though