#1

Trump has told many lies, but there are times when his lies are not enough. Enough to get his base to believe them like they believe everything he says, sure, but still not enough to convince them of any virtue, unless they are actually just nodding away inanely at his apparent charisma. 

One such lie was when he denied having inherited massive amounts of money. Didn’t you know? Trump is a self-made man. He only ever received a one million dollar loan from his father. And he specifies that he had to pay it back, in case we didn’t know what a loan was. 

But wait, a million dollars? I have gotten loan offers in the mail for 40,000 dollars–and they don’t come with a friends and family interest rate. And that’s nowadays. In 1973, Trump was already overseeing over 14,000 apartments in NYC, so a million dollar loan after that point would have been redundant. So let’s say Trump got the loan in 1973 (clearly it was more than that and earlier than that, but let’s be conservative). That would have been around 7 million in today’s dollars. 

That’s what it means to be self-made?  Only to someone who does not know the price of a loaf bread.

#2

Remember that time Trump had a joint press conference with Putin in Helsinki in 2018? Trump was asked whether he felt Russia was responsible for meddling in US elections. He responded by saying that, yea, he had heard some stuff about it from one of those intelligence guys he’s supposed to listen to, but “[Putin] just said it’s not Russia. I will say this, I don’t see any reason why it would be.”

Wow, siding with the Russian autocrat over one’s own intelligence agency. That’s not going to play well on the right or the left. So, Trump went into damage prevention mode, claiming that he had actually intended to say the exact opposite–he meant “wouldn’t” instead of “would”.

So let’s go with him. Let’s enter the mental space of gullible MAGAns. Forget that Trump had always been complimentary toward Putin, not only during that press conference, but also during his campaign. 

This was the record-stopping moment that never was. Trump intended, in Putin’s presence, to call Putin out for something Putin denied. But then Trump’s brain turned to putty and, instead of speaking truth to power, he flubbed, and accidentally went along with a narrative that aligned with Putin’s claims. What’s more, he didn’t have the presence of mind to realize he did it until he supposedly looked over the transcript. 

In this unbelievable reality, Trump doesn’t covet his neighbor’s autocracy. He really wanted to tell that guy what was what. He just didn’t have the mental acuity to do the words good. 

But let’s pull ourselves out of the morass of MAGA mind. Yuck. Hope you brought a towel. Of course the original Putin gaffe was not a gaffe. It was evidence that our president at the time was shady as hell.