Ethics Alarms only covers a fraction of the statements by prominent people that prompt the response, “What, if anything, were they thinking?” For example, I was torn today whether to mention Kamala Harris saying in a recent interview (with Axis journalist Kara Swisher, whom I have been calling out for her hackery for 30 years) on her book tour (What were they thinking to send Kamala out on a book tour?), that “some have said” that she was “the most qualified candidate ever to run for President.” Because Swisher is such a hack, she didn’t have the integrity to burst out laughing and tell Harris, “Oh, Kamala, you are so funny!” Yeah, and some have said, “I am the Lizard King!” and “Of course dogs can talk, they just don’t have anything to say!” Maybe, MAYBE, and I am giving her the benefit of the doubt here, Harris was only the second least qualified Presidential candidate of a major party in U.S. history. But I digress.
In last night’s predictably horrifying town hall meeting on CNN featuring American communist Bernie Sanders and Dunning-Kruger victim Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), AOC went for the Gold and may have said the stupidest thing that not only she has ever said in public but perhaps the stupidest thing any elected official has said in public, though Rep. Hank Johnson expressing a fear that so much U.S. military personnel and equipment on the island of Guam might cause it to “tip over” creates a daunting challenge.
Ranting in her usual pop-eyed hysterical style about how evil corporations were polluting the nation and that “rivers were on fire” because they were “pouring chemicals” into waterways and killing people, AOC was quick to name the first corporate villain to pop into what she audaciously calls her “mind.” Was it Monsanto, mayhap? Dow Chemical? Dupont? LyondellBasell Industries, the largest U.S. chemical company? Oh no. The Congresswoman, regarded by many pundits as the rising leader of the Democratic Party, has bigger game in her sights, and she immediately, without hesitation, named the vile polluter.
“Deloitte.”
Yes, the accounting firm. I’ve been trying to think of a company that she could have named that would be less guilty of pollution. The Boston Red Sox? I dunno, the team flies a lot. Hey, but anyone can make a mistake. Right? It was just a “speako.” It isn’t really evidence that Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t know what the hell she is talking about half the time, is it?
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:
Is it unfair to hold such an obvious brain fart against AOC?
I admit to being torn. As someone who speaks extemporaneously in public a lot, I am painfully aware of how easy it is to spout nonsense or worse. Ethics Alarms has frequently defended people I would prefer not to defend for such gaffes, as when Obama said there were 57 states. But I remember the time I was giving an ethics seminar and suddenly started talking about Aaron Burr when I thought I was talking about Raymond Burr, the actor who played defense lawyer Perry Mason on TV. I didn’t even realize it: I had to see the video.
But at least anyone could see how that happened: they were both named “Burr.” In addition, I do have a hard-earned reputation for knowing what I am talking about within certain preameters, just as nobody could believe that Barack Obama doesn’t know how many states there are.
AOC, though? She talks nonsense all the time. She was on national TV. She had days to prepare. This distinguished member of the House of Representatives is all loaded to attack corporate polluters and the best example she can come up with is…an accounting firm? When something that absurd jumps out of someone’s mouth, they generally hear it and correct themselves unless they don’t realize how absurd it is.
Riffing on one of my favorite lines from “Animal House,” blogger Glenn Reynolds commented, “WAS IT OVER WHEN THE ACCOUNTANTS BOMBED PEARL HARBOR?!” Of course, John Blutarski, we are told, went on from Faber College to become a U.S. Senator. I would vote for Bluto before I’d vote for AOC.
Ethics Alarms 
And we need air that is drinkable
Well, the title of this post might provide an answer of sorts.
Just saying…..
%$#@^!#$$##@!!! I proof read every thing but the titles sometimes. Fixed. Crap.
If you are going to give yourself a pass for Burr, I think it might be reasonable to think she was thinking of DuPont? Both are two syllable Frenchy sounding corporations. And, unlike Aaron and Raymond, they exist in the same century….
Also–If KH was unqualified for the presidency, it has to be because of personal qualities (not smart, unable to speak, not ethical/corrupt, demagogic, etc, none of which seem to apply). Being a US Senator, a VP, a state AG, and a local prosecutor stacks up pretty well as a resume for a president. True, some of our worst presidents had great resumes (looking at you, Jimmy Buchanan), and I’m surely not arguing that she was the most qualified candidate (she’s not a great campaigner, for one thing, and her resume, while good, is great. Who do you consider the least qualified candidate in American history? It’s tough to avoid Trump, isn’t it? We’ve never had a president who never served a day in public service. Ever. He was wildly ignorant of basics of our governmental process well into his first term, and probably still is today, if he ever took questions from a neutral journalist. True, he has inspired greater loyalty in his base than any president in history, and that’s impressive (and scary in a democracy). But he was not, in 2016, qualified to be president compared to any other major party nominee in American history.
Trump had leadership and management experience, negotiation experience: I’d put his qualifications on par with one of the Whig Generals like Taylor. Harris had no executive experience whatsoever—she was not one of the VPs who was given much to do, like Nixon, Gore or Cheney. US Senator is not a strong credential for POTUS, as Obama and others have proven. Harris didn’t even serve a full term in the Senate, and AG/DA jobs have no relevance to the Presidency. She had less useful experience than Trump in 2016: once he had been President, of course, he was qualified.
Horace Greeley was less qualified than Harris. He’s the only one who I can say that about with confidence. Bill Miller, Goldwater’s running mate, would have been worse than Harris if he were running for POTUS rather than Veep.
Then, of course, there’s the fact that she’s an idiot….
Tell me what did she do of any importance in any of those roles. Having a title especially when you were anointed and elected only to the AG role with the backing of her paramour is hardly a claim to fame. Being in government service does not make one qualified to manage much of anything. Trump’s businesses were as complex if not more so than any governor and had higher revenue streams than many states.
When your money is not on the line you are not negotiating you are jus buying and you don’t care if you get the bargained for value or not.
Deloitte? She probably was saying Big Accounting exploits tax laws allowing Big Pollution to keep destroying the environment.
jvb
Occam’s Razor suggests that she’s just ignorant.
I encourage everyone to read the book Lucky Loser for a portrait of Trump as a businessman pre-presidency. It’s also a powerful depiction of his father for the first 5 chapters or so. Fred was a real business star. A billionaire when that was extremely rare, and started pretty much from nothing. Suffice to say–his son was nothing like him. From day one, he was trading on Daddy’s name. Not only do we have the famous bankruptcies, but the chronic mismanagement, the repeated ethics problems, the long standing pattern of hiring small business guys to do major projects, the little mason goes “OMG, this is the biggest job of my life, doing marble installations at the Trump casino!”…then, upon completion, refusing to pay more than 50% of the bill. Trump has lawyers on speed dial. These guys are usually in the hock covering the costs of their work. If they don’t get paid something, they go out of business. So over and over, he f*cked the little guy. This book has the receipts! More than 4,000 civil litigations before presidency. The tax fraud, in several different ways, are documented here, too. But worst of all, the capricious and often stupid decision making. Over and over, experts tell Trump–don’t do that. And like a petulant child, he does it. Every now and then, it works out. He had some successes–Trump Tower, for example. But…he had far more failures. And some catastrophic ones, from which his dad had to rescue him. AND–he showed, over and over again, an inability to work WITH someone as a partner. It’s a remarkable portrait, and unlike so many Trump books, it doesn’t spend much time on his sex scandals or his family dynamics, except the sad story of his older brother is highlighted, but not in a way that blames Trump for it. In any case, more than any of the Trump books I’ve read, this one shows that citing his business expertise as some qualification for the presidency is…um…not a strong argument. Also…KH is not an idiot. She’s no Obama, no Clinton…and she’s not a great politician. But idiot? And her paramour did not get her the AG slot. That was two earlier appointed posts. He did give her her start in politics, that’s true. But the AG was won at the ballot box, and Brown didn’t play much of a role in her primary win there. If any–they were broken up by then, I’m pretty sure.
Don’t make me list her myriad idiotic statements, including those in the quotes from her book. Saying that “some” people say she’s the MOST qualified is signature signifcance: how deluded and historically ignorant would one have to be to say that out loud with her meager record and resume. Abe Lincoln had almost no qualifications except that he was a political and leadership genius,and he would have never said he was the “most qualified” candidate by 1860!
I wrote reams in 2015-2016 about how unqualified Trump was, but it is now clear that he was wildly underestimated. He has resilience, he has energy, he is ambitious, he solves problems, and his failures have made him better. He’s a fighter, and he’s not afraid to lose. And he has charisma, though it is lost on me.Yes, Dad was the business genius.That’s not an unusual family background for a President. Trump developed other skills. Nobody becomes President who doesn’t have something special.Well, Biden comes the closest to being the exception….
Biden was a great politician in his day. When he ran in 1988, he was compared, seriously, to JFK. Had he not plagiarized whole chunks of Neil Kinnock’s speech about coal mining, which then led to investigations of whether he had exaggerated his academic record, he’d probably have gotten the nomination. Obama picked him in 2008 in no small part because the guy had great political skills, and knew most world leaders. One of my profs in grad school worked for Biden on the Judiciary committee. He said, confidentially, that watching Biden question Bork was incredibly painful, because Bork was one of the great legal minds of the 20th century, and Joe Biden…was, um…not. True, age made much less of him by 2020, and even less by 2024, but he was not without talent. One thing he had, throughout his presidency, was a really top staff. There were almost no leaks from that staff. Trump is better about leaks in his second term, his first term was a disaster on that front. I give a lot of credit to his current Chief of Staff. She’s really good at her job. But as for the above discussion–much of the qualifications for Trump were as a businessman. But he sucked as a business man. Before he started grifting billions in crypto and social media, say, before politics, 2015….he would have been substantially richer if he had taken his inheritance and put it in market fund. Hell, a bank. It’s remarkable how bad he was at business. What was he good at? Playing a businessman on TV. When the TV crews went to Trump’s offices to shoot the Apprentice, they found out it was musty, old, and decrepit. Because…he couldn’t afford a remodel. They had to build a new set of offices for the show, that’s how bad off he was when the apprentice launched. So yeah, he does have skills…he’s a great reality TV star. That gave him a great advantage in debates…but not much in governing.
Lucky Loser also highlights how he was involved in two corrupt MLM schemes, which made him several million dollars in the early years of this century, plus the fraudulent Trump University. After the Apprentice hit, his main source of income was the show, plus these licensing agreements. Some products were real, some were fraudulent, some were just shitty. But Trump couldn’t lose–he got paid whether the whole thing went belly up on day one. Now, any celebrity billionaire (or hundreds millionaire, as he more likely was) could sell their reputations and put it on crappy or fraudulent stuff…but most don’t. They worry about their long term reputation. They worry about ethics. They worry about the law. Trump? It was test run for how well he could run the rubes into the ground. Turns out…very well!
Trump doesn’t acknowledge ethics, but he’s not a sociopath, like so many fellow Potuses. The wrongful acts, schemes and even crimes are irrelevant at this point, just as they were irrelevant to the Presidencies of Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren, both Johnsons, Garfield, Truman, JFK, Nixon. The experience made them all the effective leaders (well, not Van Buren) they were.Using their checkered pasts to justify denigrating their Presidencies is irrational.
The claim that anyone with Trump’s success (and failures on the way) is just “lucky” makes the bias of the author palpable. George Washington was “lucky,” and you could write a bio framing his life that way. But he was the perfect man to be the first President, just like Trump was the perfect (if bizarre) leader to fight the US out of a dangerously warping culture.
Those, who claim “and failures on the way” are an indicator of being a loser, fail to realize that learning is heaps of repetition, wrong answers and failures trailing behind signature accomplishments.
You lost me at “KH is not an idiot.”
kazoo is clearly a DNC troll/talking point spouter. A normal commenter doesn’t have that much text at hand. That’s cut and paste stuff.
Not true, Bill. JD is an extremely informed scholar, a gentleman too, and a hell of a good guy. I’m honored to have him debating here. Be nice to him. I know he’ll be nice to you.
Then, Trump Deranged?
That’s very kind of you, Jack. Accusations of Trump Derangement Syndrome are actually more accurate than cutting and pasting. I always indicate when I’m taking stuff–too much ego in my own writing to try to take credit for someone else’s, even in a blog comment. I think I struggle to make sure my emotional reaction to Trump isn’t affecting my analysis in a negative way, and I’m sure I fail sometimes, and I am sure some pro-Trump commentators have to do the same, either with their wild enthusiasm for him, or, more often, their vivid antipathy for
“idiots” like Harris. We are in an era that some in the academy have called “anti-partisanship.” Most Dems never liked Biden or Harris as much as they hated Trump. They overlooked Biden’s age, or lied to themselves that it wasn’t an issue, really, just made up by the right….Biden/Harris HAD to win, because if they didn’t…no more republic. Similarly, a lot of Republicans have vast issues with Trump’s style, his corruption, his sexual assaults or verbal endorsements of them, his adultery with adult sex stars, his irreligiousness, his ignorance of history and government, his draft dodging, his attacks on war heroes or the handicapped etc etc (the list is different for each person of course, and many find one or more of these bogus media creations) BUT overlook these because he’s such a great fighter against the real enemy–liberals/Democrats/the woke mind virus. If I knew how we get out of this moment of dangerous hatred….Also, if it makes you feel better, I may sometimes suffer from TDS, but….when I post on fB about how Trump will deserve the Nobel if this peace holds for even a couple months…I get accused of being FOR Trump.
Jerry, you are pretty much the epitome of the informed, civil, analytical and fearless participant I’m trying to attract here. Nothing kind about that assessement: the word is gratitude.
Wow, how does a ethics quiz about AOC generate so much discussion about Trump? Bizarre.
I’ve worked adjacent to hundreds of Deloitte employees, and escaped becoming one by incredibly narrow margins when they convinced management that they could manage the same people I worked with better than management could.
So yes, pollution was generated, a lot of smoke was blown into various orifices… But definitely not the type of pollution AOC is talking about. Five years later, management was very excited to save the 20% or so of increased costs that outsourcing had promised to save us, but didn’t actually appear on the earlier marketing polished turds.
i’d say this falls easily into Julie principle territory. It’s not useful to clarify what we already know about AOC’s absurdly wide nostrils, but is really only useful in finding out who is so Trump deranged to try to make every ethics quiz about Trump.
Because the bitter Left and Axis media blames its failures on Trump, and sees life now through Trump obsessed lenses. If someone does something wrong or stupid, it is mitigated by comparing it to Trump or blaming it on Trump. It’s sick, it’s sad, it’s irrational. and it’s dangerous.
He, of course, loves it.
Here, for example, is Jay Jones, resorting to “whatabout Trump?” as the VA Ag debate focused on JJ’s death wishes to his political opponents and their kids: https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/16/politics/virginia-attorney-general-debate-jay-jones-jason-miyares
President Trump absolutely controls the Left…and most on the Left are too deranged to even realize it. He dominates their thoughts, their words, their actions – everything they think, say, or do – from the time they’re starting out the in morning until the time they fall asleep in the sweet moonlight.
Gas prices? Trump!!
Illegal immigration? Trump!!
Government shutdown? Trump!!
Too hot? Trump!!
Too cold? Trump!!
Wet the bed again? Trump!!
Pregnant? Trump!!
Deloitte? Trump!!
It’s the ultimate position of power, and the Left has willingly given that to him. Kamala Harris? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? Mamdani? They can only dream of having that kind of control over conservatives. And they never will. Imagine having your opposition hanging on every word you say, waiting for the next tasty morsel to critique and somehow dissect into “he’s destroying the country!!”, so they can run, screaming madly, into the streets while pulling out their hair. Who wouldn’t love that kind of influence?!? The Left loves President Trump even while they claim to hate him, because he’s their sustenance…he feeds their rage.
Others here can probably say it far better (and with far greater understanding) than I, but I think that when the Left ceases to make everything (or even any one thing) all about President Trump and instead about policy or position, they will begin to break free from the shackles. Until then, Trump owns them.
Great comment, Joel.
Chuck Schumer may have uttered a sigh of relief after AOC’s interview performance. There have been many speculations about AOC being a potential challenger to Chuck Schumer in the mid terms, that being a reason for Chuck Schumer to continue the shutdown. My expectation is that Chuck should be able to beat AOC handily in a potential primary challenge, and knowing that, the shut down will probably over begin next week.
Also, Bernie Sanders had to step in and cover for AOC, as she did not handle the question about a primary challenge to Chuck Schumer very well.
Maybe she will run for President in 2028, but if she will get the nomination? I surely hope she will do; I would love to see her in a Presidential debate with JD Vance.