First Trump’s…
Now Jeffries….
“Well, it’s an extraordinary insult, but he continues to repeat it. And what’s so ironic is that Donald Trump is clearly the dumbest person ever to sit at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue…”
Jeffries was talking to the execrable Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNOW so of course there was no push-back. Such a classy exchange between a President and a Congressional leader! “You’re stupid!” “Oh yeah? Well you’re stupider!” I can just imaging Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun talking to each other like that.
Actually I can’t. Those career-long adversaries has respect for the positions they held, our institutions, and, yes, each other. They also understood the importance of civility.
Donald Trump’s penchant for stooping to ad hominem attacks is another one of his obnoxious and self-destructive habits. I wish someone would explain to him that “IQ” does not mean “intelligence” and that it is ignorant, indeed stupid, to think so. I’d bet at some point Trump’s IQ was tested, probably as a kid, registered in the relatively high range, and his parents or teachers told him it meant something. (My father told me that what proved one’s intelligence was what you did, not how you scored on a test.) The President has always been obsessed with ratings, scores and numbers (“Subscriptions way down!). Heck, if I used that to measure the value of my life, I would have killed this blog years ago. Maybe myself too.
You could excuse Trump a bit, especially given his “tit for tat” reflex, for resorting to ad hominem since his political foes constantly use the practice. Trump is fat, he’s orange, his hair is weird, he’s nuts, he’s demented, he’s stupid. It’s still no excuse for him returning fire in kind. Furthermore, it is extremely unlikely that Hakeem Jeffries is “low IQ.” He had an impressive academic record, he was a law review editor in law school and graduated at the top of his class, clerked for a judge and was a corporate litigator before entering politics.
Bravo and Bravo! No, Trump is not the dumbest President we’ve ever had and some of our smartest have let the office defeat them.
“It is also ironic that in the process of calling Trump dumb, Jeffries went on to say he “failed on immigration enforcement.”
That takes a lot of chutzpah! It’s right up there with the Democratic Talking Point of “It isn’t what it is”. For Jeffries to even make such a claim, knowing full well that his party and its deranged followers refuse to assist, intervene, dox, assault and try to kill I.C.E officers regularly in order to prevent enforcement of our immigration laws.
“For Jeffries to even make such a claim, knowing full well that his party and its deranged followers refuse to assist, intervene, dox, assault and try to kill I.C.E officers regularly in order to prevent enforcement of our immigration laws…”
should finish with….shows how little he fears being called on it.
Trump succeeded brilliantly on closing the border, one of the key mandates of his election.
He has not done so well on dealing with the illegal immigrants already here. I think careless and sloppy work has led to many pr problems. To be sure, Democrats have been resisting the hell out of deporting anyone. They’d probably rally behind Ted Bundy if he were an illegal facing deportation.
With one hand, Trump can do great things. With the other hand, Trump can do stupid things. Which hand will Americans vote for next month?
I’m fairly certain the continuous white-hot anger of the political class directed at Trump stems from his winning the biggest electoral prize as a rank amateur on the first try. So much for the expertise they purport to deal in. They’ve been stamping their feet like Yosemite Sam ever since 2016.
I think you are undervaluing IQ. I will explain why.
Many decades ago, I worked at McDonald’s and was a trainer. McDonald’s employees were trained in 3, 4-hour shifts. The first 30 minutes, the trainee would watch a video about what they were going to do, then they would spend the next 3.5 hours of instruction and doing the task. Let’s say the person is training on morning grill. The first day, they watch a video on how to make Egg McMuffin sandwiches.
Step1: Take the lid off the egg rings, butter rings, and crack an egg into each ring. Replace the lid and put water in the cup to steam the top. Set the timer.
Step 2: Separate English muffins onto a spatula, put them in the toaster and start the toaster. Get a tray ready. Make sure you took the spatula out of the toaster or it will burn you when you remove the muffins.
Step 3. When the muffins are done, take them out with the spatula, put them on the tray. Butter both sides with the brush. Put sausage and cheese on the Sausage McMufin with egg ones, cheese only on the Egg McMuffins.
Step 4. When the time goes off, lift the rings off the grill. Use a spatula to put each egg ‘hockey puck’ onto the bottom muffin. Put a slice of Canadian bacon on top of the Egg Mcmuffins.
Step 5. Put the top muffin half on the sandwiches and put them on top to be wrapped.
After 30-45 minutes, about 50% of trainees can do this by themselves. Then we will train them on how to make the biscuit sandwiches. On day 2, we will then teach them how to make scrambled eggs and hotcakes, then have them make the biscuit sandwiches and McMuffin sandwiches again. On day 3, they will be taught how to make biscuits and salads. Then they are trained and can be scheduled for normal shifts.
What about the other 50%? Well, the other 50% will spend all 3 days trying to figure out how to make the McMuffin sandwiches. No matter how you explain it, no matter how many times they do it, they will not be able to do it themselves.
It was shocking to me at 18 that people couldn’t learn this. But they couldn’t. The managers said this is normal. At the end of the training, I would tell the managers to hire the 50% that could do the job and fire the 50% that couldn’t. There never was an ‘almost’ could do the job. There never was someone that took a full day to learn how to do the McMuffins, but could then learn it and move on. They either could learn it fairly easily or they could never learn it. This is the ~83 IQ level the military found was the bare minimum for being useful.
I recognize the characteristics of the 50% that could never work at McDonald’s in some of our elected representatives. I think Trump has an above average IQ, but is surrounded at many times by sub-83 IQ people and it makes him think he is a genius.
When you get to the ~83 IQ level, IQ becomes incredibly important.
Sure, because that was the original purpose of IQ tests: to measure intelligence deficiencies. The creator of the scale himself said it had no legitimacy for measuring above average intelligence.
But this post is about politicians…