“Fake Inflation”
Don't worry, those rises in prices are an illusion!
I had missed this bit of economic analysis by our president earlier this week:
“[W]e’re having some fake inflation because of the fuel, the energy prices.”
Perhaps that means that any additional payments can be made in imaginary dollars so as to alleviate the real pain of the fake inflation?
But, of course, if you are a narcissist who has more money than he could spend, what’s a few more bucks at the pump or at the grocery (what a word!) store?
Or, worse, at the corner store:
During a Thursday event intended to promote the Republican tax agenda, President Donald Trump seemed to veer off script, riffing about how he had never heard the term “corner store” and calling the inflation that resulted from the Iran war “fake.”
”What is a corner store?” the president said to the crowd gathered for his roundtable. “I’ve never heard that term. I know what a corner store is, but I’ve never heard it described [as] a ‘corner store.’ Who the hell wrote that?”
Thank goodness he is a very stable genius and that the White House is a well-oiled machine, else I might be worried that they don’t know what they are doing and that these “policy” moves will have long-term, global consequences!
“Riffing”? Has the press ever applied that word to any other politician doing what we’d otherwise simply call rambling? Why are they still treating Trump’s erratic behavior as some kind of improv act?
I’m old enough to remember when George Bush Elder hurt his campaign when he didn’t know the price of a gallon of milk. Ah, halcyon days those were…
There’s a specific type of ‘not knowing what you are doing’ operating here. It’s not like Trump thinks that there’s a misreporting of prices going on. That would require engagement with the real price behind the fake price. He’s more of a guy watching tv or being on social media and getting angry because people who are paid to get him angry are making him angry. By angry, I mean he’s not even sure if he’s angry any more. The only truth he understands is that everything inside him is a scam. It’s like someone pretending to think climate change is a scam and then lol’ing at those crazy scientists.
@Kylopod:
Because to admit their sanewashing of this simpleton makes them complicit for the country’s current dire straits would keep them up at night?
@Kylopod:
He might be riffing; but if so, he’s out of key, and forgotten both the melody line and the rhythm.
Any sensible band leader would boot him, at least till he stops getting high on his own supply. 😉
“Spinal Tap: the Donald Trump Years.” lol
@JohnSF: I think what gets so many people to think he’s doing some kind of improv is his utter lack of shame. When most politicians are unsure how to answer something, and they start to ramble, they usually give off “oh crap!” vibes. Trump doesn’t have enough self-awareness to recognize how ridiculous he sounds, and that’s what leads him to the outlandish extremes (windmill cancer, late great Hannibal Lecter, exploding straws, etc.) that the pundits mistake for performance art. I don’t believe he intends any of it to be amusing. I don’t think he’s got any real sense of humor beyond that of the taunts of a schoolyard bully. When he says these things, he doesn’t necessarily believe they’re true (he is still a massive liar), but he does believe they sound reasonable.
This, in my view, is one of the least understood aspects of MAGA. Trump doesn’t have any idea how idiotic he sounds. But, ironically, many of his supporters do. They just have constructed scores of rationalizations about how it’s part of some canny strategy, that he knows exactly what he’s doing–he’s crazy like a fox, it’s all his negotiation style, he should be taken “seriously but not literally,” etc. That’s why I’ve always found it simplistic when people suggest his supporters believe whatever he says. Some do, no doubt. But I think part of what explains his weird coalition is that a lot of his supporters have bought into the idea that you can’t take much of what he says at face value, and then they project onto him whatever they want to believe about him. So many people–both his supporters and detractors–are unable to wrap their heads around the fact that he really is as ridiculous a human being as he seems, and that it isn’t some kind of act.
A more apt analogy than improv came from a 2016 tweet by a Missouri politician after watching one of the debates:
Antonio French
@AntonioFrench
Trump’s foreign policy answers sound like a book report from a teenager who hasn’t read the book. “Oh, the grapes! They had so much wrath!”
10:23 PM · Oct 19, 2016