For the vast majority of sane-thinking people around the world, the possibility of Donald Trump returning to the office of the President of the United States of America feels like an unimaginable nightmare. The 45th President incited an insurrection before he departed office, throwing any sense of normality out of the window as he tried to overthrow the will of the American people. Having done some genuinely appalling things whilst in office, it is difficult to imagine anything other than him going full-blown fascist if he returns to the Oval, which should have everyone very worried indeed about that happening.
With that in mind, it is worth taking a look at some of the stupidest things that Donald Trump has said over the years, with the aim being to remind everyone why it is that he is in no way fit to once again become the leader of the free world. Some of the things that he’s said are outright racist, some of them are sexist and some of them are homophobic. They are almost always offensive, with the only reason more people aren’t up in arms about them being that a lot of people can be a bit racist, sexist and homophobic from time to time. We should all agree, though, that someone so pig-headed probably shouldn’t be the President…
Donald Trump On… Himself
One thing that is important to realise is that it’s very, very difficult to narrow down things that Trump has said over the years to just ten quotations. In fact, you might be hard-pushed to narrow it down to ten quotations a year or even ten quotations per subject. The man’s arrogance knows almost no bounds, regularly referring to himself as ‘intelligent’ in spite of the fact that the evidence seems to suggest otherwise. That can perhaps best be summed up by the following:
Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest – and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure, it’s not your fault.
Whilst the evidence appears to be stacked up against Trump having a high IQ, the reality is that there is something quite smart about the man. In spite of the fact that he seems to hate ordinary people and lives a privileged life, the former President has somehow managed to get millions of Americans to buy into the idea that he is some sort of saviour of the working class. Of course, that isn’t the sort of thing that would show up as part of an Intelligence Quotient, with some people thinking that it might not even be intelligence. He is conniving and tricky, with bluster and confidence, but is he that smart?
Professor Fred I Greenstein, who was the Professional of Politics at Princeton University, believed that there are six qualities that are important when it comes to being President. They are as follows:
- Public Communication
- Organisational Capacity
- Political Skill
- Vision
- Cognitive Style
- Emotional Intelligence
Speaking about Trump, Dr Barbara A Perry, Director of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center said, “Trump scores low on emotional intelligence, cognitive style, vision, and organisational capacity. Where he has been superb, in order to win the presidency, is public communication and political skill.” Does that mean he’s smarter than some people think? His supporters would say yes, everyone else would say definitely not.
Donald Trump On… Foreign Policy
Whether you believe that Donald Trump was under the control of the Russians or not, there is little doubt that his approach to foreign policy wasn’t exactly the work of a genius. Being subservient to Vladimir Putin, the President of one of America’s sworn enemies, was never going to win him a lot of admirers from the more militaristic side of the US. His attitude to foreign policy can be seen in the following quotation:
Being nice to Rocket Man hasn’t worked in 25 years, why would it work now? Clinton failed, Bush failed, and Obama failed. I won’t fail.
The decision to give the leader of North Korea a belittling nickname wasn’t exactly the best move in the world, but the quotation also revealed something else: Trump had no clue how long Kim Jong-un had been in power, given that the dictator only came to power in 2011. He is not someone you would depend on to be all over the finer details of any given topic, but believing that his predecessors had kowtowed to a man for ’25 years’ when he’d only been in power for 16 years at the time that he said it isn’t exactly the work of a genius.
Donald Trump on… His Family
Donald Trump has five kids that we know of. The kids are Ivanka Trump, Barron Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Tiffany Trump. They aren’t all from the same mother, with Trump having been married to Ivana Zelníčková between 1977 and 1990, with whom he had Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka and Eric, Marla Maples from 1993 until 1999 having Tiffany, and Melania Knavs, whom he married in 2005 and had Barron. It is fair to say that he has mixed feelings about his children, to say nothing of slightly confusing feelings when it comes to Ivanka. To sum that up he said the following:
I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.
If Donald Trump weren’t vying to be the President of the United States at the time he said that, there is a good argument that he’d have been arrested for it. The Josef Fritzl-esque comment was unsettling for a lot of people, yet still Trump gets to be considered as a viable option for the highest office in the land.
Donald Trump on… Global Warming
Branding is always really important, which is why many people question the wisdom of referring to what’s happening to the planet as ‘global warming’. Yes, it is technically correct, but the words suggest a world in which cold can’t happen. That is perhaps why Donald Trump said:
It’s really cold outside, they are calling it a major freeze, weeks ahead of normal. Man, we could use a big fat dose of global warming!
Had the phenomenon been called something like ‘Mad Weather’, even the sceptics might be able to see what we’re talking about any want to do more to stop it. Instead, global warming gets worse with every passing day and people like Trump don’t do anywhere near enough to try to stop it.
Donald Trump on… Barack Obama
It is difficult to put a finger on the moment that Donald Trump and Barack Obama essentially became sworn enemies, although the moment that the 44th President of the United States of America used his White House Correspondence Dinner to roast the former Apprentice host might well have been the moment. The following is a neat summary of Trump’s general attitude towards the Obamas:
An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a fraud.
Let us be absolutely clear about something: Donald Trump suggesting that Barack Obama isn’t American is racism writ large. The only reason for his assertion is the fact that the former President is black, which plays into the trope that people of colour can’t really be American. Trump’s assertion that Obama’s birth certificate is ‘fake’ plays right into the hands of the more racist side of American voters, a lot of whom could never get on board with Obama simply because of the colour of his skin.
Donald Trump on… Science
We could have mentioned this alongside Donald Trump’s insane comments about global warming and encouraging it just so it wasn’t as cold and snowy in New York at winter time, but it is worth mentioning his lack of scientific knowledge in its own right. Covid-19 was one of the most serious things to happen to the world in several generations, killing indiscriminately an only being stopped thanks to the genius work of the scientists who created and distributed the vaccine. That is good news, seeing as though the following is what the then-President had to say about it:
Suppose that we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light. Supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. Is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? It sounds interesting to me, so we’ll see. But the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.
Read that again and make sure you take it in. The President of the United States of America, one of the most important offices on the planet, suggested that we could kill a deadly virus by shining a light on it or effectively by drinking bleach. If the likes of Trump had been left to their own devices it wouldn’t just have been Covid that was killing people but also the moronic suggestions of those who would no doubt later declare that it was all a ‘hoax’.
Donald Trump on… Hilary Clinton
It is entirely fair to say that there was no love lost between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump. The former Secretary of State was easily the smartest person for the job when she went up against Trump to be the person to take over from Barack Obama in the Oval Office, with the fact that she was a she clearly being something that intimidated Trump. Maybe that helps to explain why it was that he effectively suggested that someone should assassinate her during a speech in North Carolina during the 2016 Presidential Campaign, saying:
Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the second amendment. If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the second amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day.
Saying that someone should take advantage of the right to keep and bear arms, which is the second amendment of the United States constitution, in order to stop Hilary Clinton winning the Presidential Election is an act of cowardice, to say nothing of inciting violence. Thankfully, no one took him up on his suggestion, but things could’ve been so different in a dreadful way if they had.
Donald Trump on… Gay People Being Allowed to Marry
It is fair to say that Donald Trump hasn’t always had the most intelligent way of expressing himself. This was the case long before he announced that he was running for President, continued whilst he was in office and didn’t stop once he was kicked out of the White House. When asked about gay marriage, for example, he started talking about golf:
It’s like in golf… A lot of people – I don’t want this to sound trivial – but a lot of people are switching to these really long putters, very unattractive… it’s weird. You see these great players with these really long putters, because they can’t sink three-footers anymore. And, I hate it. I am a traditionalist. I have so many fabulous friends who happen to be gay, but I am a traditionalist.
If you read between the lines then it appeared that what he was saying is that people shouldn’t be allowed to use long putters in golf because that isn’t tradition, nor should two people of the same gender be allowed to marry for the same reason. The fact that anti-LGBTQ+ rules and laws have always been based in old-fashioned and backwards readings and that some traditions would say that Trump shouldn’t have been allowed to get divorced and re-married is seemingly neither here nor there.
Donald Trump on… People From Mexico
We really should have seen what sort of President Donald Trump would be from the moment he announced his candidacy. Speaking to America and the rest of the word from Trump Tower, he decided to confirm the fact that he is a racist, with prejudices against more than just black people. Here is what he said about the 125 million or so people who class themselves as Mexican:
When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists and some, I assume, are good people, but I speak to border guards and they’re telling us what we’re getting.
This was, perhaps, Trump laying the ground-work for the incredibly expensive and almost entirely useless wall that he spent huge sums of American money attempting to get built during his time in the oval office. It is extremely unlikely that the wall that was built ended up stopping anyone whatsoever from getting into America, but that won’t have stopped Mexicans already living in America from facing increased levels of racist hatred.
Donald Trump on… Guns
It is not unreasonable to suggest that gun control is one of the hottest of hot topics in American culture. Those who are against having their guns taken away from them seem to believe in extremes, refuting the idea that even a grenade launcher should be controlled by the government. Courting the right-wing, Trump knew what he was doing when he said the following to Meet the Press:
No matter what you do – guns, no guns – it doesn’t matter. You have people that are mentally ill. And they’re gonna come through the cracks. And they’re going to do things that people will not even believe are possible.
There is perhaps no weaker argument against gun control than ‘mentally ill people will attack others anyway.” Whilst this is undoubtedly true, it is worth pointing out doing so with an automatic machine gun is a lot easier than doing so with a knife. America faces more mass shootings than any other country on the planet and yet refuses to do the most basic of things to stop that from happening. That Trump is against any form of gun control should worry anyone ahead of a possible re-election.