I am not sure the Trump ads don’t help Democrats. It is getting hard to find people who are excited by Trump. Reminding Americans of the promises he made in 2024, promises that he has well and truly abandoned, might drive votes to local Democrats across the country.
Trump lives in a media bubble, don’t burst the bubble.
The Time interview, which I’ve only just started reading (having heard snippets on TV), has this exchange almost at its opening:
Do you trust Sam Altman?
I like him. Do I trust him? Who do I trust? I like Sam Altman. Smart. Dario’s smart. They’re all smart. We’re dealing with a very high level of IQ. Very very high level. That’s a good thing. I like that. I like it. Did you see the story about my uncle?
The one who taught at MIT?
I have the highest of IQs. I have the highest. I’m fine, and I understand that stuff. You know, my uncle was at MIT for 41 years, and you know, I’m a—I believe in genetics, frankly, and I understand. I understand it much more than I think any president would, because I do have an ability on this. I have an ability on those things that were the new frontiers.
What I’ve done is I’ve created, for instance, these massive plants have no—We have no electricity in our grid. These massive plants now are allowed to make their own electric—
Okay. pathetic from the outset. Trump created these massive plants? We have no electricity in our grid? (Then how am I able to read Time’s interview or type what I’m typing, with a light on over my head?) And when were these massive plants not allowed to make their own electricity?
But the fun part is the old IQ business, all because his uncle was an obviously “high IQ” physicist at MIT. (Leave aside the problems with the whole IQ thing and the different kinds of human intelligence that the standard IQ test does not test for.) One of the first things I learned about genetics writ large way back when is that, while it may be able to predict for groups, it cannot predict for individuals. And genetics, isolated from the environment (physical and social), is only a part of the story for individuals or groups.
Neither Trump nor I have any idea what genes, or crucial combinations of them, he shares with his MIT uncle, knowledge of whom (I suspect) sustained him when he was failing second grade spelling tests. But is there a gene or set off them for curiosity? Trump doesn’t lack curiosity altogether (“Who do I trust?”), and probably in some sense “curiosity” is what leads us from our beds to our first cup of coffee every morning. But, I dunno, Trump seems to lack curiosity of any meaningful kind. And, obviously, he lacks humility, which (now that I think of it) is the basis of curiosity.
I’ve gotten stuck at this moment on Time’s opening with my questions about curiosity and humility. An array of other responses to the whole interview will rain down in coming days. I can’t help but wonder if Time is leading up to naming Mark Carney as its Person of the Year.
Natalie, Steve, name two others.
Vlad…
Kim Jong Un…
I’ve read the whole thing. It cries out for the 25th. I mean, really, it does. And the interviewer deserves a Pulitzer or some other major award for journalists.
Donald Trump says Iran war could cost him November midterm elections
President Trump on Thursday said “it’s possible” the Iran war could cost him the November midterm elections by risking Republican control of the House, Senate or both.
“Well, it’s possible. It should help,” Trump told reporters outside the White House before heading to a campaign rally in the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma. “Because Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. So when you say, ‘Is it OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon?’ I would say 100 percent of the people say no, including worldwide. So, when you say it that way, it would help. If you don’t say that, it could hurt.”
The president answered a question referring to comments his daughter-in-law Lara Trump made on the YouTube talk show “Harry Cole Saves the West,” where she said the conflict could cost the president the midterms and possibly his legac
Trump claims he bombed Iran partly because ‘they were doing drugs’
At a rally in Durant, Oklahoma on Thursday night, Trump boasted of eliminating Iran’s alleged “nuclear threat,” which in 2025 he claimed had been “totally obliterated” by bombings he ordered last year.
“We did it in one night with those beautiful B-2 bombers,” the president told the crowd. “The left Missouri. They flew both ways, 37 hours. They were refueling. We have the greatest tankers. We have the greatest military in the world. They went from Missouri and then at one o’clock in the morning, with no moon, dark as can be, these unbelievable machines led by the most incredible pilots in the world, they unloaded every single bomb, went right down air chutes into this, uh, drug factories, really. That’s what they were doing. They were nuclear and drugs. They were doing drugs, but they were doing the nuclear. These drug factories/nuclear factories were hit so hard.”
This appears to be the first time that Trump has cited “drug factories” in Iran as targets for U.S. airstrikes
Red States Just Asked the Supreme Court to Kill Abortion Shield Laws – Mother Jones
In what promises to be the most consequential showdown over reproductive rights since the end of Roe v. Wade, three states with near-total abortion bans asked the US Supreme Court on Wednesday to strike down blue-state laws that have enabled tens of thousands of abortions every year across state lines since 2022.
The action by Louisiana, Alabama, and Arkansas was a dramatic escalation in the long-running battle over so-called shield laws, which provide legal immunity to doctors, organizations, and advocates in liberal states who deliver abortion care, mostly in the form of pills, to people in states with draconian abortion laws.
The suit—filed directly with the high court just in time for the start of its new session next week—accuses California, Massachusetts, and New York of violating the US Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause, which requires states to respect “the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings” of other states. The suit describes efforts by the defendants to circumvent Republican-passed abortion bans as a violation of states’ sovereignty and “one of the most serious interstate aggressions in our Nation’s history.”
A second lawsuit, filed in federal court in Louisiana on Wednesday, targets more than two dozen individual providers and pharmacists, accusing them of “a sweeping, coordinated scheme” to send abortion pills through the mail in violation of strict bans. The defendants include Dr. Angel Foster and her colleagues at The Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project, or The MAP,
I saw one of the ads in the wild, during a football game. It looks like a parody. Nobody outside of his most delusional cult members is going to be turned on by this. Mostly it gives off a “what the F is wrong with this guy” vibes.
Having said all that, it needs to be shut down–this is obviously illegal and if this one is allowed, then there is nothing stopping them from doing it with more effective ads. I suppose that Trump is immune from prosecution on anything, but does that go for everyone else involved? I know the justice department is in the bag for the remainder of the term, but is it possible to get creative? Are there state laws being violated? Possible civil cases?
Some folks in a backroom better be wargaming what Republicans plan for the lame duck session after the midterms. For example, anti-abortion groups have recently launched multiple lawsuits attacking mifepristone for medication abortions and shield laws. Republicans have meticulously avoided abortion as an election issue.
ETA: See comment 28 above from @southerndem
Out of habit I tried reading it, but caught myself after 60 seconds. Why am I wasting my time was my thought, something I do more often now that I’m running out of road. Shouda, woulda made it a habit when younger (all the time in the world) but you know how that story goes.
Plus Time magazine is to journalism what Bill Maher is to standup. But relevant questions still have to be asked. But the Trump Show, it’s still a shit show. Nothing is ever resolved. October is here and November is close.
Good line, but Cortellessa and Jacobs, the two interviewers, come through on this one. They are amazingly persistent. I don’t know why Natalie or Cheung didn’t yank him away from the interview. (Because Trump wants to be Time’s person of the year?) The takeaway isn’t so much in some of the outlandish lies and claims Trump delivers as in the continuous (and I don’t mean continual) incoherence of Trump’s thinking. Just skim, but do give it more than 60 seconds.
It’s just such a stunning display of Trump’s stupidity/dementia/lack of connection to reality that it should be read by everyone concerned about the direction of the country and the state of our democracy.
He’s scary stupid and a real threat to the future of America as we have known it.
Sorry, but not worth my time. Persistence and percise follow up questions are always impressive, but still, nothing is ever resolved, Trump is sick/demented and still believing he has something to say. He never has. Weaponizing the wearing of masks, nominating truly damaged amoral broken people with zero personal credibility to enormously important positions in our government is so scary and reckless it must be called dangerous (dare a reporter be so bold?)
Trump a real threat to world order and now even the existence of the human race going forward. Sounds crazy but that’s where we are. I figured Trump would have “stroked out” by now, but he hasn’t.
Ok! Enough for the sake of all of our sanity …fucking DO something…this is clearly illegal .Stop Him! If we are unable to mitigate a psychotic moron and his henchmen admit it and stop asking me for donations 50 timesa day.
We’re they eating the cats and dogs!
[quote=“zd123, post:29, topic:260800”] there is nothing stopping them from doing it with more effective ads.
[/quote]
. They need more effective ads. Have you seen Trump’s ads?
