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submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by Powderhorn@beehaw.org to c/politics@beehaw.org

This is admittedly about a month old, but I just ran across it. If you've got an hour to spare sometime (or just need something interesting as background noise), I'd highly recommend it.

Kurt Andersen joins Joanna Coles to trace Donald Trump’s rise from Spy magazine punchline to the ultimate show-business president, arguing that Trump didn’t invent the con so much as perfect a distinctly American tradition stretching back to P.T. Barnum’s “clever humbug,” where attention matters more than truth and audiences happily play along. Andersen dissects Trump’s maximalist language—everything the “greatest,” the “best,” the “like nobody’s ever seen”—and warns that the same improvisational instincts that fueled his celebrity now shape foreign policy, including claims of negotiations with Iran that didn’t exist and a presidency run like an endless next episode. They close on Epstein, conspiracies, and the blurry line between con and belief—asking whether Trump the salesman now believes his own pitch, and what it means when politics becomes a spectacle with global stakes.

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[-] ech@lemmy.ca 18 points 2 days ago

The reason he talks like an idiot is because he's an idiot. The reason it works is because other idiots hear him and think he makes sense. Conveniently, it's also so incomprehensible that intelligent people struggle to address anything he says because he says so much dumb shit - he is Gish Gallop manifested.

[-] baggins@beehaw.org 5 points 2 days ago

The only correct answer.

Trump is a senile, rascist, idiot.

this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2026
13 points (100.0% liked)

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