Nobody “believed” these things. They PRETENDED TO BELIEVE THEM because “fuck you, you can’t prove I don’t.”
May as well rant about it here.
Whenever someone say about trump “But he’s a good businessman!” As some sort of defense, I get immediately annoyed. He is an absolute garbage businessman. He has failed or run so many businesses into the ground. He made a casino go broke, you know the business that thrives on basically just letting people come in and throw their money at you and leave?
What he is good at is lining his own pockets. He goes into anything and lies, cheats, and schemes, then shovels as much money into his pockets as he can before someone notices and the bills come due. He makes deals with contractors, then refuses to pay, then drags them through courts until they give up and claims he got a discount. That’s not “good business” that’s theft. It’s despicable and gross.
Every allegory we have for a corrupt, lying, thieving businessman is embodied in Trump. He is not good for business. He’s good for himself until the business fails then he moves on to the next persons pile of money to steal.
And that’s what he is doing as president. He is selling the country piece by piece to line his own pockets, then once everything goes belly up he’ll take his money and walk away.
Fuck Trump.
This is all really the fault of The Apprentice, who made him seem as if he were some kind of business genius.
Trump was decent at making himself seem like he was a good businessman. But, all his self-promotion had to compete with all his failures. Eventually he would have run out of money to self-promote.
Then the people behind The Apprentice came along and did everything in their power to make him seem like he was the best businessman in the world, and idiots bought it. People watched a fictional reality TV show where contestants had to do silly “businessey” things, and somehow they concluded that the guy at the boardroom table set was actually good at business, rather than competent at acting.
This barely competent idiot who had inherited / stolen half a billion from his father and was slowly burning through it with his various failures had worked his entire life to try to create a myth that he was a genius businessman. That attempt had almost failed as he ran out of money. Then the guy who made Survivor came along and made his dreams come true. Finally, he was on TV all the time playing the character of a shrewd businessman, and somehow getting paid for it. This show lasted a decade, and by the end of it, idiots were convinced that Trump was a business genius, and the rest is history.
Oh, and incidentally, Mark Burnett, the guy who created The Apprentice, is now “United States Special Envoy for the United Kingdom”, appointed on Trump’s inauguration day in 2025.
I mean, Berlusconi got rich thanks to his mafia connection, so it kinda seems like making lots of money somehow involves utter disregard for human life.
Long before Trump was in politics, the thing most people knew him for was not his business acumen, but that he was essentially the physical avatar of avarice and greed and everything wrong with capitalism. He was not an aspirational role model, he was a caricature of the negative stereotypes embodied by the average American businessmen, everything dialed up to 11, including his contempt for the common laborer.
He was well hated before getting into politics, and it had nothing to do with his political opinions at the time.
There’s two major types of businessmen: Those that are good at business, and those that are good at scamming. MAGA cannot discern between the two. That’s why a lot of his influencers peddle in obvious scam bait. And ever since meme stocks became a thing through social network engagement cults-on-demand, it doesn’t matter how much they get scammed out and lose as long as they can do so communally on a communal circlejerk while claiming someone else is the real loser. Trump is the materialization of all the efforts to manipulate and profit from society that led up to him
Realistically, there is no difference between being good at business and being good at scamming. Both involve stealing, businessmen just steal from their employees instead of their customers.
Or scamming your subsidiaries, Scamming your investors, scamming the government etc
That’s not “good business” that’s theft.
Implying capitalism is anything other than a bunch of fancy legalese to make mass theft sound legitimate
Accurate post!
His casinos were just a money laundering operation for the Russians.
Slight counter thought on the ‘business man’ thing – Trump’s clearly done well for himself. Yes, his businesses all tended to fail, he was convicted of fraud, etc etc – he made a stock market entry based solely on his brand name. His entire reputation is based on vapor.
But that’s not much different than a lot of celebrities these days. They’re also rich as fuck, with basically no real ‘deliverables’ to speak of in terms of productivity benefits for the broader community. It’s practically the definition of an influencer.
Also consider the standard advice that young people get in regards to work/business – that they should essentially constantly change jobs / jump around to try and ratchet up that salary. That sort of behaviour is inherently reducing their overall benefit/contribution to the businesses they work for, and is entirely about lining their own pockets.
Americans inherently tie having large sums of money, to being a good business person. It’s not about productivity, sustainability or supplying a need / service or anything of that sort. So lining his own pockets, is him being a good business man by the American definition of what that means.
Trump’s clearly done well for himself
No he hasn’t. If he’d just kept the money he stole / inherited from his dad and retired, he’d have come out ahead. The timeline diverges when he manages to get elected and starts being able to funnel billions to himself. But, until then, his story was mostly about self-promotion and failing at business.
His stock market name brand did well. The apprentice did well, and was arguably the launchpad for his presidency. He’s owned his Mar-a-lago mansion since 1985.
He seemingly spent his time travelling between his gaudy mansions and a child sex island in a warm climate where he raped people with zero accountability due to his prestige. That sort of freedom / luxury / depravity is not something afforded to the normies.
Even if built on bullshit, his life hasn’t been one of failures in regards to his personal urges and lifestyle. Compared to ‘commoner’ Americans, he’s rich and successful. And that he was able to get away with it, we can use an American quote: “Don’t hate the playa, hate the game” (Ice T). To succeed via corruption and gaming the system, is as American as apple pie.
The Apprentice saved him. If they had cast Michael Dell or Larry Ellison I think Trump would have run out of money and his name would just be one of those people from the 80s and 90s that you forgot about.
He seemingly spent his time travelling between his gaudy mansions and a child sex island in a warm climate where he raped people with zero accountability due to his prestige. That sort of freedom / luxury / depravity is not something afforded to the normies.
Yes, and he could have done that if he’d just retired on the money he inherited / stole from his father. He didn’t need to start and fail at a bunch of businesses, but his ego demanded that he do that. So, slowly he depleted the half a billion and it was almost gone when The Apprentice gave him a lifeline.
Actually, to try and help highlight the viewpoint I’m describing, in light of what you’re putting out, let me try to frame this stuff a little differently.
Consider something like the CEO of Blackberry. His company is now essentially defunct, in part due to the lack of security and stolen IP, but also because they screwed up their business market dominance by trying to chase the retail market when Apple/google started showing up. His business is toast, and for the sake of argument, let’s say the CEO now lives a basic lifestyle, with very little to his name – most likely he’s living pretty damn good though, in reality, but likely not “ultra rich” wealthy.
At the height of his wealth curve, he’d be viewed as a successful business man. At the nadir of his wealth curve, he’s a failure.
Business people are often considered successful or not based on their current positions and most recent endeavours, and their overall hoard of wealth. Given that the apprentice ‘saved’ him, anytime after the apprentice it’d be reasonable to say Trump’s a successful business person, even if he was drastically inflating the actual numbers associated with his wealth. Even if he’d previously failed a bunch. There are lots of entrepeneurs that will see their efforts fail a bunch at the start, and if they have enough wealth they’ll often eventually succeed. Doesn’t make it less of a success when it happens, in some ways.
And now that he’s managed to leverage that into owning America, his profit’s gone up exponentially – for both himself and his entire family line. So by American standards, that’s pretty successful. And we all know there’ll be no accountability, especially not for his family.
At the height of his wealth curve, he’d be viewed as a successful business man.
I guess you’re using Research in Motion as an example of a company that went up and went back down, and are picturing some imaginary CEO, not Mike Lazaridis or Doug Fregin who were the co-CEOs of RIM, but are no longer with the company.
The difference from Trump is that this imaginary “Blackberry CEO” took a company that was worth nothing and then made it into a company that was one of the most influential in the world. That “zero to hero” story is something Trump never did. He started at the peak, with half a billion dollars he inherited / stole from his dad, and then he went down from there.
To be considered a “successful businessman” you have to make something worth more than it was previously worth. That’s not something Trump ever achieved.
Jay Gould was considered a successful businessman because he grew up in poverty and then became a multi-millionaire (a billionaire in today’s dollars). His son George Jay Gould isn’t considered a successful businessman because all he did was inherit his dad’s company and didn’t meaningfully increase its value.
Fred Trump was a successful businessman because he made the fortune that Donald Trump squandered.
And how much money has Trump made pillaging America? Pretty sure he’s got most of those folks beat. Heck, Jared Kushner got like $2billion from the Saudis to play around with, and that was just one of the kickbacks to Trump’s family orbit. Pretty successful at enriching themselves – Gould become a billionaire, Trump’s become a multi-billionaire and made his family connections all billionaires in their own right aswell.
To be considered a “successful businessman” you have to make something worth more than it was previously worth. That’s not something Trump ever achieved.
Trumps made himself worth more than he was previously worth. He’s also made his family and friends worth more than they were previously worth. So he fits your definition of being a successful businessman.
I think you’re correct that this is how Americans define “good businessman”. But there’s some missing cognition when they then decide that he should run things.
“A ‘good dream’ is when you’re in a dream and enjoy yourself. Freddy Kruger has many good dreams. Therefore, I hope Freddy is in my dream.”
Yeah, no argument here. Though I think that’s been a societal norm in America for a very long time, and in many western/capitalist countries. People have value based on wealth, not on historic/potential benefit to the broader public.
I always think back to the time Gene Simmons from KISS had his reality show, like back in the 90s or something ancient like that. One of his asides, he basically says he wants to amass money, and he wants his kids to amass money, cause money is what demonstrates how much value you’ve added to the world. That sort of thinking, I reckon, is baked into Americans. So Trump, Elon and Thiel and them have billions/trillions of dollars, they’ve ‘clearly’ been the most positive forces in American life in recent decades, and are inherently ‘good’ business men. Regardless of how they made that money, or whether anything was delivered. It’s flawed, but as noted, that sentiment’s been around for decades.
Elon and Peter are not Americans. Like not in any way culturally or physically are they American.
Elon is a fucking illegal on top of it.
So Elon allegedly became an American citizen in 2002. He immigrated, sure, and seemingly spent 10 years as an illegal, but he’s as American as any other immigrant that America’s taken in – you can’t realistically say he isn’t, unless you want to expand the anti-immigrant rhetoric coming out of the current administration. Peter Thiel’s been an American since he was 1 year old, and was naturalised I guess. So similar story on that front.
Point there being that if you want to make a case that they aren’t Americans, you’d need to accept the current administration’s take that immigrants aren’t Americans. Which seems un-American historically (I mean, statue of liberty quotes and all…).
However at the same time, Americans, in the eyes of the current administration, are white protestant sorts. Like how they’re kicking out “immigrants”, but generally haven’t been deporting the absurd number of Canadians who immigrated south, because the Canadian immigrants are generally white protestant sorts (even if non practicing, the same sort of work ethic). To accept the current administration’s take on immigrants, you need to be a white nationalist, like Jack Posobiec and the Trump administration that lauds him.
And to reject the current administrations take on immigrants, you’d need to accept that Musk and Thiel are American.
This is a hard pill to swallow even for the people against him.
But when it comes to the state of America, we are all to blame.
Assuming the American election is not fixed.
I have doubts its a fair election.
Facts do not support your doubts. Get your head out of the sand. Half of voting Americans want all this.
Oh boi, who would influence our elections this time now that Russia is busy at war?
You should. Even if everything about the elections was exactly as advertised, it’s still an unfair election. Citizens United, lobbyists, gerrymandering, voter suppression tactics, party controlled primaries, and FPTP voting are inherently and deliberately unfair.
Then there are the (currently unproven) allegations that Musk may have done something sneaky with voting machines, not to mention the fact that the Dems ran with an unpopular, no-primary “take it or leave it” non-progressive uninspiring candidate at the last minute, seemingly losing on purpose.
Biden promised to be a single term president, and if he hasn’t lied about that, we wouldn’t be in Iran right now.
Read it just before Trump ordered bombing Cuba
Mike birnigglia is a top tier shitpost name
If undereducation was a natural resource the usa would be the world’s top provider.
Not just USA, it’s everywhere. I blame social media and the lack of literacy.
Like, social media developped by american gafam?
As bad as this country is you really think that? Truly? There are countries that don’t have proper plumbing and don’t give a fuck about having that “luxury”. Countries that chop clits off babies so they will never enjoy what life has to offer. These kinds of comments make you people seem stupid and racist.
So, because there are less economically developed places that somehow negates the idea that the U.S.is undereducated, how? It’s still a huge fucking problem, even if there are other entirely independent problems in the world. Fuck this whataboutism.
Typical american who never left his country comment lol.
Your country:
- run by literal nazi pedophiles,
- 3 americans alone owns 800+ billions while 50% of the population owns less then 86 b.
- life expectancy in the US ranks 60, under countries like Kuwait, Albania, Slovenia
- no universal healthcare
- gun violence is the leading cause of child death
So you might want to rethink " they will never enjoy what life has to offer" , while most of your citizens don’t have the “luxury” to not die before 79. And btw, “stupid and racist” is litteraly the first thing that comes to mind to anyone when thinking about “you people”.
I know several Trump voters this probably applies to.
During the run up to the last presidential election, they made comments along the lines of “I know who my life was better under” in the same conversation where I had to prove to them that Biden wasn’t the president in 2020 – a fact that I had to prove to them by showing them on “Google”.
Attempts to draw the line from Republicans’ and Trump’s disastrous policies, such as the record setting deficit spending PRIOR to the COVID era, and state of the country as the Biden administration took over were met with the equivalent of “Golly Gee that’s way over my head”. Same thing with discussions about how the Trump administration’s policies (for this term) would/could be a disaster for future generations (i.e. your grandchildren). It was met with statements like “it’s too complicated for me to understand, all I can do is vote for what’s best for me right now.”
Of all the bad things that social media has brought us, the worst is making stupid people feel intelligent because other stupid people agree with them.
EDIT: I have seen your positive votes, thank you, I feel validated and it is clear that I am very intelligent
Of all the bad things that social media has brought us, the worst is making stupid people feel intelligent because other stupid people agree with them.
-Abraham Lincoln
Hey now, Boomers didn’t invent anti-intellectualism, they just think they did. Because they’re stupid. Then social media put those views out there for other idiots with baby brains to see and identify with.
Behold, the smartest person on the internet.
There are plenty of smart MAGA. Many have high paying jobs and degrees.
This is because america overwhelmingly places money over anything else. Most of them just call it the economy but America has spent a lot of time teaching its citizens that if the number goes up then whatever is happening is good and moral.
Bombing kids, line goes up. Fuck over your friends, line goes up. Break laws and regulations, line goes up. Violently deport neighbors, line goes up.
I agree with you, but you must know that a high paying job and a degree aren’t reliable indicators of intelligence.
Something you need to understand is that a high paying job and a degree do not inherently mean intelligence, especially not in the US and Canada where education is largely for the generationally wealthy and school is designed for memorization and brute-force solutions over learning how to be clever.
Anyone who’s truly intelligent understands that “line goes up” is a ideology what’s dead on arrival. Every single layer of it is a new layer of stupidity, it’s a staggering lack of intelligence.
If you think anything they’re doing is clever and not the incredibly obvious bullshit that it is, I have news for you. We can see everything they’re doing, they only get away with it because we do next to nothing to stop them and because there are a lot of stupid people in the world willing to back them up.
So if all these intelligent people know better, then why do they still participate in the same nonsense system as everyone else?
First off, that response looks like you did not read or understand my comment at all.
Secondly, to be charitable and respond anyway, there just aren’t that many intelligent people in the world. They vote and participate in the system because it’s the right thing to do. What the fuck else are they supposed to, bud? They can’t just separate from the system.
Should we go back and argue on who counts as intelligent? Is that the part I missed?
I said: “A lot of MAGA are intelligent.”
You said: “Nuh-uh.”
Which part did I miss?
Exactly. I said they weren’t intelligent, and then you said “so if there are all these intelligent people…”
Like, which intelligent people? Who are you talking about?
Reading comprehension seems to be a problem for both of you.
I mean, I can understand each of you pretty easily here, but neither one of you seems to be able to do that.
It’s probably just emotions getting in the way, though, I suppose. Sometimes Reddit arguments happen on Lemmy… wel, more often lately
Honestly I just don’t have much else to say. They can disagree with me if they want.
Seriously, you’ve read this exchange and believe Soup has a reading comprehension issue?
Yeah, ok — you’re right that Lemmy definitely has a lot of reddit-brained people.
Much like your point about line goes up, Americans are also taught that high pay and degree equal smart. At the same time know a high paying position can be gained through affiliation, decite, bribery or reputation and a degree can be gained by affiliation, decite, bribery, reputation, or simply being good at memorizing. All of those things can be accomplished by stupid people.
In example, Elon Musk is a ketamine addicted nazi who mails sperm to influencers and is also the richest person alive.
Most people with high paying jobs and degrees didn’t vote for Trump if they were smart. Nobody smart thought Trump would be good for the economy.
He was good for the extremely wealthy, but not everyone else’s pockets.
It really depends how much your wealth is tied into the “economy”. Like I said, even average Americans will make excuses for immoral actions as long as they personally benefit in some way.
Average Americans aren’t economicly benefiting from the Trump administration.
The Dow might be up, but probably would be doing better under Harris.
Bombing kids, line goes up. Fuck over your friends, line goes up. Break laws and regulations, line goes up. Violently deport neighbors, line goes up.
Dow Jones : 47,954.74USD -784.67(1.61%)
Line ain’t goin’ up
Even the 50000 that the Trump administration was trying to praise is underwhelming. The DOW hits record highs under every president, it’s the nature of the stock market that in the medium term it goes up.
But it hasn’t gone up as fast as we’d expect under a booming economy.
You aren’t looking at the right lines.
Lines don’t always go up, but a “good” executive can always make it look like it’s going up.
The “smart ones” are doing the grifting
The few “smart” ones are going along for personal gain–they’re in on it. The masses of MAGA, though, are literally stupid.
You could argue that evangelicals trying to end the world are also doing it for personal gain.
There is a big difference between Intelligence and Critical Thinking. Critical Thinking is how humans are supposed to think, but it takes training and practice to get really good at it. If you aren’t introduced to Critical Thinking Skills at an early age, then you substitute a sort of chaotic thinking, that tries to connect dots between known data points, and extrapolates weird conclusions, instead of thinking through the evidence with proper Critical Thinking Skills.
That’s how you end up with smart people who make dumb decisions. They have the intelligence to retain knowledge, etc. but if you can’t think properly, then you can’t apply that knowledge properly. Eventually you end up on a weird path, applying your intelligence to a poorly designed strategy.
Nothing helps citizens resist propaganda like Critical Thinking Skills, which is why Republicans have actively suppressed the teaching of Critical Thinking Skills in schools for decades, because that creates citizens who will listen to the Conservative Propaganda Machine without questioning it. That makes them easy to manipulate, which is the objective of every politician.
The truth, amen!
Sadly telling someone with baby brain that they are stupid and have a baby brain isn’t going to help them change. Baby’s don’t learn like that. We need to sing them songs and make learning fun until they have a leap and want to learn more all by themselves. Also cutting their screen time to zero until their brains develop well into toddler brain is supposed to be super beneficial.
Yes, but I’m tired of babysitting.
Yeah but the baby’s don’t go away because the adults CBF, kinda how we got into this mess …
Don’t worry, many of them will just be dieing sooner than expected, as a result of the policies they voted for resulting in cuts to social security, increases in property taxes and home insurance, skyrocketing healthcare costs, and thier 401ks and pensions poofing out of existence, again due to the people they keep voting for.
Whole lotta farmers are already pre-empting that!
What, am I supposed to have sympathy for these genocidal apocalyptic death cultists?
Fuck em.
Hope they die horribly, soon, quickly, alone, miserable, and confused.
Stupid is as stupid does.
What they need is to feel the pain of their Dear Leader’s choices. And, they are. That’s why the administration is trying to take over the mid-term elections. They know they’ll lose anything that looks like a fair election, small tweaks won’t cut it.
*Babies. So stupid
I prefer the term baby brained thank you very much.
Noooo not my screen time :( Gonna miss pig-family!
Look, you can watch tv when you get your toddler brain … and then only 30 mins a day, also I don’t think it’s nice to call the Trumps that …
These people are incapable of making that leap, that’s why they’re still baby brain idiots
Or, maybe Kristi Noem had a point…
These old dogs are too hard to train and need to be put down.
I don’t know if we should trust the opinion of someone who hasn’t advanced past playing dress ups …
Correct strategy. Wrong animals.
They’re not just stupid but also evil. They knew perfectly well that Trump was going to cause suffering to a lot of people and they voted for him because that is exactly what they wanted.
“he’s not hurting the right people”
Worse: I distinctly recall the countless people who - in response to being called stupid and told they were about to do a stupid thing - voted for Trump in a fit of contrarian infantilism.
Sounds quite deplorable
More than the system that created the conditions? So it’s the victim’s fault. I see.
So the victims, in this case, are the people who voted for Trump?
Yeah, nah.
Well, the leopards ate their faces too!
Hating brown people is not the fault of the system.
It… Kinda is though? Obviously xenophobia is baked into human biology, true, but why people are not xenophobic is because they’ve been exposed to lots of different things/people by their parents/society. The reason you’re not and I’m not is because we came in contact with lots of foreign things/people, so “our system” (meaning the immediate people around us that had the most impact on us) contributed to removing our natural xenophobia.
So essentially, other people, who did not learn to reduce their xenophobia, were “failed by the system”. Because the system allowed their parents, neighbors, friends to not reduce their xenophobia, like it should have happened.
That doesn’t absolve them of responsibility and make them a victim though
Oh, it’s that stand-up comic I like, Mike Birbig-- Oh. Uhh…
