Thread by @Robert_E_Kelly

Just when you think Trump can’t get any worse or bizarre, he does. His idiocy and incompetence is just mind-boggling, as is why anyone would vote for someone this colossally stupid. Jesus christ, people, wake up. This isn’t the Onion; this is American democracy imploding

I've always been wary of calling the Trump dumb or stupid. It feels like a cheap shot, coarse and insulting, stooping to Trump's level. But there is just no way around that with this remark. Trump has said lots of terrible, inappropriate, and illiberal stuff. But I think this /2

may be the dumbest, clearly revealing his astonishing lack of knowledge and critical thinking skills, as well as how disconnected he is from the hugely important office he holds. This is the sort of thing someone with basic social science classes would pick up in high school /3

or early college, and certainly as a worldly businessman, much less POTUS. Yet he's been POTUS for 2.5 years and entertained this idea seriously enough to ask about it more than once. Staggering. We now know what Tillerson meant when he called Trump a moron. Wow. END

ADDENDUM:

For those asking why this is inane: bc in 2019 the U States is not some 19th century, ‘Scramble for Africa’ imperialist buying and selling people over their heads. To our national disgrace, the Greenland Foreign Ministry had to educate our president on this obvious /5

point: . But you say Truman wanted to do this too. Yeah, back when colonialism was common and our domestic politics exclusionary & hierarchic. Since then we’ve had decolonization, the UN, the c rights movement, feminism, better inclusion for traditional /6

outgroups like the disabled or homosexuals, & a lot of human rights treaties & norms to capture all this. So we don’t just high-handedly ignore small, weak populations like the Greenlanders. That T has missed all this, that he seems not to have learned anything f/ democracy's /7

growth & maturation in the last 50 years is one of the creepiest things about him. That’s why he says stuff like this, calls E Warren ‘Pocahontas’ in front of N Americans, ignores P Rico, wanted to steal Iraq’s oil, admires Putin’s land-grab in Crimea, etc. The small & weak /8

are to be bullied, not defended - which is what you thought when you were a 13 y/o boy on the school parking lot, but then grew out of as you read, learned, traveled, built relationships, realized that TV isn't real,etc. That Trump lacks all this is why he’s Tillerson’s moron.END

ADDENDUM 2

Commenters keep suggesting that bc there may be a US strategic logic to deeper involvement in Greenland, this is not such a dumb idea. But that’s not the issue; Trump’s method is. A normal person, much less POTUS, would know in 2019 that the US does not buy people./10

That is why this suggestion reveals Trump’s stupidity so obviously. A normal adult in a democracy would have absorbed that buying people is wrong from the last 70 years & from a basic history and social science education of that time period. This is why his staff treated the /11

idea as absurd, and it got so much press. Trump himself lived through decolonization! Yet he suggested it multiple times anyway. That’s astonishing cluelessness, astonishing disengagement from the world around you, & the best evidence yet that Trump doesn’t read. A lot of us /12

have foolish ideas, but we read and listen to people smarter than us, and we grow out of them. In this case, a basic presidential knowledge of modern politics and history would have taught Trump that we approach Greenland and Denmark with our concerns, propose a tighter /13

relationship or deepening of the alliance, expanding Thule AB perhaps, encourage FDI in critical sectors there, and so on. The State Department – not buying people like some 19th century commercial imperialist – is the obvious tool. But Trump doesn’t read or listen to his /14

briefers and watches way too much TV. So you get ridiculous, laugh out loud - you laughed when you first heard it, right? - ideas like this. END