Donald Trump’s easiest rhetorical question yet

06-27-2024

Today’s must-read: What kind of “a psycho or a crazy person or a very stupid person” calls dead Americans “losers”?

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“Trump seems preoccupied generally with denying his own record of disparaging service members,” Adrienne LaFrance writes.

(Win McNamee / Getty)

Perhaps you’ve noticed lately that Donald Trump, a man not known for subtlety, has been testing the limits of the Streisand effect. At one event after another—at a rally, then a fundraiser, in remarks on his social platform, and in at least one video that his campaign distributed online—Trump keeps reminding his supporters about his well-documented habit of disparaging America’s military service members as “dumb,” “losers,” and “suckers.”

“Think of it, from a practical standpoint,” Trump said before a crowd in Las Vegas earlier this month. “I’m standing there with generals and military people in a cemetery, and I look at them and say, ‘These people are suckers and losers.’ Now, think of it; unless you’re a psycho or a crazy person or a very stupid person, who would say that, anyway?”

As it happens, the American people have, by now, a very clear picture of the kind of person who would say such a thing.


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