“The Cyber is So Big..”

Ed Brayton recently compared Donald Trump to that student who tries to give a book report without having read the book. His evidence? A Politico report on yet another episode of Trump’s “stream of consciousness” babbling, this time in what was intended to be a carefully orchestrated town hall in Virginia Beach, with a friendly moderator chosen to lob softballs:

A few minutes later, Flynn asked Trump a question about cybersecurity challenges.

Trump’s response?

“You know, cyber is becoming so big today. It’s becoming something that a number of years ago, a short number of years ago, wasn’t even a word.”…

“Now the cyber is so big. You know you look at what they’re doing with the Internet and how they’re taking, recruiting people through the Internet. And part of it is the psychology, because so many people think they’re winning. And you know there’s a whole big thing.

“Even today’s psychology, where CNN came out with a big poll — their big poll came out today that Trump is winning. It’s good psychology. It’s good psychology.”

I defy anyone to interpret that word salad. Trump makes Sarah Palin look coherent.

Brayton said it best:

All politicians try to avoid answering a question directly and they will quickly pivot to their pre-rehearsed answers. But this is not that, not even close. This is someone who literally has no idea what he’s talking about so he just babbles for a while and then stops talking without having ever even come into the same vicinity as the subject that was asked about. It’s like there’s just random firing of synapses going on.

And the really bizarre thing is that this was a staged event for the Trump campaign. He knew all the questions in advance. He was being interview by one of his advisers. He had been given prewritten answers to the question. And he still had nothing but a stream of drivel to offer. Can you imagine trying to run his campaign? I’d have killed myself by now.

It has become increasingly clear that something is very wrong with Donald Trump–not simply his ignorance, or his lack of self-discipline, or his bigotry, or even his monumental (and unwarranted) self-esteem. This man appears to be profoundly mentally ill.

And millions of Americans will vote for him.

Color me terrified.

48 Comments

  1. Considering I never watch anything Trump anymore (I just change the channel or avoid on the internet), this gave me a good laugh. I haven’t missed a thing apparently. This is one time that I will not do research to justify my opinion of that maniac. When Palin came on the scene, you can bet back then, I did a boatload of research about her. But not this guy. I used to watch the apprentice and I quit watching not because I left the country but because he was a jerk back then in season 1 or 2 that I watched. Today’s post just proves he’s an idiot too.

  2. AgingGirl. Well put. I saw 1-2 episodes of the Apprentice and I didn’t have the stomach for any more. He’s having the same effect on me with the tv news – even the News Hour. I can’t make myself watch another story about him. He epitomizes the response to the old question: How do you know when a politician is lying?

    And, let’s not overlook that HE calls his opponents lying Ted, Hillary, etc. He can’t possibly believe anything he says. I hope his candidacy signals the bottom of the curve for politics in the US, but I doubt it.

  3. AgingLGrl and daleb; I have been watching Donald Trump’s very public “business”, bankruptcies and marital history for 20 years so knew better than to watch “The Apprentice”. It, again, got headlines on the news for reasons beyond my somewhat limited understanding of what is considered “news” today. The name “Donald Trump” draws the media like s#*t draws flies.

    Sheila; you must admit Trump knows lots and lots of words and can quickly put them into an unconnected stream of disconnected, mindless rambling which his supporters agree with. I do agree with his pre-debate disclaimer that the debates will be “rigged”; an intelligent candidate pitted against a fool on national (international) television with the presidency and the salvation of this entire country at stake.

  5. I sometimes wonder if inbreeding was involved in his conception. I also wonder how he could have possibly graduated from Wharton – did his daddy keep giving them large donations in order to obtain his son’s degree? I just cannot fathom how he could have passed a single test at that well respected school. I know without a doubt that he could not have possibly obtained the empire he has without his daddy’s money. He must have learned bullying from his daddy too.

  6. Lack of frontal lobes leads to dominance of amygdalae and perpetually emotion-driven behavior. In essence, dumb primitives and their authoritarian thinking undermining their own liberties by ignoring relative stupidity and valuing only hyper-masculinity and public displays of aggressiveness. Progress and democratic government are not inevitable.

    How’s that hopey-changy thing workin’out for ya?

  7. His doctor told Donny that he was the healthiest primate to ever run for president, but he also told him that at his age he should eat more cyber.

  8. Looks like a jumble of random syllables that accidentally came close to forming sentences as they fell out his mouth. Yes, millions of people will vote for him, directly, because that babel somehow actually makes sense in their universe, or indirectly, because they’ve bought the anti-Hillary demagoguery from the GOP hate machine and just don’t understand the danger the short-fingered vulgarian presents.

  9. Nancy, being from Kentucky, I am deeply offended by your insult of inbred people. I served with inbred people. I knew inbred people. Inbred people were friends of mine. Trust me, Donald Trump is no inbred person.

    But having attended, (clears throat haughtily) a prestigious university, I can assure you that there are the ones who bring the averages up and the ones whose families fund the whole thing. How did he get through Wharton? One wonders… #$$$$$$$$$$

  10. I have no idea if this will appear in Cyberspace but…I flipped to MSNBC late, missing the introduction of the guest sitting next to Mika and the name of the woman interviewing Gary Johnson. The subject of the interview was the fact that he was not included in the presidential debate; he stated he would gain support to the level of Hillary and Trump had he been included. The last of his interview was done with his tongue sticking out at the young interviewer; Mika had the film clip run a second time in case anyone missed the tongue episode. As far as I am concerned the winning political quote of the week came from Mika’s guest who responded regarding Gary Johnson’s comment , “He would gain supporters if he stopped talking.”

    Lord, have mercy; what a world we live in, survival is at stake in the entire presidential campaign.

  11. Over it, Thanks for the best laugh of the morning. About Wharton… maybe it is not the great school we have been led to believe it is.

  13. DSM-5 criteria for narcissistic personality disorder include these features:

    Having an exaggerated sense of self-importance
    Expecting to be recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant it
    Exaggerating your achievements and talents
    Being preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate
    Believing that you are superior and can only be understood by or associate with equally special people
    Requiring constant admiration
    Having a sense of entitlement
    Expecting special favors and unquestioning compliance with your expectations
    Taking advantage of others to get what you want
    Having an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others
    Being envious of others and believing others envy you
    Behaving in an arrogant or haughty manner

  14. The prospect of a Trump Presidency keeps me awake at night. I never watched “The Apprentice”, nor any other reality show. There is simply no reality to any of them. Reality is, after all, mostly boring. I have known too much of Trump just by being aware of my surroundings and reading a daily newspaper.

    We have come to expect so little that is coherent from him that even one good answer on Monday night may make him seem like a winner. If the debates are anything like the so called “Commander in Chief Forum” the Dems can kiss this election goodbye. The moderators must be better than Lauer.

  15. I’m a graduate of The Wharton School of Finance and Commerce. It’s the business school at the University of Pennsylvania. Its prominence comes from the graduate school which neither Trump nor I attend. He probably graduated at the bottom of the class from the undergraduate school. He didn’t start as an undergraduate at the Wharton School he was a transfer. Like you said $$$$$$ probably played a part.

    My senior year 1958-59, I was caught up in a riot. Trolley cars were turned over etc. etc. These were the grumblings of bigger troubles to follow. (See the movie, “The Love Story”) I wasn’t a participant. However, when the paddy waggons came out, they picked up anyone they could find. I unfortunately, was found. That was the bad news. The good news was that the son of one of the $$$$Trustees was also picked up. The dormitory was named after him. The nine of us faced being kicked out of school which was the usual punishment. That wasn’t the final result. We were placed on probation for one year and the punishment expunged from our record when we graduated. Do I not have the Gods on my side or was it the $$$$?

  17. Theresa,

    If someone asks where if went to college, I don’t say, Wharton, I say Penn. If I had received a Masters Degree from the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, I would use the word Wharton to distinguish myself from the undergraduate school.

    Give the guy credit. It’s not all that easy when you’re a sociopath.

  18. In addition to his tax returns, maybe there should be demands for Trump to make public his college transcript before he might take over leadership of, supposedly, the most powerful country in the world.

  19. Pingback: Trump Word Salad: “The Cyber is So Big"

  20. I should probably mention that the debate Monday night/my Tuesday middle of the night, I will be getting up at 3am to watch it live. Bank on it. I look forward to watching Hillary snicker at his answers and look forward to watching her take him to task for those answers. I am not looking forward to trump making fun of her, calling her crooked Hillary or any of the other things he may come up on the fly.

  21. Sheila: “Color me terrified.”

    I’m using a dark red mixed with purple. This is from a book by a great journalist, author, and historian Dan van der Vat:

    “As a leader [1933]of the largest party in a democratically elected Reichstag, Adolf Hitler was constitutionally entitled to Hindenburg’s reluctant invitation to head a government (the present German usage of machtergreifung–seizure of power–to describe the Nazi accession is misleading). His first concern was to eliminate the constraints imposed on him by his Nationalist Party coalition. COMMAND OF THE DOMESTIC POLITICAL SCENE WAS HIS ABSOLUTE PRIORITY, and foreign affairs, finance, and military were very much secondary. The Reichstag fire conveniently enabled Hitler to persuade Hindenburg to sign a decree suspending civil liberties on February 28; the “Enabling Act” of March 23 transferred legislative power from the Reichstag to the Cabinet. BUT THE NAZIS HAD RISEN TO POWER ON THE BACKS OF THE “RESPECTABLE” RIGHT and the military. Once in the Chancellery, Hitler had every reason to believe he would be able TO SEE OFF THE CONVENTIONAL POLITICIANS and indeed the groundwork for this was laid at a Cabinet meeting on January 30, the day of his appointment. The military would need more subtle handling as their support was central to his strategy.” “The Atlantic Campaign” by Dan van der Vat, p. 58

    Also “Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power: January 1933” by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr. (New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., 1996).

    I hope I’ve made myself clear….there will be no democratic life left in America if DonaldTrump is elected President. THERE WON’T BE TIME TO RE-GROUP.

  22. Marv –

    “there will be no democratic life left in America if DonaldTrump is elected President.”
    The fact that people don’t want to believe that is what is most terrifying.

  23. Alphons,

    “there will be no democratic life left in America if Donald Trump is elected President.”
    The fact that people don’t want to believe that is what is most terrifying.

    Many Thanks. You always speak up when the rest of the blog is too scared to do so. What is it going to take for them to do so? It’ll probably be after they have lost everything and have nothing else to lose. That’s normal human nature. The word FROZEN was used during the Nazi era.

    AgingLGrl can still speak out like she always does, but she lives in Switzerland. That makes a WORLD of difference.

  24. Rich kids get degrees from Ivy League schools because their rich parents pony up to the endowment hawks – a couple of million to Harvard’s endowment trove, for instance, may buy you an MBA for your kid. Consider George Bush and his Harvard MBA. I will never be convinced that his MBA was earned but think rather that it was purchased. As for Trump, Shelia is right – he does have a mental defect: he doesn’t think like most of us, and whether the problem is organic or otherwise, I don’t want his impulsive behavior anywhere near the atomic button nor do I want him to be privy to intelligence (which in his worship of money over country he would probably sell to the highest bidder – free market economy, you know). After all the brouhaha we have been subjected to in this campaign, it all comes down to arithmetic, i.e., turnout. So let’s all vote and try to influence anyone we know to vote.

  25. Marv, I’m absolutely sure the Gods were taking care of you and the others – it couldn’t have possibly had anything to do with $$$$$$ or a Trustee (tongue in cheek)

  27. Over It –

    “Nancy, being from Kentucky, I am deeply offended by your insult of inbred people. I served with inbred people. I knew inbred people. Inbred people were friends of mine. Trust me, Donald Trump is no inbred person.”

    I am hoping that you were being facetious with the above statement because it had me laughing. My reason for knowing a little about the results of inbreeding is due to many coal mining families from KY moving up to northern IN in the 50’s and 60’s. Inbreeding was still an issue as of 2000 around here. In addition, the Amish in northern IN also have this problem.

  28. Gerald,

    Dick Chaney and Yale. I’m sure Lynn Chaney’s millionaire father’s connections with Yale had nothing to do with it. The same for George Bush. After all of this, how can anyone effectively challenge Trump’s intelligence.

    All of this takes me back to when I was 29 and confirmed by Congress to be the Deputy Chief of the Office of Emergency Planning ( Civil Defense and the Stockpiling of All Strategic Materials ). The Chief was Farris Bryant who had been the Governor of Florida and at the time was my millionaire father’s business partner. I never met him or was vetted for the job.

    And we wonder why we keep “fucking -up” the world.

  30. While bashing Trump is the easiest job liberals and centrists have these days and quite entertaining it’s not the most productive. I would suggest that supporting Hillary is.

    Our real choices are that stark.

    Bad politicians are a dime a dozen but he’s in a class by himself yet many of our fellow Americans can’t tell him from a President.

    We have a huge and growing knowledge deficit worsened every day by entertainment media making more money regardless of the impact on others.

    That’s problamo uno.

  33. Pete,

    I think we need both. Remember it’s only been a few weeks ago that you were saying that Hillary Clinton was unbeatable. It doesn’t seem to me that she has ALL the answers. This election is about Donald Trump and it gets down to whether or not voters understand how dangerous he is. Hillary Clinton isn’t up to that task.

  34. Marv –

    “All of this takes me back to when I was 29 and confirmed by Congress to be the Deputy Chief of the Office of Emergency Planning ( Civil Defense and the Stockpiling of All Strategic Materials ). The Chief was Farris Bryant who had been the Governor of Florida and at the time was my millionaire father’s business partner. I never met him or was vetted for the job.”

    You have first hand knowledge and experience of obtaining employment that you may or may not have been qualified for, but were hired due to your father’s connections. I imagine you could educate the rest of us about the amount of cronyism within multiple levels of government (local, state, federal). I have never been fortunate enough to have any connections that enabled me to gain employment that easily.

  37. It’s a twofold problem as you so keenly see: Inbreeding and cronyism. The intellectual level can be so low that it allows someone like Carl Rove to be able to take over complete political control.

    Back in the late 60’s and early 70’s, I was counsel to two of the most powerful men in Texas politics. The facts are outlined in the “about”section of my principal website: http://www.StrategicPower.org. So sometime in the early 70’s, I was invited to a POWER cocktail party and while sort of shuffling around, I ran into a man named Bill Clements. He was a millionaire oil man like many in attendance. We started a conversation and he led me into the fact that he was seriously going to run for Governor of Texas and would I help him with his campaign. After a few minutes of listening to him, most anyone could have figured out that he had little knowledge of politics and probably only average intellectual capacity. So I told him, “I need a refill and walked on.” If you read a biography of Carl Rove’s rise to power, it starts with his taking over the Clements campaign. He learned very early, the political power he could obtain by being the advisor to the inbreeding and cronyism within the power circle of Texas oilmen.

  38. Pete,

    I’m not against Hillary Clinton. I hope she wins the election. But she is not the only answer. Even If she wins, without a successful counter to the movement that Trump heads, the country will be in a state of chaos just as France was in 1936 after the election of Leon Blum, the Popular Front candidate.

    You want to take a short cut, I’m against it. The body politic has a deadly malignancy, denying it won’t make it go away.

  39. My worry is post election and how much I worry depends on Congress. I don’t think that HRC would be as skilled at running the country without Congress as Obama has been and that could still be required. She’s too much a traditionalist in government.

    I don’t worry about her motives at all or her work ethic.

    If I had my druthers among anybody I would wish for a young family like the Obamas.

    I do like the idea of breaking the gender barrier. If anyone thinks that any institution can successfully compete today if they eliminate half of the available brains in the population IMO they are delusional.

  40. Ha ha, I live in Switzerland so what happens in the US. happens there and it doesn’t affect me here, right? Well, I’m sorry to burst your bubble but it does affect me! damnit and you don’t know how or what or when or damn you, please make an effort to escape your damn bubble and hear reality. It affects everyone, the world, it’s the GD President of the United States, the most powerful leader and listened to, Leader.of. the. Free, World. Whether you agree or not! Everybody listens even if they don’t agree and that’s the problem because that person can influence 6-7 Billion people. The President of the United States does have a lot of power and influence and until we Americans get serious about that, the world will suffer the consequences along with U.S. and us. So what’s it going to be?

  41. We now have a few models for President. We could label them the Nixon, the Reagan/Bush, the WJClinton, the Obama/Lincoln, the Traditional, and the Trump.

    HRC is pretty much conventional Traditional. The good news is that that model has always worked well for us. The worry is that this is 2016 and we need to remake almost everything we have and are.

    I wish that god by any of his names was available but am afraid that we’re limited to humans.

  42. AgingLgrl,

    “AgingLGrl can still speak out like she always does, but she lives in Switzerland. That makes a WORLD of difference.”

    I said you weren’t scared like everyone else. I apologize, I should have been more specific. My point was that you’re not in the U. S. facing retaliation. Like you said this jerk is affecting everyone around the globe including you.

    I’m not living in a bubble and I never thought you were.

    There is no protection for whistleblowers who go deep into the
    American political system. I know that first hand. The few organization who say they represent whistleblowers won’t even correspond with you. Not when you’re exposing the deep political forces. They play a big part in the serious problems we’re now facing. They don’t want to scare off their political $$$$$ contributors who don’t want RETALIATION.

    Let’s see: In 1969, I lost my daughter
    In 1978, I lost my Zionist friends in the Jewish community
    In 1988, I lost all my Jewish friends
    In 1989, I lost my second marriage
    In 1991, I lost my law practice, reputation and all my other friends

    All of the above was retaliation in Dallas. Forget Jacksonville. Do you think the whistleblower protection organizations might have responded to my requests for assistance? Never. There is absolutely no protection for me from retaliation threatened in John Grisham’s “The Chamber.” None. The F.B.I. wouldn’t even touch it. See http://www.KillingtheMessenger.info

    This is a country of organized cowards dressed in “Sheep’s clothing.” They don’t want to lose a $.

    As you can see, I learned to lose early on. I learned my lesson well, I haven’t lost since. But you never know.

  44. I won’t vote for Trump.

    cyber is so big, and she is much more computer savvy. Even has her own server!

    No security, though, and forcing everyone who works for her forced to email her on her server.

    Cyber is huge!

    I didn’t even know that C meant classified! It is so confusing after my concussion!

    I can only handle one devise at a time, so confusing.

    There is no evidence I was hacked!

  46. Engineer Pete

    Do yo have wvidence that it wasn’t?
    Ridiculous point. Former CIA heads say that they would be embarrassed for Russia and China if they hadn’t, so such a ridiculous position to take, especially for an engineer.

    And more importantly, that’s all you and the tribe got out of that.

    Scott Walker, the irrelevant–bad!!!
    Hillary Clinton? There is no evidence!!!

    Hacks

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