this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2025
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Leopards Ate My Face
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Depends on how you interpret the word "good". Not in a moral sense obviously, but good as in "effective"? Trump got elected POTUS twice, despite (or because of) being one of the most despicable human beings to ever exist. Not a great orator, and every time I see him speak I want to vomit, but still, objectively I'd have to concede that he did indeed talk a good game.
Did he get elected really? In his own words he had "all the votes [he] needs", he didn't care how the popular vote landed because it wasn't relevant, those aren't the votes that actually do anything.
He got the people who determine rhe results of the election to say he was elected.
I've always hated this "Well, you can't argue with the results" metric. The calculation I get from Trump's victory is that you could have any number of scandals plaguing a candidate, and as long as they're ultra-racist and churn out the same brain-dead ultra-nationalist talking points we'd been warning about since the classic "Don't Be a Sucker" PSA, central America will vote en masse for them.
It says far more about THEM than it does about that THING as an orator. It pains me to admit truth to the articles claiming "This was not a pure mistake. This is always who America has been."
What I'm saying is that Trump has the right set of ingredients to win the support of these morons, and while his personal "qualities" like privilege, cruelty, racism, malleability and hubris are a part of that, the whole package doesn't work unless he can deliver the right kind of speech, which gives the fascists what they want. The dumbest of them find validation in the idiocy of Trump's words. For a movement which rejects good faith discourse entirely, the endless lies, the self-aggrandizement, the dogwhistles are all what they want to hear. The incoherent rambling delivery is just perfect for avoiding any accountability. It's all the more appealing because honest people find it infuriating, and it degrades every person and institution which has to engage with it.
I don't want to imply any great skill here, it's just the way Trump is, but it happens to be the right play for this game. Which, I agree, is far more an indictment of the game than an accolade for the player.