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Re:Restrooms along the Norwegian Scenic Routes by mopsi on Sunday November 01, 2026 @06:47AM (#50324729)
You obviously can. An EU delegation had to explain the EU to Trump using colored cards as if he was a small child and it took many attempts before he got it. So the deciding quality must be something else.
Re:Restrooms along the Norwegian Scenic Routes by anal_reactor on Sunday November 01, 2026 @07:13AM (#50324892)
You're assuming that understanding it was his priority in the first place. It wasn't.

Imagine a painter saying "these software engineers are profoundly stupid, I spent a whole day explaining to one how different color combinations are differently interpreted by different cultures and he still wouldn't get it".

Re:Restrooms along the Norwegian Scenic Routes by mcmcmc on Sunday November 01, 2026 @08:06AM (#50325286)
Imagine an 80 year old bragging about acing screening tests for Alzheimer’s as if they were a Wonderlic, then shitting his pants in the Oval Office
Re:Restrooms along the Norwegian Scenic Routes by notahacker on Sunday November 01, 2026 @08:50AM (#50325684)
Trump stans: "actually he's very intelligent, he just has a gift for focusing on what the average voter cares about and talking in their terms rather than those of elites"

Trump: "Not many people know this, but dumb is spelled with a 'b' "

Re:Restrooms along the Norwegian Scenic Routes by lesuorac on Sunday November 01, 2026 @01:09PM (#50328045)
I still find it amazing nobody brings up he "aced it" once.

When a 80 year old "aces" a driving test they still have to take it more times to check for further decline. You only take these tests until you fail them.

Re:Restrooms along the Norwegian Scenic Routes by mopsi on Sunday November 01, 2026 @07:57AM (#50325209)
That happened when Trump was discussing trade issues with the EU. Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission at the time, had to prepare colorful flash cards in simple language to explain the issues to Trump, because Trump didn't know at all what he was talking about.

A similar thing happened between him and Merkel, when Trump didn't understand that the EU was a unified trading bloc with a common market and that making separate trade agreements with Germany was not possible. Trump allegedly asked Merkel more than 10 times why he could not do that.

I don't think Americans still understand what a laughing stock their president is to the rest of the world. This goes beyond personal sympathies and antipathies; he is objectively a very unintelligent person and his exceptionally poor manners make things only worse.

Re:Restrooms along the Norwegian Scenic Routes by swasheck on Sunday November 01, 2026 @09:07AM (#50325841)
> I don't think Americans still understand what a laughing stock their president is to the rest of the world.

The US is a very big and diverse place with a lot of different people and perspectives. However, most of us actually do understand what a laughing stock the president is. It’s the response that ends up being what we’re judged upon. The responses that perform insane mental gymnastics to absolve him (such as gp) cast most of us in a bad light as thoughtless parrots. There’s also a big nationalist response that leads people to defend a president that they know is an embarrassment because “USA.” There are also those of us who work in silence to educate and allow the embarrassments to carry on humiliating themselves

Re:Restrooms along the Norwegian Scenic Routes by SideburnsOfDoom on Sunday November 01, 2026 @10:47AM (#50326738)
> I don't think Americans still understand what a laughing stock their president is to the rest of the world.

And, I don't think that Americans yet understand what leaders elsewhere are incrementally factoring in: this is not a one a one-off event. It happened twice. There is every reason to expect that it can happen again - this is a thing that the USA will do from time to time, and so they cannot be relied upon. Decoupling is the wise direction.

e.g.

"The world's trust in America is collapsing. That has consequences"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBcHwbuOKXU