Day 891: Trump thinks school busing debate simply refers to getting from A to B, thinks ‘western-style liberalism’ simply refers to California

Donald Trump’s ignorance and ineptitude was on full display Saturday. During a wide-ranging press conference in Osaka, Japan, he was hit with questions from reporters and seemed to know nothing about many of the topics. So instead of asking for clarification or acknowledging needing to study the issue more carefully, he chose to guess based on what the phrases sounded like they meant.

Take school busing policy, which is one of the most significant ways to better integrate homogeneous public school districts. The issue has risen to national news after it came up during one of the Democratic primary debates from earlier in the week. Trump thought the issue was about the physical act of getting children to school on buses after randomly and vaguely floating a policy that he claims his administration will be announcing.

The same confusion happened about another vitally important topic too.

Recently, Russian’s authoritarian president Vladimir Putin’s criticized the western world for their longstanding belief that democracy is a savior of the people. Democracy is historically a liberal idea compared to autocracy or monarchy. Putin much prefers power concentrated in few individuals for much longer lengths of time and has demonstrated and espoused that belief on numerous occasions.

When Trump was asked about Putin’s attack on “western-style liberalism” — a pretty common political phrase — Trump believed that the “western-style” referred to California and “liberalism” to left and center-left American policies.

Putin is attacking the inherent political fabric of the United States and its allies. Trump somehow thought that Putin would be criticizing a singular region of the U.S. and responds by rambling about liberals in San Francisco and Los Angeles. He was apparently hoping that a word salad would ease him through to another question. Instead, Trump, who frequently brags about his own intelligence — saying things like, “I’m, like, a smart person,” “I’m a very stable genius,” and “I know words, I have the best words” — couldn’t even tell when America was being insulted by a geopolitical foe.

891 days in, 571 to go

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