Trump Falls For Satire From Site Called ‘The Dunning Kruger Times’
from the how-is-this-reality? dept
Over the weekend, the President of the United States fell for obvious satire from a website literally called “The Dunning Kruger Times.”
Donald Trump—a man with access to the best, most accurate information on basically any subject—posted to Truth Social a screenshot claiming that “DOGE halts yearly payments of $2.5 million to Barack Obama for ‘royalties linked to Obamacare.’ Obama has collected this payment since 2010, for a total of $40 million in taxpayer dollars.”
Trump’s comment on this fabrication? “WOW!”
This is, obviously, complete and utter nonsense. It’s so stupid it almost feels silly to debunk it, but: Obama does not and has never received “royalties” for the Affordable Care Act. That’s not how legislation works. That’s not how royalties work. That’s not how anything works. The only person clearly profiting millions of dollars off the Presidency is the guy in the Oval Office right now.
The Dunning-Kruger effect describes how people with low competence in a particular domain drastically overestimate their abilities in that domain. A site called “The Dunning Kruger Times” is essentially a warning label: this is bait for extremely overconfident idiots.
And the President of the United States fell for it.
The article itself is from months ago and regularly makes the rounds among the most credulous corners of X. But even a cursory glance reveals obvious red flags. The byline? “Flagg Eagleton – Patriot,” with this bio:
Flagg Eagleton is the son of an American potato farmer and a patriot. After spending 4 years in the Navy and 7 on welfare picking himself up by the bootstraps, Flagg finally got his HVAC certificate and is hard at work keeping the mobile homes of Tallahassee at a comfy 83 degrees.
This is not subtle satire. Seven years on welfare picking himself up by the bootstraps? Keeping mobile homes in Tallahassee a comfy 83 degrees?
This is what the President of the United States falls for?
And just to remove any possible doubt about what kind of operation this is, here’s what the site says about itself:
Everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real. If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined.
They’re quite explicit about their target audience:
They are fragile, frightened, mostly older caucasian Americans. They believe nearly anything. While we go out of our way to educate them that not everything they agree with is true, they are still old, typically ignorant, and again — very afraid of everything.
Our mission is to do our best to show them the light, through shame if necessary, and to have a good time doing it, because…old and afraid or not, these people are responsible for the patriarchy we’re railing so hard against. They don’t understand logic and they couldn’t care less about reason. Facts are irrelevant. BUT…they do understand shame.
The site’s entire premise is that its targets “believe nearly anything” and that “facts are irrelevant” to them.
Congratulations, Mr. President. You’re the mark.
Tragically, it’s not at all clear that Donald Trump does understand shame. His superpower is his shamelessness.
But remember all the fuss earlier this year about how no one was willing to seriously discuss the apparent mental decline of Joe Biden while he was President? Remember how people like Jake Tapper insisted that the lesson they learned from that was to be more willing to call out such things in the future?
Well, where is Jake Tapper now?
The President of the United States, with access to the best information and advisors in the world, just fell for obvious satire from a website literally called “The Dunning Kruger Times”—a site that explicitly states anyone who believes its content “should have your head examined.”
If that’s not evidence of a profound cognitive failure that warrants serious discussion about fitness for office, what is?
Filed Under: barack obama, donald trump, dunning kruger, satire
Companies: dunning kruger times
Comments on “Trump Falls For Satire From Site Called ‘The Dunning Kruger Times’”
Trump’s head has already been examined by many of the greatest doctors in the world.
They’ve found nothing. Nothing at all.
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They found plenty inside. It was all brown.
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Indeed. It was entirely vacant. There’s nothing in there. It’s a vacuum quite impressive to science, quite frankly, and its ability to suck up arrant nonsense is quite spectacular.
“Donald Trump—a man with access to the best, most accurate information on basically any subject […]”
That was true. But it’s not any more, because this administration has done its best to purge the people and destroy the agencies producing accurate information.
Not that I’m excusing the mad would-be king from his own stupidity: this is who he’s always been. But I think it’s worth noting that mechanisms which took decades to carefully build, in order to ensure that decision makers in government had the highest quality information at their fingertips, have been gutted in favor of wishful thinking, fabrication, propaganda, and outright lies.
I have to believe Trump’s “wow” is in response to the idea of somebody getting paid $40 million slowly over 15 years, rather than in a few months of lump-sum frivolous lawsuit settlement bribes.
Of course Trump believes it, because it’s how he runs the country. Bribes and kickbacks are the norm in the USA now.
That kind of is how royalties work. Just as Trump gets money for allowing people to use the brand “Trump”, Obama probably could’ve arranged to receive royalties for the “ObamaCare” branding. You know, if such branding had actually existed, rather than just being a colloquial name. And if it wasn’t illegal under the Emoluments clause; in those days, presidents were expected to obey court orders.
But it’s not like it is, or was, uncommon for people to get royalties for the use of their names as brands. The 2023 film “Air” claimed that Michael Jordan makes “$400 million a year” from Nike on that basis.
Anyway, Trump “falling for” something is barely even news. And it seems somewhat in bad taste to be making fun of a mentally challenged person for being fooled.
Re: you forgot the /s tag on that last paragraph...
it’s not in bad taste when he is the president and has the nuclear codes
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Honestly, when it comes to comments on Trump, I can’t tell whether they’re sarcastic even when I write them myself.
As for the codes, that’s the problem Harold Hering noted in 1973: “How can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?”. The Air Force’s answer was to discharge Hering for asking the question, citing a “failure to demonstrate acceptable qualities of leadership”.
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well fair enough… he is such a sad pathetic POS that making fun of him is like shooting fish in a barrel. the line between sarcasm and pity is a fine one indeed.
but yeah, he does have the codes and we both know him and Hegseth would happily fire all of the modern ‘Hering’ types in an instant (assuming any are even left at this point) and then dox and have the DOJ persecute them just to be next level douchecanoes. so for that reason I dont think the guy deserves to be given any of our “pity the senile/demented old man who falls for stupid shit online” energy, because if he would just accept that’s where he is at in his life and give up power to enjoy his final days in quiet [golden] luxury, then all of North America would be so much better off, but alas.
“BUT…they do understand shame.”
To be fair, the Cheato does not.
Trump falling for this isn’t a surprise. Not after he fell for an AI generated video of himself talking about biobeds.
People keep thinking this administration is pulling the US into a dystopia a la 1984. While that’s very much true, it’s also true from stories like this that we’re also being pulled into the world of Idiocracy!
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I wish.
In Idiocracy they had a president who, when faced with a problem, found the smartest man in the world, sought his advice, and followed it.
Re: Re: One is terrified of people smarter than him, the other looks for and hires them
You know things have gone horribly wrong when having the president from Idiocracy would be a significant improvement over the person currently holding the position.
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Smarter, less racist, and probably about equally emotionally volatile.
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Careful what you wish for: I think that’s what Trump was trying to do by hiring Musk. Might’ve even gotten the idea from the documentary you’re referencing.
They had him undergo what sounds like a dementia test (That person, man, woman, camera, TV line by Trump) and found it not a problem that they felt the need to give their candidate a test like that.
Re: 'It's only okay when WE do it' might as well be the republican motto
Republicans have never had a problem with the idea of a dementia-riddled old man holding the highest political office in the US and being in a position to make decisions that stand to impact hundreds of millions of people both in the country and out, their only objection was that it might not be their dementia-riddled old man in office.
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Not in the 1980s and not today.
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One more evil empire with an astrologer kinda running some things.
Your, uh, assuming that he actually does have this access. And that his staff and advisors would use such access themselves…
Based on the incompetency and sheer stupidity of the people in the Oval Office, it wouldn’t at all surprise me to learn that they don’t even know what Dunning Kruger means. Even if they have access to both the largest encyclopedia ever created, and the largest information network ever devised. After all, all that stuff is leftist material. Right?
Right?
He fell for it because he WANTS to believe it(and he's incredibly stupid)
Of course he fell for it, and I’ve no doubt that a massive number of his cultists had/have fell for it too, they are all in a post-fact cult where reality is is determined not by what can be shown and demonstrated to be real but by what you want to be real, and he and his cultists deeply want Obama to be engaged in an illegal kickback scheme like that so they can criticize both the ACA and Obama as terrible.
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I mean the motherfucker accused Ted Cruz’s father of plotting the JFK assassination because it said so in the National Enquirer, and that was before he was even elected.
If it fits their narrative, it’s true. No real proof needed.
It is amazing how that dumb fucker believes everything he reads on the internet.
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Obamacare is a failure, has always been a failure, was in many ways DESIGNED to be a failure.
It’s like 3/4 disassembled now, but the remaining bits are just ruining the market. Gotta finish it off.
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Shut up. It provided Healthcare to millions who couldn’t access it. It read compromised, to be sure, but only a fucking idiot would ever call it a failure.
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I note that the only people I’ve seen who give any data that it’s a failure are people complaining that their insurance costs went up. Without making any comparisons about what was covered before and after the ACA.
Some admit that they never looked. That they have no idea what their cheaper insurance would and would not cover.
Though if Trump does manage to break the ACA, maybe Democrats will copy something that works in other countries next time.
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It’s like 3/4 disassembled now, but the remaining bits are just ruining the market.
Republicans voted to repeal it 40+ times when it didn’t matter. When you got control of Congress during Trump’s first fucked up term, you had a ‘sure thing’ chance, fucked it up, and for some reason didn’t try again. Now, you still have control of Congress, and for some reason, you still can’t seem to call for a vote to repeal it. I mean, you had 10 fucking months already.
Do you people ever fucking do something? Or are you only capable of bitching and moaning all the time? Get off your lazy fucking asses and fucking fix something other than what the Gulf of Mexico is called. Any idiot could’ve done that. And did.
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I think that the Republicans are aware that the ACA is popular and will likely get more popular if people see the immediate effects of killing it.
They fear that coming back to bite them the next time they are up for reelection. So they don’t want to repeal it in any way that they can be blamed for.
But they also want to look like they are fighting against Obamacare, because that pleases their base.
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Always amazed when idiot MAGA types claim the Affordable Care Act is a failure when it has over 65% approval ratings, meaning a ton of Republicans love it as well.
https://www.kff.org/interactive/kff-health-tracking-poll-the-publics-views-on-the-aca/#?response=Favorable–Unfavorable&aRange=all
I know, I know, you get all your talking points from Fox News, so reality won’t seep in, but you’re wrong again.
But, also, nice way to not actually respond to this story which is that your god king got fooled by the most obvious fucking satire imaginable. How fucking embarrassing.
You are in a cult to support the dumbest fucking guy.
Trump’s wow was simply exclaiming what a great opportunity it will be for him to get more money by having bills named after him.
Trump didn’t “fall for” anything. That implies he made a decision. His people just put out any slop they feel like.