Goin’ to Kansas City
So Trump doesn’t know where Kansas City is. I’m sure lots of people don’t, and the name does suggest that it’s in Kansas, but still, a president should know things like that. It’s not a random small town, it’s an important city in the Midwest or West or Plains States or whatever you want to call it – in the Heartland, if you like. It has a lot of cultural chops. Presidents should have a decent knowledge of US geography.
But does it really matter? Yes.
But here’s why Trump doesn’t get a pass. Because he and his administration have made a HUGE point of picking out the slip-ups of past politicians and questioning people over their supposed lack of knowledge of geography.
He talked about Obama’s flubs, he talked about Hillary Clinton’s purported imminent collapse, he talks about Biden’s flubs.
At a campaign rally in November 2019, Trump said this of Biden:
“They have him all freaked out because he makes a mistake every time he speaks. I can just see these handlers because they’re handlers like they use on horses. ‘Alright, get him off now, he’s been up there long enough!’ So they’re screaming, ‘Get off! Get off! Sleepy Joe, get off the stage! Please! Please, Joe, you’re doing fine. Joe, you’re doing fine. You’re doing fine.'”
And at a campaign rally in Milwaukee just last month, Trump again mocked Biden for forgetting which state he was speaking in; “When you do that, you can’t really recover,” Trump concluded.
And then…
Trump’s own Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly challenged an NPR reporter to find Ukraine on a blank map after she asked him some questions regarding the President’s interactions with the country.
And she found it at once, so since then he’s been lying about it. (I wasn’t there. I didn’t see her find it. But come on – she has advanced degrees in international relations. It’s not like trying to locate a particular city on a blank map, or even one of the Baltic countries. She says she pointed it out at once and I believe her.)
The reason stuff like Trump’s Kansas flub can’t be totally ignored is because if the shoe [were] on the other foot — and it has been! — we know that Trump not only doesn’t ignore it, but seeks to make the flub some sort of sign of either declining mental ability or a lack of intelligence.
When he’s always the stupidest person in the room.
To be pedantic (and I love being pedantic), I think it’s more a matter of knowing which Kansas City it is rather than where Kansas City is, since there is one in Kansas and it borders the one in Missouri.
So it’s about being a big enough football fan to know which Kansas City the Chiefs represent rather than a geography question.
Really, a mistake most people could make, which is why a normal president would have his tweets fact-checked and screened so he doesn’t blast out stupidity, ignorance, or hate as Trump does so often.
I don’t think you need to be a “big enough football fan”. I am not a football fan at all, and I know which Kansas City the Chiefs represent. To be fair, my husband is a big Chiefs fan, which does give me a ready source, but to be fair on the other side, I knew that before I even know my husband, and the KC Chiefs were just another name I heard somewhere.
And yes, having your tweets fact checked, but then, who would fact check them for him? He knows more than anyone else, so having anyone fact check his tweets is clearly ridiculous. In fact, he knows things other people don’t know. So I guess maybe the rest of us are wrong about which Kansas City the Chiefs represent? Including the team themselves? And the states? Because impossible, impossible for Trump to be wrong. He is never wrong, no never ever. After all, he is a stable genius. (let us all pause for a moment of laughter).
At the time of the moon landing, Nixon had a second speech ready in case the mission failed and the crew was lost. Did Trump have a second tweet on hand just in case the Chiefs lost?
Not that this is news to anybody here, but Trump really doesn’t think these things through, does he? And I’m not even talking about the geography. I don’t know who else was playing in the Super Bowl (and I can’t be arsed to find out), but would that team not also have been American? Would that other team not also have represented the entire USA as well?
On the other hand, from Trump’s perspective, the other team LOST and is therefore a BUNCH OF LOSERS, no doubt representing some shithole city (Was it Baltimore? Trump hates Baltimore) in a shithole state that voted Dem, so they don’t count. Only winners here! Losing losers suck!! No White House hamberders for them!!!
The other team was the 49ers which are out of San Francisco I believe… So no, not Real Americans ™ at all.
I think it would be more accurate to say that the Chiefs represent the greater KC area, which encompasses parts of both Kansas and Missouri (until recently, there was another football team in St. Louis). But yeah, they play in Missouri.
I’m just waiting for him to congratulate the great state of Washington for winning last year’s World Series (for those of you who don’t follow US baseball, the team from Washington, DC won).
Re “I don’t know who else was playing in the Super Bowl”:
It appears Trump didn’t know, either.
https://www.sfgate.com/49ers/article/Trump-Super-Bowl-LIV-preview-memes-quote-Chiefs-15020608.php
An absolute monarch is never wrong, and as well, there is no shortage of courtiers and flunkies in accord. Just ask Kim Jong Il. Why, even the convict down below in the castle dungeon will agree.
BKiSA, my thoughts exactly. San Francisco = coastal elites. I’m sure Trump takes it as a sign of the superiority of his base (if he has thought about anything other than, let’s congratulate the football fans and get some applause). Of course, he may have just pissed off all the San Francisco fans, but hey, they’re not his voters, right? (Except…San Francisco fans stretch far beyond San Francisco, and some parts of California resemble Alabama more than they do California).
Sounds like someone suggested that maybe Frederick Douglas was playing on one of the teams…
I wouldn’t criticize him for not knowing who was playing, since I didn’t know myself. Because I don’t follow that stuff and couldn’t care less. But not knowing that sort of thing can jeopordize one’s True Manhood status, about which I don’t give a shit either, so I’ll cut him some slack. I would criticize him to the extent that for the sake of his molecule thin “man of the people” facade, he was likely more worried about being caught out not knowing who was playing in the Superbowl than he ever was at having been caught out not knowing what the nuclear triad is.
Pedantic shmedantic. I said in the post “I’m sure lots of people don’t [know where Kansas City is], and the name does suggest that it’s in Kansas.” In this story it’s beside the point that there is one in Kansas, because someone culturally literate enough to be president would know which Kansas City is the one people mean when they talk about Kansas City. There’s a St Louis in Michigan, too, but that’s not what people mean when they talk about St Louis. Everybody makes mistakes; it’s no big deal not knowing the celebrity Kansas City is in Missouri, but Trump has vast ambitions and vast conceit and vast contempt for all other people, so he doesn’t get a free pass on bozo mistakes like that.
And there’s an Omaha in Missouri, but you can just say Omaha and people automatically think of Nebraska. Omaha Steaks, Mutual of Omaha – no one thinks of Missouri.
That’s the thing. The famous one is the one in Missouri. I freely admit I didn’t realize that until long into adulthood – but I’m not president.
Calvin (Bud) Trillin is from KC.
We have Paris, Ontario. Until 1917, we also had Berlin.
No football teams, though.
A couple of points:
1. People make stupid mistakes, especially when speaking (or tweeting) off the cuff. Hell, Obama claimed he had been to 57 states (I think he got that figure from John Kerry :)). But most people, when called on their stupid mistakes, admit it, maybe make a self-deprecating joke, and then move on. Trump, narcissist that he is, is incapable of doing that, though, and his followers must fall into line and defend him. This is just one of countless examples.
2. We USAians have this childish expectation that the President must be one of us; he’s expected to be a king in many ways, but also a man of the people (and until proven otherwise, I’ll assume that the president is always a man). And so we expect them to care about all sports, even if they have no idea, but especially football. Obama was more of a basketball man, but he had to pretend to care about football. The Bushes were into baseball, but they had to care about football.
But, if you look at Trump’s history, he’s always been obsessed with the NFL. It’s not just kneeling at the anthem, it’s not just Kaepernick; long before he entered politics he twice tried to buy NFL franchises, probably committing wire fraud in the process. Before that, he owned a team in the rival USFL and led that league in a lawsuit against the NFL, one which had the effect of destroying the USFL.
Point being, someone that obsessed with professional football ought to have some awareness of what teams are in the Super Bowl, and where they play (if you don’t believe me, just ask any acquaintance of yours who’s tried multiple times to buy an NFL team).
‘Fraid I don’t travel in those circles. Would a fantasy team do?
If Trump couldn’t be bothered to figure out how casinos (and any of the other businesses he’s successfully run into the ground) actually work, why would he follow minor details like that? I’m guessing he was obsessed with ownership rather than the game itself, or the actual teams that play it.
iknklast,
Clearly you have the wrong class of friends. Why, just last week, seven in my circle bid on various NFL teams.
But yes, in fact, fantasy sports owners would probably be more likely to know who’s playing, for reasons that YNnB stated.
Trump and his ilk perverted Kaepernick’s protest into something it wasn’t. They made it about being unpatriotic and not supporting the troops and portrayed it as an insult to America. The number of ignorant people they convinced with their garbage was staggering. It was an appeal to their outrage at the outrageous thing he did, and then they politicized it according to their own purposes by (pardon the pun) Shifting the Goalposts i.e. let’s talk about patriotism instead of racial injustice… The NFL went along with it, so to hell with the NFL too. Anyone with half a brain knows it was about racial injustice. Kaepernick risked his career on something he believed in (and lost unfortunately), but the message was a positive and nonviolent one, and the people who didn’t know why but wanted to, only heard the wrong explanations from the wrong people.
Trump doesn’t care about professional football any further than it feeds his own ego, or appeals to some voters or other that he has semi-concealed contempt for.
Another point. If Trump chooses to run his administration via Twitter, then all of his tweets will be dissected as policy statements.