This list is intended to be updated regularly as new information becomes available.
- Donald Trump didn’t know that Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014, despite it being one of the most reported stories of the last two years, a major destabilizing factor for Eastern Europe ever since, and a contributor to the imminent threat of war between Ukraine and Russia.
- Donald Trump thought that Brexit was a Scottish Independence referendum, despite the fact that Scotland voted overwhelmingly to remain in the UK during that 2014 vote, but voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU during that 2016 referendum.
- Donald Trump doesn’t know how to run a business. Trump-owned businesses have declared bankruptcies four times, costing literally thousands of people to lose their jobs, and despite several bailouts from his own father. Despite (his own) popular opinion, his only major financial successes have been a few hotels and a television show. His failures, however, are numerous; in addition to the four bankruptcies, he has run nine semi-successful companies into the ground; no non-building property that he has ever taken over survived his management.
- Donald Trump doesn’t know that the Constitution refuses him the ability to negotiate down the nation’s debt. And he doesn’t know that doing so would essentially destroy our ability to borrow money in the future (at best) or wreck the world economy entirely, plunging us into yet another global recession (at worst).
- Donald Trump does not understand that the deterring factor in owning nuclear weapons is not in using them, but simply in having them. He does not understand that using them would (not could, but would) activate Mutually Assured Destruction responses that would destroy the planet. He has also considered using nuclear weapons in Europe, and is unaware that the president does not have the power to declare war.
- Donald Trump is unaware that a wall between the United States and Mexico would alienate the government of that nation, removing one of our major trade partners and political allies on the world stage, and leave us vulnerable to attack or (again) recession. This is not speculation; the Mexican government has said as much.
- Donald Trump does not know that leaving NAFTA would cost the United States 3.5 million jobs and plunge us into a recession.
- Donald Trump does not know that the Constitution does not give him the power to “open up” libel laws and sue journalistic organizations that he does not agree with.
- Donald Trump does not know that Hispanics did not come up with the taco bowl.
- Donald Trump doesn’t know how to make a profit. After beginning his career in 1976 with a value of around $200 million (about $846 million in 2016 dollars), he’s managed to increase it to $4.5 billion by today. Leaving aside the fact that a little less than 1/4 of that fortune comes from tax subsidies in New York alone, and another 1/4 of it is the inflation-adjusted value of the original money his father gave him, if he had placed that $200m into an index fund (one of the lowest-risk investments available) and reinvested the dividends, his value would be around $12 billion. The fact that he didn’t do that means that he’s not a good businessman, and he’s not even very good at faking it.
One or two of these statements could be slip-ups or bad info. But all of them? Advocating policy that would cause major recessions in three different ways, global war in two different ways, and at least two different international incidents, not to mention his clear disdain for the U.S. Constitution, do not in any way sound like “competency” to me.
