Stocks A to Z / Stocks B / Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) ❤
No. of Recommendations: 19
Trump: "This is something nobody else can do. I can get the drug prices down...1000% 600% 500% 1500%.
Numbers that are not even thought to be achievable."
MAGA cheers and then wonders why people call them stupid...
LOL!
The most interesting thing about getting the drug prices down 1000% 600% 500% 1500% is that the customer would getting money instead of paying it,
and that Trump is a pedophile.
https://bsky.app/profile/ronfilipkowski.bsky.socia...
No. of Recommendations: 8
Trump: "This is something nobody else can do. I can get the drug prices down...1000% 600% 500% 1500%.
Numbers that are not even thought to be achievable."
Thank goodness this moron isn't negotiating tariff rates!
No. of Recommendations: 2
Trump: "This is something nobody else can do. I can get the drug prices down...1000% 600% 500% 1500%.
Numbers that are not even thought to be achievable."
MAGA cheers and then wonders why people call them stupid...He's not stupid, and neither are his supporters.
Trump isn't using those figures literally, and no one would reasonably understand them to be taken literally. It's "World's Best Coffee" territory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUPDRnUWeBATrump comes from the world of real estate development (for the most part). If you make a statement with a specific factual claim in that context, you have to deliver - and expose yourself to liability if you don't. But if you make a hyperbolic statement that any reasonable listener would understand to be puffery, then you can't be held to any specific claim.
So when Trump says he'll reduce drug prices by 500%, neither he nor any Trump-leaning listener will take that as a statement actually promising negative prices. It's just signaling that he can substantially reduce drug prices - the number isn't relevant (and was deliberately chosen to be hyperbole), it's the generic claim.
And when Trump's opponents label statements like this as "lies," or "stupid," or whatever, it just makes
the opponents look like folks that don't get it. Like Buddy the Elf in the clip above. Everyone who is
savvy understands when something is puffery and not intended to be taken literally. The humor in the
Elf clip is that Buddy is naive and
doesn't have the sophistication to understand the actual context of the statement. So when
WaPo adds this to their running list of Trump's lies, it's going to make
WaPo just that much more foolish in the eyes of anyone open to Trump-leaning.
No. of Recommendations: 7
He's not stupid, and neither are his supporters.
Yes he is, and yes they are. You keep trumpsplaining his pronouncements as just so much huckster hyperbole, but I guarantee that neither Trump nor 90% of the MAGA base really know what a 500% price reduction would mean in practice.
No. of Recommendations: 4
Yes he is, and yes they are. You keep trumpsplaining his pronouncements as just so much huckster hyperbole, but I guarantee that neither Trump nor 90% of the MAGA base really know what a 500% price reduction would mean in practice.
They might not know how to translate a 500% reduction into actual values, but they are well aware that Trump isn't proposing to start paying people to acquire medications. The same is true of Trump.
Both speaker and audience know full well that the "500%" figure was chosen to be absurdly, impossibly high because it is being used figuratively and hyperbolically in that context. Indeed, intentionally. So they're reaction to critiques like this will be exactly the same reaction that you or I would have if some pedant were to say, "Actually, no one can go out there and give 110%, so clearly coach has no idea how percentages work." Or, again, to observe that the neighborhood cafe almost doesn't have the "World's Friendliest Staff." Or whatever phrase is clearly being uttered and understood as figurative.
No. of Recommendations: 3
Trump can prove how smart he is at any time by releasing his college transcripts.
Don't hold your breath...
"Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had!" ~William T. Kelley, Professor at the Wharton School of Business
No. of Recommendations: 3
They might not know how to translate a 500% reduction into actual values, but they are well aware that Trump isn't proposing to start paying people to acquire medications. The same is true of Trump.
That's not what they expect, I'm sure. But they also don't realize that is the result of the statement taken at face value.
Remember, most people are not that sophisticated. Especially in red states where they continually try to defund education. A lot of people can't do the math to realize that a BOGO offer is the same as a 50% off offer (if you get two of whatever it is). Grocery stores in particular use that in their pricing schemes precisely because most shoppers aren't sophisticated enough to see that "3 for $10" when one is $3.5 means you're only saving 50 cents (on three...only 16.67 cents on one). People like me who walk down the aisles and do the math in their heads almost automatically are the exception, not the rule.
So when he says "lower drug prices by 500%", most people don't really understand. I suspect many think "oh, so it will be 1/5 what it is now". But I do think most will realize that a $30 bottle of pills dropping to $28 is NOT 500%.
No. of Recommendations: 3
That's not what they expect, I'm sure. But they also don't realize that is the result of the statement taken at face value.
So what? They realize that the statement is not intended to be taken at face value. The sign in the greasy spoon diner that says "World's Best Coffee" isn't intended to be a literal claim that the coffee there is actually the best in the world. It's hyperbole. It's figurative language, intended to convey a meaning that isn't taking the statement at face value.
When Trump talks about cutting costs 1000%, he's speaking colloquially. His audience knows that he's speaking colloquially. That he's using "1000%" as a figurative reference to "an awful lot," not a literal percentage. It's one of his signature mannerism, speaking in hyperbole. I have no doubt that this stems from his years in real estate. If you tell someone that your property is such a good deal it will make you a 12.6% annual return on your investment, that's a potentially actionable claim if it doesn't happen - but if you tell them it will make you a million times your investment in five years, then that's obvious puffery. So it's always safer to communicate optimism and future expectations in exaggeration and hyperbole, or vague terms, and it's become a habit. So he falls back on "1000%," or superlatives like "best" or "greatest" or "worst."
And honestly, I think his critics sometimes look like they're blindly misreading the context when they pedantically claim that this is evidence of his "stupidity" rather than his manner of using hyperbolic speech. Again, if you point out that "No, actually, no one can give 110%," that's not really going to make the baseball coach look stupid - it will make the critic look foolish for not identifying an instance of figurative and hyperbolic language.
No. of Recommendations: 2
When Trump talks about cutting costs 1000%, he's speaking colloquially. His audience knows that he's speaking colloquially.
I don't think they do. Because most people suck at math. They don't understand what "1000%" means, so they don't know if it's colloquial or not. Yes, on such people, hyperbole works because they simply don't understand.
I don't claim this as evidence of his stupidity. There are a lot of things that indicate that. I think this is him simply making stuff up as he goes along. He lies; tells people what they want to hear. That's a different flaw, not specifically stupidity.
No. of Recommendations: 1
it does appear that when any trump promises fail, MAGA laziness will point to for others' inability to recognize puffery.
beats the hell out of tracking the latest contradictory rightwing propaganda.
MAGA like simple stories...anyone remember their fascination with the absolute level of prices in 2024? old news.
