Where are they now?
This happened today.
“You had the Nobel Prize?” Donald Trump learns of Yazidi activist Nadia Murad. Here’s how the interaction unfolded pic.twitter.com/DE3exTAm7N
— The National (@TheNationalUAE) July 18, 2019
It’s disgusting to watch. He turns his back on her, he slumps there looking bored and stupid, he asks her where her family are now when she just told him Isis killed them all. Then he gets perky when he asks her about the fucking Nobel Prize.
Although Murad, 26, gave the president a very terse explanation of her activism, Murad did not convey the horrors or bravery of the journey that earned her the prestigious award: After ISIS kidnapped her and 6,500 Yazidi women and children, Murad became a sex slave who was raped on a daily basis. She escaped from ISIS in November 2014, and has since made it her mission to lobby world leaders to recognize — and condemn — how sexual assault and rape are used as weapons of war around the world, and to fight for the safety of the Yazidi.
A recent documentary by RYOT (which shares parent company Verizon Media with Yahoo), On Her Shoulders, follows Murad’s tireless work to bring “ISIS before the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.” The activist was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018, along with Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege, becoming the first Iraqi person and the second-youngest honoree to take home the prestigious award.
Trump doesn’t care about all that, he just wants pointers on how to get a Nobel Prize. (If he wants to go spend several years being held captive by Islamist fighters and being raped by them repeatedly, I definitely think he should jump at the chance.)
Nadia Murad: “They killed my mum, my six brothers…”
Trump: “Where are they now?”
NM: “They killed them. They are in the mass grave in Sinjar…”
Trump: “I know the area very well." https://t.co/rRvI6Dxr9w— Philip Gourevitch (@PGourevitch) July 19, 2019
What’s really appalling is the look on his face after she explains this to him. Then, when she’s done, he cheerfully pipes up “and you got a Nobel Prize?” The pained look on her face when he chirps that is hard to watch. He simply lacks the part of the brain capable of empathy.
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) July 19, 2019
Very much that.
I’ve never seen such an emotionally and mentally vacant human being in my life.
Does anyone know how to get him kidnapped by extraterrestrials? Taken to a planet a long way away? They could take the junior Trumps with him so he wouldn’t be lonely. Beam him up, Scotty, please.
Yeah, he’s got a golf course there,doesn”t he?
There is nothing wrong with democratic elections, only with the politicians who put themselves up for election. If I had the habit of hanging around court houses buttonholing all and sundry and telling them I was just busting to ‘serve’ on a jury, preferably for a serious case with serious penalties involved, I would probably be given the bum’s rush in short order, and deservedly so.
But politicians do it all the time, inevitably with personal histories.and motivations they would prefer were not examined too closely. Not all of them, mind. But far too many of them.
The problem as I see it is that the modern political systems result from modifications of authoritarian systems that have gone before. In the Anglosphere, these have replaced unelected royalty and nobility born to rule with elected individuals who commonly behave as if they were born to rule, and believe in themselves to that extent. Trump is an outstanding example of the type, as is Boris Johnson of the UK, Australia’s happy-clappy born again Christian PM Scott Morrison. (I do not know enough about Canada.) New Zealand’s PM Jacinda Adern appears to me to be the one honourable exception in the list.
The political party system means we have a choice between a limited number of policy packages, with the likelihood that none are entirely suitable to many voters at all: a bit like being condemned to eat every meal for the term of one’s natural life at McDonald’s.
I think we need two different elections for each constituency, state, country or whatever. The first to decide what policies we want, and once that is decided, a second election for the choice of the executives of the popular will to put those policies into effect, to be re-elected if their performance at executing the popular will is established as good enough.
But Catch-22: the transition to this would be in the hands of the current generation of politicians; and by the nature of things you could not choose a less suitable bunch.
Why would she even want to be near him?
@Omar
I think that part of the problem is that the skill set and personality you need to get to the top of a party (you need some ruthlessness, some self-centeredness etc.) is exactly what you do not want in someone who actually leads.
In one of Arthur C. Clarkes novels, a committee elects the earth present, and they elect only people who do not want the job and hope to be dismissed – but dismissal happens only if they do a good job. Sounds a bit weird, but not as weird as a system that can end up putting the Trumps and Johnsons of the world to the top…
There’s a lot of bad Trump behavior on display there, but part most are focusing on is not being represented accurately:
That is removing words and not even having an ellipsis to indicate that’s been done. Here’s what was actually said:
It could be punctuated differently, but those are the full words, and I think I’ve punctuated as Trump could reasonably have heard it.
Now, Trump’s a complete ass for interrupting her with “where are they now?” when she’s talking about the horrible things that happened to her family. But she hadn’t clearly said the brothers were dead at that point. She probably would have in the next sentence or two if he hadn’t so rudely interrupted. But cutting out words to disingenuously frame it as if she clearly had should be beneath us.
I agree that Trump’s behavior is overall disgusting (interrupting, looking away, bragging he knows the area well, seeming to brag that he got rid of ISIS, the bad segue to the Nobel prize, etc.).
My take on “Where are they now”: she had just made a statement about ISIS, and Trump was asking where ISIS, not the family, is.
Trump clearly doesn’t give a crap about the personal horrors this woman has been subjected to. He doesn’t care about the family. His other comments show that he is tallying enemies, troubled about how confusing it is to have to add to the enemies list. He wanted to congratulate someone on getting a Nobel Prize, and this sob story is boring him.
“I know the area very well.”
Bullshit! Trump couldn’t find Sinjar on a map of Sinjar.
What’s with his habit of making people stand to the side and slightly to the rear of him when he meets them in the Oval Office? The normal thing is to have people seated opposite so conversation can be face-to-face. The Trump method is immediately dismissive and extremely rude, forcing people to speak to the side of his face. I would suspect, if he were a normal person, that he was deaf in his left ear and hard of hearing in his right, requiring people to stand close so he can hear what’s being said. But this is Trump, and the answer is certainly more mundane. His vanity requires that he be front and centre of everything (he’d fit right in with the trans!), and nobody may come between him and the cameras.
Skeletor – so you say “Here’s what was actually said” on the basis of changing the punctuation on a spoken phrase? Seriously? The punctuation cannot be “actual” in either example because spoken language doesn’t include literal commas and periods. You think it could be punctuated differently, fine, but the accusations of misrepresentation are complete bullshit, and triply obnoxious in this context.
Why does Trump stage conversations that way? I think it’s so that he features center screen and everyone else is peripheral and also a supplicant. He thinks it looks royal. He does it for the same reason he keeps quoting people calling him “Sir.” He’s mentally a child, and a nasty child at that.
It also irks him that he has not been awarded a Nobel. Don’t forget how eagerly he told the world that Abe had nominated him for one. It annoys him that mere peons (aka “other people” in his mind) have been awarded these things, but not him.
It also has a certain last supper look to it (not perfect, of course, but good enough for someone who probably doesn’t know any more about art than he does about government). The whole God complex coming forward.
Hmm. I think that’s a stretch. Last Supper everybody’s at the table, assuming you mean the familiar painting. Not the same as Trumptoad squatting alone while everyone else stands, which is a very royal or nobility set-up. I think it’s all about Trump emphasizing his importanitude as much as he possibly can. (Yes I suppose making himself jesus would also do that except jesus was promptly executed but Trump wouldn’t know that but still. Basically I think Trump is all about the worldly and immediate and obvious.)
I don’t think Rump knows or cares enough about religion to have a God complex. Being fawned on as royalty? He grows that.
The paucity of his language: “We will look into that very strongly.”
Skeletor @ 6, again –
I just watched it again twice. (That part starts at 1:25). Your “correction” is complete bullshit. She did say “They killed my mom, my six brothers” – it’s absurd to claim that that comma should be a period and that we’re doing something suspect and nefarious by quoting it with the comma instead of your invented period. It’s what she said! Nitpicking is one thing, nitpicking with scolding is another, and nitpicking that gets it wrong with scolding is a whole other ball game. Just stop.
Trump could not have a God complex simply because he’d see that as a step down. Trump cannot conceive of a higher power than Trump.