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.

Trump's original tweet was quickly deleted, but not before it was shared widely.

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.

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