Trump’s ‘dumb’ story makes no sense

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There are far more important issues to discuss. But in these divided times, surely we can all come together for a brief moment and agree that President Donald Trump’s “dumb” story makes no sense.

Trump has been saying it over and over for months, straight-faced and dead serious, as he tries to brand Democrats as “Dumocrats.” The president who has a long history of asserting nobody knew things lots of people actually knew is this time declaring that…nobody knows, or at least most people don’t know, that “dumb” ends with the letter B.

“Most people don’t know that ‘dumb’ has a B at the end,” he told Republican lawmakers at the White House on Wednesday. “You know, they think it’s D-U-M, and that’s okay.”

“Most people don’t know that ‘dumb’ has a B,” he said at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in July.

“Nobody knows that ‘dumb’ has a B,” he said in a New York Post interview in June.

“Most people don’t know that, you know, ‘dumb’ ends with a B. But most people don’t know,” he said in a Fox News interview in May.

To be very generous to Trump, his “most people” claim cannot be authoritatively fact-checked because there has not been a national spelling test on the word “dumb.” And it’s certainly true that some Americans struggle with literacy in general and spelling in particular.

But…come on here. “Dumb”? A common four-letter word kids learn in grade school? Most people know how to spell “dumb.” This is obvious.

So why is the president of the United States going out of his way to establish a fantasy world in which most people don’t know – or even that nobody knows – a thing most people clearly know?

We don’t believe the critics who claim it’s because Trump himself just learned “dumb” has a B. Rather, it’s more likely this nonsense is a product of the president’s insistence on being constantly and universally viewed as brilliant – that someone questioned the wisdom of “Dumocrat,” his preferred spelling of the juvenile insult, and he preferred to justify it by making the public sound woefully ignorant rather than admit this might not be his finest nicknaming work.

“If you replace the E with a U, instead of Democrat you have Dumocrat,” the president explained on Tuesday, as he has on multiple previous occasions. “And most people don’t know that ‘dumb’ has a B at the end. You know, they think it’s D-U-M, and that’s okay. So it’s a one-letter change and you go no more E, you just put a D, and you got a Dumocrat.”

We’ll never know for certain what is happening here. Which is fine given how dumb this whole thing is.

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还有许多更重要的问题需要讨论。但在如今这个分裂的时代，我们难道不能短暂地达成共识，认为唐纳德·特朗普总统的“愚蠢”说法毫无道理吗？

几个月来，特朗普一直一本正经、一本正经地重复这句话，试图把民主党人贴上“蠢货民主党人”（Dumocrats）的标签。这位总统一贯喜欢断言没人知道一些其实很多人都知道的事情，而这一次，他宣称……没人知道，或者至少大多数人不知道，“dumb”（愚蠢的）这个词是以字母B结尾的。

“大多数人不知道‘dumb’这个词的结尾是B，”他周三在白宫对共和党议员们说。“你知道，他们以为是DUM，这也没关系。”

“大多数人不知道‘dumb’这个词也有字母B，”他在7月份的白宫记者晚宴上说道。

“没人知道‘dumb’这个词后面还有个B，”他在6月份接受《纽约邮报》采访时说道。

“大多数人不知道，你知道，‘dumb’这个词是以字母B结尾的。但大多数人确实不知道，”他在五月份接受福克斯新闻采访时说道。

往好处想，特朗普的“大多数人”的说法确实无法得到权威的事实核查，因为目前还没有针对“dumb”（愚蠢的）一词进行过全国性的拼写测试。当然，一些美国人的读写能力普遍较差，拼写尤其如此，这的确是事实。

但是……拜托。“笨蛋”？一个孩子们在小学就学过的常见四个字母的单词？大多数人都知道“笨蛋”怎么拼写。这显而易见。

那么，美国总统为什么要费尽心思去构建一个大多数人不知道——甚至没有人知道——但大多数人显然都知道的事情的幻想世界呢？

我们不相信那些批评者的说法，即这是因为特朗普本人刚刚才知道“dumb”也有个“b”。相反，更有可能的是，这种荒谬的说法源于总统坚持要时刻、普遍地被视为才华横溢——有人质疑“Dumocrat”（他偏爱的那个幼稚侮辱词的拼写）的合理性，而他宁愿通过让公众显得极其无知来为自己的行为辩解，也不愿承认这可能不是他起绰号的最佳作品。

“如果你把E换成U，民主党（Democrat）就变成了杜莫克拉特（Dumocrat），”总统周二解释道，他此前也多次这样解释过。“而且大多数人不知道‘dumb’（愚蠢的）结尾是B。你知道，他们会以为是DUM，这也没关系。所以，这只是一个字母的改变，E就没了，换成D，就变成了杜莫克拉特。”

我们永远无法确切知道这里发生了什么。考虑到整件事有多么愚蠢，这倒也无妨。