Trump and Churchill – separated at birth?

Yup, because Churchill always downplayed a crisis – like this:

“We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind…many, many long months of struggle and of suffering.”

— Winston Churchill address to the nation, May 10, 1940

Not comparable, you think? The United Kingdom lost 449,000 military and civilian casualties in six years in WW2. The current forecast for one year of COVID-19 is for 410,000 fatalities in the United States.

And of course Winnie greatly encouraged deceiving the public:

“It was necessary above all to warn the House and the country of the misfortunes which impended upon us. There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away. The British people can face peril or misfortune with fortitude and buoyancy, but they bitterly resent being deceived or finding that those responsible for their affairs are themselves living in a fool’s paradise.”

— Winston Churchill, “The Second World War”

22 thoughts on “Trump and Churchill – separated at birth?

  1. Indy, I think we agree politically on pretty much everything other than social justice and social engineering.

  2. worse yet he wouldn’t have told the country yhat Japan did not bomb us at Pearl Harbor until Japan attacked Calif and then claim he did not want to panic the American people

    1. The US would have joined the Axis in those cases. Most of his supporters are death cult Evangelicals that would loved to wipe out another religion, or white supremacists neo-Nazis anyway.

  3. If Trump were leading in WWII he would claim bombs raining in London weren’t from Germany but from left wing extremists. And if people then were as fucking stupid as now, half of them would believe him.

    1. If the left wing extremists are starting the fires, why shouldn’t we place the blame on them? Sorry it hurts your narrative. Feel free to google the names – in fact, I urge you to.

      Jeddiah Fulton
      Alberto Vincent Acosta
      Kevin Carle
      Ivan Geronimo Gomez
      Guadalupe Molina-Pacheco
      Julian Draper
      Demarco Covey
      Wesley James Bergman
      Elias Pendergrass
      Anita Esquivel
      Vanya Hummel
      John Davies
      Christine Comello
      Jesse Peterson
      Jeffrey Accord
      Milton Loice Moran
      Anthony Travis Bodda
      Michael Jared Bakkela
      Jonathan Maas

      1. Congratulations. You have assembled a small list of random dipshits. Yep, these people are making the world worse!

        Meanwhile corrupt politicians are being bought and sold by even more corrupt corporations. The world burns so a few rich people can get their profits just a tiny bit faster.

      2. What color’s the sky in your world today, bro? Google some of these, get a clue –

        Greg Palast
        Barbara Ehrenreich
        Ted Rall
        Glen Greenwald
        Jello Biafra
        Ian MacKaye
        David Nutt
        Ben Goldacre
        Nelson Ahlgren
        David Graeber
        Thomas Piketty
        Paul Krugman
        Richard Lenski
        Chris Rodda
        Carl Sagan
        Harlan Ellison
        Michael Harriot
        Ursula Leguin
        Darren Brown

  4. Well wherever do you start with all those similarities? Towering intelligence, farsightedness, physical and moral courage, honesty, wit and literary craftmanship, skill at whitewashing an ancestor’s somewhat checkered career (Marlborough in Churchill’s case), decency and empathy, and a reverence for his country and its constitution (written or not). And skill at switching parties – Trump has changed his registration six or so times, Churchill jumped twice – (“Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.”).
    How could you ever distinguish the one from the other?

  5. I think Donald Trump has always lived in fool’s paradise, or at least has done his best to do so. Perhaps his many, many failures all stem from trying to make it real. One must give him credit for being able to fail so often and yet rise to fail again, and on such a large scale. No con man has conned his way into the American presidency before, Does that say more about him, or the present American public?

    1. “As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” ~ H.L. Mencken

      TBF pretty sure Mencken was talking about Warren G. Harding. 😛

      “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” also attributed to Mencken although no one could find a direct quote lol.

      Yielding back the balance of my time …

      1. The original Mencken quote is:

        “No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.”

        Over the years it has been condensed into the more pithy statement, but the sentiment remains the same.

        Reference: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/03/01/underestimate/

      2. The actual quote: “No one in this world, so far as I know … has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”

        H.L. Mencken, “Notes on Journalism”, Chicago Tribune, September 19, 1926

        1. Favorite Mencken quote, even though the original isn’t as pithy as the altered frequently misquoted version:

          Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong

          1. I like a similar one

            I can’t remember the name of the naturalist, but he came to this conclusion in studying the behavior of animals, and it has become my favorite.

            Paraphrased:

            In undertaking the study of any new subject, look first to the conventional wisdom. More often than not, the the exact opposite is the truth.

            Another one I cite frequently:

            One of the useful things about age is realizing that conventional wisdom is often simply inertia with a candy coating of conformity.

      3. Harding is the most Trump-like president. He would have friends over to play poker (OK, OK, Trump would never have friends, but still…), lose, and pay them off in White House china. He was a well-known dip, if he was smarter than Trump it’s at least close.
        Andrew Johnson is first runner-up, which is more important than people realize. If, for any reason, Harding is unable to continue laying there rotting away like a big dead idiot, then Johnson would have to assume his duties as most Trump-like president.

          1. Good point, maybe Johnson does deserve the top spot. Either way, Rump shore is the gift that keeps on taking.

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