Former president Donald Trump called Melania ‘Mercedes’ as he praised his wife during a speech in Washington DC. The crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gave the former First Lady a standing ovation as Mr Trump described how “people love her”. “Oh look at that Mercedes, that’s pretty good” he said as the audience stood and applauded. The GOP presidential hopeful was making the keynote speech on 24 February on the same day as voters head to the polls in the South Carolina primary.
  • spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works
    2273·
    10 months ago

    Can you imagine the wall to wall coverage had it been Biden who called his wife by the wrong name? It would go on for weeks.

    Because it’s Trump they’ll be nary a peep about this from the “liberal” media.

    Edit: Confirmed this morning - not a word about Trump’s demented rambling on the front pages of CNN, NBC, NYT or WA Post. The GQP front-runner’s inability to string a coherent sentence together or remember his wife’s name should be front page news. If Biden tripped over a mic stand it would be.

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
      2026·
      10 months ago

      Look at that Mercedes wouldn’t be a wrong name, it would be objectification to the point of calling your wife a trophy car, not even a trophy wife… Or maybe I read it differently

      • El Barto@lemmy.world
        562·
        10 months ago

        Mercedes is an actual woman’s name:

        “The source of the name was Spanish businesswoman Mercedes Jellinek, whose father Emil Jellinek was a business associate of the company’s founder, Gottlieb Daimler.”

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
          126·
          10 months ago

          No offense, but a thread of people not having read “Count of Monte-Cristo” is just scary to see.

          • El Barto@lemmy.world
            6·
            10 months ago

            You don’t need need to read the novel. Plenty of movie and other media adaptations out there.

              • El Barto@lemmy.world
                5·
                10 months ago

                I haven’t ready it yet, so I wouldn’t know. I didn’t grow up studying English literature. I’ve read plenty of Spanish ones, though.

                What do you mean by easy to read? As in, easy to understand? 1,200 pages sound daunting for most people.

                • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
                  31·
                  10 months ago

                  I meant the flow, Dumas is in general known for that.

                  Also French, not English, but he may be less known in Spanish-speaking countries, I didn’t know that. Thought Dumas was somewhat of a classic everyone reads in their childhood, a bit like Jules Verne.

          • Moneo@lemmy.world
            1·
            10 months ago

            What a shit take lol. It’s not even that good of a book, way too fucking long.

        • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
          74·
          10 months ago

          That’s irrelevant. Trump said “Look at that Mercedes”. That’s the sentence structure for an object. Not a person, no matter what their name is.

          • El Barto@lemmy.world
            71·
            10 months ago

            Oooh, serves me right for not reading TFA. Yeah, with context, it’s clear he’s objectifying her.

            Edit: I saw the video. It’s debatable that we said “look at that Mercedes!” There was a “wow” and a pause in between. Did he mean to say “look at that Mercedes?” Possibly. But it’s also possible that he meant “Look at that, wow! Mercedes, that’s pretty good!”

      • Simulation6@sopuli.xyz
        113·
        10 months ago

        Mercedes is the main character in The Merchant of Venice, it’s been a woman’ name for a long time. Could be his pet name for her?

        • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
          37·
          10 months ago

          Mercedes is a name, yes. The sentence structure fits more to speaking about an object though. Replace the name Mercedes with Ferrari and you see how it still works? I’m not saying his sentence structure is always correct but referring to his wife as a high end luxury object is something he would think is flattering (and many women would infact blush at being called so). Many others would feel objectified and think the speaker was a creep, hence the way I read it.

          • MisterFeeny@kbin.social
            11·
            10 months ago

            Did you just read the quote of what he said or did you actually listen to it? By the way he says it, it’s clear he’s using it as a name.

            I would say the article even printed the quote wrong. They wrote, “Oh look at that Mercedes, that’s pretty good.”
            They dropped a word and in my opinion got the punctuation wrong. I would quote it as, “Oh look at that, wow. Mercedes, that’s pretty good.”

            • go $fsck yourself@lemmy.world
              2·
              10 months ago

              “Oh look at that, wow. Mercedes, that’s pretty good. Wow, she’s good.”

              Yeah it’s very clear he’s referring to her, not a car.

          • SkippingRelax@lemmy.world
            66·
            10 months ago

            Since when is Mercedes a high end luxury object? Its one car maker from Germany. Do they make some higher end models? Sure but hardly Ferrari, Lamborghini or Bugatti.

    • PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works
      523·
      10 months ago

      I’m baffled that people actually think the media goes after him for his speaking errors. A few people on the right do, but most of the MSM seems to still feel responsible for Trump’s election and downplay Biden’s mistakes.

      • Natanael@slrpnk.net
        31·
        10 months ago

        It’s literally the reverse, they try to frame everything as “this is a problem for Biden”, even when he does things successfully, especially NYT really insists on framing everything as a problem. And then they completely ignore most of Trump’s failures.

        Don’t forget that most of mass media companies has owners with a right wing leaning.

        • PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          10 months ago

          We probably consume different media. They talk about it (it’s hard to really avoid it) but they’re a bit more lenient in the analysis.

          You guys are a good portion of my media consumption now, save for a few center/center-right youtube channels. Not many left of those, though. It might just be that I feel like you guys downplay it.

          It’s hard to ignore the fact that neither of them are fit to be running, but here we are.

  • Rapidcreek@lemmy.world
    1931·
    10 months ago

    The GOP is about to nominate an old man who can’t remember his 3rd wife’s name who is facing 91 federal charges.

    • PlantDadManGuy@lemmy.world
      50·
      10 months ago

      Who, more importantly, is literally a traitor to our country and attempted to overthrow democracy (albeit a pitiful halfhearted attempt via his angry lapdogs)

    • S_204@lemm.ee
      2113·
      10 months ago

      This cognitive debate between two geriatrics is just sad to see. I’m not American, our politicians aren’t qualified for other reasons, but I’m so curious to see one of them die in office and the mayhem it’s gonna cause when it happens. My stock market play would be completely different LoL.

      • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
        321·
        10 months ago

        Dying in office won’t produce mayhem. We have a well established process for that. The VP takes over and fights with Congress over who gets appointed as the next VP. The only drama will be who fills that role.

        Dying just before the election? Now that will be a clown show. If the vacancy happens after the party convention the ballots likely wouldn’t be able to be changed. However, as you likely know we are not voting for President and VP directly, we are voting for a slate of Electors pledged to the candidates. Many states bind those electors to vote according to the popular vote, and those states would need to pass quick laws changing that process.

        If it’s the winning side whose candidate bites it, there needs to be a ton of coordination to all this. Because there is still a process to counting those EC votes. If some votes come in for the deceased candidate at the top of the ticket and some don’t, they will likely be counted separately and as a result no one would technically have the majority.

        We do have a weird way to resolve that, though: if the EC has no majority, the House votes on the President and the Senate votes on the VP. But the House vote has an additional wrinkle, in that each State’s delegation gets one vote. So, all 50+ of California’s members get 1 vote, and Wyoming’s Lone member also gets a vote. The math there favors the Republican candidate, even if Democrats control the House.

        It could also result in the Republican choice being President while the Democrat becomes VP, which would make for the world’s most awkward Peformance Reviews.

        • S_204@lemm.ee
          415·
          10 months ago

          If you don’t think that the US president dying in office will lead to global upheaval, you’re crazy. The stock market went nuts when the defense Secretary was hospitalized. There’s global responses to tweets FFS.

          • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
            25·
            10 months ago

            The stock market fluctuating is not mayhem. It’s designed to go nuts. Traders make money on volatility. I bet there is some high frequency trader who makes millions of dollars in trades every time Elon takes a shit.

            Global upheaval is some country deciding to invade a US ally because we had an election and the fascist lost, even within our EC guidelines, but might take office anyway.

            • S_204@lemm.ee
              312·
              10 months ago

              It’s a reflection of sentiment, when it’s going haywire that means the decision makers are nervous.

              The US is clearly in a weaker position in terms of global influence than it’s been in the past 30 to 50 years. Any and every opportunity that they offer Iran, Russia, China etc. Is obviously going to further destabilize in unstable situation. The US can’t even get its budgets in order and face shutdowns on a quarterly basis. Throw a backup president into that situation and you don’t think there’s going to be major problems? That’s beyond wishful thinking and firmly in the fantasy land.

              • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
                11·
                10 months ago

                Sentiment is not reality. The stock market is a voting machine in the short term, but a weighing machine in the long term. This means yearly financials are the only thing that really matter for investing. Do not worry about a 20-50% drop in prices. That appears to happen every decade or so.

                Just because it “goes crazy”, I guarantee you US Treasury Bonds will not go down in price. In fact, I bet they go up in price. Whenever there’s large issues in the world there’s a “flight to safety”. US Treasuries are the safest assets around.

                • S_204@lemm.ee
                  14·
                  10 months ago

                  I’m fascinated by the ability to see how completely fucked up American politics has been for the past decade+, and honestly believe that a president dying in office wouldn’t throw the government completely off the rails. It’s barely on the rails right now.

              • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
                7·
                10 months ago

                But at least there is a clear sucession if a President dies in office. Yes, they are the backup, but continuity is not in question. Its happened before, the Republic survived. We haven’t had any candidate die right before an election.

                Well, there was RFK, he was killed before the convention and he wasn’t the front-runner at the time anyway. But that 1968 Democratic Convention could be rightfully described as “upheaval”.

            • sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz
              20·
              10 months ago

              I remember that press conference. It was so clear that someone had mentioned that bleach and UV are effective virus killers and he just ran with it like a PSA for awareness of Dunning-Krueger.

                • helenslunch@feddit.nl
                  2·
                  10 months ago

                  The rate of everything goes up and down constantly. I’m reminded of the non-stop “x is down 3% as uncorrelated event takes place” financial articles.

                  In the case of bleach poisoning, the numbers are low, so going from 1 to 2 poisonings can be a “100% increase”.

                  From your link:

                  Critically, association is not causation, and with a frightened public doing whatever it can to protect itself from the virus, the same increases in poisonings might have happened regardless of Trump’s remarks.

              • Zitronensaft@feddit.de
                4·
                10 months ago

                That whole thing was so ridiculous, they were talking about what kills the virus on surfaces. There are a lot of things that can sanitize a table or counter but that doesn’t mean they can kill germs in your body without also killing you. Imagine having a sunburn inside your lungs because someone shoved a light down there, that was Trump’s genius solution to the pandemic in that moment.

              • helenslunch@feddit.nl
                4·
                10 months ago

                He’s so narcissistic that he legitimately thought he randomly came up with a cure for COVID on the spot that no one had thought of.

      • El Barto@lemmy.world
        7·
        10 months ago

        As if they couldn’t give them a fake name.

        Like a stripper named “Mandy,” you wouldn’t assume that was her real name.

  • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
    1042·
    10 months ago

    The thought of the day that I get to watch Donald Trump finally stroke out on stage for good is honestly what keeps me going at this point.

  • hOrni@lemmy.world
    1022·
    10 months ago

    The guy who gave his daughter plastic surgery treats women as objects. It’s not even shocking. It’s not news. It’s nothing. It’s obvious. The weird part is, that people like him for it.

    • lolcatnip@reddthat.comEnglish
      331·
      10 months ago

      I usually manage to call my possessions by their correct names. Trump has dementia.

      • pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online
        29·
        10 months ago

        The number of people who don’t seem to get that is staggering. He’s shown clear signs of cognitive decline since at most 2020. I know mental health and elder care professionals that were noticing it as early ad 2016.

        Just watch his interviews from around 9/11. He’s still a stupid, pompous, narcissistic, lying piece of shit with delusions of grandiosity, but he could speak coherently and form complete thoughts.

        It’s likely only a matter of months before he finally sundowns with cameras on him, although I’m sure his handlers are trying their hardest to keep that from happening.

        • Loui@feddit.de
          41·
          10 months ago

          You could have said the same about George W Bush.

          There are reels of him saying stupid dumb stuff as a president when he was coherent as governor of Texas.

          • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
            16·
            10 months ago

            You could have said the same about George W Bush.

            People did say the same things about George W. Bush! He was a horrible president, too!

      • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
        14·
        10 months ago

        I’d like to believe that most of his voting base don’t want to fuck their kids. Donnie was just raised in a… special environment, which produced his ah bigly brain

    • Fleamo@lemmy.world
      710·
      10 months ago

      People don’t “like him for it” they like him despite it. Just because people like an unlikable person doesn’t mean they like everything about him.

      • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
        102·
        10 months ago

        They like him because he does the horrible things that they want him to do. He hurts the people they don’t like.

  • eran_morad@lemmy.world
    711·
    10 months ago

    Some witch named Mercedes is polishing his mushroom. That’s fine tho, I’m sure melanoma has a side piece.

    • Erasmus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      50·
      10 months ago

      I said this in another thread that I bet some stripper or Porn star was banging him on the side and he slipped again.

      Just imagine if Biden called Jill Biden ‘Jane’ or the like - the media would be be all over him for days poking fun at his supposed dementia.

    • betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.worldEnglish
      251·
      10 months ago

      Considering Donald’s well-documented desire to play the world’s most disappointing game of hide-the-underfilled-cocktail-frank with his own daughter, maybe Eric is that side piece. Shit doesn’t fall far from the ass.

  • WoahWoah@lemmy.world
    512·
    10 months ago

    I mean, it doesn’t make it better, but he got confused because he was talking about Mercedes Schlapp earlier.

  • gloss@discuss.tchncs.de
    461·
    10 months ago

    Is his brain even going to last the nine months til the election? It feels like in just a month or two he will have degraded to saying the n-word on stage while talking about how bad he wants to fuck his daughter.

      • Username02@lemmy.world
        61·
        10 months ago

        Republicans are fine with killing transgenders but saying the n word might be too much. Not ironical.

        • El Barto@lemmy.world
          10·
          10 months ago

          You mean, saying it loud.

          Edit: Or more like, saying it out loud in public. Thank you, valutdweller013.

          • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
            2·
            10 months ago

            Outloud in public you mean, theres something weird about ones grandmother calling a small club a n-word beater. Especially since this is the same woman who praised my tolerance for having a trans friend in highschool, but then again shes the one who pointed out to me they were trans. I am dense as a fucking brick.

    • hOrni@lemmy.world
      2·
      10 months ago

      The cut before he says “Mercedes that’s pretty good” kinda annoys me. Is there a full uncut version? Honestly it seems like footage manipulation, I’m not really sure that he is talking about Melania in that sentence.

      • snake@lemmy.world
        5·
        10 months ago

        Unfortunately he is not losing his mind just yet… he is in fact addressing Mercedes Schlapp who is actually in the audience.

        I had to look into it because it also seemed to me that these were two unrelated sentences.

      • Tolookah@discuss.tchncs.de
        3·
        10 months ago

        How he stings together sentences, even if the previous one was about his wife, this one could be about cars, and the next one might be about air in potato chip bags.