On Saturday morning, while Iran was announcing it was closing the Strait of Hormuz and accusing the United States of violating their freshly-signed ceasefire agreement — an agreement that was already showing signs of collapse less than seventy-two hours after Trump declared it a historic victory — the President of the United States posted a poll on Truth Social.
The question: “Which do you prefer, Dumocrat or Dumbocrat?” MultiState
He was not being flippant. He was genuinely seeking guidance. “In one case, you simply exchange the ‘e’ for ‘u,’ so simple and precise,” he explained. “Many people don’t know, or assume, that DUMB ends in ‘b.'” Stateline
Let that sit for a moment.
The 47th President of the United States, holding the nuclear codes and the fate of a collapsing Iran agreement he negotiated personally, paused his Saturday morning to share with tens of thousands of online followers that many people — many people — do not know how to spell the word “dumb.” He then offered them two options for a playground nickname and asked them to vote. By Saturday afternoon, with more than 60,000 votes in, “Dumocrat” was leading 63 percent to 37 percent. MultiState
The man who cannot sit through an intelligence briefing without a picture book has thoughts on branding.
The argument for “Dumocrat,” per Trump, is its elegance: one letter swapped, clean, precise. The argument against “Dumbocrat,” also per Trump, is that spelling out the full word D-U-M-B somehow loses “the identity to Democrats.” He did not elaborate on what identity would be lost, exactly, by making the insult slightly more legible. This is the level of strategic communication analysis happening in the White House right now.
Meanwhile, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz to maritime traffic. Fuel prices were soaring. The $300 billion reconstruction fund his own son-in-law apparently helped design was already being picked apart. The MOU was unraveling. And the leader of the free world was workshopping his insult vocabulary with the internet. Buildermuse
There is, buried in this, a genuinely revealing moment. When Trump writes that “many people don’t know, or assume, that DUMB ends in ‘b,'” veteran journalist Chuck Todd noted that “many people” is usually Trump’s stand-in for self-discovery. The man who regularly misspells words in his own social media posts — “Dumocrats,” “Winers,” “Covfefe,” a greatest-hits catalog of presidential illiteracy — is now holding a spelling clinic for his followers. “People who aren’t dumb know ‘dumb’ ends in ‘b,'” observed political organizer Melanie D’Arrigo. “MAGA should be insulted that he treats them as if they’re idiots.” nvnv
She’s right. The whole exercise is an insult to his own base — a poll that presupposes they need a letter-by-letter explanation of a four-letter word, conducted by a man who has made it his personal brand to call other people stupid. The irony is so thick you could practically touch it. Like a loose piece of Reflecting Pool liner floating in algae-green water.
He also, in the same posting session, ran a separate poll asking whether ICE should be rebranded to NICE — National Immigration and Customs Enforcement — on the grounds that it would “totally discombobulate” hostile reporters who would be forced to say “NICE agents” instead of “ICE agents.” He is eighty years old. The Strait of Hormuz was closing. He was playing word games on his phone. MultiState
“However you spell it,” author Jennifer Erin Valent wrote, “making this man president is, hands down, one of the dumbest things American society has ever done.” nv
D-U-M-B. It ends in a B. Many people know this. One of them is not running the country.