Our idiot king

Ladies and gentleman, the president of the United States:

But beyond that it’s OK if the tax plan increases the deficit?
It is OK, because it won’t increase it for long. You may have two years where you’ll…you understand the expression “prime the pump”?

Yes.
We have to prime the pump.

It’s very Keynesian.
We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world. Have you heard that expression before, for this particular type of an event?

Priming the pump?
Yeah, have you heard it?

Yes.
Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard it. I mean, I just…I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good. It’s what you have to do.

It’s…
Yeah, what you have to do is you have to put something in before you can get something out.

I’ve mentioned before that for me the most startling discovery about Donald Trump is that he is such an ignorant and stupid man.  Now Republicans in recent decades have taken to electing some deeply incurious and simplistically-minded presidents, but in comparison to Trump, Bush the Lesser is Isaiah Berlin and Ronald Reagan was Jeremy Bentham.

Trump isn’t just stupid and ignorant for a person with a kind of important job. We’re not grading on a curve here: Trump is stupid and ignorant in comparison to the average American.  Which when you consider what the average American does and doesn’t know, and then mull over that hypothetical paragon’s likely reasoning skills . . . oh yes I’m being the worst thing you can be, a snotty “elitist,” who is not awed by the simple wisdom of the common folk, but for reals, even or I should say especially the common folk know what the simple English expression “prime the pump” means literally.  I mean it’s one thing not to be familiar with the oeuvre of the great economist Alicia Keynes, but have you ever tried to mow a lawn or draw a cup of beer out of a keg or . . . it’s alright doctor I’ll come quietly now.