“You have a beautiful voice and a beautiful accent. The only problem is I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) February 5, 2025
Maybe the funniest Trump quote of all time. Instant classic.
pic.twitter.com/OMWCb8s7iI
I don't think it's funny at all. It's truly awkward when you are on public display in a position where you are under pressure to respond to a person who speaks in a way that you can't understand. I've been in that situation more than once. It's difficult! I probably said something like "I'm terribly sorry, but I couldn't understand you," which led to a repetition and an embarrassing struggle. Trump avoided the problem of spending time on a repetition, and he was quite gentle and gracious. The female reporter wanted to talk about the plight of women in Afghanistan, and that's not a topic for comedy. It also wasn't the topic of that press briefing, so it was good that he didn't veer into the problems of countries other than Israel and its adversaries.
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59 comments:
Yes, let's all blame those dastardly Islamists!
Here is a snippet from an interview of Mika's dad.
Le Nouvel Observateur: Former CIA director, Robert Gates, says in his memoirs: the American secret services assisted Afghan mujahedeen six months before the Soviet invasion. By that time, you were President Carter’s advisor and you played a key role on this. Do you confirm it?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of the story, the CIA began to assist mujahedeen in the year 1980, that is, after the invasion of the Soviet army against Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the truth that remained secret until today is quite different: it was on July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed his first order on the secret assistance to Kabul’s pro-Soviet regime opponents. That day I wrote a memorandum to the President in which I told him that that assistance would cause the Soviet intervention (…) we did not force the Russian intervention, we just, conscientiously, increased the intervention possibilities.
We did this. The communists had women's rights as a basic tenet of their ideology. A post communist Afghanistan would be a very different place that this 7th century hellhole we created. We taught the Taliban how to organize and take over a country, we armed them, we funded them.
The “plight of women in Afghanistan” was surely lessened dramatically by 20 years of U.S. inflicted war, and gay and trans propaganda. I got caught up in the war whooping after 9/11, and I am sorry that I did.
There's accent reduction training if she's interested.
Well, it is funny in a human way. Trump speaking frankly about the reality in front of him, despite the 'seriousness' of the setting.
Courses from India Sociology are a fun source of difficult learning.
Look, Biden would have had her question printed out on a little card in front of him — along with his answer.
So much more Presidential.
Prof, I’m considering the idea that 75 years of feminist, gay and trans propaganda was created, directed and funded by USAID to destabilize foreign nations, and then inevitably imported back into the U.S.. I’m also thinking that the leftist penetration and subversion of the churches and temples was the work of USAID.
Diversity means it's the listener's fault if they can't decipher the speaker's accent.
This will cause the emotional insane left to blow their collective tops in a fit of rage. again. Racist!
That's how the world works. Yesterday's enemies might be today's friends. Today's friends might be tomorrow's enemies.
You can learn the lessons of yesterday and you can plan for tomorrow, but today is where you live.
Nah, the 20th century origin of gay culture in the US was WW2. Many draftees went through the port cities (e.g., San Francisco, New York) when being shipped overseas. Gays met gays and stuck around in the relatively gay-friendly port cities. This morphed into Gay Pride circa 1970 as the (then hardcore) urban police cracked down and blackmailed gays (e.g., NYC Stonewall riots of 1969).
The trans culture was a tiny, tiny, tiny offshoot of gay culture (e.g., see John Waters explicit and satirical movies with Divine), and his humor relied on the stability of straight male-female culture to be funny. The trans explosion of the last 10 years follows from Obamacare requiring/offering insurance coverage for treatment, and from doctors exploiting a new profitable niche. Social media narcissism, role-play fantasies without real-world consequences, and short attention spans likely contribute to the trend.
Feminism was a 1970s reaction to the male-oriented Playboy, Rat Pack, and free-love movement of the 1960s. That had been great for men, so women wanted their share too. Live for today, don't have kids because the world is overpopulated...
Remember when Biden did all those open forum / full-transparency / no notebooks or cheat-sheet media fed/demohack rehearsal press conference meetings?
Yeah - Me neither.
"The female reporter wanted to talk about the plight of women in Afghanistan."
The post-9-11 invasion of Afghanistan was a misbegotten project from the start. Bush II was sheepish enough to adopt the PC version of warfare -- blow shit up, kill whoever points a weapon at you, but don't fuck with the existing culture. If we had fought WWII that way, Hermann Goering and Tojo Hideki would have been the first post-occupation premiers of Germany and Japan. Consequently, we left Afghanistan with the Taliban still in charge, and thanks to Bumbling/Evil Joe Biden, far more dangerously armed than ever.
Germany was a different place prior to Bismarck, and Germany today is more like Schiller's Deutschland than the Kaiser's. We got the 1946 culture war mostly right. Afghanistan in the 1960s was a far different place as well, at least in Kabul. Unfortunately, every president from Bush to Biden dropped the ball and caved to the cultural relativists, and thus the plight of Afghan women.
@tim maguire: This is how the deep state formed and its core function. They hire only those who can and will shift with the political winds. They don't like it when their power is threatened, such as "Drain the swamp." They will act when attacked.
The woman speaker was not anti Trump or anti America. She was just asking what Trump could do to help the women of Afghanistan. She must have been nervous because she repeated herself rather than ask the question simply and then wait for a response.
Is this reporter in the press room because the WH and Leavitt opened it up to non-MSM applicants? It's an interesting problem, juggling accents.
We “funded” them. Through USAID?
Me too.
Afghan women AND small Afghan boys who are preyed upon by the disgusting Afghan men.
1) He could not understand her.
2) Her question was somewhat lengthy... and she should have been given a microphone and told to speak clear and slow..
3) Trump should have said - "I'll make sure to catch up with you later." or something like it.
A good reminder. Thanks- Q.
The wife’s line is anything Broadchurch or lower. Lost…
Generally I’m pretty good except for Maryland and parts of the NY outer boroughs…
Trump treats people like this all the time. Why is this particular comment so out of bounds compared to all of the others?
Wasn't it the Northern Alliance we "taught", not the Taliban. The Northern Alliance was a fairly reliable ally, which is why Osama bin Laden had its leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, assassinated days before 9/11.
I have a different theory. Go on scholar.google.com and look up Ibuprofen and "endocrine disrupter" and look at when "Children's Motrin" first appeared on the market.
Here, check it out yourself: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=ibuprofen+endocrine+disruptor&btnG=&oq=ibuprofen+end
Its more complicated then that the Soviets thought they could tame the Pathans as the brits learned the hard way tariq amin was not cooperating
General zia wanted to spread islam through the madrassas king fahd wanted to reassert his claim after the grand mosque siege
"Wasn't it the Northern Alliance we "taught", not the Taliban."
I was just quoting Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, and he's dead now, so you can't ask him to clarify, but this is what he said further down in the interview:
NO: Aren’t you sorry either for favoring Islamic fundamentalism and providing weapons and consultancies to future terrorists?
B: What is the most important thing when you look at world history, the Taliban or the fall of the Soviet empire? Some excited Islamists or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?
We are talking about 1979 here, BTW, not 2001. I doubt that Mika's dad would be so open about how he thought up and executed creating a terrorist state in Afghanistan, you know, after September 11, though.
Here's one:
We conclude that, at concentrations relevant to human exposure and within a particular narrow ‘early window’ of sensitivity within first trimester, ibuprofen causes direct endocrine disturbances in the human fetal testis and alteration of the germ cell biology.
jrytrpt, does it ever bother you how Biden took us to the brink of WW3, and Trump still has some fancy footwork to do to get us out of it with some semblance of our military prestige intact, and without missiles flying all across Europe, and perhaps in our own skies?
"No! It's the mean tweets that are the most important!"
Trump married two women with foreign accents, so I think it'd be hard to accuse him of lacking respect for this lady on account of her accent.
In any event, I was surprised that nobody standing around her, including the staffer with the microphone, didn't just repeat the question on the woman's behalf.
We have a lot of foreign customers at my store whom struggles with English language communication. Sometimes several iterations and multiple hand gestures are required. Trump was being honest and tried to give the reporter a gentle landing. Totally within his character of dealing with all sorts of characters.
How ridiculous. Its nots Trump's job to understand her, its her job to make herself understood. If she can't shout out a question that an be understood, get some training.
And the question wasn't relevant or even sensible. Women in Afghanistan? Well, I hope they're doing OK. I hope the men are doing well too. And now that they're not getting killed in a war, I suppose they will be happier. Why is that any of Trump's business or ours?
BIden wouldn't have answered the question, because there would've been no press conference to begin with.
And yes Trump was very gracious, but then he usually is to people who are polite to him.
I saw that live. I couldn't understand her either.
I've been in that situation; we probably all have. Trump handled it well.
She could've asked, "What about Afghan woman now?" Slowly. Then maybe added a few more words for more nuance.
Our great secular republic shouldn't involve itself in Muzzie countries, no matter how much the men beat their wives and bugger their nephews.
I think it He didn’t know what her point was, that’s why he gave a general answer.
Germany of course, and to a lesser extent Japan, had great cultures and civilizations, and reasonably civilized governments, before the nuts took over.
Afghanistan has been a shithole since the days of Alexander the Great and will be a shithole when our grandchildren's grandchildren are in nursing homes.
The only words I understood in that were "Afghanistan" and "Taliban." I suppose Trump could have asked her or someone else to explain what she was saying, but time moves on, and even when politicians understand the questions that they are asked they don't always answer them. Is impoliteness -- if that's what it was -- worse than the usual deception?
Afghan woman (stay away, baby)
Afghan woman (stay away, baby)
Afghan woman (stay away, baby)
I could love you so (no, no)
I could love you so (no, no)
Afghan woman
I could love you so
(Mm, mm, mm)
h/t Bill Medley
The female reporter wanted to talk about the plight of women in Afghanistan, and that's not a topic for comedy.
Alas. If only the US Army was on the ground in Afghanistan with assault weapons and artillery pieces, backed up by Army helicopters and Air Force jets with smart bombs. The. American feminists could go in and help their Afghani sisters. But out of the past quarter century how often was that the case? Granted, it would have been hard work on the part of US feminists, but backed up by the US military, at least with enough effort, it would have had a chance of success.
Now feminists are reduced to raising the plight of Afghani women in press conferences. That’s really, really easy to do, but without boots on the ground there’s not much Trump can do, is there? Are the feminists proposing that we go back in? Not much chance of that.
No, there’s nothing to be done now but it was an important issue for her and that’s why she raised it. If she had spoken more clearly Trump would have detailed all the ways Biden had failed our soldiers and now how people there were suffering. That would have been a win win. She should have prepared her question better.
Reagan had hearing aids and couldn't hear a nervous child's repeated question when visiting a school. Hearing loss was one reason Morris called him "an apparent airhead."
AA, "The female reporter wanted to talk about the plight of women in Afghanistan, and that's not a topic for comedy."
So start hammering away about the cruelty of Islam. Domestic violence is found in all societies, but only in Islam is it divinely sanctioned. Surah 4,34.
Sadly - the female population of Afghanistan is of little concern to... anyone.
Morris turns out to have been the airhead
Because they didn't understand her either. I listened to the excerpt 3 times and still couldn't puzzle out what she was asking.
@gspencer: tell her, not me. I’m simply saying what I thought she said and what I think her motivation was.
You meant your comment for AA, still the point’s the same
HEY HOW ABOUT,,SORRY I DIDNT UNDERSTAND YOU I''LL HAVE SOMEONE ASK YOU WHAT YOU SAID AND i'LL GIVE YOU AN ANSWER.THANK YOU...Instead of yeah your good...YOU know they are called interpreters. c'mon man,
I'm occasionally called upon to stand in front of a large group of people and conduct a meeting or a seminar etc. As my hearing has deteriorated, that's becoming increasingly difficult. That's even true with one on one situations--say a cashier or sales person. I simply can't hear certain pitches. I've got sympathy for both Trump and the speaker in this situation.
You got that right.
“…and that's not a topic for comedy.”
Let’s get Gilbert Gottfried’s opinion on that.
Afghans, at least in the cities, were Westernizing in the 1960s. Then something happened next door to them in about 1979 ...
I think you need a 'Trump is an inkblot' tag.
"It's truly awkward when you are on public display in a position where you are under pressure to respond to a person who speaks in a way that you can't understand."
We call that "business as usual" in the modern high-tech workplace. Those H-1B's mostly speak English, but that doesn't mean an American can understand them.
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