r/politics • u/Quirkie The Netherlands • 11d ago

Paywall Trump, 79, Seems Utterly Perplexed About Where Alaska Is - The president made multiple comments suggesting he doesn’t know Alaska is part of the United States.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-seems-utterly-perplexed-about-where-alaska-is/
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u/ExZowieAgent Texas 11d ago

My guess is Putin keeps telling him Alaska belongs to Russia and Trump, being the idiot he is, believes him since he believes the last thing he was told.

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u/throwawayinthe818 10d ago

Did you catch Putin talking about many Russian- built churches and place names there are there? He’s laying out the historical justification for it as historically Russian.

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u/bastetlives 10d ago

I noticed that too. Same framing. He started his public address with it, as the lead, and it wasn’t short. He also made a big point about how we share a border (phased as a relatively unknown fact eg “people aren’t saying, yet”) and how it was so “easy to transport tanks across” during WW2.

This is exactly how he talked about the current war, and those before it. Long historical discussions to educate about the former empire .. then the war action is a one liner “thus, of course this”.

Americans are not just uneducated but resistant to education (I’m American!). Many don’t leave their town, or state, let alone travel to other countries, or learn the history, and the history of propaganda.

The statement was propaganda of course. But it was not only ignored but not even parsed to determine the flavor of propaganda and the intent, and the intended audience.

It was too much acknowledgement of the locale for the occasion to be for the host alone. Plus over our heads. It was for the Russian media: look where we are. It used to be ours. So so close. We could go here next.? Whatcha think? Can you believe they are just letting me say this here?

Planting domestic seeds. Flaunting political global power. Kind of a big deal. We should be outraged. There should have been big Native American displays of ancient heritage integrated into American unity to preempt this kind of thing, and some witty jokes written about the price tag to rebuff their comparatively short legacy claims in a polite but dismissive way.

We got none of that, sadly. Plus, planes? Whatever. A sophisticated drone swarm airshow would have been much more pointed.

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u/GutterRider 10d ago

Well said, thank you.