from the how-is-this-reality? dept

Over the weekend, the President of the United States fell for obvious satire from a website literally called “The Dunning Kruger Times.”

Donald Trump—a man with access to the best, most accurate information on basically any subject—posted to Truth Social a screenshot claiming that “DOGE halts yearly payments of $2.5 million to Barack Obama for ‘royalties linked to Obamacare.’ Obama has collected this payment since 2010, for a total of $40 million in taxpayer dollars.”

Trump’s comment on this fabrication? “WOW!”

This is, obviously, complete and utter nonsense. It’s so stupid it almost feels silly to debunk it, but: Obama does not and has never received “royalties” for the Affordable Care Act. That’s not how legislation works. That’s not how royalties work. That’s not how anything works. The only person clearly profiting millions of dollars off the Presidency is the guy in the Oval Office right now.

The Dunning-Kruger effect describes how people with low competence in a particular domain drastically overestimate their abilities in that domain. A site called “The Dunning Kruger Times” is essentially a warning label: this is bait for extremely overconfident idiots.

And the President of the United States fell for it.

The article itself is from months ago and regularly makes the rounds among the most credulous corners of X. But even a cursory glance reveals obvious red flags. The byline? “Flagg Eagleton – Patriot,” with this bio:

Flagg Eagleton is the son of an American potato farmer and a patriot. After spending 4 years in the Navy and 7 on welfare picking himself up by the bootstraps, Flagg finally got his HVAC certificate and is hard at work keeping the mobile homes of Tallahassee at a comfy 83 degrees.

This is not subtle satire. Seven years on welfare picking himself up by the bootstraps? Keeping mobile homes in Tallahassee a comfy 83 degrees?

This is what the President of the United States falls for?

And just to remove any possible doubt about what kind of operation this is, here’s what the site says about itself:

Everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real. If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined*.*

They’re quite explicit about their target audience:

They are fragile, frightened, mostly older caucasian Americans*.* They believe nearly anything*. While we go out of our way to educate them that not everything they agree with is true,* they are still old, typically ignorant, and again — very afraid of everything.

Our mission is to do our best to show them the light, through shame if necessary, and to have a good time doing it, because…old and afraid or not, these people are responsible for the patriarchy we’re railing so hard against. They don’t understand logic and they couldn’t care less about reason. Facts are irrelevant. BUT…they do understand shame.

The site’s entire premise is that its targets “believe nearly anything” and that “facts are irrelevant” to them.

Congratulations, Mr. President. You’re the mark.

Tragically, it’s not at all clear that Donald Trump does understand shame. His superpower is his shamelessness.

But remember all the fuss earlier this year about how no one was willing to seriously discuss the apparent mental decline of Joe Biden while he was President? Remember how people like Jake Tapper insisted that the lesson they learned from that was to be more willing to call out such things in the future?

Well, where is Jake Tapper now?

The President of the United States, with access to the best information and advisors in the world, just fell for obvious satire from a website literally called “The Dunning Kruger Times”—a site that explicitly states anyone who believes its content “should have your head examined.”

If that’s not evidence of a profound cognitive failure that warrants serious discussion about fitness for office, what is?

Filed Under: barack obama, donald trump, dunning kruger, satire Companies: dunning kruger times