Former president Donald Trump called Melania ‘Mercedes’ as he praised his wife during a speech in Washington DC. The crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gave the former First Lady a standing ovation as Mr Trump described how “people love her”. “Oh look at that Mercedes, that’s pretty good” he said as the audience stood and applauded. The GOP presidential hopeful was making the keynote speech on 24 February on the same day as voters head to the polls in the South Carolina primary.
  • spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works
    2253·
    9 months ago

    Can you imagine the wall to wall coverage had it been Biden who called his wife by the wrong name? It would go on for weeks.

    Because it’s Trump they’ll be nary a peep about this from the “liberal” media.

    Edit: Confirmed this morning - not a word about Trump’s demented rambling on the front pages of CNN, NBC, NYT or WA Post. The GQP front-runner’s inability to string a coherent sentence together or remember his wife’s name should be front page news. If Biden tripped over a mic stand it would be.

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
      2026·
      9 months ago

      Look at that Mercedes wouldn’t be a wrong name, it would be objectification to the point of calling your wife a trophy car, not even a trophy wife… Or maybe I read it differently

      • El Barto@lemmy.world
        562·
        9 months ago

        Mercedes is an actual woman’s name:

        “The source of the name was Spanish businesswoman Mercedes Jellinek, whose father Emil Jellinek was a business associate of the company’s founder, Gottlieb Daimler.”

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
          126·
          9 months ago

          No offense, but a thread of people not having read “Count of Monte-Cristo” is just scary to see.

          • El Barto@lemmy.world
            6·
            9 months ago

            You don’t need need to read the novel. Plenty of movie and other media adaptations out there.

              • El Barto@lemmy.world
                5·
                9 months ago

                I haven’t ready it yet, so I wouldn’t know. I didn’t grow up studying English literature. I’ve read plenty of Spanish ones, though.

                What do you mean by easy to read? As in, easy to understand? 1,200 pages sound daunting for most people.

                • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
                  31·
                  9 months ago

                  I meant the flow, Dumas is in general known for that.

                  Also French, not English, but he may be less known in Spanish-speaking countries, I didn’t know that. Thought Dumas was somewhat of a classic everyone reads in their childhood, a bit like Jules Verne.

          • Moneo@lemmy.world
            1·
            9 months ago

            What a shit take lol. It’s not even that good of a book, way too fucking long.

        • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
          74·
          9 months ago

          That’s irrelevant. Trump said “Look at that Mercedes”. That’s the sentence structure for an object. Not a person, no matter what their name is.

          • El Barto@lemmy.world
            71·
            9 months ago

            Oooh, serves me right for not reading TFA. Yeah, with context, it’s clear he’s objectifying her.

            Edit: I saw the video. It’s debatable that we said “look at that Mercedes!” There was a “wow” and a pause in between. Did he mean to say “look at that Mercedes?” Possibly. But it’s also possible that he meant “Look at that, wow! Mercedes, that’s pretty good!”

      • Simulation6@sopuli.xyz
        113·
        9 months ago

        Mercedes is the main character in The Merchant of Venice, it’s been a woman’ name for a long time. Could be his pet name for her?

        • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
          37·
          9 months ago

          Mercedes is a name, yes. The sentence structure fits more to speaking about an object though. Replace the name Mercedes with Ferrari and you see how it still works? I’m not saying his sentence structure is always correct but referring to his wife as a high end luxury object is something he would think is flattering (and many women would infact blush at being called so). Many others would feel objectified and think the speaker was a creep, hence the way I read it.

          • MisterFeeny@kbin.social
            11·
            9 months ago

            Did you just read the quote of what he said or did you actually listen to it? By the way he says it, it’s clear he’s using it as a name.

            I would say the article even printed the quote wrong. They wrote, “Oh look at that Mercedes, that’s pretty good.”
            They dropped a word and in my opinion got the punctuation wrong. I would quote it as, “Oh look at that, wow. Mercedes, that’s pretty good.”

            • go $fsck yourself@lemmy.world
              2·
              9 months ago

              “Oh look at that, wow. Mercedes, that’s pretty good. Wow, she’s good.”

              Yeah it’s very clear he’s referring to her, not a car.

          • SkippingRelax@lemmy.world
            65·
            9 months ago

            Since when is Mercedes a high end luxury object? Its one car maker from Germany. Do they make some higher end models? Sure but hardly Ferrari, Lamborghini or Bugatti.

    • PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works
      523·
      9 months ago

      I’m baffled that people actually think the media goes after him for his speaking errors. A few people on the right do, but most of the MSM seems to still feel responsible for Trump’s election and downplay Biden’s mistakes.

      • Natanael@slrpnk.net
        31·
        9 months ago

        It’s literally the reverse, they try to frame everything as “this is a problem for Biden”, even when he does things successfully, especially NYT really insists on framing everything as a problem. And then they completely ignore most of Trump’s failures.

        Don’t forget that most of mass media companies has owners with a right wing leaning.

        • PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          9 months ago

          We probably consume different media. They talk about it (it’s hard to really avoid it) but they’re a bit more lenient in the analysis.

          You guys are a good portion of my media consumption now, save for a few center/center-right youtube channels. Not many left of those, though. It might just be that I feel like you guys downplay it.

          It’s hard to ignore the fact that neither of them are fit to be running, but here we are.

      • El Barto@lemmy.world
        7·
        9 months ago

        As if they couldn’t give them a fake name.

        Like a stripper named “Mandy,” you wouldn’t assume that was her real name.

  • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
    1042·
    9 months ago

    The thought of the day that I get to watch Donald Trump finally stroke out on stage for good is honestly what keeps me going at this point.

  • hOrni@lemmy.world
    992·
    9 months ago

    The guy who gave his daughter plastic surgery treats women as objects. It’s not even shocking. It’s not news. It’s nothing. It’s obvious. The weird part is, that people like him for it.

    • lolcatnip@reddthat.comEnglish
      321·
      9 months ago

      I usually manage to call my possessions by their correct names. Trump has dementia.

      • pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online
        29·
        9 months ago

        The number of people who don’t seem to get that is staggering. He’s shown clear signs of cognitive decline since at most 2020. I know mental health and elder care professionals that were noticing it as early ad 2016.

        Just watch his interviews from around 9/11. He’s still a stupid, pompous, narcissistic, lying piece of shit with delusions of grandiosity, but he could speak coherently and form complete thoughts.

        It’s likely only a matter of months before he finally sundowns with cameras on him, although I’m sure his handlers are trying their hardest to keep that from happening.

        • Loui@feddit.de
          41·
          9 months ago

          You could have said the same about George W Bush.

          There are reels of him saying stupid dumb stuff as a president when he was coherent as governor of Texas.

          • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
            16·
            9 months ago

            You could have said the same about George W Bush.

            People did say the same things about George W. Bush! He was a horrible president, too!

      • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
        13·
        9 months ago

        I’d like to believe that most of his voting base don’t want to fuck their kids. Donnie was just raised in a… special environment, which produced his ah bigly brain

    • Fleamo@lemmy.world
      710·
      9 months ago

      People don’t “like him for it” they like him despite it. Just because people like an unlikable person doesn’t mean they like everything about him.

      • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
        102·
        9 months ago

        They like him because he does the horrible things that they want him to do. He hurts the people they don’t like.

  • eran_morad@lemmy.world
    711·
    9 months ago

    Some witch named Mercedes is polishing his mushroom. That’s fine tho, I’m sure melanoma has a side piece.

    • Erasmus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      50·
      9 months ago

      I said this in another thread that I bet some stripper or Porn star was banging him on the side and he slipped again.

      Just imagine if Biden called Jill Biden ‘Jane’ or the like - the media would be be all over him for days poking fun at his supposed dementia.

    • betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.worldEnglish
      251·
      9 months ago

      Considering Donald’s well-documented desire to play the world’s most disappointing game of hide-the-underfilled-cocktail-frank with his own daughter, maybe Eric is that side piece. Shit doesn’t fall far from the ass.

  • WoahWoah@lemmy.world
    501·
    9 months ago

    I mean, it doesn’t make it better, but he got confused because he was talking about Mercedes Schlapp earlier.

  • spider@lemmy.nz
    483·
    9 months ago

    Makes perfect sense.

    Trump probably regards her as an acquisition, like a luxury car.

  • gloss@discuss.tchncs.de
    451·
    9 months ago

    Is his brain even going to last the nine months til the election? It feels like in just a month or two he will have degraded to saying the n-word on stage while talking about how bad he wants to fuck his daughter.

      • Username02@lemmy.world
        61·
        9 months ago

        Republicans are fine with killing transgenders but saying the n word might be too much. Not ironical.

        • El Barto@lemmy.world
          10·
          9 months ago

          You mean, saying it loud.

          Edit: Or more like, saying it out loud in public. Thank you, valutdweller013.

          • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
            2·
            9 months ago

            Outloud in public you mean, theres something weird about ones grandmother calling a small club a n-word beater. Especially since this is the same woman who praised my tolerance for having a trans friend in highschool, but then again shes the one who pointed out to me they were trans. I am dense as a fucking brick.

    • hOrni@lemmy.world
      2·
      9 months ago

      The cut before he says “Mercedes that’s pretty good” kinda annoys me. Is there a full uncut version? Honestly it seems like footage manipulation, I’m not really sure that he is talking about Melania in that sentence.

      • snake@lemmy.world
        5·
        9 months ago

        Unfortunately he is not losing his mind just yet… he is in fact addressing Mercedes Schlapp who is actually in the audience.

        I had to look into it because it also seemed to me that these were two unrelated sentences.

      • Tolookah@discuss.tchncs.de
        3·
        9 months ago

        How he stings together sentences, even if the previous one was about his wife, this one could be about cars, and the next one might be about air in potato chip bags.