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Comment by hamper653 | Hacker News Reader

Never see malice where incompetence is a sufficient explanation.

Could be a core cadre of 5% of clearly compromised or foreign agents recruiting a vast amount of fools and putting them in the positions where they can do the most damage.

Or it could be a core cadre of 51% of clearly foolish Americans electing a vast amount of fools and putting them in the positions where they will do the most damage.

That is exactly how you end up in this situation.

There are actually malicious people in the world, and many of them like to pretend to be incompetent as a smokescreen.

They are making hundreds of millions of dollars on the grift. They seem quite comptent.

Hundreds of millions dramatically undersells what happened in Trump's ~first year back in office:

Trump personally made $3 billion during his 2nd term's 1st year. [1]

19-year-old high school graduate Barron Trump earned $150 million dollars. [2]

Also, Trump's children stand to profit from a $1.6 billion mining deal that Trump cut as president this term - 'Kaz Resources'. [3]

Also, "The White House Intervened to Get a $620 Million Deal for a Company Tied to Donald Trump Jr." - 'Vulcan Elements'. [4]

Also, "Trump’s Sons Land Massive Pentagon Deal as They Flaunt Corruption" via "Powerus" a company founded last year and which merged with a golf club in March. [5]

The Trump family cryptocurrency company received a $500m investment by the Emirati royal family, before the Trump admin announced that the Emirates would be allowed to import enough Nvidia AI chips to build the largest AI campus outside the US. [6]

Edit: As alluded to by walrus01, "The double life of Jared Kushner, mixing business with politics as emissary for his father-in-law Donald Trump … Ivanka Trump's husband has a career as an unofficial diplomat and a master dealmaker, juggling billions and focusing his activities on the Middle East and Near East. His latest coup, carried out with the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, was the $55 billion acquisition of video game giant Electronic Arts." [8]

While Trump and his family have made billions during Trump's first year back as president, for an example of how Republicans treated Biden family finances: in 2018, while Biden was out of office, Biden received a check from his brother with "loan repayment" written on it for 200K. Despite that Biden was not in office then, and the small amount (compared to not just thousands or even millions, but billions that Trump and his family have made in Trump's first year back in office), 5 years later, in 2023, Republicans were still investigating that $200K loan repayment. [7]

[1] https://theweek.com/politics/donald-trump-presidency-wealth

[2] https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/us-news/how-did-barron...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/28/world/europe/trump-lutnic...

[4] https://www.propublica.org/article/donald-trump-jr-vulcan-de...

[5] https://newrepublic.com/post/209840/donald-jr-eric-trump-mil...

[6] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/02/trump-uae-cr...

[7] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/31/politics/fact-check-evide...

[8] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2025/10/07/the-dou...

Heck, all of that is like the tip of an iceberg, before anyone even googles like "kushner + saudis"

But, what about Hunter Biden's laptop!? /s

That's actually an excellent example - perhaps the closest thing to something real for Joe Biden to come out of the laptop was that in 2017, while Joe was a private citizen and held no office, an email between his son and his son's business partners had proposed Joe take a 10% share in a foreign deal his son was negotiating. 6 days later in 2017, Hunter replied that Joe had replied "an emphatic NO" when the idea was presented to him. https://www.vox.com/2020/10/22/21529237/hunter-biden-debate-...

Republicans spent years focusing on a potential deal that Joe had quickly said no to, which was while Joe was out of office anyway. Meanwhile Trump in both term 1 and term 2 has been actively getting foreign income, but crickets. (I realize you said /s.)

> Never see malice where incompetence is a sufficient explanation.

¿Por qué no los dos?

Some direct quotes are,

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.

We want to put them in trauma.”

That was Russel Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget and key author or Project 2025.

Trump also said, "a whole civilization will die tonight".

These people aren’t very bright, are they?

They've successfully planned and executed a takeover of the US government that will take decades to undo, if it's even possible at all. Of course they are bright, you don't stumble into causing this much damage.

They are simply thoroughly evil. This is easy to mask as "stupid", but stupid people wouldn't be able to be so consistent.

I mean, Americans have consistently elected these people, haven’t they? This is easy to mask as "evil", but…

I don't know what you're trying to say. Evil people can run for elections and receive votes.

But not-very-bright evil people can’t?

Of course they can, but as I already said, you don't stumble into causing this much damage. Damage caused by genuine stupidity would be distributed more randomly.

They are capable of executing in their own self interest. I doubt they have full understanding about the 2nd and 3rd order effects of their actions.

I wouldn't call them stupid, but they are hardly bright.

Maybe you've seen something I haven't, but why do you think that regarding e.g. Russell Vought? His primary goal has long been to swing the US towards Christian nationalism, and he has made enormous strides towards that. People like him are well aware of the negatives consequences these decisions have, but to them it's worth the pain.

I can't truly say since I've never talked to him (and I hope it stays that way), but IMO I simply cannot imagine someone doing everything Russell Vought has done to America, without being fairly smart. Maybe he's just acting as a proxy for smart people, but someone behind Project 2025 etc. objectively must be very intelligent.

There's a reflexive tendency to assume that anyone implementing cruel and bigoted policies must also be stupid, regretfully, this is sometimes not the case. As you have so accurately described, it's a very careful and calculated plan to move towards a desired end state. Whether that desired end state goal looks something like Gilead in The Handmaid's Tale, and whether you're supposed to like that, or abhor it, totally other question...

Is it though? Desiring such an end state sounds pretty stupid to me.

Of course, how could I forget that people's motivations are solely filtered through their reasoning. Obviously no smart person has ever desired anything that brings negative consequences for the people around them, while increasing their own power. That would be too stupid.

They seem to be doing pretty well for themselves.

Indeed.

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