Donald Trump Doesn’t Know Foreign Groups Because They’re Just “Arab Name, Arab Name”

Max Whittaker/ZUMA

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During Wednesday’s GOP presidential debate, Donald Trump—the Republican who’s still running laps around the competition in the polls—faced a seemingly tough question from moderator Jake Tapper: can he really serve as an effective president when he can’t name or even recognize many foreign leaders and groups?

The question stems from Trump’s appearance earlier this month on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, in which he confused Iran’s Quds Force, a special forces unit within the country’s Revolutionary Guard, with the Kurds in Iraq.

Tapper framed the question around Sen. Marco Rubio’s recent criticism of Trump over the gaffe. “If you don’t know the answer to these questions, then you are not going to be able to serve as commander and chief,” Rubio said earlier this month.

How’d Trump deal with Tapper’s question? After all, confusing and mispronouncing foreign names was a standard criticism that dogged George W. Bush throughout his presidency. But Trump? Nah, he’s not worried. First, he boasted about how Hewitt—a co-moderator of the CNN debate—had since apologized and said that “Donald Trump is maybe the best interview anywhere that he’s ever done.”

“I will say this though,” Trump continued, “Hugh was giving me name after name—Arab name, Arab name, Arab—and there are few people anywhere, ANYWHERE, that would have known those names. I think he was reading them off a sheet.”

Oy vey.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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