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In the latest instance of US president Donald Trump saying something which has people questioning his ability to serve in the top job, the 79-year-old Republican discussed the decision to deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at airports to reporters on Sunday using one weird analogy.
Armed officers appeared at a minimum of 13 major transport hubs on Monday, including airports in New York City, Houston and Atlanta, to support Transport Security Administration (TSA) staff.
Asked who came up with such an idea, Trump told reporters on Sunday: “Mine. That was mine.
“That was like the paper clip. Do you know the story of the paper clip?
“182 years ago, a man discovered the paper clip. It was so simple, and everybody that looks at it says, ‘why didn’t I think of that?’”
Journalist Mehdi Hasan was among those who renewed calls for the 25th amendment to the US Constitution – around the ability of the president to “discharge the powers and duties of his office” – to be invoked:
Commentator Art Candee also made the same call:
“His brain is mush,” tweeted Blue Georgia:
One X/Twitter user responded with a meme of the Microsoft assistant ‘Clippy’ (or ‘Clippit’):
Another commented: “There are not enough reporters asking, ‘Excuse me, but what in the actual f*** are you talking about?’”:
And a third asked: “How the f*** did a question about ICE turn into talking about paper clips?”
It isn’t even the first time that Trump has talked about the invention of the paper clip, as he also rambled about the common office item back in June during a speech about car manufacturing.
“I said, ‘why couldn’t we, if a car was made in the United States only … give the people that buy the car a reduction in the interest that they’re paying to buy the car?’ And people said, ‘what a great idea’.
“It’s so simple, it’s like the paper clip. Somebody came up with the idea of a paper clip may years ago – 1817 – and he became a very rich person, and everybody looked at it and said ‘why the hell didn’t I think of that’,” he said.
Very weird.
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