cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/37519364

Top White House officials told a reporter, “Your mom,” when asked who picked the location for Donald Trump’s upcoming meeting with Vladimir Putin.

Trump announced Thursday that he will soon meet with Putin in Budapest, Hungary, to discuss an end to the war in Ukraine. The choice has raised questions, because Putin is wanted by the International Criminal Court. However, Hungary appears unlikely to cooperate with the warrant and is in the process of leaving the court, the Associated Press reports.

When HuffPost asked the White House who chose the location for the meeting, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt replied, “Your mom did.” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung also followed up with, “Your mom,” the outlet reports.

  • tomi000@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    13 hours ago

    Do they actually say that its about genetics? Been a while since I watched the movie but in real life children of uneducated parents tend to remain uneducated (which is of course a major flaw in the current education and social system), not to mention the massive efforts of current US leadership to keep people uneducated in general. I could see the premise of the movie playing out without the assumption of intelligence being a genetic feature.

    • Garbagio@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      13 hours ago

      I mean the movie was fun in its time, and has a good critique of societal trends from the mid 2000’s, but yes. Literally in the beginning of the movie, after they freeze the mc, the narrator explains that society became a shithole because while intelligent people waited until their 30s to have maybe 1 kid, stupid people had so many kids that they just bred intelligence out of the gene pool. Even at the end the narrator explains that nothing really changes, because while the mc and romantic lead go off to raise 2 intelligent kids, the stupid sidekick went off to have 32. Sure, it was more a plot device than an actual moral stance, but it is also a deracialized form of literally THE core belief of the eugenics movement.

      Yes, Terry Crews, funny guy, good joke, it maps onto the Trump admin decently if you squint. It’s a funny satire, but it’s also 20 years old. People were Idiocracy-posting on MySpace during the Bush admin when the movie came out. And considering the basis for Maga is also purging the undesirables, maybe resting on the laurels of a movie whose plot is based on there being immutable, undesirable genetic characteristics is a bad idea, or at least in poor taste.

      • tomi000@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        12 hours ago

        Yes I remember the beginning, just wasnt sure if it was explicitly said that its the gene pool that caused the change. Imo you could make the same movie and leave out that ‘fact’, it would still work. Uneducated parts of the population having disproportionally more kids could lead to that outcome given the current circumstances. As it is, there is a huge correlation between family income and level of education, but there is no causality, which disproves the genetic part.

        • Garbagio@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          6 hours ago

          I mean, not really? Uneducated parts of the population having disproportionate amounts of children wouldn’t impact intelligence at all, like bro go back far enough and all of our ancestors were uneducated. Like it wasn’t that long ago that 100% of parents and 100% of children thought if you pissed on a certain tree you’d get struck by lightning.

          Idk. Honestly I get why they did it; I’m wracking my brain and the only reasonable explanation I can think of would be smartphones, which didn’t exist when the movie was written. You don’t know what you don’t know, you know? Like I said it’s still a good movie, like it’s still funny and captures a fair bit of seeming trends, it just also sets itself up as a wet dream for people who think other people don’t deserve the right to have children, which is a pretty core belief of the people we’re trying to mock.