TRUMP STOLE THE "STABLE GENIUS" TERM! And in context, it really did imply "HUMAN MORON"!

[bellmartin]

I knew I’d heard the term before!

It’s in a quote from Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, 1959.

(By the way, although I remember it, I personally didn’t care for the book. I love dogs, though, and that’s why the line stuck. It also bothers me that, if you think about it, the quote is rather insulting to dogs.)

"...a neodog is not a talking dog; he is not a dog at all, he is an artificially mutated symbiote derived from dog stock. A neo, a trained Caleb, is about six times as bright as a dog, say about as intelligent as a human moron — except that the comparison is not fair to the neo; a moron is a defective, whereas a neo is a stable genius in his own line of work."

So Trump, not being a “neo,” but rather a human, would be characterized as a “human moron” and “a defective”. That fits.

[onenote]

1. There is no way that Trump read and remembers a line from Starship Troopers

[delisen]

3. Somebody in his entourage may be the source

Maybe that 400 lb guy on a bed or one of the coffee boy/deal brokers.

[bellmartin]

11. Kind of smells like Meredith McIver to me

[grumpyduck]

2. Waitaminnit... doesn't your post imply

that he READ the book?

Edit: Sorry, onenote beat me to it

[mercuryblues]

4. ok

who in the WH is trolling trump?

[JI7]

5. Maybe someone who did read it said that to him

And he took it as a compliment

[regnaD kciN]

6. I always thought it originally referred to...

[lagomorph777]

10. Wilbur, or Ed?

[Scurrilous]

7. K&R

[Kirk Lover]

8. Just as he does everything else he made it up and he's doing that as he's going along. I mean for

goodness sake he thought he came up with the term prime the pump so there is NO WAY I would EVER think he's quoting from that book...oh hell no.

[Gothmog]

9. I remember that book but did not recall this term being used

It has only been 40 years since I read that book

[tritsofme]

12. Trump reacted to news reports saying he is cuckoo-for-cocoa puffs.

It is no more complicated than that. With Trump, the simplest answer is almost always the right one.

[bellmartin]

13. I know it. I know he doesn't read. Or think. I'm just having fun. The quote's real, though.

[sl8]

14. I wouldn't be too sure about that.

If you search Google Books for "stable genius" (keep the quotes in the search term), you'll get more hits than you can shake a stick at.