Xorte logo

News Markets Groups

USA | Europe | Asia | World| Stocks | Commodities



Add a new RSS channel

 
 


Keywords

2025-06-07 11:00:00| Fast Company

On Monday, the head of U.S. disaster agency FEMA stunned staffers when he mentioned in a briefing that hed not been aware of any such thing as hurricane season. Not exactly an ideal grasp of weather phenomena for the person in charge of Americas emergency management. Although a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security later claimed the comment was intended as a joke, it didn’t exactly rouse more confidence in his abilities. I dont know, after all, has lately become a go-to line among leaders all throughout the federal governmentespecially the president himself. The most egregious I dont know in recent memory was almost certainly Trumps response when a reporter asked him if the president needs to uphold the U.S. Constitution, something he swore an oath to do, but thats just the tip of the uninformed iceberg. Ignorance may be bliss but in President Donald Trumps second term, its just standard operating procedure. Nearly five months in, its starting to look like the I Dont Know administration. WELKER: Your secretary of state says everyone who's here, citizens and non-citizens, deserve due process. Do you agree?TRUMP: I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. I don't know.WELKER: Don't you need to uphold the Constitution?TRUMP: I don't know pic.twitter.com/xRwDh8sm0X— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 4, 2025 Every shade in the I dont know rainbow For leaders in every field, I dont know can be a get-out-of-jail-free card for difficult questions, be they from board members, reporters, or staff at an all-hands meeting. I dont know can be the meat in a sandwich where the bread slices are, thats a great question, and Ill look into that. It only tends to work as an acceptable deflection, however, if used sparingly. Thats certainly not the case with the current president. Some of Trumps I dont knowswhich will be labeled IDKs going forward, for brevityseem utterly genuine. It stands to reason that the president might have merely been candid, rather than obtuse, in an Oval Office meeting back in April when he said he did not know what ‘the Congo’ is. More often than not, however, those IDKs smack of tactics. Looking closely at the presidents recent speeches, press conferences, and interviews, he appears to have three main modes for using IDK as a strategic evasion: the Ostrich, the Complicator, and the Minimizer. As the title suggests, the Ostrich is Trumps way of metaphorically burying his head in the sand. He employs it seemingly to avoid admitting an inconvenient fact, either to maintain plausible deniability or deflect blame. The Ostrich is perfect for neither confirming nor denying the details of Signalgate right as that explosive story first broke, explaining why the new surgeon general is a wellness influencer and not a practicing physician, or why Trump pardoned a violent January 6 rioter who assaulted a police officer. The Complicator is the IDK Trump trots out in an apparent effort to inject ambiguity into settled issues, or at least those with an obvious correct answer. Is the separation of church and state a good thing or a bad thing? Trump does not know. Do DOGEs massive cuts or the elimination of the US Agency of International Development require a vote in Congress? Whos to say. (Certainly not Trump.) Did Trump benefit at all from sky-high sales of the memecoin that literally bears his name? Consider asking someone else who may know of such things. Finally, The Minimizer is the IDK Trump seems to reach for when casting a moment or person as so insignificant as to not be worth talking about. It cant be a big deal if Trump doesnt even know about itperhaps it never even happened! This one is reserved for not acknowledging things like Mitch McConnells battle with polio or a Kennedy Center audience booing JD Vance. It can be hard to tell sometimes whether Trump is using strategic evasion or if he truly doesnt know something. Either way, when it comes to issues as important as the arrest and detention of a Tufts University student, seemingly over her writing of a pro-Palestine op-ed in a student newspaper, the leader of the free world not knowing about it is a problem. The evolution of Trumps IDKs Trumps history with IDK runs all the way back to the early days of his political career. In a February 2016 interview, Jake Tapper asked the then-candidate if he wanted to disavow a recent endorsement from former KKK leader David Duke, who told listeners on his radio show that week that voting for anyone besides Trump is really a treason to your heritage. What should have been a no-brainer disavowal, however, ended up becoming an Ostrich moment. “I don’t know anything about David Duke,” Trump claimed. The non-disavowal quickly became a persistent news item, helped in no small part by unearthed footage of Trump previously denouncing Duke in the year 2000. (Trump went on to disavow Duke again, and blame a supposedly shoddy earpiece during the Tapper interview for his not doing so sooner.) During his first term as president, Trump seemed to use IDKs as a folksy performance of not being the average ivory tower egghead politician. He wouldnt simply admit when he didnt know something, he would cast it as groundbreaking information for Real Americas. The telltale term in such instances wasnt IDK, but rather nobody knew. When Trump proved unable to quickly replace Obamacare, he famously lamented, nobody knew health care could be so complicated. He used this construction so often, Now This made a supercut about it. As for those in Trumps cabinet and in Congress during his first term, the IDKs mostly came in response to reporters asking for reactions to Trumps provocative tweets.  The ‘I dont know’ administration The difference between Trumps first term and his current one is that both Trump and his colleagues seem to be a lot more comfortable dropping IDKs, considering how often they do it. Another change, though, is the brazenness with which they offer them.  The Secretary of Health didnt know whether the COVID-19 vaccine saved millions of lives or not. The Secretary of Education didnt know about a new policy of vetting social media accounts for foreign students. The Secretary of Labor didnt know her department had eliminated a whole agency, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, one that happened to be investigating self-styled DOGEfather Elon Musk. And neither the Secretary of State nor the Speaker of the House apparently knew about the presidents private dinner for investors in his cryptocurrency during the week of the dinner. Members of Team Trump even cling to their supposed lack of information as they are offered enlightenment in real time. Anyone paying close attention to politics in 2025 will have likely seen by now the surreal spectacle of a grown adult denying the necessary knowledge to determine whether, say, January 6 rioters behaved violently, while being shown a video about it. The worst offender of the bunch is probably Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Questioned about a doctored image Trump shared in an effort to link mistakenly deported immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia with the violent gang MS-13, Noem vehemently refused to admit the image had obviously been photoshopped. I dont have any knowledge as to that photo youre pointing to, she claimed, refusing to look at the blown-up image in question. When the congressman interrogating her asked an assistant to bring the poster image within five feet of Noems face, she declined to look at it, and thus continued to know nothing about it. Its getting easier to believe, though, that Trump and his administration may not know a lot of things. Who knows what they wont know tomorrow.


Category: E-Commerce

 

Latest from this category

25.07The weirdest Venmo request yet: The U.S. government
25.07Trumps budget cuts may hand Spain a scientific prize worth billions
25.07Think your ChatGPT therapy sessions are private? Think again.
25.07Everything to know about Tea, the viral and controversial app that lets women mark men as red flags
25.07This Florida companys imaging tool helps speed up natural disaster recovery efforts
25.07Largest U.S. homebuilder: Housing market shift still pointing towards bigger incentives
25.07Pura Scents recalls more than 850,000 diffuser covers over ingestion hazard to children
25.07Trump says he likes a strong dollar, but a weaker one is good for inflation
E-Commerce »

All news

26.07Evening Headlines
26.07RBI governor supports independence of central bank
26.07RBI's oversubscribed VRRR auction signals strong bank participation amid falling overnight rates
26.07India's equity indices fall for fourth consecutive week amid weak earnings
26.07Salon owner 'ready' for key L'Or�al dispute hearing
26.07Weekly Scoreboard*
26.07Metra BNSF trains delayed after pedestrian fatally struck by inbound train
26.07Dixons JV with Chinese firm gets govt nod, other Indian companies may follow
More »
Privacy policy . Copyright . Contact form .