The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - December 04, 2025


Explaining Trump's ＂Somalia is Garbage＂ Comment (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_928)


Episode Stats

Length

21 minutes

Words per Minute

133.02507

Word Count

2,896

Sentence Count

174

Misogynist Sentences

5

Hate Speech Sentences

22


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Trump said that Somali-American Ilhan Omar is a "garbage person" and that "this country is a shithole" and so on. What does this have to do with anything? And why does it matter?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Okay, so some of you know that there's been a recent scandal involving $1 billion of
00:00:11.220 stolen money, taxpayer money, in Minnesota, largely from the Somali community.
00:00:21.180 And Trump said, you know, Ilhan Omar is a garbage person.
00:00:26.720 Those are the words he used and that Somalia is a garbage country.
00:00:31.260 If you remember in the past, he's used words like, you know, this country is a shithole
00:00:36.340 and so on.
00:00:37.380 So before I specifically address this, you know, the Somalia comment in terms of its substance,
00:00:47.080 I just wanted to read for you something that I wrote earlier today.
00:00:50.620 It's a long thread, so I'm going to read it for you.
00:00:53.260 And I want you to think about it as I go through it.
00:00:56.380 So here we go.
00:00:58.580 In the parasitic mind, I explained that the aversion that people have toward Donald Trump
00:01:03.300 stems from stylistic matters.
00:01:05.780 I coined this as an aesthetic injury.
00:01:08.440 For example, when he states that Ilhan Omar is garbage, the bien-pensants get offended at
00:01:14.280 such language.
00:01:14.920 If he states that Somalia is a garbage nation, people get offended and point to it being an
00:01:20.320 instantiation of bigotry.
00:01:21.780 Trump uses shortcut linguistic heuristics that at times exhibit, quote, lack of presidential
00:01:28.760 decorum, close quote.
00:01:30.380 But the content of what he says might be nonetheless accurate.
00:01:34.820 Let us take his evaluation of Somalia.
00:01:37.980 As a professor, I could phrase his, quote, garbage comment as follows, quote, this is if I am
00:01:45.720 presenting the information on Somalia.
00:01:47.580 Somalia is a country wherein personal liberties do not flourish.
00:01:52.960 Its GDP is astoundingly low.
00:01:55.840 It is ruled by religious fervor that does not permit individuals to practice their freedom
00:02:00.700 of conscience.
00:02:01.900 Women do not have the freedom to dress as they see fit.
00:02:05.400 Governmental institutions do not work optimally.
00:02:08.860 Corruption is endemic.
00:02:10.520 And I'm going to come back to this and I'm going to give you an analysis.
00:02:13.020 Tribal warlords have ruined the country.
00:02:16.920 Homosexuals cannot live out their lives in peace.
00:02:20.440 Atheists cannot proclaim their lack of belief openly.
00:02:24.320 Many women are subjected to female genital mutilation.
00:02:28.760 Somali society has internalized a set of values that are incongruent with Western liberties,
00:02:34.780 close quotes.
00:02:35.380 So, the long quote that I just gave you would be me trying to offer a professorial explanation
00:02:43.920 for why Somalia might not be the model society that we each aspire to emulate.
00:02:51.760 Donald Trump speaks, not that I'm verbose, right?
00:02:56.260 If I'm asked as a professor to offer justifications for why Somalia is useless, I might offer this.
00:03:04.140 Donald Trump just cuts through it and just says garbage, okay?
00:03:08.880 Let me go on.
00:03:09.740 I'm going to keep reading for a bit.
00:03:11.560 I could have continued for another 2,000 words to explain why Somalia does not score very high
00:03:17.100 on any global metric of optimal flourishing.
00:03:20.820 But Trump cuts through those professional details and summarizes it in one word, garbage.
00:03:26.980 I understand that it might be wise to use less, quote, offensive words,
00:03:31.460 but the gist of what he is saying is veridical.
00:03:34.540 I offer the following challenge to the people who are offended, especially the Western progressives.
00:03:41.800 I will personally raise the funds to send you on a fun vacation to Mogadishu,
00:03:46.280 but you have to wear the following t-shirt conspicuously for one day.
00:03:50.240 Quote,
00:03:51.260 Islam is false.
00:03:52.660 I'm a gay Jew.
00:03:53.780 Give me a hug.
00:03:54.760 Close quote.
00:03:55.800 Let us know how it turns out.
00:03:57.380 In the United States, you could wear such a t-shirt and live.
00:04:00.460 In Somalia, you can't, hence his term.
00:04:04.440 Okay, so that's what I mentioned earlier today.
00:04:07.760 But now, as I've often explained to you guys, whenever you're taking a position on something,
00:04:14.920 do your homework.
00:04:17.040 Build the nomological network of cumulative evidence, if you can,
00:04:21.760 that makes your position unassailable.
00:04:24.420 Drown your interlocutor with so much evidence that it becomes impossible for them to engage in emotional incontinence.
00:04:34.720 As every single degenerate Hollywood star and progressive and Democrat is saying, right?
00:04:42.640 Because Trump, for better or worse, does not cross his legs as though his testicles have been cut off,
00:04:51.760 which happens with Justin Trudeau, which happens with Barack Obama, right?
00:04:57.020 You speak in an effeminate manner.
00:04:59.280 You put out your pinky when you're drinking an espresso, right?
00:05:04.120 You emote, you're gentle, you're kind, you're castrated, you're spineless.
00:05:08.920 He doesn't do that, which is now something that is expected of all politicians to do.
00:05:14.520 You have to be an invertebrate castrato to be a politician and be invited to Davos.
00:05:20.220 For better or worse, Trump doesn't do that.
00:05:22.180 But is the gist of what he's saying about Somalia true?
00:05:25.080 Well, there is less evidence that gravity exists than regarding the veracity of his statement.
00:05:34.360 But as I explained, we don't need to, you know, just scream louder than our interlocutor.
00:05:43.720 How about we do an analysis?
00:05:45.500 Well, I have explained this, by the way, many years ago.
00:05:49.640 I was a professor at University of California, Irvine, at the Graduate School of Management,
00:05:55.660 which has since changed its name to the Paul Mirage Business School.
00:05:59.560 But at the time, I was tasked with teaching an MBA course in international marketing.
00:06:07.120 And so I was, you know, was part international business, part international marketing,
00:06:12.320 part international management.
00:06:13.960 And so at one point, I was discussing the cultural differences in the endemic corruption
00:06:23.740 that exists across national borders.
00:06:27.200 And there are a set of cultural values that either make corruption a accepted endemic part
00:06:34.120 of that society or not.
00:06:35.320 That's why cultures are not indistinguishable from each other.
00:06:39.360 That's why cultures are not equivalent.
00:06:41.200 That's why cultures are not equal, right?
00:06:44.840 There are many, many human universals that make all human identical to each other in the
00:06:50.940 sense that they share a biological heritage.
00:06:53.980 But there are an astounding number of cross-cultural differences.
00:06:58.620 Just go on Google Scholar and enter cross-cultural difference, and you will get 33 trillion hits
00:07:05.080 because psychologists and anthropologists and sociologists and other behavioral scientists
00:07:11.300 have studied endless ways by which cultures vary.
00:07:14.820 One of which is how internalized is corruption within that society.
00:07:21.180 Before I give you the data on beautiful, noble, honest Somalia,
00:07:27.900 let me give you a personal story.
00:07:29.780 Okay, because oftentimes people remember well, one of the reasons why, well, I'd like to think
00:07:36.920 one of many reasons, but one of the reasons why I resonate so much with people is that I take
00:07:42.460 theoretical explanations and then I marry them to personal narratives to make them come alive.
00:07:50.200 So let me give you a personal story.
00:07:51.680 When we first moved from Lebanon to Canada, my father had received a few parking tickets and he was pissed.
00:08:05.200 And so he went around and said, you know, can somebody know who is the, you know, the specific police man
00:08:14.640 that I have to, you know, slip some bachshish so that we could finish with the story?
00:08:20.680 Why? Because, you know, he thought that, I mean, this is how it's done in Lebanon.
00:08:24.760 That's how it's done in the Middle East, right?
00:08:26.400 There's always an institutional mechanism of bachshish.
00:08:31.580 You want the customs agent to go a bit easier on you? Bachshish.
00:08:36.200 You want the cop to not give you bachshish.
00:08:38.920 Of course, then that becomes an issue when you're doing international trade
00:08:43.540 because what is considered bachshish and OK in one society is completely illegal, say, in the United States.
00:08:51.060 And there are some very interesting international legal issues that which I had lectured about back then
00:08:57.160 when I was teaching the MBA students.
00:08:58.440 But just to finish my story with my dad, and I'm not trying to hear to, I'm not trying to denigrate my dad.
00:09:06.300 You know, he's a product of the culture that he comes from.
00:09:09.320 And so when he asked, so, you know, who's the cop that I've got to grease here and finish with the story?
00:09:14.380 And the person to whom he was asking the question said, well, you know, this is, you know, this is not how it's done over here.
00:09:22.380 We don't do that over here.
00:09:24.040 And his answer, which is in the lore of the sad family, he said, well, what kind of barbaric society is this where you can't do this?
00:09:33.600 So, again, think about what I just said.
00:09:35.560 From my dad's perspective, the fact that you couldn't solve the problem by going to the cop in question,
00:09:43.860 coming to some understanding, and therefore you could now park wherever you want, was insane, was barbaric.
00:09:51.620 The fact that you had these rules that you can't, you know, navigate across, smelled of barbarism.
00:09:59.220 Now, imagine this very inconsequential case multiplied by every single interaction in society at every level,
00:10:08.320 and then you get failed states.
00:10:11.240 Are you with me?
00:10:12.440 Hello?
00:10:13.180 Are you listening?
00:10:14.340 Okay.
00:10:15.200 So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to go, I'm going to let this thing, it's called data.
00:10:22.100 Okay.
00:10:22.500 It's called reality.
00:10:25.320 Okay.
00:10:25.560 I'm going to let that decide whether his statement that Somalia is a garbage country.
00:10:33.060 Again, I would not have used those terms, right?
00:10:37.440 But he has a different style, and therefore let's see if the substance, the substantive content of what he said is veridical or not.
00:10:50.120 You ready?
00:10:50.500 So I went to my buddy, Grok, and I asked, because, I mean, I could have sat there and, you know, went to the Corruption Perceptions Index.
00:11:04.220 It's called CPI, which is published annually by Transparency International for the past exactly 30 years, since 1995.
00:11:11.500 And I could have calculated each year that Somalia is on the list where it ranks.
00:11:17.800 But I just asked, Grok, could you tell me the average rank of Somalia for each of the years that the Corruption Perception Index has been calculated?
00:11:27.940 Are you ready?
00:11:29.680 You're listening?
00:11:30.320 So now, take this data and share it with Ben Stiller, Jewish Ben Stiller, who was so hurt.
00:11:40.800 This is not who we are.
00:11:42.680 We don't, you know, I ate at a Somali restaurant, or maybe he doesn't know whether Somalia is different from Ethiopia.
00:11:49.800 And, you know, I loved it, and they were so kind to me.
00:11:53.020 So don't be mean.
00:11:54.180 So Somalia only entered the rankings starting in 2005.
00:12:01.560 Okay, are you with me?
00:12:02.820 The rankings began in 1995, but Somalia came in in 2005.
00:12:09.120 For each of the years, I'm going to give you the rank of what Somalia was ranked.
00:12:17.660 So if you were ranked first, that means you are the least corrupt.
00:12:22.320 Okay, and then as you go down the rank, you're worse.
00:12:26.560 And so I'm going to give you first, what's the rank of Somalia out of how many countries were ranked that year?
00:12:33.620 So, for example, 2005, Somalia ranked 154th out of 159 countries.
00:12:41.860 Okay, why don't you get a pen and paper and jot it down?
00:12:45.940 2005, 154 rank out of 159.
00:12:51.340 2006, 142 out of 163.
00:12:56.020 2007, 147 out of 179.
00:13:00.880 2008, 170 out of 180.
00:13:05.900 Uh-oh, we're starting to suck really badly.
00:13:09.880 2009, 171 out of 180.
00:13:13.800 2010, they outdid themselves.
00:13:16.760 They ranked the most corrupt nation in the world.
00:13:23.440 178 out of 178.
00:13:25.720 In 2011, they ranked 182 out of 182.
00:13:32.600 In 2012, they really pulled their socks up and they ranked 174 out of 176.
00:13:41.960 In 2013, 177 out of 177.
00:13:47.580 In 2014, they were tied for last place out of 175 countries.
00:13:53.620 In 2015, they ranked last place out of 168 countries.
00:14:00.440 In 2016, 170 out of 176.
00:14:04.960 2017, 176 out of 180.
00:14:08.780 Now, this, they're going to really do well.
00:14:11.080 You ready?
00:14:12.420 In 2017, 176 out of 180.
00:14:17.020 Oh, and now, world championship.
00:14:20.040 In 2018, 180 out of 180.
00:14:23.440 2019, 180 out of 180.
00:14:27.000 2020, 180 out of 180.
00:14:30.380 2021, 180 out of 180.
00:14:33.920 2022, 180 over 180.
00:14:37.560 2023, 180 over 180.
00:14:41.340 And then in 2024, they really pulled those reins.
00:14:45.620 They really pulled their socks up.
00:14:47.540 They scored an admirable 179 out of 180.
00:14:53.480 And so, Grok was kind enough to calculate their average ranking,
00:14:58.980 which was 180.8 as their average ranking,
00:15:03.780 which ranks them as the singular worst country in the world
00:15:09.560 out of 180 countries ranked.
00:15:12.040 So, when Donald Trump uses the term garbage country,
00:15:17.180 he doesn't know about the CPI,
00:15:19.600 but he lives in the real world.
00:15:21.920 He has a sense of whether,
00:15:24.400 when we are looking at models of society,
00:15:27.660 whether we should emulate Somalia,
00:15:30.620 or whether Somalia doesn't do very...
00:15:33.240 Now, does that stop the fact that there are endless Somalis
00:15:36.300 who are perfectly lovely and will invite you for a nice meal?
00:15:40.620 Well, both statements hold true.
00:15:44.300 Yes, I could play soccer with a lovely Somali
00:15:48.340 who might be my best friend,
00:15:50.300 and it absolutely holds true
00:15:52.360 that Somalia is a degenerate society.
00:15:56.460 It cuts off the clitorises of women.
00:16:00.940 Does that make it a garbage society or a great society?
00:16:04.440 It kills gays.
00:16:06.040 There are no Jews in Somalia.
00:16:08.220 There are no Christians in Somalia.
00:16:10.120 There is no freedom of speech in Somalia.
00:16:12.740 There is no criticizing Islam in Somalia.
00:16:15.620 There are no governmental institutions in Somalia.
00:16:20.520 No metric on which you judge the health
00:16:24.260 and flourishing of a society
00:16:26.380 does Somalia not score either last or close to last at.
00:16:31.680 But see, what I just spent doing in the last 16 minutes
00:16:34.940 takes a lot of effort.
00:16:37.580 Thinking is hard.
00:16:39.060 Engaging my cognitive system is so hard.
00:16:44.100 It's so much easier to go on CNN
00:16:48.320 and with that guy Rachel Maddow
00:16:50.840 and scream and huff and puff
00:16:53.100 that Donald Trump is a racist.
00:16:56.360 He's Islamophobic.
00:16:57.580 Did I mention at all the word Islam when now giving you the CPI data?
00:17:03.080 I didn't, right?
00:17:05.240 Cultures have values.
00:17:07.920 Those values have downstream consequences
00:17:11.520 that then orient the entire way by which people navigate through their societies.
00:17:18.520 What made the United States great,
00:17:21.280 what made the West great,
00:17:23.140 is that they came up with the magic sauce
00:17:26.200 that allowed, regrettably,
00:17:30.240 the dark heart of human beings to be quelled.
00:17:34.600 Therefore, we had societies that had high trust
00:17:38.460 where you can trust that the government can't come to your house
00:17:41.980 and take you away in the middle of the night,
00:17:43.960 where they can't trump up charges against you,
00:17:46.800 where they can't do all the things
00:17:49.680 that throughout all of history has been the normal thing,
00:17:53.660 or as we say in French,
00:17:55.320 de rigueur, okay?
00:17:57.600 Somalia is a failed society
00:18:01.700 that is not racist,
00:18:04.420 that's not Islamophobic,
00:18:06.560 that's not bigoted,
00:18:08.340 that's not xenophobic.
00:18:10.400 Nothing could be further from the truth.
00:18:13.180 If Somalia is a beautiful society
00:18:15.720 which we should all aspire to live by,
00:18:19.200 then we should see in consumer behavior,
00:18:22.620 we know that if you buy product A,
00:18:25.320 95% buy product A,
00:18:27.320 nobody buys product B,
00:18:28.860 the market has spoken.
00:18:30.360 People don't like product B.
00:18:32.140 It has bad quality.
00:18:33.420 It has bad after-purchase service.
00:18:36.640 It has bad whatever it is
00:18:39.100 by which we judge that product, right?
00:18:41.080 So we do vote with our feet.
00:18:44.000 We do vote with our wallet.
00:18:47.360 So when Somalis are desperately trying
00:18:51.360 to come to the United States
00:18:52.980 and not the other way around,
00:18:55.420 that is making a statement
00:18:57.280 that the United States
00:18:58.840 is a astoundingly superior society
00:19:03.540 than Somalia.
00:19:06.120 Nothing could be clearer,
00:19:08.360 but the world that we live in
00:19:10.560 causes most people,
00:19:13.060 including most moronic Americans,
00:19:15.520 to feel uncomfortable saying that, right?
00:19:19.140 I feel icky saying that Somalia
00:19:22.140 is a worse society than United States.
00:19:26.500 I want to believe in cultural relativism.
00:19:29.820 I want to believe in multiculturalism,
00:19:32.140 which says,
00:19:32.900 who are you racist to judge the norms,
00:19:36.680 the ways of another society?
00:19:38.200 Now, if you take a society,
00:19:41.700 which I just gave you
00:19:43.260 incontrovertible data,
00:19:46.360 astoundingly unequivocal data,
00:19:49.420 that it ranks absolutely by far
00:19:53.080 as the most corrupt nation in the world,
00:19:56.640 and you bring in hundreds of thousands of people,
00:20:00.440 do you think that corruption
00:20:02.360 in the host society
00:20:04.600 where they've come in,
00:20:06.360 stemming from these new,
00:20:08.720 quote, immigrants or refugees,
00:20:11.380 will corruption go up,
00:20:14.200 stay the same,
00:20:15.760 or go down?
00:20:17.720 If you have to bet the house on it,
00:20:19.780 which one do you think it would be?
00:20:21.680 Oh my God.
00:20:22.920 You mean if you bring in
00:20:24.220 hundreds of thousands of people
00:20:25.840 from a society
00:20:27.220 that has scored dead last
00:20:29.880 for 20 years
00:20:31.600 in an unbelievably non-partisan
00:20:34.540 scientific methodology
00:20:36.440 that ascribes to them
00:20:38.460 the most corrupt society
00:20:40.520 that you're going to get more corruption
00:20:42.660 in the United States
00:20:44.320 to the tune of $1 billion?
00:20:46.700 Many of the people that are listening now,
00:20:49.020 I don't know how many are listening.
00:20:50.240 I have no idea.
00:20:51.540 But many of the people who are listening
00:20:53.140 got up,
00:20:55.060 went to work,
00:20:56.340 worked hard,
00:20:57.500 did double shifts,
00:20:58.860 did triple shifts
00:20:59.920 to make a better life for themselves.
00:21:02.120 Then the government came along
00:21:03.760 and said,
00:21:04.180 hey, that money you make is mine.
00:21:06.700 Now I'm going to divert that money
00:21:08.960 to whatever scam
00:21:11.240 is being pulled by Somalis in Minnesota
00:21:13.880 to the tune of $1 billion.
00:21:16.940 Does the taxpayer have a right
00:21:19.360 to be angry at that?
00:21:21.000 Or is that bigoted?
00:21:23.260 Does the taxpayer have a right to say,
00:21:25.720 you know,
00:21:26.720 some cultures are inherently less likely
00:21:29.520 to assimilate
00:21:30.840 within the high-trust civil society
00:21:34.020 that we have?
00:21:34.860 Is that bigoted?
00:21:35.980 Is that phobic?
00:21:37.880 Is that xenophobic?
00:21:41.260 Or is it called
00:21:43.560 I'm wedded to reality?
00:21:45.340 Have a good night, everybody.