Knucklehead, but Presidential?
I know there’s a lot going on right now, but I just can’t stop thinking about the fact that Tim Walz, during the Vice Presidential debate against JD Vance, defending his habit of pathologically lying about his lived experience proudly proclaimed himself to be, and I quote, “a knucklehead”.
Merriam-Webster defines a knucklehead as a stupid person.
This means that when defending himself against being a liar, he claimed stupidity as his defense which is certainly something.
That he stands by some of his hilarious and/or infuriating lies to this day makes him, by his own standards, both stupid and a liar which I think might make him the first person to transcend the time honored Adam Corolla game of figuring out which of those two categories people fell into when they made asses of themselves publicly.
But let me back up a bit because while many have taken Walz at his word as far as him being a “Knucklehead” goes, they might be assigning a different meaning to the phrase as opposed to him just being stupid so let’s explore some alternative synonyms provided by Merriam-Webster.
Please don’t come at me this is literally me reading a thesaurus trying to parse out Tim Walz’s own rhetoric.
That qualifier qualified, which of any of these sounds better?
idiot, moron, lunatic, numbskull, dummy, loser, know-nothing, prat (British), dolt, bonehead, mutt, chucklehead, fool, dimwit, imbecile, jackass, ignoramus, dunderhead, blockhead, lunkhead, donkey (as in jackass), dunce, hardhead, dullard, airhead, pinhead, goof, cretin, nitwit, numskull, meathead, goon (not that goon), simpleton, jerk, dumbhead, dope, fathead, oaf, loon, ninny, natural (as in idiot), clown, stupe, deadhead, bubblehead, nincompoop, hammerhead, yahoo (not that yahoo!), gander, dummkopf, birdbrain, shlub, half-wit, chowderhead, turkey, dip, noodle, dumb cluck, cluck, golem, clunk, goose, saphead, ratbag (Chiefly Australian), ninnyhammer, lamebrain, noddy, dumbbell, villain, lump, dodo, buffoon, dum-dum, stock (as in idiot), clodpole, skunk (as in person whose behavior is offensive to others), thickhead, madman, woodenhead, cuddie (as in a stupid person), clodpoll, loony, yo-yo, booby, zany, nut, clot (British), snake (again as in person whose behavior is offensive to others), creep, beast, scatterbrain, boor, gawk, stinker, heel, cad, featherbrain, cur, & finally churl (as in bastard, a person whose behavior is offensive to others).
So we know he rolled a 1 for intelligence but do we now need to roll a 100-sided die to figure out how to describe it? Let me know how this works because I’d like to know the proper thing to say when people are trying to convince me that this *synonym to be chosen later* should be a heartbeat away from the Nuclear Codes since “Knucklehead” doesn’t sound very Presidential.
Pick your favorite in the comments.
Cheers.