https://www.c-span.org/video/standalone/?416683-1/donald-trump-campaigns-ambridge-pennsylvania

As the wheels fall off of the Trump campaign and the screens fall off the teleprompters, Donald Trump made some disparaging remarks about the state of the US chess game.

Taking a break from defending himself from dozens of new sexual assault allegations, Trump railed against a favorite punching bag: the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Calling it the worst deal since NAFTA, he swore to get rid of it and renegotiate a better deal, but without any evidence, research or policy to back it up. And then, at the 20:30 mark of the above video at a rally in Ambridge, PA last week, he threw shade on US chess players.

“[TPP] is a complex deal with many countries, you have to see the arrows all over the place. Once you sign it it’s five thousand pages, or more than that, long. Once you sign it, it’s a mess. I like free trade. We made one deal, two deals, we make them with individual countries, and if they don’t behave we terminate them. We send them what is called a notice of termination. Right? but that’ll never happen because during that thirty day period we’ll renegotiate a better deal for our country, ok? And the other way you can’t terminate, it’s going, people go crazy. You have to be like a Grand Chess Master. And we don’t have any of them.

The 90 current US chess grandmasters (“grand chess masters” as Trump said, is wrong) would beg to differ. The US ranks third in the world in number of grandmasters, behind Russia and Germany. The title of grandmaster is the highest title that a chess player can attain and it is awarded by Fédération Internationale des Échecs or World Chess Federation, and is awarded for life.

Also, I know that Trump’s catch phrase is “You’re Fired,” but couldn’t he find a better word than “terminate” to describe what we’re going to other countries that don’t cooperate with us?

Sources:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/14/donald-trump/donald-trump-wrongly-maligns-us-chess-prowess/
https://ratings.fide.com/topfed.phtml
https://www.c-span.org/video/?416683-1/donald-trump-campaigns-ambridge-pennsylvania