So many people here baffled by "TDS" in the face of all the things the Left has done that need to be stopped! You're baffled because you have taken your eyes off the ball and you're in denial. Trump is a criminal many times over, his mendacity is unparalleled, and his goals and your goals don't actually align. He wants to establish in the US what Putin has in Russia. It's going to be the end of the Republic. You may like it for a while, just as my ancestors did in Germany. Perhaps we'll pump a fist and have a drink when DEI gets outlawed, or the like. But in the end you will find that a psychopath at the helm is always a disaster. There are no exceptions. "TDS" is a very stupid concept.
Kristi Noem proudly writes about killing a puppy. A Governor hates DEI but celebrates the Confederacy. A Republican activist calls Black medical students “Malpractice bailouts”. Who would want to be a member of a party where these acts do not disqualify an office holder?
Bill Barr says Trump shoul be nowhere near the Oval Office, but I’ll vote for Trump. There is no bottom for the GOP.
We didn't think it could get any worse when they were all big fans of Ollie North but then they decided to implement a torture regime and have Alberto Gonzalez and John Yoo provide the expert legal lies to cover for Dick Cheney et al, who actually belonged in the dock at the Hague. But now I'm with old Dick and his daughter, trying to hold on to the minimum rule of law, while the SCOTUS is purporting to puzzle over the legality of murdering the opposition if you're the President. And the subscribers to this show, many of whom are far from stupid, are down with all that, just because we have encampments for Hamas and menstruating men and Joe Kinnock Biden is getting senile. You couldn't have made this up.
I agree the silence is the most disturbing thing. SCOTUS is clearly biased. Republicans ar unable to govern They are at each others throats and can only pass legislation with the help of Democrats.
When you observe how the Justin’s are treated by the Republican Tennessee legislature, you realize the danger created by GOP rule.
Thanks for your considerate response, Gordon. We definitely agree on nuclear and RFK. As for the ultimate vote, there we must disagree. One other major concern about the Biden camp is his VP. With his age, she is a very real possibility,
What is wrong with people who think like this. How can you listen to yourselves and Sam Harris as examples while they quote their cult as we watch our economy and borders or vax as they describe it not exiting?!? You are not asking the right question! What can’t you see it!! The cult like progressives who voted Joe and Kamala in and will vote for them again while they destroy our country are the people you need to be asking about and fearing. Jeez that’s frustrating.
Certainly there is a 'cult of personality' built around the 'larger-than-life' Trump....but no more so than the Cult of Personality which surrounds Obama.... (Say Hallelujah to the chorus of Hosannahs which greet his every manifestation! Can I get an Amen?!). Equally we could speak of the Cult of Personality which elevates Taylor & Patrick & Kevin & Pink & JLo & Elon & Jimmy.... which make People Magazine, Oprah, Entertainment Tonight, and the View massive cross-generational multi-media hits.
We love our Celebrities and their 'glamorous lives'. This is not new. (Indeed, it's probably why the good-looking, non-sweating Kennedy (whose hair was perfect) was elected 84 years ago.). It's probably why Snoop Dogg is on every commercial.
But that's not the substance of Trumpism. Nor is it why millions upon millions of Americans will vote for him (even as millions of those millions hold their nose and wince as they pull that electoral lever). Yes, he is buffoonish; yes, he's 'orange'; yes, he rough, crude, and more than occasionally inappropriate. He's not even particularly likeable.
But he's also, in a very real sense, 'a new broom which sweeps clean'. And that fundamental truth resonates. It has weight and carries meaning, especially with those who have lost all tolerance for the Unending Perversion, Waste & Corruption which overflows the Beltway.
When what we see in Washington is a massive, sucking, sinkhole of an Anti-American Money & Policy Pit....and what we hear from Trump is that that Deep Dark Progressive Swamp needs draining....who could possibly disagree?
It's not baffling or troubling that people would vote for the man who promises to put an end to the State Hog Trough. What's baffling is why anyone would vote for a demented Biden and More of the Same Garbage and Self-Serving Venality which gives us Sanctuary Cities, Open Borders, Transgendered Days of Visibility, Men Pretending to be Women getting naked in our daughters' locker rooms.... which gives us a feckless, shuffling foreign policy which tips ever closer to world war.... which celebrates crowds of anti-semites shutting down our universities....which abandons our allies....which prides itself on its enthusiastic embrace of racism & sexism and selects Supreme Court Justices because their skin is Black and their genitals are female (of course we still don't know what a woman actually is...so we're just guessing she's female).
No, student loans should not be forgiven. If you borrow from me you need to pay me back. No, we should not subsidize degrees in Gender Studies, Women's Studies, Black Studies, Hispanic Studies, Study Studies. No, we should not mandate electric cars or fund their outrageous price tags with taxpayer dollars. No, the world is not ending. No, we should not shut down our fossil fuel plants. No, we don't need more windmills or solar farms when they are better cheaper forms of energy. No, the Dept of Education should not be funded...nor the waste which is the CDC.
It's not a shame that Caitlan Clark has a contract which is absolutely in line with her league's revenue streams. Abortion is not a 'right'. This is not a Climate Emergency. And inflation is NOT declining (things cost 20% more now than they did 8 years ago, for God's sake!)
The list of no good, very bad, terrible stuff is endless.
Diversity, Inclusivity, and Equity kills Quality, destroys Merit, crushes Initiative, and shackles Freedom....and yet DIE is what Biden's Left is all about.
John speaks of Trump and tells us he's dangerous.
What is dangerous ...what is truly, truly, horrifically dangerous ... is the United States being led, for four more years, by a man who doesn't know who he is, where he is, or what he's saying...but who also serves as the white-haired figurehead of a handpuppet for those who are actively working to destroy the Constitution, this nation and our freedom (including the freedom to fail...to eat steak, drive non-electric cars, and kiss someone without a sworn affidavit).
You may not like him. You may despise him. You may hate his haircut, his pout, and his thin skin....but what he works for is undeniably a better & safer & wealthier world than the one in which we currently wallow.
Trump was a reaction to the Washington consensus of wars , open borders and free trade. Dems squelched their version when the crushed Bernie Sanders and adopted a miasma of identity and cultural policies to provide progressive cover.
Progressives delude themselves that they don't like Trump. The fact is, until 2015, they didn't care about him one way or the other. Trumps is the first significant public figure to call out progressives and progressivism for the social tyrants that they are. NEVER been said before, although millions of us were aware of the truth.
All totalitarians rely on controlling the narrative. It's worked for progressives for over a century. And then Trump came along and blew up their entire charade. THAT'S why they hate him. But they can/won't recognize their own bigotry and extremism, so they make up excuses about why he's a bad man and must be stopped 'to save democracy'. Only fools and progressives believe that crap.
I say all this, even as I live in a progressive neighborhood and have progressives in my family. They are mostly well-intentioned people, but they couldn't think their way out of a wet paper bag.
What does it say about our country that ad hominem attacks are made on Trump, while congressmen continually lied that they had evidence he conspired with Russia and they in fact were just lying, and we have people that are not concerned that these liars might regain immense political power and have a track record of abusing their authority. Even if you only half way believe the argument made by Hayek in The Road to Serfdom, or don’t believe it at all, the problem might just be that so much power is centralized in Washington.
That's an interesting word, 'collude', meaning to meet with or work secretly with someone, typically in an effort to deceive or cheat.
It is doubtless true that Trump reps did meet with Russian reps on occasion in an effort to determine if there was something there that could benefit the campaign. In fact I would guess that Trump's people met with thousands of individuals from any number of places over the course of the campaign to do exactly that whenever possible. Heck, I'm sure all the candidates did.
It's the 'deceive or cheat' portion of the word which seems dubious.
Of course we might quite accurately argue that every candidate works as hard as they can (and spend millions of dollars accordingly) to 'deceive' the electorate to buy the exact brand of 'Miracle Solutions' that they're selling. It's called politics. But doing all that is not criminal. It's normal.
Just like it's normal that the U.S. government meets regularly with political candidates all across the world to seek to influence their elections.
It's how all this stuff works.
Or doesn't work, as the case may be.
Obviously if all it took was a coupla million dollars and a few meetings to grab an election victory, the $14.4B that was actually spent in 2020 was entirely unnecessary (which, in fact, it may have been....though you'll never convince either party of that)
As for the ad hominem attacks against Trump...they're everywhere. Entirely forgettable...like John, here, calling him a gorilla.
Bdarn1: I'm afraid this is exactly the kind of comment that just reinforces how Trump degrades the norms of our democracy. You seem to think that it's a regular occurrence for presidential campaigns to meet with the intelligence services and other members of hostile governments to see how these governments can help them win the election.
But that simply isn't the case. It's something that never happened before (and would have been considered a campaign ending scandal if it did). But somehow Trump supporters rationalize it as normal behavior.
Sadly, while I didn't believe it at the time, I actually think Trump famous remark that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose any voters is probably accurate. Folks like you would doubtless come up with some way to rationalize it as normal or justified. And you would no doubt support Trump's claim of immunity from prosecution for it as well (https://www.axios.com/2024/01/10/trump-immunity-hearing-court-case-5th-avenue-quote).
It's really quite shocking. And the whole Trump Derangement Syndrome accusation is just a way for folks to rationalize dismissing how uniquely awful Trump is.
100% agree with John about Trump. As a kid growing up in California, I first really became aware of Trump in my teenage years in the late 80's when reading a Doonesbury anthology that absolutely eviscerated Trump for being the embodiment of a low class rich guy. From the start, he was a ridiculous figure; the kind of guy that proved that just because you had money, didn't mean you had class or character or competence.
Then, living in New York, in the early 2000s, Trump kind of grew on me. In New York business circles he was viewed as a joke; the rich son of a successful developer who was pretending to be a great businessman while obviously knowing nothing about what it actually takes to build a successful business. But he played the part so well, both with conviction but also a note of self-aware irony and a willingness to play along with jokes about him, that it was appealing and fun. Trump was like the closest thing to a merger of pro wrestling and the business world, and I loved pro wrestling as a kid. This period obviously hit its peak with The Apprentice, which was a lot of fun to watch, even though succeeding on the show obviously had as much to do with succeeding in business, as succeeding in pro wrestling has to do with being successful in actual combat sports.
So when Trump entered the 2016 presidential race, I thought it would be fun. And as someone who thought the Republican party had already gone a little crazy by then, I rooted for him to win the nomination, since I assumed there was no way that someone who is such an obvious buffoon could actually get elected.
Clearly, I was wrong about that. And so the question Glenn raises really is an important one. What does it say about the state of our country that such a significant percentage of the population is willing to vote for (and in some cases idolize) a figure like Trump: the publicity seeking non-religious son of a rich real estate developer who was spectacularly unsuccessful as a businessman (known primarily for the strategic use of bankruptcy law and law suits to avoid paying vendors) turned successful reality TV star, who dodged military service through a bogus medical deferment, married and cheated on multiple women, and ran for president despite having no experience in politics or government?
You did the same thing John did in this short video: plenty of descriptors of Mr. Trump, but nothing about his work as *president*. I'm sure you and John dislike some things he did *as president*, and I have no doubt both of you could present them articulately. Why, then, do you resort to "He's a ridiculous figure, he's a buffoon...." therefore he shouldn't be president? It's nice to have class, but incivility is not a presidential disqualifier, any more than bad breath disqualifies someone from being a race car driver.
"What does it say about the state of our country that such a significant percentage of the population is willing to vote for (and in some cases idolize) a figure like Trump"
It says a significant percentage of the population prefers low gas prices, affordable groceries, and peace more than they care about a president with good manners.
Good question and points Jesse. It made me think about George W. and Trump. I thought both were disastrously bad presidents in their own ways; but definitely dislike Trump far more intensely even though I would agree that from a pure policy perspective, George W. was worse. To your point, Trump didn't launch any wars and the economy was strong during his presidency.
So why do I dislike Trump so much more intensely? I think it comes down to two things:
- First, I think Trump's behavior during and after the 2020 election has been disastrously bad for the country, in ways that could permanently damage it. Trump lost a close election in 2020, just as he won a close one in 2016. The idea that the election was stolen has been comprehensively debunked (https://www.readtangle.com/2000-mules-fact-check-stolen-election/). But Trump has continuously claimed he was cheated in a way unlike any other Presidential candidate in American history. And while that would be bad enough in and of itself, the fact that has managed to parley that claim into being nominated again means that candidates may conclude that falsely claiming they were cheated is the best way to remain politically viable. I think that could be terrible for the country's future.
- The second reason has to do with character. You're right that "class" and "civility", while I hope and think they are helpful, are not prerequisites for being a president (and maybe not even for being a good president). Certainly, those are freighted concepts. But I think I always believed, maybe naively, that all of our presidents before Trump were men of character. Which doesn't mean they were perfect or even good people all of the time (many were unfaithful, LBJ stole a Senate election, Wilson was a racist , etc. etc.), but I think they all ran for President not only because of personal ambition but because they actually did want to make a difference for their country. And I think that is also true for most Congresspeople today, even the ones I disagree with intensely, whether it is an Ilhan Omar on the left or a Mike Johnson on the right. I don't think that is true for Donald Trump. I believe that Trump as President is the same person he was before he became President: a completely amoral person whose only motivation is self aggrandizement. I think it's sad that we had someone like that as our President for even one term, much less two.
Finally, Jesse, to your last point, I think you're probably right that lots of folks lean toward Trump because they associate him with a good period of time in their lives. What is sad, however, is that this association is likely to prove disastrous if Trump is reelected. Trump was incredibly fortunate to come to office at a time when he inherited an economy in marvelous shape and one where low interest rates meant that even increasing the budget deficit in the way that Trump did was not going to lead to bad outcomes for people. But whoever is President in 2025 is going to be faced with a very different situation, and Trump's plan to simply run it back will lead to a huge spike in inflation this time around: https://www.slowboring.com/p/trump-would-make-inflation-worse
Thanks for the reply. I appreciate the articulation of actual reasons, even if I don't agree with them.
1. The first reason I think is overstated, considering such behavior is not uncommon for the loser. I took 60 seconds for an Internet search, and it's easy to find stories--even on CNN and NPR--of Democrats questioning and challenging the 2000, 2004, and 2016 elections. Yes, Trump's complaints were louder and longer--in part because he planned to run again, unlike Gore, Kerry, and Hillary--but I don't see how that translates to permanently damaging the country.
2. Your second reason is a big part of Trump's popular appeal. You are not alone in naively thinking previous presidents were men of character; but at this point, I think most of us realize politicians (on both sides) are sleazy, who will do or say anything to get elected. When people saw Trump in all his buffoonery, they said, "That's who he really is; he's not pretending to be someone else in order to secure votes." As Trump himself said, "I'm not a politician. That's why I got elected."
3. I agree the debt/economy will be a big challenge, no matter who is elected. I'm not pleased that Trump increased the national debt, even though nearly half of it was covid relief.
Were I to wholly agree with your three reasons, I still don't see how this translates to....Adolf Hitler. Some say: "But he tried to take over the country!". It's a great propaganda point against Trump, but very silly when thought through. Consider the scenario: this vile, extremely charismatic dictator with 500,000 of his loyal devotees, most of whom own GUNS, are gathered to take over the country, with only 340 National Guard soldiers and the Capitol Police to stop them. In the afternoon, 1100 more Guardsmen are called, and in the evening, another 6200. (These numbers from the National Guard website report on Jan. 6.)
According to Wikipedia (which leans left), there were five deaths (one by shooting, one by drug overdose, three of natural causes); 174 injured police officers; and $2.7 million in damage. Five hundred thousand gun owners (following orders from their charismatic dictator) against a few thousand troops, and that's the best they can do? This is the wimpiest revolution of all time. It's hard to imagine a less Hitlerian result than that feeble attempted insurrection.
I know you, Gordon, didn't bring up "Hitler," but John and many others have made the comparison, and you state you agree 100% with John.
"1. The first reason I think is overstated, considering such behavior is not uncommon for the loser. I took 60 seconds for an Internet search, and it's easy to find stories--even on CNN and NPR--of Democrats questioning and challenging the 2000, 2004, and 2016 elections. Yes, Trump's complaints were louder and longer--in part because he planned to run again, unlike Gore, Kerry, and Hillary--but I don't see how that translates to permanently damaging the country."
Here's why that "Dems did it too:" argument comes across to me as incredibly weak.
In 2000, Al Gore believed that with a proper recount of FL, he would have won. He said as much, he took that claim to court, I think he won some legal victories in Florida but eventually lost when the US Supreme Court ruled against him in Bush v Gore. The VERY NEXT DAY, he gave a very gracious speech in which he acknowledged that he was giving up his legal challenges and acknowledging Bush as the next President. On Jan 6, 2001, the date of the electoral vote certification, a few Democratic House members made objections to counting the electoral vote count, and Al Gore himself, presiding over the electoral vote count as the sitting VP, ruled all of the objections out of order so that Bush could be certified the winner.
Other than the fact that both Trump in 2020 and Gore in 2016 filed lawsuits, absolutely no part of what Gore did in 2000 has even the slightest resemblance to what Trump did 2 decades later. No attempts to break Florida law by producing an "alternate" slate of electors, no attempts to bring a huge mob to Washington to strom the Capitol, and even though Gore was literally the guy who presided over the electoral vote count, no attempts to monkey with that.
In 2004, Bush defeated Kerry, and Kerry conceded. A smattering of Dem lawmakers protested, including one Senator who actually did object to the electoral vote count, but that objection was defeated in the Senate by a vote of 74-1 (8 Dems and 17 Republucans did not bother to vote). Kerry himself filed no lawsuits and made no efforts to scheme or foment violence in order to steal the election.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton called Trump and congratulated him on his victory on election night and gave a concession speech the next day. No lawsuits, no mobs, no "alternate" slates of electors. On Jan 6th, 2017, the then VP presided over the counting of electoral votes and overruled all objections from the floor. No mob stormed the Capitol that day in an effort to change the result.
Good points, Michael. "Dems did it too" is not to say their behavior matched Trump's precisely; it's mentioned only because there seems to be a large contingent who think the very thought of questioning the election (no matter the method) is dangerous and unpatriotic, etc.
My main point was this: in each case (2000, 2004, 2017, 2021) the RESULT was the same: a peaceful transition to the next president on the appointed day. In other words, mostly a lot of hot air. I think it's naive to assume other presidential candidates (and governors, mayors, senators, etc) don't work hard to "find" votes, and ask (in private conversation) for help finding such votes. Bush and Gore probably both did it in Florida. Politics is dirty business, yet the country abides. You can say Trump went overboard, that he worked dirtier than Gore and Hillary, but he still left office on the appointed day, and the country is still here. The aftermath of each election was the same. The outrage over Trump seems to be largely over what MIGHT have happened. But to repeat my earlier comment: if Trump actually wanted to "take over the country" in an unlawful manner (i.e. not through the courts)--with tens of millions of brainwashed, gun-toting followers at his disposal--don't you think he could have done more damage than a few broken windows, some trespassing arrests, and five deaths (only one--a Trump supporter--killed by another human)?
I don't think there is any reasonable characterization of what happened in 2021 as a peaceful transition. Moree than 1,000 police engaged in hand to hand fighting for several hours is "peaceful." Nope.
It is true Trump give up his fight after losing that battle, but there was still a physical battle fought, and it could have turned out differently than it did.
I would say there are a lot of meaningful differences between 2021 and 2001, 2005, and 2017, but the largest of these is this: in each of the prior years, the losing candidate accepted the outcome of the election and made abundantly clear long before it mattered they had done so. Outside of Gore's lawsuit, none made any effort, through the courts or outside them, to change the result. When Gore lost he abided by the decision. Trump did not accept his defeat until after his attempt to subvert the election failed.
To be clear Jesse, I'm definitely not saying that Trump equals Hitler. Nor is he Stalin or Mao. Or Idi Amin. Or even Castro. But to be fair, I don't think John was really equating Trump to Hitler either. I think his point about reading the Hitler biography was just that he was trying to understand how demagogues come to power.
Anyway, two points (and then I'll probably give you the last word if you want it).
First, I think it's sad that so many people believe, in the way that you describe, that there is no real difference between Trump and other politicians. I really do think that all previous presidents (and most politicians) are fundamentally different from Trump. I believe almost all of them were motivated by a mix of wanting to do some good for the world as well as personal ambition. I think Trump’s complete narcissism and self-centeredness is literally unprecedented among major American political figures.
I believe that virtually everyone, on both sides of the aisle, is a better person than Trump. In fact, with the exception of MTG (who I think is simply a whack job), I'm not aware of a single person in Congress of either party who I would not prefer to Trump as President. The only one who even gives me a moment of pause is Ted Cruz. While Cruz is obviously a much smarter and more competent person than Trump and doesn’t present the same kind of threat to democracy, I pause with him only because I've never heard of anyone else in politics who is so disliked by everyone who has ever spent time with him from colleagues to school mates. And like Trump, it seems sad for that bad a person to become President.
Second, with regard to Trump as a danger to democracy, for me it has little to nothing to do with January 6th. While that was obviously the visible moment in his effort to overturn the election, I agree it never had any real chance to actually change anything.
What I think was much scarier was both Trump’s phone call to Kemp trying to get the necessary votes in Georgia by whatever means necessary and his effort to get a slate of fake electors selected in Michigan. These were both real attempts to steal the election that could have succeeded if more officials had been MAGA rather than people of principle.
And I will tell you, speaking only for myself personally, that if a state legislature ever uses its powers to override the votes of the people in the state to throw its electors to its preferred candidate over the will of the voters, I would consider it a coup (even if technically constitutional) and would consider it legitimate to fight back by any and all means (including taking up arms if necessary).
And I think this gets to the real danger of Trump. American is a constitutional republic, but it’s not simply the constitution that has assured peaceful transfer of powers. It’s that we have norms. It’s that candidates for office, once they have exhausted their legal remedies for contesting an election, have agreed to concede and call for their supporters to stop fighting the election and become the loyal opposition. The ultimate example of this, of course, being Al Gore just 24 years ago. Can you imagine if the situation were reversed today? If Trump were to lose an election because supporters of Biden stopped a recount in a state where Biden’s brother was the governor? But 24 years ago, for the good of the country and despite the fact that it was terrible for him personally, when Gore was faced with this situation he agreed to stop the fight once the Supreme Court had made its final ruling.
I do believe that the way Trump has flagrantly violated this norm is immensely dangerous. And it’s all the worse that his supporters back him in this, despite the fact that his the kind of man that Matt Yglesias describes here: https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-orange-man-is-bad
It is refreshing to hear you reject the Trump=Hitler equation. No matter how much one dislikes him, it's still baffling to make the comparison; and people have been doing it since well before January 6. I'm curious if it is simply an ignorance of history. There may be, for instance, a whole generation of young voters who grew up on social media, who don't even know who Hitler was. They might think insulting people on Twitter is actually a Hitler-like move.
Trump has a big ego but I do believe he cares about America. I recently saw a clip from the early 1990s where Trump was on one of the big talk shows (Oprah, I think), talking about how Americans were getting screwed by overseas manufacturing, demanding something be done about it. (The host, seemingly impressed by this off-script rant, asked if Trump would consider running for president someday!) But I get how his ego can distract from any pro-America sensibilities he does have. He has become, unavoidably, a politician; but when people say he's different (or at least *was* different), they mean he's not a career politician. He was never a congressman, senator, or governor; thus he never had those years of "refinement," learning how to be phony, brown-nose, lie with a smile, &c. He's a straight shooter.
I think the Georgia phone call is similar to Jan. 6, in that people overreacted as if the country was in peril, when in both cases nothing (or very little) actually happened. As with Jan. 6, don't you think Trump could have done more, if he were really the evil dictator? Perhaps send some of his gun-toting supporters to Atlanta and demand Kemp's removal, or even his life? (This is just a hypothetical; I know you've clarified Trump is not on par with the evil dictators.) In both cases, Trump was very loud, but it was only words. He's actually followed the rules. He left office Jan. 20th. He's said "Find me votes," but he hasn't actually produces his own votes out of thin air. He was simply saying, in his verbose way, "Make sure you've counted all the votes properly." But again, I can clearly see how Trump's opponents interpret it as trying to steal the election. I'm sure many on the other side would accuse Biden of doing the same, if the scenario were reversed.
Sorry. Having trouble resisting the urge to make one last point. Your bar what constitutes a threat to democracy seems incredibly high to me Jesse. You seem to be saying that anything short of a military coup doesn't qualify.
Finally, if you think Trump's call to Kemp was his way of saying "make sure you have counted all the votes properly", I don't know what to tell you. It's like believing that Tony was telling Christopher to help these guys get a suit (https://youtu.be/9va2KKNCg4o?si=aPjP1Ht1Kf0Die_0&t=261).
As president, he used the powers of his office to try and usurp the presidency from his duly elected successor. As president, he disastrously mismanaged the US response to a worldwide pandemic. As president, he ordered the tear gassing of peaceful protestors so that he could stage a photo op. None of these is reasonably characterized as merely "bad manners."
For those who believe that there are at least some circumstances where pregant women should be allowed to get abortions, Trump appointed the justces who took away that federal right - and he is proud of having done it. People can view that as good or bad depending on where they stand on the issue, of course.
Trump oversaw a nationwide crime wave in 2020 that has taken some time to subside.
And, as president, Biden is using the DOJ to go after his political opponent. The Democrat attorneys general are using spurious and concocted laws that have never been applied against other businessmen, to go after Trump. Peaceful (unlike the George Floyd rioting criminals) anti-abortion protesters are being prosecuted. The entire justice system is being perverted by Biden and his Democrat party and people like oyu who hate Trump, are OK with that.
The tear-gassing to which you refer, never happened. It was just another lie concocted to attack Trump.
I'm certainly not a huge Biden guy. I think both Obama and Clinton are much smarter and more impressive people (though I would fully agree that Clinton is no better than Trump or JFK or LBJ when it comes to being faithful).
But in terms of what he has done at President, I think it's clear that Biden has gotten it mostly right. The American economy has been by far the strongest in the world (https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/03/14/americas-extraordinary-economy-keeps-defying-the-pessimists), his support for Ukraine has been unwavering and vital, he has generally done the right thing on Israel (though he should be pushing back again Netanyahu even more strongly than he has), the withdrawal from Afghanistan was poorly executed but ultimately the the right decision, and he has begun to call for the right steps on the border (only to be stopped by the Republicans trying to keep it as an issue).
Not a perfect record, but certainly a good one. If you feel differently, it would be good to know why.
Meanwhile, that's a response about policy. In terms of comparing Biden and Trump as people, the differences are much more stark. Biden is a career politician (which I'll agree has negatives as well as positives), who has dealt with incredible personal hardship with class and grace and is someone who was historically popular with his colleagues on both side of the aisle.
Trump, on the other hand, has a good sense of humor but otherwise has no redeeming qualities. He's a publicity seeking cheat in all senses of that word. He cheats in golf, cheats on his wives, cheats the people he does business with, and has tried to cheat in elections as well. He has almost no redeeming qualities, and I guarantee that 20 years from now, folks will be embarrassed to tell their grandchilden they voted for him.
I think we have to conclude that marital fidelity as a presidential characteristic is low on the pole. I've never been impressed with Biden, regardless of his political affiliation.
Biden was supposed to be a unifier, but his actions seem to me more as a divider the way he rags on Republicans/Trump supporters.
I believe he appears weak and feeble as a president and that does not engender confidence either here in the States and abroad, which is why we have so many conflicts going on.
The border is a disaster and has been since Biden got into office. Why has it taken 3.5 years to figure out what to do, and it's my understanding simply enforcing the laws and keeping the remain in Mexico ruling would have given time to put something together.
I don't understand the ultimate goal for the Ukraine War, do we just keep giving money indefinitely or do we try to broker some kind of negotiation?
Hamas released a shit storm with that raid, and now the ME is in an uproar. I am confident Hamas knew what it was doing and has no compunction about the dead Palestinians left in its wake. Biden now has to decide how to assist Israel kick Hamas' ass and get the hostages back, or let that conflict drag on with danger of escalation.
I fully agree with the Afhgan pullout, but yes, it was a disaster.
The economy may be doing OK, but most Americans aren't feeling it.
The pandering to the Trans movement, DEI, and all the other attendant "Theories" is unwarranted and over the top.
At this point, I am not voting for a personality, I am voting for who I think will steer us in the right direction.
I might ask since you seem to lean Democrat- what is your opinion of RFK?
Trump was very complicit in the bad Afghanistan withdrawal. By cutting the ostensibly US-supported Afghan government out of the negotiations with the Taliban, he signaled that that government was a sinking ship and the Afghans outside of Kabul saw the writing on the wall and cut their own deals with the Taliban, leading to the much faster than expected collapse when the actual US withdrawal began. Not one of Biden's or US intelligence's finest hours, but he was absolutely set up to fail by his predecessor. To change course he would have had to risk attacks on US forces (something Trump supporters generally oppose in other contexts).
What a pathetic justification of Biden's disastrous handling of Afghanistan, leaving Americans there to die, as well as billions in equipment, now in the hands of terrorists.
PSW: Why do you think Biden is going way too fast into alternatives? I think his energy policy has actually been arguably his strongest area, since he is both investing in alternative energy, while also taking steps to boost domestic oil production to its highest rate ever. I'm a big believer in a policy of energy abudance (https://www.slowboring.com/p/energy-abundance), and my main recommendation for Biden in this area is to become a stronger supporter of nuclear power.
And speaking of nuclear power PSW, to answer the question you asked above, I have no interest at all in RFK Jr. as an alternative to Biden. I think Jr. is wrong on nuclear power, wrong on vaccines, and wrong on Ukraine.
As for Ukraine, PSW, I suspect we may in some agreement there. Certainly, I think it's fair for you to ask the question of what the endgame is? Ultimately, I think a negotiated solution that gives up the Crimea (at least for now) will have to be the answer, but I think it's vital that Ukraine enter those negotiations from a position of relative strength, so that it is clear to everyone (including the Russian people) that launching the war was a huge mistake.
I also think, PSW, that some of your other criticisms are fair as well. I think it's reasonable to criticize for Biden for being late to address the border issues and for pandering too much on some social issues.
But ultimately, even from a strictly policy perspective, these criticisms are outweighed by the fact that Biden is far better on both the economy (https://www.slowboring.com/p/trump-would-make-inflation-worse) and our energy future. Then when you add in the huge weaknesses that Trump brings to the table because of his election denial and his lack of character (discussed in detail on a different thread above), I think the choice to vote for Biden is an easy one.
Please change focus. I'd like to see a debate on Dopey Joe. Trump is the God of Rationality compared to Biden who is incapable of putting a sentence together.
I joined the Republican Party to do what I could to nominate the most worthy POTUS candidate other than Trump. However, Biden is inept, corrupt and appears to hate our limited form of government. Trump now appears clearly the best alternative. TDS blinds many to reality.
I agree. The Democrats, of whom I was a member until Biden came along, really must find an intelligent, educated, rational, experienced male to allow Biden to slip into retirement asap.
Like most people who dislike Trump, John does not give any real reasons or evidence WHY Trump is dangerous, why the country is better off in its current state, or what Trump has done that earns him a comparison to Adolf Hitler.
I admire your patience with those who still push the Russia hoax, phony Steele dossier, and the Mueller witch hunt. And then they accuse otherts of not arguing in good faith!
It is self evident that a person who tries to unlwafully stay in power after losing an election is a dangrous person the country is better off without.
Prediction: once Trump wins in 2024, questioning elections, voter fraud, insurrections, resisting 'misinformation', etc. will become the most patriotic, ethical, and vital thing any educated American can do. Ya know, so there's no authoritarianism, fascism, blah blah blah. Gtfoh.
People who say this have very short memories. Everyone who likes to parrot this line of nonsense forgets that Dmeocrats have been through losses like by razor thin margins twice in the past 25 years and in neither of those cases did we resort to political violence and attempts at election theft. In one case, the losing candidate actually presided over the certification of his opponent; in the other Joe Biden himself presided over Trump's certification. Only one close election loser has done what your boy did. One. And it proves him unfit.
Except for the Russia hoax where they crippled the incoming president, jailed his allies and tried to destroy him. Added bonus is when democrats attacked his inauguration but charges were dropped. Double bonus when he was renominated in 2020 his supporters were subject to attacks. But besides that dems totally accepting of election results.
What you and conservative talking heads call "the Russia hoax" wasn't any kind of a hoax. It was shown pretty clearly that the Trump campaign sought assistance from Russia in various ways, responded positively to Russian offers to provide such assistance, provided their campaign internal polling data to a Russian intellegence operative. Among other things. It was also shown that Russia made various efforts to help the Trump campaign, including both a social media campaign and a hack and dump campaign that resulted in a number of indictments of Russian intellegican personnel.
What was NEVER shown is a "meeting of the minds" between Trump or his campaign and Russian officials that would have been necessary to support a chanrge of conspiracy. It's possible that such meeting did happen but that it was not uncovered by investigstors (who documented numerous uncooperative witnesses, documents they could not access etc.); also quite possible that there never was.
But the known facts were still scandalous. It is unconscionable for a presidential candidate to openly seek and receive assistance from a hostile foreign power, for obvious reasons, but it happened here. No hoax.
Democrats did not "attack his inauguration."
" But besides that dems totally accepting of election results."
It is completely reasonable for a losing candidate ewho thinks he was wrionged and can prove that in court to sue (as Trump himself did). You cannot name a single Democrat who sought, as Trump did, to seize or hold an office after losing an election.
Do you get your information from the 51 agents who lied about hunter , the Obama intelligence agents who lied to the public about trump being a Russian asset , the 8 intelligence agencies who told us Russia favored Clinton , crowdstrike who never actually showed the servers were hacked , or just a steady stream of Rachel Maddow. It was hoax all of it , accept it and move on .
No one is 'my boy" there chief. I'm a lifelong Democrat, now Independent. Politically adrift because of the bullshit we've all been subjected to. But by all means, stick with 'your team'...they're doin a bang up job!
What we witnessed in those days, and weeks of scrambling ...and vote questioning....and rallies.... and lawsuits.... and accusations of tampering was the entirely predictable reaction of a man who was entirely shocked by what he mistakenly thought was impossible: losing a general election to a bunkered and demented fool who could neither think nor speak.
And in that feckless scrambling he sought to leverage every possible avenue he had to prove the election tainted. He failed.
At least he failed to prove it in the places which counted.
And now he's back to prove in a different way that he should have won, despite what Time magazine called the "secret bipartisan campaign to 'save' the 2020" election.
The truth is that what is 'lawful' or 'unlawful' is far from self-evident. Questioning election outcomes is not unlawful. Arguing about same is not unlawful. Seeking to prove obstruction, or interference, or malfeasance is not unlawful. Objecting to the outcome is not unlawful.
And, as we all know, when conversations are had behind closed doors, all kinds of other leverage is typically applied with more or less success....and like a tree in the forest when no one's there, whether those conversations and leverage points are strictly lawful is unknown.
The truth is, in order for Trump to have somehow remained in-power, the electoral result would have had to have been proved, lawfully, to be invalid. That did not happen. That he wished to make that happen is clear...but that his efforts to do so were somehow unlawful is far from it.
" the entirely predictable reaction of a man who was entirely shocked by what he mistakenly thought was impossible: losing a general election to a bunkered and demented fool who could neither think nor speak."
Do you imagine that thinking very very poorly of the election opponent who defeats you is some sort of new thing in American politics? Like, before Trump lost in 2020 is wasn't a routine thing? And that an unfounded belief that you were wronged justifies violence? And you call Trump's critics the deranged ones?
Why would anyone imagine it's new? Of course it's not new; what a silly idea.
Nor am I calling Trump's critics deranged. Somehow you've imagined a conversation which doesn't exist.
In any case simply because a thing happens and has happened before -- but not to you -- that does not mean that even you would not be surprised when it happens again....especially when you're running against a 2-dimensional zombie of a candidate who can't either think or speak.
But all that's beside the point isn't it?
Trump was surprised; he was shocked; and he scrambled in typical Trumpian fashion to prove the election tainted, as I said. And, as noted, he failed to prove it in the places which counted.
The truth is, in order for Trump to have remained in-power, the electoral result would have had to have been proved, lawfully, to be invalid. That did not happen. That he wished to make that happen is clear...but that his efforts to do so were somehow unlawful is far from clear....and therefore, it is far from self-evident that the man is -- (shall we snicker a bit?) a dangerous criminal.
Trump derangement syndrome (TDS) is a standard trope on the right which, I guess, is supposed to mean that if one viscerally objects to a President who tried to steal an election he lost through criminal means, is an adjudicated rapist, etc., then one must be deranged. Even this topic title meantions it!
But I apologize for wrongly putting you in the group of people who say that.
"Trump was surprised; he was shocked; and he scrambled in typical Trumpian fashion to prove the election tainted, as I said. "
So, tell me. When does surprise and shock at having something very bad happen result in a license to engage in crime and encourage violence, and when doesn't it? I was suprised and shocked a couple of months ago when my the company I work for made a substantial payroll error that was bad for me. What types of normally aberrant or criminal behaviors was a justfied in doing because of that?
"The truth is, in order for Trump to have remained in-power, the electoral result would have had to have been proved, lawfully, to be invalid. That did not happen. "
You have the tense wrong there - it has not happened yet, and Trump is - for some reason - doing all he can to prevent it.
But there is really no factual dispute about whether Trump ginned up a huge mob and loosed it on the Capitol. There is a legal question - did his actions stay within the constitutional protections offered by the 1st amendment or did they not. But I don't think the legal answer to that question is necessary for any fair-minded person to conclude that, crime or not, that was the behavior of someone who was and is totally unfit for the Presidency.
"especially when you're running against a 2-dimensional zombie of a candidate who can't either think or speak."
I guess you view the right wing media caricature of Joe Biden as the actual version of him, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Are you referencing the $2B in property damage...the 19 confirmed dead... the city blocks in flames....those "mostly peaceful" protests committed by millions (generating 14K arrests but only about 120 convictions) which were validated by Kamala, et al?
Or are you referencing the Trump quote from Jan. 6th: "Go home with Love & in Peace. Remember this day forever!"
You reference the "huge mob"... but which mob is that? The estimated 2000 who protested in the Capitol on January 6th? Or the estimated 15-26M who protested 6 months prior (while burning, looting, and killing all across the United States)?
The problem, of course, is one of proportionality. 4-5-6 days of burning & looting & murder is not equivalent to a handful of hours in which people in Viking headgear, carried their American flags, and put their dirty shoes on Pelosi's desk.
Neither act is right or lawful...but surely you recognize the vast difference between the two (one of those differences being 718 convictions out of the 1200 arrests, out of the 2000 who entered the Capitol (36% and counting.)...vs. 120 convictions out of 14K arrests (1%).
Trump's behavior that day was equally disproportionate and far from blameless. But he did not try to steal the election (he was trying to right what he believed was wrong)...he did not engage in criminal behavior...he did not encourage violence (but, yes, he could have done far more to discourage it)
But all this is not to defend Trump or portray him as some saint or genius or savior....it is to point out that he did not do what so many on the progressive left believe he did. And to more importantly note that Biden and the policy platform on which he stands is far, far worse.
You speak of the 'right wing media caricature' of the man? Have you listened to him? Have you watched him on stage (or even watched him try to get on or off stage)? Have you actually tried to understand what it is he struggles to say (when he's not talking about Corn Pop or Cannibals or Big Rigs)?
Perhaps you've not yet had the misfortune of witnessing your own loved ones suffer from dementia. I can assure you it's terrible. But for many of us, it's also inevitable.
Biden is already there. He's been there, in that lost condition for years and he's getting worse: the vacant stares, the sentences that just die and end in baffled silence, the wandering, the inappropriate language, the intermittent rages, the memory loss, the confusion, the need to have handlers guide him to & fro (speech prompter at the ready).
He is what the Special Counsel said he was, 'an elderly man, with a poor memory, who does not possess a 'state of willfulness'. That is not 'right wing caricature'; that is tragedy made extraordinarily dangerous by the fact that the demented, old man in question is the head of the free world.
Why do people wrangle so much with Trump’s appeal even to those who admit to a dislike of him personally? Just take a look at the alternative, that should help.
Richard Nixon was elected President, and then re-elected in an absolute landslide. Yet almost no one like him. Evidently, voters were able to distinguish between a personality cult and a job application. Are voters nowadays less grown-up in their choices of candidates and parties? I'm looking at you, Mr. Obama!
I could not believe how my best friends became devoted members of the Obama Cult immediately! I suspected it was their compensation for having been born white.
As a former... DIE HARD Never Trumper... here's my 2 cents...
https://open.substack.com/pub/brookskoenig/p/as-a-former-never-trumper-a-rabid?r=oyvyx&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
So many people here baffled by "TDS" in the face of all the things the Left has done that need to be stopped! You're baffled because you have taken your eyes off the ball and you're in denial. Trump is a criminal many times over, his mendacity is unparalleled, and his goals and your goals don't actually align. He wants to establish in the US what Putin has in Russia. It's going to be the end of the Republic. You may like it for a while, just as my ancestors did in Germany. Perhaps we'll pump a fist and have a drink when DEI gets outlawed, or the like. But in the end you will find that a psychopath at the helm is always a disaster. There are no exceptions. "TDS" is a very stupid concept.
Kristi Noem proudly writes about killing a puppy. A Governor hates DEI but celebrates the Confederacy. A Republican activist calls Black medical students “Malpractice bailouts”. Who would want to be a member of a party where these acts do not disqualify an office holder?
Bill Barr says Trump shoul be nowhere near the Oval Office, but I’ll vote for Trump. There is no bottom for the GOP.
We didn't think it could get any worse when they were all big fans of Ollie North but then they decided to implement a torture regime and have Alberto Gonzalez and John Yoo provide the expert legal lies to cover for Dick Cheney et al, who actually belonged in the dock at the Hague. But now I'm with old Dick and his daughter, trying to hold on to the minimum rule of law, while the SCOTUS is purporting to puzzle over the legality of murdering the opposition if you're the President. And the subscribers to this show, many of whom are far from stupid, are down with all that, just because we have encampments for Hamas and menstruating men and Joe Kinnock Biden is getting senile. You couldn't have made this up.
I agree the silence is the most disturbing thing. SCOTUS is clearly biased. Republicans ar unable to govern They are at each others throats and can only pass legislation with the help of Democrats.
When you observe how the Justin’s are treated by the Republican Tennessee legislature, you realize the danger created by GOP rule.
Just thinking about Glenn and hoping his recovery is going well. Sending blessings and all good wishes his way...
Thanks for your considerate response, Gordon. We definitely agree on nuclear and RFK. As for the ultimate vote, there we must disagree. One other major concern about the Biden camp is his VP. With his age, she is a very real possibility,
What is wrong with people who think like this. How can you listen to yourselves and Sam Harris as examples while they quote their cult as we watch our economy and borders or vax as they describe it not exiting?!? You are not asking the right question! What can’t you see it!! The cult like progressives who voted Joe and Kamala in and will vote for them again while they destroy our country are the people you need to be asking about and fearing. Jeez that’s frustrating.
We miss the forest for the trees.
Certainly there is a 'cult of personality' built around the 'larger-than-life' Trump....but no more so than the Cult of Personality which surrounds Obama.... (Say Hallelujah to the chorus of Hosannahs which greet his every manifestation! Can I get an Amen?!). Equally we could speak of the Cult of Personality which elevates Taylor & Patrick & Kevin & Pink & JLo & Elon & Jimmy.... which make People Magazine, Oprah, Entertainment Tonight, and the View massive cross-generational multi-media hits.
We love our Celebrities and their 'glamorous lives'. This is not new. (Indeed, it's probably why the good-looking, non-sweating Kennedy (whose hair was perfect) was elected 84 years ago.). It's probably why Snoop Dogg is on every commercial.
But that's not the substance of Trumpism. Nor is it why millions upon millions of Americans will vote for him (even as millions of those millions hold their nose and wince as they pull that electoral lever). Yes, he is buffoonish; yes, he's 'orange'; yes, he rough, crude, and more than occasionally inappropriate. He's not even particularly likeable.
But he's also, in a very real sense, 'a new broom which sweeps clean'. And that fundamental truth resonates. It has weight and carries meaning, especially with those who have lost all tolerance for the Unending Perversion, Waste & Corruption which overflows the Beltway.
When what we see in Washington is a massive, sucking, sinkhole of an Anti-American Money & Policy Pit....and what we hear from Trump is that that Deep Dark Progressive Swamp needs draining....who could possibly disagree?
It's not baffling or troubling that people would vote for the man who promises to put an end to the State Hog Trough. What's baffling is why anyone would vote for a demented Biden and More of the Same Garbage and Self-Serving Venality which gives us Sanctuary Cities, Open Borders, Transgendered Days of Visibility, Men Pretending to be Women getting naked in our daughters' locker rooms.... which gives us a feckless, shuffling foreign policy which tips ever closer to world war.... which celebrates crowds of anti-semites shutting down our universities....which abandons our allies....which prides itself on its enthusiastic embrace of racism & sexism and selects Supreme Court Justices because their skin is Black and their genitals are female (of course we still don't know what a woman actually is...so we're just guessing she's female).
No, student loans should not be forgiven. If you borrow from me you need to pay me back. No, we should not subsidize degrees in Gender Studies, Women's Studies, Black Studies, Hispanic Studies, Study Studies. No, we should not mandate electric cars or fund their outrageous price tags with taxpayer dollars. No, the world is not ending. No, we should not shut down our fossil fuel plants. No, we don't need more windmills or solar farms when they are better cheaper forms of energy. No, the Dept of Education should not be funded...nor the waste which is the CDC.
It's not a shame that Caitlan Clark has a contract which is absolutely in line with her league's revenue streams. Abortion is not a 'right'. This is not a Climate Emergency. And inflation is NOT declining (things cost 20% more now than they did 8 years ago, for God's sake!)
The list of no good, very bad, terrible stuff is endless.
Diversity, Inclusivity, and Equity kills Quality, destroys Merit, crushes Initiative, and shackles Freedom....and yet DIE is what Biden's Left is all about.
John speaks of Trump and tells us he's dangerous.
What is dangerous ...what is truly, truly, horrifically dangerous ... is the United States being led, for four more years, by a man who doesn't know who he is, where he is, or what he's saying...but who also serves as the white-haired figurehead of a handpuppet for those who are actively working to destroy the Constitution, this nation and our freedom (including the freedom to fail...to eat steak, drive non-electric cars, and kiss someone without a sworn affidavit).
You may not like him. You may despise him. You may hate his haircut, his pout, and his thin skin....but what he works for is undeniably a better & safer & wealthier world than the one in which we currently wallow.
Pause!
Trump was a reaction to the Washington consensus of wars , open borders and free trade. Dems squelched their version when the crushed Bernie Sanders and adopted a miasma of identity and cultural policies to provide progressive cover.
Progressives delude themselves that they don't like Trump. The fact is, until 2015, they didn't care about him one way or the other. Trumps is the first significant public figure to call out progressives and progressivism for the social tyrants that they are. NEVER been said before, although millions of us were aware of the truth.
All totalitarians rely on controlling the narrative. It's worked for progressives for over a century. And then Trump came along and blew up their entire charade. THAT'S why they hate him. But they can/won't recognize their own bigotry and extremism, so they make up excuses about why he's a bad man and must be stopped 'to save democracy'. Only fools and progressives believe that crap.
I say all this, even as I live in a progressive neighborhood and have progressives in my family. They are mostly well-intentioned people, but they couldn't think their way out of a wet paper bag.
What does it say about our country that ad hominem attacks are made on Trump, while congressmen continually lied that they had evidence he conspired with Russia and they in fact were just lying, and we have people that are not concerned that these liars might regain immense political power and have a track record of abusing their authority. Even if you only half way believe the argument made by Hayek in The Road to Serfdom, or don’t believe it at all, the problem might just be that so much power is centralized in Washington.
That’s senator schiff to you.
What are the ad hominem attacks you are referring to James?
Trump did collude with Russia. The evidence on that is clear: (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/media-liberal-bias-npr-free-press-trump-russia-mueller-collusion.html). What the Mueller report explicitly found was that this collusion did not rise to the legal standard needed to find Trump guilty of conspiring with a foreign power, but collusion was clearly proven.
That's an interesting word, 'collude', meaning to meet with or work secretly with someone, typically in an effort to deceive or cheat.
It is doubtless true that Trump reps did meet with Russian reps on occasion in an effort to determine if there was something there that could benefit the campaign. In fact I would guess that Trump's people met with thousands of individuals from any number of places over the course of the campaign to do exactly that whenever possible. Heck, I'm sure all the candidates did.
It's the 'deceive or cheat' portion of the word which seems dubious.
Of course we might quite accurately argue that every candidate works as hard as they can (and spend millions of dollars accordingly) to 'deceive' the electorate to buy the exact brand of 'Miracle Solutions' that they're selling. It's called politics. But doing all that is not criminal. It's normal.
Just like it's normal that the U.S. government meets regularly with political candidates all across the world to seek to influence their elections.
It's how all this stuff works.
Or doesn't work, as the case may be.
Obviously if all it took was a coupla million dollars and a few meetings to grab an election victory, the $14.4B that was actually spent in 2020 was entirely unnecessary (which, in fact, it may have been....though you'll never convince either party of that)
As for the ad hominem attacks against Trump...they're everywhere. Entirely forgettable...like John, here, calling him a gorilla.
Bdarn1: I'm afraid this is exactly the kind of comment that just reinforces how Trump degrades the norms of our democracy. You seem to think that it's a regular occurrence for presidential campaigns to meet with the intelligence services and other members of hostile governments to see how these governments can help them win the election.
But that simply isn't the case. It's something that never happened before (and would have been considered a campaign ending scandal if it did). But somehow Trump supporters rationalize it as normal behavior.
Sadly, while I didn't believe it at the time, I actually think Trump famous remark that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose any voters is probably accurate. Folks like you would doubtless come up with some way to rationalize it as normal or justified. And you would no doubt support Trump's claim of immunity from prosecution for it as well (https://www.axios.com/2024/01/10/trump-immunity-hearing-court-case-5th-avenue-quote).
It's really quite shocking. And the whole Trump Derangement Syndrome accusation is just a way for folks to rationalize dismissing how uniquely awful Trump is.
I think both Glenn and John have it right here.
100% agree with John about Trump. As a kid growing up in California, I first really became aware of Trump in my teenage years in the late 80's when reading a Doonesbury anthology that absolutely eviscerated Trump for being the embodiment of a low class rich guy. From the start, he was a ridiculous figure; the kind of guy that proved that just because you had money, didn't mean you had class or character or competence.
Then, living in New York, in the early 2000s, Trump kind of grew on me. In New York business circles he was viewed as a joke; the rich son of a successful developer who was pretending to be a great businessman while obviously knowing nothing about what it actually takes to build a successful business. But he played the part so well, both with conviction but also a note of self-aware irony and a willingness to play along with jokes about him, that it was appealing and fun. Trump was like the closest thing to a merger of pro wrestling and the business world, and I loved pro wrestling as a kid. This period obviously hit its peak with The Apprentice, which was a lot of fun to watch, even though succeeding on the show obviously had as much to do with succeeding in business, as succeeding in pro wrestling has to do with being successful in actual combat sports.
So when Trump entered the 2016 presidential race, I thought it would be fun. And as someone who thought the Republican party had already gone a little crazy by then, I rooted for him to win the nomination, since I assumed there was no way that someone who is such an obvious buffoon could actually get elected.
Clearly, I was wrong about that. And so the question Glenn raises really is an important one. What does it say about the state of our country that such a significant percentage of the population is willing to vote for (and in some cases idolize) a figure like Trump: the publicity seeking non-religious son of a rich real estate developer who was spectacularly unsuccessful as a businessman (known primarily for the strategic use of bankruptcy law and law suits to avoid paying vendors) turned successful reality TV star, who dodged military service through a bogus medical deferment, married and cheated on multiple women, and ran for president despite having no experience in politics or government?
It’s a fascinating question and an important one.
It’s says we have a disconnected elite based in dc.
Gordon,
You did the same thing John did in this short video: plenty of descriptors of Mr. Trump, but nothing about his work as *president*. I'm sure you and John dislike some things he did *as president*, and I have no doubt both of you could present them articulately. Why, then, do you resort to "He's a ridiculous figure, he's a buffoon...." therefore he shouldn't be president? It's nice to have class, but incivility is not a presidential disqualifier, any more than bad breath disqualifies someone from being a race car driver.
"What does it say about the state of our country that such a significant percentage of the population is willing to vote for (and in some cases idolize) a figure like Trump"
It says a significant percentage of the population prefers low gas prices, affordable groceries, and peace more than they care about a president with good manners.
Good question and points Jesse. It made me think about George W. and Trump. I thought both were disastrously bad presidents in their own ways; but definitely dislike Trump far more intensely even though I would agree that from a pure policy perspective, George W. was worse. To your point, Trump didn't launch any wars and the economy was strong during his presidency.
So why do I dislike Trump so much more intensely? I think it comes down to two things:
- First, I think Trump's behavior during and after the 2020 election has been disastrously bad for the country, in ways that could permanently damage it. Trump lost a close election in 2020, just as he won a close one in 2016. The idea that the election was stolen has been comprehensively debunked (https://www.readtangle.com/2000-mules-fact-check-stolen-election/). But Trump has continuously claimed he was cheated in a way unlike any other Presidential candidate in American history. And while that would be bad enough in and of itself, the fact that has managed to parley that claim into being nominated again means that candidates may conclude that falsely claiming they were cheated is the best way to remain politically viable. I think that could be terrible for the country's future.
- The second reason has to do with character. You're right that "class" and "civility", while I hope and think they are helpful, are not prerequisites for being a president (and maybe not even for being a good president). Certainly, those are freighted concepts. But I think I always believed, maybe naively, that all of our presidents before Trump were men of character. Which doesn't mean they were perfect or even good people all of the time (many were unfaithful, LBJ stole a Senate election, Wilson was a racist , etc. etc.), but I think they all ran for President not only because of personal ambition but because they actually did want to make a difference for their country. And I think that is also true for most Congresspeople today, even the ones I disagree with intensely, whether it is an Ilhan Omar on the left or a Mike Johnson on the right. I don't think that is true for Donald Trump. I believe that Trump as President is the same person he was before he became President: a completely amoral person whose only motivation is self aggrandizement. I think it's sad that we had someone like that as our President for even one term, much less two.
Finally, Jesse, to your last point, I think you're probably right that lots of folks lean toward Trump because they associate him with a good period of time in their lives. What is sad, however, is that this association is likely to prove disastrous if Trump is reelected. Trump was incredibly fortunate to come to office at a time when he inherited an economy in marvelous shape and one where low interest rates meant that even increasing the budget deficit in the way that Trump did was not going to lead to bad outcomes for people. But whoever is President in 2025 is going to be faced with a very different situation, and Trump's plan to simply run it back will lead to a huge spike in inflation this time around: https://www.slowboring.com/p/trump-would-make-inflation-worse
Thanks for the reply. I appreciate the articulation of actual reasons, even if I don't agree with them.
1. The first reason I think is overstated, considering such behavior is not uncommon for the loser. I took 60 seconds for an Internet search, and it's easy to find stories--even on CNN and NPR--of Democrats questioning and challenging the 2000, 2004, and 2016 elections. Yes, Trump's complaints were louder and longer--in part because he planned to run again, unlike Gore, Kerry, and Hillary--but I don't see how that translates to permanently damaging the country.
2. Your second reason is a big part of Trump's popular appeal. You are not alone in naively thinking previous presidents were men of character; but at this point, I think most of us realize politicians (on both sides) are sleazy, who will do or say anything to get elected. When people saw Trump in all his buffoonery, they said, "That's who he really is; he's not pretending to be someone else in order to secure votes." As Trump himself said, "I'm not a politician. That's why I got elected."
3. I agree the debt/economy will be a big challenge, no matter who is elected. I'm not pleased that Trump increased the national debt, even though nearly half of it was covid relief.
Were I to wholly agree with your three reasons, I still don't see how this translates to....Adolf Hitler. Some say: "But he tried to take over the country!". It's a great propaganda point against Trump, but very silly when thought through. Consider the scenario: this vile, extremely charismatic dictator with 500,000 of his loyal devotees, most of whom own GUNS, are gathered to take over the country, with only 340 National Guard soldiers and the Capitol Police to stop them. In the afternoon, 1100 more Guardsmen are called, and in the evening, another 6200. (These numbers from the National Guard website report on Jan. 6.)
According to Wikipedia (which leans left), there were five deaths (one by shooting, one by drug overdose, three of natural causes); 174 injured police officers; and $2.7 million in damage. Five hundred thousand gun owners (following orders from their charismatic dictator) against a few thousand troops, and that's the best they can do? This is the wimpiest revolution of all time. It's hard to imagine a less Hitlerian result than that feeble attempted insurrection.
I know you, Gordon, didn't bring up "Hitler," but John and many others have made the comparison, and you state you agree 100% with John.
"1. The first reason I think is overstated, considering such behavior is not uncommon for the loser. I took 60 seconds for an Internet search, and it's easy to find stories--even on CNN and NPR--of Democrats questioning and challenging the 2000, 2004, and 2016 elections. Yes, Trump's complaints were louder and longer--in part because he planned to run again, unlike Gore, Kerry, and Hillary--but I don't see how that translates to permanently damaging the country."
Here's why that "Dems did it too:" argument comes across to me as incredibly weak.
In 2000, Al Gore believed that with a proper recount of FL, he would have won. He said as much, he took that claim to court, I think he won some legal victories in Florida but eventually lost when the US Supreme Court ruled against him in Bush v Gore. The VERY NEXT DAY, he gave a very gracious speech in which he acknowledged that he was giving up his legal challenges and acknowledging Bush as the next President. On Jan 6, 2001, the date of the electoral vote certification, a few Democratic House members made objections to counting the electoral vote count, and Al Gore himself, presiding over the electoral vote count as the sitting VP, ruled all of the objections out of order so that Bush could be certified the winner.
Other than the fact that both Trump in 2020 and Gore in 2016 filed lawsuits, absolutely no part of what Gore did in 2000 has even the slightest resemblance to what Trump did 2 decades later. No attempts to break Florida law by producing an "alternate" slate of electors, no attempts to bring a huge mob to Washington to strom the Capitol, and even though Gore was literally the guy who presided over the electoral vote count, no attempts to monkey with that.
In 2004, Bush defeated Kerry, and Kerry conceded. A smattering of Dem lawmakers protested, including one Senator who actually did object to the electoral vote count, but that objection was defeated in the Senate by a vote of 74-1 (8 Dems and 17 Republucans did not bother to vote). Kerry himself filed no lawsuits and made no efforts to scheme or foment violence in order to steal the election.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton called Trump and congratulated him on his victory on election night and gave a concession speech the next day. No lawsuits, no mobs, no "alternate" slates of electors. On Jan 6th, 2017, the then VP presided over the counting of electoral votes and overruled all objections from the floor. No mob stormed the Capitol that day in an effort to change the result.
Good points, Michael. "Dems did it too" is not to say their behavior matched Trump's precisely; it's mentioned only because there seems to be a large contingent who think the very thought of questioning the election (no matter the method) is dangerous and unpatriotic, etc.
My main point was this: in each case (2000, 2004, 2017, 2021) the RESULT was the same: a peaceful transition to the next president on the appointed day. In other words, mostly a lot of hot air. I think it's naive to assume other presidential candidates (and governors, mayors, senators, etc) don't work hard to "find" votes, and ask (in private conversation) for help finding such votes. Bush and Gore probably both did it in Florida. Politics is dirty business, yet the country abides. You can say Trump went overboard, that he worked dirtier than Gore and Hillary, but he still left office on the appointed day, and the country is still here. The aftermath of each election was the same. The outrage over Trump seems to be largely over what MIGHT have happened. But to repeat my earlier comment: if Trump actually wanted to "take over the country" in an unlawful manner (i.e. not through the courts)--with tens of millions of brainwashed, gun-toting followers at his disposal--don't you think he could have done more damage than a few broken windows, some trespassing arrests, and five deaths (only one--a Trump supporter--killed by another human)?
I don't think there is any reasonable characterization of what happened in 2021 as a peaceful transition. Moree than 1,000 police engaged in hand to hand fighting for several hours is "peaceful." Nope.
It is true Trump give up his fight after losing that battle, but there was still a physical battle fought, and it could have turned out differently than it did.
I would say there are a lot of meaningful differences between 2021 and 2001, 2005, and 2017, but the largest of these is this: in each of the prior years, the losing candidate accepted the outcome of the election and made abundantly clear long before it mattered they had done so. Outside of Gore's lawsuit, none made any effort, through the courts or outside them, to change the result. When Gore lost he abided by the decision. Trump did not accept his defeat until after his attempt to subvert the election failed.
To be clear Jesse, I'm definitely not saying that Trump equals Hitler. Nor is he Stalin or Mao. Or Idi Amin. Or even Castro. But to be fair, I don't think John was really equating Trump to Hitler either. I think his point about reading the Hitler biography was just that he was trying to understand how demagogues come to power.
Anyway, two points (and then I'll probably give you the last word if you want it).
First, I think it's sad that so many people believe, in the way that you describe, that there is no real difference between Trump and other politicians. I really do think that all previous presidents (and most politicians) are fundamentally different from Trump. I believe almost all of them were motivated by a mix of wanting to do some good for the world as well as personal ambition. I think Trump’s complete narcissism and self-centeredness is literally unprecedented among major American political figures.
I believe that virtually everyone, on both sides of the aisle, is a better person than Trump. In fact, with the exception of MTG (who I think is simply a whack job), I'm not aware of a single person in Congress of either party who I would not prefer to Trump as President. The only one who even gives me a moment of pause is Ted Cruz. While Cruz is obviously a much smarter and more competent person than Trump and doesn’t present the same kind of threat to democracy, I pause with him only because I've never heard of anyone else in politics who is so disliked by everyone who has ever spent time with him from colleagues to school mates. And like Trump, it seems sad for that bad a person to become President.
Second, with regard to Trump as a danger to democracy, for me it has little to nothing to do with January 6th. While that was obviously the visible moment in his effort to overturn the election, I agree it never had any real chance to actually change anything.
What I think was much scarier was both Trump’s phone call to Kemp trying to get the necessary votes in Georgia by whatever means necessary and his effort to get a slate of fake electors selected in Michigan. These were both real attempts to steal the election that could have succeeded if more officials had been MAGA rather than people of principle.
And I will tell you, speaking only for myself personally, that if a state legislature ever uses its powers to override the votes of the people in the state to throw its electors to its preferred candidate over the will of the voters, I would consider it a coup (even if technically constitutional) and would consider it legitimate to fight back by any and all means (including taking up arms if necessary).
And I think this gets to the real danger of Trump. American is a constitutional republic, but it’s not simply the constitution that has assured peaceful transfer of powers. It’s that we have norms. It’s that candidates for office, once they have exhausted their legal remedies for contesting an election, have agreed to concede and call for their supporters to stop fighting the election and become the loyal opposition. The ultimate example of this, of course, being Al Gore just 24 years ago. Can you imagine if the situation were reversed today? If Trump were to lose an election because supporters of Biden stopped a recount in a state where Biden’s brother was the governor? But 24 years ago, for the good of the country and despite the fact that it was terrible for him personally, when Gore was faced with this situation he agreed to stop the fight once the Supreme Court had made its final ruling.
I do believe that the way Trump has flagrantly violated this norm is immensely dangerous. And it’s all the worse that his supporters back him in this, despite the fact that his the kind of man that Matt Yglesias describes here: https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-orange-man-is-bad
It is refreshing to hear you reject the Trump=Hitler equation. No matter how much one dislikes him, it's still baffling to make the comparison; and people have been doing it since well before January 6. I'm curious if it is simply an ignorance of history. There may be, for instance, a whole generation of young voters who grew up on social media, who don't even know who Hitler was. They might think insulting people on Twitter is actually a Hitler-like move.
Trump has a big ego but I do believe he cares about America. I recently saw a clip from the early 1990s where Trump was on one of the big talk shows (Oprah, I think), talking about how Americans were getting screwed by overseas manufacturing, demanding something be done about it. (The host, seemingly impressed by this off-script rant, asked if Trump would consider running for president someday!) But I get how his ego can distract from any pro-America sensibilities he does have. He has become, unavoidably, a politician; but when people say he's different (or at least *was* different), they mean he's not a career politician. He was never a congressman, senator, or governor; thus he never had those years of "refinement," learning how to be phony, brown-nose, lie with a smile, &c. He's a straight shooter.
I think the Georgia phone call is similar to Jan. 6, in that people overreacted as if the country was in peril, when in both cases nothing (or very little) actually happened. As with Jan. 6, don't you think Trump could have done more, if he were really the evil dictator? Perhaps send some of his gun-toting supporters to Atlanta and demand Kemp's removal, or even his life? (This is just a hypothetical; I know you've clarified Trump is not on par with the evil dictators.) In both cases, Trump was very loud, but it was only words. He's actually followed the rules. He left office Jan. 20th. He's said "Find me votes," but he hasn't actually produces his own votes out of thin air. He was simply saying, in his verbose way, "Make sure you've counted all the votes properly." But again, I can clearly see how Trump's opponents interpret it as trying to steal the election. I'm sure many on the other side would accuse Biden of doing the same, if the scenario were reversed.
Thanks for the discussion.
Sorry. Having trouble resisting the urge to make one last point. Your bar what constitutes a threat to democracy seems incredibly high to me Jesse. You seem to be saying that anything short of a military coup doesn't qualify.
To be clear, I'm not worried about a military coup; I trust the military not to get involved domestically. What I worry about is the Orbanization of America (https://www.illiberalism.org/dismantling-democracy-the-orbanization-of-hungary/), which is what I genuinely think Trump would try to do.
Finally, if you think Trump's call to Kemp was his way of saying "make sure you have counted all the votes properly", I don't know what to tell you. It's like believing that Tony was telling Christopher to help these guys get a suit (https://youtu.be/9va2KKNCg4o?si=aPjP1Ht1Kf0Die_0&t=261).
As president, he used the powers of his office to try and usurp the presidency from his duly elected successor. As president, he disastrously mismanaged the US response to a worldwide pandemic. As president, he ordered the tear gassing of peaceful protestors so that he could stage a photo op. None of these is reasonably characterized as merely "bad manners."
For those who believe that there are at least some circumstances where pregant women should be allowed to get abortions, Trump appointed the justces who took away that federal right - and he is proud of having done it. People can view that as good or bad depending on where they stand on the issue, of course.
Trump oversaw a nationwide crime wave in 2020 that has taken some time to subside.
And, as president, Biden is using the DOJ to go after his political opponent. The Democrat attorneys general are using spurious and concocted laws that have never been applied against other businessmen, to go after Trump. Peaceful (unlike the George Floyd rioting criminals) anti-abortion protesters are being prosecuted. The entire justice system is being perverted by Biden and his Democrat party and people like oyu who hate Trump, are OK with that.
The tear-gassing to which you refer, never happened. It was just another lie concocted to attack Trump.
Joe's had 50 years of experience in politics and government and he's still a screw up.
I'm certainly not a huge Biden guy. I think both Obama and Clinton are much smarter and more impressive people (though I would fully agree that Clinton is no better than Trump or JFK or LBJ when it comes to being faithful).
But in terms of what he has done at President, I think it's clear that Biden has gotten it mostly right. The American economy has been by far the strongest in the world (https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/03/14/americas-extraordinary-economy-keeps-defying-the-pessimists), his support for Ukraine has been unwavering and vital, he has generally done the right thing on Israel (though he should be pushing back again Netanyahu even more strongly than he has), the withdrawal from Afghanistan was poorly executed but ultimately the the right decision, and he has begun to call for the right steps on the border (only to be stopped by the Republicans trying to keep it as an issue).
Not a perfect record, but certainly a good one. If you feel differently, it would be good to know why.
Meanwhile, that's a response about policy. In terms of comparing Biden and Trump as people, the differences are much more stark. Biden is a career politician (which I'll agree has negatives as well as positives), who has dealt with incredible personal hardship with class and grace and is someone who was historically popular with his colleagues on both side of the aisle.
Trump, on the other hand, has a good sense of humor but otherwise has no redeeming qualities. He's a publicity seeking cheat in all senses of that word. He cheats in golf, cheats on his wives, cheats the people he does business with, and has tried to cheat in elections as well. He has almost no redeeming qualities, and I guarantee that 20 years from now, folks will be embarrassed to tell their grandchilden they voted for him.
I think we have to conclude that marital fidelity as a presidential characteristic is low on the pole. I've never been impressed with Biden, regardless of his political affiliation.
Biden was supposed to be a unifier, but his actions seem to me more as a divider the way he rags on Republicans/Trump supporters.
I believe he appears weak and feeble as a president and that does not engender confidence either here in the States and abroad, which is why we have so many conflicts going on.
The border is a disaster and has been since Biden got into office. Why has it taken 3.5 years to figure out what to do, and it's my understanding simply enforcing the laws and keeping the remain in Mexico ruling would have given time to put something together.
I don't understand the ultimate goal for the Ukraine War, do we just keep giving money indefinitely or do we try to broker some kind of negotiation?
Hamas released a shit storm with that raid, and now the ME is in an uproar. I am confident Hamas knew what it was doing and has no compunction about the dead Palestinians left in its wake. Biden now has to decide how to assist Israel kick Hamas' ass and get the hostages back, or let that conflict drag on with danger of escalation.
I fully agree with the Afhgan pullout, but yes, it was a disaster.
The economy may be doing OK, but most Americans aren't feeling it.
The pandering to the Trans movement, DEI, and all the other attendant "Theories" is unwarranted and over the top.
At this point, I am not voting for a personality, I am voting for who I think will steer us in the right direction.
I might ask since you seem to lean Democrat- what is your opinion of RFK?
Trump was very complicit in the bad Afghanistan withdrawal. By cutting the ostensibly US-supported Afghan government out of the negotiations with the Taliban, he signaled that that government was a sinking ship and the Afghans outside of Kabul saw the writing on the wall and cut their own deals with the Taliban, leading to the much faster than expected collapse when the actual US withdrawal began. Not one of Biden's or US intelligence's finest hours, but he was absolutely set up to fail by his predecessor. To change course he would have had to risk attacks on US forces (something Trump supporters generally oppose in other contexts).
What a pathetic justification of Biden's disastrous handling of Afghanistan, leaving Americans there to die, as well as billions in equipment, now in the hands of terrorists.
Energy policy-Going wayyy to fast into alternatives without thinking about the consequences.
PSW: Why do you think Biden is going way too fast into alternatives? I think his energy policy has actually been arguably his strongest area, since he is both investing in alternative energy, while also taking steps to boost domestic oil production to its highest rate ever. I'm a big believer in a policy of energy abudance (https://www.slowboring.com/p/energy-abundance), and my main recommendation for Biden in this area is to become a stronger supporter of nuclear power.
And speaking of nuclear power PSW, to answer the question you asked above, I have no interest at all in RFK Jr. as an alternative to Biden. I think Jr. is wrong on nuclear power, wrong on vaccines, and wrong on Ukraine.
As for Ukraine, PSW, I suspect we may in some agreement there. Certainly, I think it's fair for you to ask the question of what the endgame is? Ultimately, I think a negotiated solution that gives up the Crimea (at least for now) will have to be the answer, but I think it's vital that Ukraine enter those negotiations from a position of relative strength, so that it is clear to everyone (including the Russian people) that launching the war was a huge mistake.
I also think, PSW, that some of your other criticisms are fair as well. I think it's reasonable to criticize for Biden for being late to address the border issues and for pandering too much on some social issues.
But ultimately, even from a strictly policy perspective, these criticisms are outweighed by the fact that Biden is far better on both the economy (https://www.slowboring.com/p/trump-would-make-inflation-worse) and our energy future. Then when you add in the huge weaknesses that Trump brings to the table because of his election denial and his lack of character (discussed in detail on a different thread above), I think the choice to vote for Biden is an easy one.
Please change focus. I'd like to see a debate on Dopey Joe. Trump is the God of Rationality compared to Biden who is incapable of putting a sentence together.
Clearly you haven't seen Trump speak recently.
Pause!
I joined the Republican Party to do what I could to nominate the most worthy POTUS candidate other than Trump. However, Biden is inept, corrupt and appears to hate our limited form of government. Trump now appears clearly the best alternative. TDS blinds many to reality.
Same
I agree. The Democrats, of whom I was a member until Biden came along, really must find an intelligent, educated, rational, experienced male to allow Biden to slip into retirement asap.
😂
This recent Joe Rogan excerpt with Brendan O'Neill ("Why The Working Class Supports Trump") helps explain Trump's popularity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRDFDhmAZgE
Pick up a copy of Arlie Hochschild's book, "Strangers in Their Own Land" if you want to do a deep dive.
A thousand thank yous to you! ! ! I forwarded a link to my husband, a friend in Oregon, and daughter in law in Colorado . . . for starters.
That was excellent.
"He's a gorilla."
"He doesn't belong in public office."
"He's dangerous.
"He's stupefyingly incompetent."
Like most people who dislike Trump, John does not give any real reasons or evidence WHY Trump is dangerous, why the country is better off in its current state, or what Trump has done that earns him a comparison to Adolf Hitler.
Jesse:
I admire your patience with those who still push the Russia hoax, phony Steele dossier, and the Mueller witch hunt. And then they accuse otherts of not arguing in good faith!
Thank you. I figure it's a better strategy than just yelling YOU'RE WRONG, which is ineffective no matter which side it's coming from.
It is self evident that a person who tries to unlwafully stay in power after losing an election is a dangrous person the country is better off without.
Prediction: once Trump wins in 2024, questioning elections, voter fraud, insurrections, resisting 'misinformation', etc. will become the most patriotic, ethical, and vital thing any educated American can do. Ya know, so there's no authoritarianism, fascism, blah blah blah. Gtfoh.
People who say this have very short memories. Everyone who likes to parrot this line of nonsense forgets that Dmeocrats have been through losses like by razor thin margins twice in the past 25 years and in neither of those cases did we resort to political violence and attempts at election theft. In one case, the losing candidate actually presided over the certification of his opponent; in the other Joe Biden himself presided over Trump's certification. Only one close election loser has done what your boy did. One. And it proves him unfit.
Except for the Russia hoax where they crippled the incoming president, jailed his allies and tried to destroy him. Added bonus is when democrats attacked his inauguration but charges were dropped. Double bonus when he was renominated in 2020 his supporters were subject to attacks. But besides that dems totally accepting of election results.
What you and conservative talking heads call "the Russia hoax" wasn't any kind of a hoax. It was shown pretty clearly that the Trump campaign sought assistance from Russia in various ways, responded positively to Russian offers to provide such assistance, provided their campaign internal polling data to a Russian intellegence operative. Among other things. It was also shown that Russia made various efforts to help the Trump campaign, including both a social media campaign and a hack and dump campaign that resulted in a number of indictments of Russian intellegican personnel.
What was NEVER shown is a "meeting of the minds" between Trump or his campaign and Russian officials that would have been necessary to support a chanrge of conspiracy. It's possible that such meeting did happen but that it was not uncovered by investigstors (who documented numerous uncooperative witnesses, documents they could not access etc.); also quite possible that there never was.
But the known facts were still scandalous. It is unconscionable for a presidential candidate to openly seek and receive assistance from a hostile foreign power, for obvious reasons, but it happened here. No hoax.
Democrats did not "attack his inauguration."
" But besides that dems totally accepting of election results."
It is completely reasonable for a losing candidate ewho thinks he was wrionged and can prove that in court to sue (as Trump himself did). You cannot name a single Democrat who sought, as Trump did, to seize or hold an office after losing an election.
Do you get your information from the 51 agents who lied about hunter , the Obama intelligence agents who lied to the public about trump being a Russian asset , the 8 intelligence agencies who told us Russia favored Clinton , crowdstrike who never actually showed the servers were hacked , or just a steady stream of Rachel Maddow. It was hoax all of it , accept it and move on .
No one is 'my boy" there chief. I'm a lifelong Democrat, now Independent. Politically adrift because of the bullshit we've all been subjected to. But by all means, stick with 'your team'...they're doin a bang up job!
Not going to defend your original comment I see.
How does one defend a prediction?
Lol. And why would one need to?
Self-evident?
What we witnessed in those days, and weeks of scrambling ...and vote questioning....and rallies.... and lawsuits.... and accusations of tampering was the entirely predictable reaction of a man who was entirely shocked by what he mistakenly thought was impossible: losing a general election to a bunkered and demented fool who could neither think nor speak.
And in that feckless scrambling he sought to leverage every possible avenue he had to prove the election tainted. He failed.
At least he failed to prove it in the places which counted.
And now he's back to prove in a different way that he should have won, despite what Time magazine called the "secret bipartisan campaign to 'save' the 2020" election.
The truth is that what is 'lawful' or 'unlawful' is far from self-evident. Questioning election outcomes is not unlawful. Arguing about same is not unlawful. Seeking to prove obstruction, or interference, or malfeasance is not unlawful. Objecting to the outcome is not unlawful.
And, as we all know, when conversations are had behind closed doors, all kinds of other leverage is typically applied with more or less success....and like a tree in the forest when no one's there, whether those conversations and leverage points are strictly lawful is unknown.
The truth is, in order for Trump to have somehow remained in-power, the electoral result would have had to have been proved, lawfully, to be invalid. That did not happen. That he wished to make that happen is clear...but that his efforts to do so were somehow unlawful is far from it.
" the entirely predictable reaction of a man who was entirely shocked by what he mistakenly thought was impossible: losing a general election to a bunkered and demented fool who could neither think nor speak."
Do you imagine that thinking very very poorly of the election opponent who defeats you is some sort of new thing in American politics? Like, before Trump lost in 2020 is wasn't a routine thing? And that an unfounded belief that you were wronged justifies violence? And you call Trump's critics the deranged ones?
Why would anyone imagine it's new? Of course it's not new; what a silly idea.
Nor am I calling Trump's critics deranged. Somehow you've imagined a conversation which doesn't exist.
In any case simply because a thing happens and has happened before -- but not to you -- that does not mean that even you would not be surprised when it happens again....especially when you're running against a 2-dimensional zombie of a candidate who can't either think or speak.
But all that's beside the point isn't it?
Trump was surprised; he was shocked; and he scrambled in typical Trumpian fashion to prove the election tainted, as I said. And, as noted, he failed to prove it in the places which counted.
The truth is, in order for Trump to have remained in-power, the electoral result would have had to have been proved, lawfully, to be invalid. That did not happen. That he wished to make that happen is clear...but that his efforts to do so were somehow unlawful is far from clear....and therefore, it is far from self-evident that the man is -- (shall we snicker a bit?) a dangerous criminal.
"Nor am I calling Trump's critics deranged."
Trump derangement syndrome (TDS) is a standard trope on the right which, I guess, is supposed to mean that if one viscerally objects to a President who tried to steal an election he lost through criminal means, is an adjudicated rapist, etc., then one must be deranged. Even this topic title meantions it!
But I apologize for wrongly putting you in the group of people who say that.
"Trump was surprised; he was shocked; and he scrambled in typical Trumpian fashion to prove the election tainted, as I said. "
So, tell me. When does surprise and shock at having something very bad happen result in a license to engage in crime and encourage violence, and when doesn't it? I was suprised and shocked a couple of months ago when my the company I work for made a substantial payroll error that was bad for me. What types of normally aberrant or criminal behaviors was a justfied in doing because of that?
"The truth is, in order for Trump to have remained in-power, the electoral result would have had to have been proved, lawfully, to be invalid. That did not happen. "
You have the tense wrong there - it has not happened yet, and Trump is - for some reason - doing all he can to prevent it.
But there is really no factual dispute about whether Trump ginned up a huge mob and loosed it on the Capitol. There is a legal question - did his actions stay within the constitutional protections offered by the 1st amendment or did they not. But I don't think the legal answer to that question is necessary for any fair-minded person to conclude that, crime or not, that was the behavior of someone who was and is totally unfit for the Presidency.
"especially when you're running against a 2-dimensional zombie of a candidate who can't either think or speak."
I guess you view the right wing media caricature of Joe Biden as the actual version of him, when nothing could be further from the truth.
What crime? What violence did he encourage?
Are you referencing the $2B in property damage...the 19 confirmed dead... the city blocks in flames....those "mostly peaceful" protests committed by millions (generating 14K arrests but only about 120 convictions) which were validated by Kamala, et al?
Or are you referencing the Trump quote from Jan. 6th: "Go home with Love & in Peace. Remember this day forever!"
You reference the "huge mob"... but which mob is that? The estimated 2000 who protested in the Capitol on January 6th? Or the estimated 15-26M who protested 6 months prior (while burning, looting, and killing all across the United States)?
The problem, of course, is one of proportionality. 4-5-6 days of burning & looting & murder is not equivalent to a handful of hours in which people in Viking headgear, carried their American flags, and put their dirty shoes on Pelosi's desk.
Neither act is right or lawful...but surely you recognize the vast difference between the two (one of those differences being 718 convictions out of the 1200 arrests, out of the 2000 who entered the Capitol (36% and counting.)...vs. 120 convictions out of 14K arrests (1%).
Trump's behavior that day was equally disproportionate and far from blameless. But he did not try to steal the election (he was trying to right what he believed was wrong)...he did not engage in criminal behavior...he did not encourage violence (but, yes, he could have done far more to discourage it)
But all this is not to defend Trump or portray him as some saint or genius or savior....it is to point out that he did not do what so many on the progressive left believe he did. And to more importantly note that Biden and the policy platform on which he stands is far, far worse.
You speak of the 'right wing media caricature' of the man? Have you listened to him? Have you watched him on stage (or even watched him try to get on or off stage)? Have you actually tried to understand what it is he struggles to say (when he's not talking about Corn Pop or Cannibals or Big Rigs)?
Perhaps you've not yet had the misfortune of witnessing your own loved ones suffer from dementia. I can assure you it's terrible. But for many of us, it's also inevitable.
Biden is already there. He's been there, in that lost condition for years and he's getting worse: the vacant stares, the sentences that just die and end in baffled silence, the wandering, the inappropriate language, the intermittent rages, the memory loss, the confusion, the need to have handlers guide him to & fro (speech prompter at the ready).
He is what the Special Counsel said he was, 'an elderly man, with a poor memory, who does not possess a 'state of willfulness'. That is not 'right wing caricature'; that is tragedy made extraordinarily dangerous by the fact that the demented, old man in question is the head of the free world.
Why do people wrangle so much with Trump’s appeal even to those who admit to a dislike of him personally? Just take a look at the alternative, that should help.
Richard Nixon was elected President, and then re-elected in an absolute landslide. Yet almost no one like him. Evidently, voters were able to distinguish between a personality cult and a job application. Are voters nowadays less grown-up in their choices of candidates and parties? I'm looking at you, Mr. Obama!
I could not believe how my best friends became devoted members of the Obama Cult immediately! I suspected it was their compensation for having been born white.