Trump — or What, Exactly?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Let’s compare Trump’s policies and behavior to that of prior presidents — and to his 2020 opponents’.
I n traditional political terms, there is always an alternate agenda to an incumbent president’s that reasonable voters can debate.
In Trump’s case, two massive annual budget deficits — coming on top of the previous two administrations that doubled the national debt — seem fair game. No president for the past 19 years has sought to offer any remotely sane budget. And with still relatively low interest rates, massive federal spending, a $22 billion national debt, and an annual deficit of nearly $1 trillion, it is hard to imagine, in extremis , that there remains any notion of “stimulus” or “pump-priming” left.
Yet we hear little about such financial profligacy.
Not a word comes from Trump’s critics about the need for Social Security or Medicare reform to ensure the long-term viability of each — other than the Democrats’ promises to extend such financially shaky programs to millions of new clients well beyond the current retiring Baby Boomer cohorts who are already taxing the limits of the system.
To counter every signature Trump issue, there is almost no rational alternative advanced. That void helps explain the bizarre, three-year litany of dreaming of impeachment, the emoluments clause, the Logan Act, the 25th Amendment, the Mueller special-counsel investigation, Stormy Daniels and Michael Avenatti, Trump’s tax returns, White Supremacy!, Recession! — and Lord knows what next.
The subtext of all these Wile E. Coyote all-too-clever efforts at trapping road-runner Trump is not just the wish to abort an elected presidency; they’re offering the heat of hatred rather than the light of a viable political alternative.
China
The pushback against Trump on China is that tariffs are taboo and dangerous. Perhaps. But no serious critic has offered any other strategy to counter four decades of systematic Chinese mercantilism and economic exploitation.
Do any believe at this late date that the Chinese juggernaut wishes to pause to discuss at length patent infringement, copyright violation, dumping, currency manipulation, technological expropriation, systematic espionage, or massive subsidized surpluses — given that its comprehensive assault on the international commercial order has made China the second-richest country in the world?
The Western world’s cumulative appeasement of Chinese buccaneerism since 1980 is no longer viable in 2019. At least it is not if the United States wishes to maintain its global influence, protect its allies, and ensure prosperity for its hollowed-out interior.
Yet for decades, we heard nothing but more diplomatic pabulum from the Chinese as they appeared sober and judicious at global G-something summits and left with poorly disguised contempt for their silly Western appeasers. In terms of commercial magnitude, six months of retaliatory tariffs are small beer compared with 30 years of currency manipulation, forced technological appropriation, and copyright and patent theft.
Oil and Gas
We hear little about the Trump effort to green-light more leasing and production of natural gas and oil, efforts that have already made the U.S. the No. 1 producer in the world.
For all the talk of “climate change,” does the Left tell us how many barrels of oil per day and cubic feet of natural gas they would wish to curtail, or whether the resulting higher costs for fuel, heating, and power are worth the cutbacks, or whether we wish to return to strategic dependence on Persian Gulf psychodramas? Do they have a plan to deal with Indian and Chinese coal-burning if we were to radically cut the use of clean-burning natural gas? Do they know why the signees of the Paris climate accord for the most part have not and will not meet their promises while the U.S. has?
In truth, Trump’s critics mostly stay silent, given that Sarah Palin’s 2008 much-reviled “drill, baby, drill” call to lower costs and achieve independence from Middle Eastern oil has more or less proven wise.
The Economy
What exactly are the Never Trump and progressive alternative agendas? In the latter case, are we to expect that top income-tax rate of 70 percent, a wealth tax, the Green New Deal, reparations, free health care for illegal aliens, Medicare for all, cancellation of $1.5 trillion in college debt, and free college tuition will avoid the now looked-for recession?
Have we heard a serious solution, like that offered by the Simpson-Bowles commission, from anyone? Or detailed arguments that we could sit down and politely negotiate with China to deal away the asymmetries it has so carefully built over the past 40 years?
Is unemployment at 3.7 or 3.8 percent dangerously too low? Did the Trump administration overheat the economy when its first two years of GDP growth were stronger than the last two of the prior administration’s? Was record-low minority unemployment somehow a problematic development? Where I live in impoverished southwestern Fresno County, most would prefer a suddenly “wrecked” Trump economy to the near-decade of stagnant growth and high unemployment after 2008.
So we need some alternate guidance from Trump’s critics for an economic blueprint that will best Trump’s stock-market gains, low inflation, increased workers’ wages and family income, and low unemployment rather than the same old, same old “I can’t believe he tweeted that!”
Illegal Immigration
The prior Republican-establishment position on illegal immigration was summed up best in Jeb Bush’s comment that illegal entry was an “act of love” for many immigrants, as well as in the open borders–abolish ICE–blanket amnesty–sanctuary-city mantras of many of the current Democrat presidential field.
Trump has not closed the border and made immigration strictly a legal enterprise. But to that aim, he has shut down the government, fought in the courts to build the wall, issued executive orders to contravene Obama’s second-term open-borders mandates, juggled funding from a variety of agencies, and jawboned Mexico nonstop.
Most believe that Trump, in exchange for the completion of the long-ago congressionally mandated wall and border security, would be willing to deal, by offering some sort of green-card option for illegal-immigrant residents who have not broken the law, are working, and are not on public assistance. But such a compromise is not what progressives envision as “comprehensive immigration reform,” given their Electoral College dividends rendered by generations of massive illegal immigration. Progressives apparently believe that, without importing constituents, their agendas simply are not persuasive. So they’ll likely never close the border to illegal immigration or embrace meritocratic legal immigration or deport those who have broken criminal statutes or who are not working.
Foreign Policy
Do we hear calls to return to the Iran Deal? Has Iran since 2018 shown us that it is a reliable partner that respects international commerce, does not support terrorism, and never really had any plans to become nuclear?
What are the advantages of returning to the Paris climate accord? Or reentering the missile deal with Vladimir Putin? Who was subverting NATO: the reckless, tough-talking Trump, or the German-led membership that never had much intention of meeting their prior “2 percent” promises? How exactly did Barack Obama’s whines about “free riders” persuade some NATO nations to reconsider their broken promises on defense expenditures?
Were Hamas and the Palestinians really still refugees after nearly 75 years, an era that saw all the other refugees of the world of that bygone era — Jews from the Middle East, Germans from Eastern Europe, and the Volga German-speaking Russians of the Soviet Union — ethnically cleansed from their homes long ago and considered citizens or residents of their new homes and refuges?
Did Jerusalem — historically, politically, and culturally — have no claim as the capital of the Jewish State?
Perhaps the old Agreed Framework, the six-party talks, the South–North Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, the Jimmy Carter shuttle diplomacy, the scores of U.N. resolutions, and the on-again/off-again “tough” sanctions had made real progress with North Korea — and to such an extent that it did not have nuclear-tipped missiles pointing toward the West Coast when Trump entered office?
Was ISIS really a jayvee bunch, and were Obama’s strict rules of engagement for the American military the right way to stop the jihadists’ signature primeval terror?
Was the prior relationship with Vladimir Putin the right one: six years of abject appeasement followed by furor that he mocked our efforts to convince Russia to emulate something like California and that he saw our serial magnanimity as a weakness to be exploited rather than as generosity to be repaid in kind?
When a nation’s Russia policy goes from “it’s important for him [Putin] to give me space. . . . This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility” in a blink to a Russian colluder under every bed — is that really an approach Trump could build on? When one compares actual U.S. policy to Russia before 2017 and after 2017, why do disinterested experts find Trump’s far tougher?
The Media
But the tweets, we say.
Granted, Trump has no need to burn up presidential time stooping to spar with the likes of irrelevant George Conway or Anthony Scaramucci. I agree that the back-and-forth with the “Squad” does not merit Trump’s attention and crowds out mention of his economic and foreign-policy records.
But then again, I and my family were not libeled as traitors, crooks, deviants, and imbeciles, and put in legal jeopardy for 22 months as the media and ex-Obama officials ginned up hoax after hoax. If I had been, perhaps I might have stooped to express outrage on Twitter.
In the age prior to Trump, what exactly was the status of the media?
In truth, it was mostly an extension of the progressive party, with a veneer of sober and judicious bipartisan pieties — while, after 2016, several media watchdogs have scored the media as 80 to 90 percent anti-Trump.
Trump’s crime is that, without sanitized surgical gloves, he completely ripped the scab off what we call “journalism” and exposed a festering wound of narcissistic, mostly incompetent, and utterly partisan reportage.
Indeed, we knew what was beneath but dared not touch the scab. We had smelled the fetid pus when journalists rallied around the mythographer Dan Rather, chatted in the JournoList files, and competed to toady up to Hillary Clinton in Wikileaks’ trove of Podesta emails. Dean Baquet’s latest New York Times pep talk about the next “racist!” newspeak to follow the failed Mueller hoax was thus anticlimactic — well aside from the epidemics of #MeToo accusations not usually associated with woke, progressive journalistic professionals.
We know that the New York Times , so eager to accuse Trump and the nation at large of serial racism, is itself fond of publishing anti-Semitic cartoons and hiring those with a paper trail of racism and anti-Semitism as its editors, reporters, or editorial-board members, as we see with Sarah Jeong, Jonathan Weisman, and Tom Wright-Piersanti.
Trump did not destroy CNN or the New York Times as viable news organizations. He had nothing to do the past three years with their suicidal abandonment of ethics, professionalism, and disinterested reporting.
For the collapse of American journalism, and the media in general, media outlets should ask a variety of their own journalists about their roles in torching their own profession, whether by unprofessional personal conduct or violations of professional standards. Start with Donna Brazile, Mark Halperin, Matt Lauer, Mark Leibovich, Charlie Rose, Glenn Thrush, Matt Taibbi — or the CNN teams that occasionally gave us lies and false scoops, or sometimes just made things up or got all their details wrong, as did Gloria Borger, Chris Cuomo, Manu Raju, Brian Rokus, Jake Tapper, Jeff Zeleny, and teams such as Jim Sciutto, Carl Bernstein, and Marshall Cohen as well as Thomas Frank, Eric Lichtblau, and Lex Harris who peddled falsities or were forced to retract or resign. Trump did not force CNN’s Kathy Griffin to produce a decapitation video, or prompt CNN’s Reza Aslan’s “piece of s***” commentary, or urge the late Anthony Bourdain to joke about poisoning the president, or convince an entire CNN news team to do their on-air “hands-up” dance to spread the inflammatory lie that Michael Brown was murdered by the police. No one forced CNN to hire the admitted liar-under-oath James Clapper, or more recently, Andrew McCabe, who is facing criminal referrals for lying to federal investigators.
Conduct
But we are told that the boisterous Trump, our first president without military or political experience prior to his election, has disgraced the office. In his 30 months since January 2017, how exactly has he done so, at least by the somewhat low bar of past presidential standards?
Did Trump conduct liaisons in the presidential bed or restroom or office in the manner of liberal lions such as FDR, JFK, or Bill Clinton? Did he habitually use the N-word or expose himself to staffers, as did the great civil-rights icon LBJ?
Is his terminal health condition now kept from the media in the conspiratorial fashion of Woodrow Wilson or FDR?
Is the Trump Foundation flush with infusions of hundreds of millions of dollars, as was the case with the Clinton Foundation during Hillary’s tenure as secretary of state? Does President Trump have a tendency to get handsy at public events, or come up behind female teenagers or blow in their ears à la Vice President Joe Biden? Did he weaponize the IRS, the DOJ, the FBI, and the CIA the way Obama-administration officials did to sabotage a political opponent’s campaign? Has Attorney General Barr surveilled the communications of Associated Press reporters in the fashion of Eric Holder?
Or perhaps Trump’s twitter crudity is shocking given the sober comportment of his current would-be presidential opponents. Has Trump, then, promised to take Joe Biden behind the gym and physically beat him up, or warned Cory Booker that in a testosterone rage he would beat him up too, as both have bragged about doing to Trump? Did he whip racial animosity in the manner of Elizabeth Warren by falsely alleging that the Ferguson shooting, thoroughly investigated by the Obama Justice Department, was murder?
Has Trump punned about Kamala Harris not coming out of an elevator alive?
Did he egg on Johnny Depp, Madonna, and a host of other creepy celebrity has-beens to brag about the ways to assassinate a president? Would current Democratic – primary leader Joe Biden be willing to take the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test, given to Trump (who aced it) to remind his critics that he was not demented as they serially alleged?
The progressive party, many past presidents, the media, and Hollywood didn’t need to be schooled by Donald Trump on the arts of crudity, unprofessionalism, and unethical behavior.
So what we need are not more pathetic abort-the-Trump-presidency melodramas, or ethical sermons from the abjectly unethical, or “Trump is the worst” this or that from historically ignorant pundits.
Instead of vague socialist bombast and promises, where is the actual detailed progressive version of the Contract with America, so voters can read it, digest it, and then decide whether it is superior or inferior to the status quo since 2017? Let us see two antithetical visions of America’s future, and let the voters decide.
For those who insist that “character matters” more than policy, then, let us compare the Trump behavior in the White House since 2017 with JFK’s, Lyndon Johnson’s, and Bill Clinton’s. Let’s compare his supposed efforts to “obstruct” justice with Obama’s actual record of politicizing federal justice, intelligence, tax, and investigatory agencies.
So far, all that is something that apparently no presidential candidate wishes to do.
NRO contributor VICTOR DAVIS HANSON is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The Case for Trump .
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There is a minor mistake in this article. In the first paragraph there is a reference to the $22 billion debt - obviously he meant trillion.
Hanson makes the case which nobody has been able to lay a glove on. Despite all his flaws, Donald Trump is better than any alternative in either party. He has accomplished much and he has taken on what his predecessors have dared not touch.
Another mistake in the 1st paragraph that the author is comparing Trump's deficit with previous debts.
Apparently the author, either does not understand the difference, or is deliberately trying to mislead you.
Let's compare The Bushs', Clinton's, and Obama's growing or shrinking deficits, with Trump's ballooning deficit.
No it wasn't.
Let's compare The Bushs', Clinton's, and Obama's growing or shrinking deficits, with Trump's ballooning deficit.
Allow me:
"Obama and his supporters are saying that he "cut the deficit by two-thirds" while president. The left-wing group Politifact, which is supposed to be a fact-checker, even has rated Obama's claim as "mostly true." Last week, while I was talking about the fiscal outlook on CNN, the producers put a chart on the screen showing that the deficit dropped by 60 percent while Obama was president.
My jaw dropped – literally – when I saw the chart. This takes data torturing to new heights. The national debt skyrocketed from $11 trillion to nearly $20 trillion on Obama's watch. Is a diet successful if you start by weighing 200 pounds and eight years later you weigh 400 pounds? Would anyone in that position say, "I may be obese now, but at least I'm putting on the pounds at a slower pace"?
The national debt nearly doubled in eight years, which makes Obama the runaway Olympic gold medalist for fiscal incompetence. On this score Obama's record is by far the worst of any modern president.
So where does this fantasy come from that Obama lowered the deficit by 60 percent? Here are the official deficit amounts (in billions of dollars) in George W. Bush's last year in office and Obama's eight years in office:
2008 – 459
2009 – 1,413
2010 – 1,294
2011 – 1,300
2012 – 1,087
2013 – 680
2014 – 485
2015 – 438
2016 – 585
Here is some simple math for the Obama worshipers: $585 billion, the deficit at the end of the Obama presidency, is higher than $459 billion, the deficit at the beginning of the Obama presidency.
The left comes up with a different answer by dishonestly starting Obama's deficit meter in 2010, after he passed the fiscal stimulus bill, an $800 billion debt bomb. So they assigned the gargantuan deficit in Obama's first year to Bush. It is true that we were four months into fiscal year 2009 when Obama was sworn into office. And it is true that the deficit was going to be much higher no matter what Obama did in his first year because of the deep recession that ended in June 2009. So in fairness, some of the large deficit in 2009 was Bush's fault.
But Obama made the deficit hundreds of billions of dollars worse with a stimulus plan that by the administration's own admission didn't create a single new job. The number of jobs in 2009, 2010 and 2011 was lower than Obama's economists predicted we would get if we had done nothing and not wasted $800 billion.
Obama's failed presidency is being falsely lionized in other ways, as well. The new spin from the left is that Obama saved the U.S. from a second Great Depression, when in fact he gave America the weakest recovery from a recession since the Great Depression. He also left Donald Trump with an economy that was crawling at 1.6 percent – which is why many people thought we were headed into another recession.
No one thinks that today. If the latest Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta projections are right, we will have growth of 3.2 percent in the first quarter of this year, and we will have averaged 3 percent for the past year. This is almost twice the growth rate Trump inherited, and that number, ladies and gentlemen, is not fantasy; it is fact.
I don't want to ticket you and to take that down I might have to. Donkeyfeed.com is not recognized by Media Bias/Fact Check and that's what we go by around here. Posting recovery figures vs the year of the financial/housing crisis is not what you want to be associated with.
If the information is false, prove it. Besides Vic, you brought Obama up, not me.
Info is correct, that's why he wants to take it down.
The info is inaccurate and irrelevant.
Seriously Vic, this is little better than drivel. Trump's "accomplishments" are all approved from a far right or conservative perspective. Now, the right has a point of view that can be legitimate from the political spectrum way of looking at it, I agree that they have the right to their beliefs and conclusions, but all of Trump's accomplishments have legitimate opposition also. For pete's sake, there was a recent poll showing that only 49% of Americans approve of his handling of the economy, and that is his strong point!
And as I said before, Hanson's section of the article on "character" is just laughable.
This is a trivial article, and I will concisely tell you why. Most of it is a recitation of conservative policy positions, along with the claim that they are superior to "liberal" policy positions.
No real argument for why this means Trump should be re-elected. Is Trump the only Republican on earth promoting these positions? Evidently not, since Hanson himself does, and he's a conservative public figure. If he had any guts or decency, maybe Victor Davis Hanson would himself run to unseat Trump.
The last part of the article compares Trump to various Democrats in terms of "outlandishness". The fact that he has to compare the single figure of Donald Trump to the "offenses" of a laundry list of individuals from the "other side" speaks for itself. It takes dozens of Democrats and liberals to accumulate the same offences against morality and intelligence done by one man , Donald Trump.
You mean conservative policy positions that Trump has achieved! Right? That is the real problem, not his words, right?
Is Trump the only Republican on earth promoting these positions?
One could say that he is the only Republican truly dedicated to pursuing these positions. Trump takes all the arrows and fights to deliver on his promises. How rare is that?
he's a conservative public figure.
He is an academic not a politician.
The last part of the article compares Trump to various Democrats in terms of "outlandishness".
And for what purpose? TO SHOW HOW FALSE AND HYPOCRITICAL THE LEFT"S OUTRAGE TRULY IS!
I though Republicans were fiscally responsible. Isn't that one of their major campaign points? How's that deficit looking to you?
Well, Trump did graduate from kindergarten. After that his daddy made sure to pay good money for Trump to get certificates to prove he graduated beyond that.
They lost that title under the Presidency of George W Bush. Democrats don't even pretend to be fiscally responsible, so that makes them better?
How's that deficit looking to you?
Suddenly you are concerned? Interesting.
Well, Trump did graduate from kindergarten.
You weren't paying attention, I guess. John was talking about Victor David Hansen. One of the rare times he wasn't talking about Trump.
No one is a politician until they become one. There have been many US presidents who had previous careers in other fields.
Utter nonsense. If you have to compare Trump's character faults to the accumulated faults of 20 other people in order to achieve balance, you have lost before you begin.
And Victor David Hanson has shown no interest in entering politics.
Utter nonsense. If you have to compare Trump's character faults to the accumulated faults of 20 other people in order to achieve balance, you have lost before you begin.
It was more a pick any one than a combined comparison. In other words, you (the democrats) have had many leaders with personal flaws, therefore "those who live in glass houses.....
History not a strong point with you is it?
Clinton took Bush 1's mess and turned it into a fiscal surplus.
Obama took Bush 2's recession and turned it around to growth, see chart .
Actually it is. Bill Clinton was lucky to inherit both the Reagan economy and the Tech boom.
George W forfeited both
Not really. He does appear to be the only one actually willing to follow through, though.
What Republican alternative was going to go to these lengths to secure the southern border? Who was going to play hardball to this level with China? Which one would have actually had the balls to pull out of the Iran deal or the Paris Accords, or physically travel to North Korea? Which Republican was actually going to recognize Jerusalem?
To be sure, many promises have been made on those issues for years, but no one - Democrat or Republican - ever actually does something about them.
The positions mentioned in the very comment to which you are replying. Really, Tessy!
The "Left" bitches about Trump in the Trillion or two of spending, yet rally to the Democrats running for President that want to spend 10's of Trillions to finance their plans.
How Fucking "STUPID" is that ?
US debt by president since 1960.
Donald Trump: As projected in Table S-10 in the FY 2020 budget , Trump plans to add $5.088 trillion to the debt in his first term. That's a 30% increase from the $20.245 trillion debt at the end of Obama's last budget for FY 2017. If he remains in office for a second term, he plans to add $9.1 trillion. Trump had promised to eliminate the debt during his campaign.
Barack Obama: Added $8.588 trillion, a 74% increase from the $11.657 trillion debt at the end of Bush’s last budget, FY 2009.
George W. Bush : Added $5.849 trillion, a 101% increase from the $5.8 trillion debt at the end of Clinton's last budget, FY 2001.
Bill Clinton : Added $1.396 trillion, a 32% increase from the $4.4 trillion debt at the end of George H.W. Bush's last budget, FY 1993.
George H.W. Bush: Added $1.554 trillion, a 54% increase from the $2.857 trillion debt at the end of Reagan's last budget, FY 1989.
Ronald Reagan: Added $1.86 trillion, a 186% increase from the $998 billion debt at the end of Carter's last budget, FY 1981.
Jimmy Carter : Added $299 billion, a 43% increase from the $699 billion debt at the end of Ford's last budget, FY 1977.
Gerald Ford: Added $224 billion, a 47% increase from the $475 billion debt at the end of Nixon's last budget, FY 1974.
Richard Nixon : Added $121 billion, a 34% increase from the $354 billion debt at the end of President Johnson's last budget, FY 1969.
Lyndon B. Johnson : Added $42 billion, a 13% increase from the $312 billion debt at the end of President Kennedy's last budget, FY 1964.
John F. Kennedy : Added $23 billion, an 8% increase from the $289 billion debt at the end of Eisenhower's last budget, FY 1961.
Dwight Eisenhower: Added $23 billion, a 9% increase from the $266 billion debt at the end of Truman's last budget, FY 1953.
Harry Truman : Added $7 billion, a 3% increase from the $259 billion debt at the end of President Roosevelt’s last budget, FY 1945.
.
With the exception of Obama, it's almost always the repubs that add the most to the debt.
Obama inherited an economy that was in a free fall, we were on the verge of economic collapse which is why he spent so much money, it was to get our economy going again, (cleaning up after a republican is expensive). What exactly is trump's excuse for adding to the debt? He inherited a growing economy. So where is all the money being spent and why?
OH! The debt is that thing that the repubs cried about..
EVERY
FUCKING
DAY
Obama was in office, yet now they are silent. Weird how that works.
Link to above information.
Funny, the Dems were silent about the Debt when Obama was in office (or just blamed it on Bush); but cry about it whenever a Republican is in office. See how the two party system works?
Also, name one Democratic candidate that is worried about the debt? All of them have plans that will explode the debt far beyond anything Trump has planned. But everyone just shut up and vote for whichever candidate comes rolling out of the insane exploding Democratic clown car!
Love the hypocrisy!
Neither side is worried in the slightest about the debt.
What is weird is you didn't put up a link to that nonsense. Where did it come from?
What a great image! Well done!
Good piece overall. People need to step back from the ledge and talk about things that actually matter.
Do you still claim you are not a Trump supporter? Just wondering.
My support is dependent on what aspect of him we are talking about and relative to any available alternatives. I can find something good or bad to say about lots of different people. If you want me to be all-or-nothing about him or most other options, that's just not going to happen.
The first alternative is another Republican to replace him. If you cant get behind that, then you are not serious.
The idea that Trump is "just another politician" no better or worse than others, is ludicrous.
If you can't acknowledge the specifics of what you are replying to, then clearly you are not serious.
We get it Tex, you support someone who is a crook, cheat, pathological liar, misogynist, conspiracy theorist, and ignoramus to be president of the United States, not only now but for four more years.
Own it.
??????????
There is no need to "compare" Trump to someone else. His qualifications or lack of qualifications are not dependent on anyone else. He is a serial liar, crook, cheat, and ignoramus. There are hundreds of other Republican politicians who have his same political beliefs. You cant find one decent one to replace him?
That's funny, I expect my President to be patriotic, not to be sucking up to Kim and Putin and Xi while calling his own administration "traitors" and calling the Fed chief an enemy of the United States. To give a shit about our Constitution and not try to turn the free press into a state news organization, and not to encourage violence against members of the press and protestors.
He's the exact opposite of patriotic; he only cares about his ego and his money. This is nothing but a big reality TV show to him. And only idiots think reality TV is a good thing.
Most Trump supporters seem to be the exact opposite of patriotic. Party above country, Trump above party, they'd rather be Russian than Democrat .. our founding fathers would turn in their graves.
Then you have no logical basis for judging him.
What qualifications do you want? The only required qualifications are that he be a natural born citizen and 35 years of age.
And anyway, what did other qualifications ever get us? We have hundreds of career politicians. What is their "experience" doing for us?
Oh well done. You just described 90% of the people who work in Washington D.C.
You people have been offered "decent" men. John McCain. Mitt Romney. Many others. You won't vote for them. You call them Hitler and insane, just like you do with Trump. Even the ones that somehow do get elected like the Bushes or Ronald Reagan get this treatment. Meanwhile you lionize guys like Kennedy and Clinton who fuck mistresses in the White House. So spare me the talk of wanting "decent" men. You don't mean it.
Texan...I have an honest question. Something I have been very curious about for some time. And I mean it to be a serious question.
I am not a Republican nor Democrat, but, if the Republicans were to put up a much better qualified candidate who would likely do a much better job for our country and our people as a whole, and re-establish our much needed working relationship with our allies....would you vote for them? Or would you stick with Trump? And I am not talking about Dems, I am talking about a better Republican candidate.
For me, that is an important question. I'm not being snide or argumentative, I truly would like to know.
What I truly dont understand is why some here on Newstalkers insist on describing you as the reasonable one of the Trump supporters.
Anyone who tries to frame Trump in a category remotely like "normal" or "usual" is not reasonable.
Because some of us have a different view of what "reasonable" is. There are some here both sides that I would not ever think of as being reasonable. And.....some here may think of me in the same way.
When approached in a civil and honest manner I have found that I a very informative dialog can be had from which a better understanding can be reached.
This is much different than what some others, on both sides, are willing to engage in.
So...if you don't find your exchanges with Tacos the same as some of us do, then that is on you, not those of us who do.
Thank you for being honest in your answer. However, what concerns me most is the idea thta winning is more important than what is best for the country.
As things stand now, there is no guarantee that Trump will win. Perhaps only in the minds of the staunch Trump supporters. However, because he won the 2016 election does not necessarily mean he would be the candidate of choice in the 2020 election, based upon his own track record at this point.
Putting country first does not seem to matter anymore from either side.
It is not how bad the other side is, it is how much better for America and the people the winning side is, not just for party occupation of the WH.
Just my own thoughts. Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts and opinion. I truly appreciate it.
Sorry Raven, but people who want to normalize Trump are not reasonable.
Sorry John, but, that is your opinion, and not all people are like you.
Not everyone who is a Republican tries to "normalize" Trump or make excuses for him. For many Republicans, and I do know quite a few, are Americans first and Republicans second, not the other way around like some here on NT.
There are good and bad on BOTH sides, neither party is without fault, nor without common sense.
I have not seen one Democrat OR Republican candidate yet that I would vote for. I am hoping to see a candidate that will put America and its people before party loyalty step up. So far, that field is still empty.
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people who want to normalize Trump are not reasonable.
Oh, but we are. Your ongoing sweeping generalization that includes the whole group of people who support Trump is getting old, tiresome, and goes against the COH.
It is yours truly who is having difficulty accepting reality.
Thanks to all those who were civil and stayed on topic
Thanks and good night