I'm going to miss Donald Trump.

[lpm]

No, it's not a great post, and his laziness and incompetence definitely did mean his impact has been greatly reduced. The post's flaw is that most of that list would have been done by any Republican President. It's pretty inevitable there'll be a Republican in the White House in 8 of every 16 years on average over the decades and that Republican will be an evil f.cker.

Any Republican would have significantly reduced refugees, attacked DACA, taken out of Paris Climate and reduced fuel efficiency standards, exploited transgender issues for cultural war, reinstated the global gag rule and attacked abortion rights, ignored Puerto Rico, loaded the Supreme Court with three right wingers, stacked the lower courts, reduced taxes for the wealthiest, f.cked up on Iran, probably moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, probably gutted the CDC and Pandemic-Preparedness, and try to destroy Obamacare.

On that entire list, the only actual "achievements" of Trump that are unique to him and wouldn't have happened under a generic Republican president are:

- withdrawing from the World Health Organisation during a global pandemic (not convinced this had any real impact on anything and will be reversed)
- government shutdown due to his incompetence
- the worst aspects of immigration i.e. separating children
- open white supremacy (but perhaps it's helpful that he made the racism of the Republican Party so visible rather than a generic Republican who would have kept it concealed)
- open attacks on democracy and elections (but again perhaps it's helpful he made it so visible rather than a generic Republican who'd keep voter suppression and dirty tricks more concealed)
- surely any other president couldn't have been quite so disastrous on Covid

As a counter balance, Trump was such an idiot that he failed to overturn Obamacare and a generic Republican might have been to organise Congress to wreck it. Plus a generic Republican might have retained the House in 2018 instead of switching to a large Democrat majority.

We got incredibly lucky. Trump could easily have done far more damage and he threw away a highly likely reelection. But most of the indictments laid at his door in the post above are simply because the USA is an incredibly right wing country with highly influential Christian extremists and deep seated racism. Tens of millions vote for Republicans because they want Republicans, and the vile stuff Republicans do is because they and their voters are evil f.ckers.

[cvb]

No, it's not a great post, and his laziness and incompetence definitely did mean his impact has been greatly reduced. The post's flaw is that most of that list would have been done by any Republican President. It's pretty inevitable there'll be a Republican in the White House in 8 of every 16 years on average over the decades and that Republican will be an evil f.cker.

Any Republican would have significantly reduced refugees, attacked DACA, taken out of Paris Climate and reduced fuel efficiency standards, exploited transgender issues for cultural war, reinstated the global gag rule and attacked abortion rights, ignored Puerto Rico, loaded the Supreme Court with three right wingers, stacked the lower courts, reduced taxes for the wealthiest, f.cked up on Iran, probably moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, probably gutted the CDC and Pandemic-Preparedness, and try to destroy Obamacare.

On that entire list, the only actual "achievements" of Trump that are unique to him and wouldn't have happened under a generic Republican president are:

- withdrawing from the World Health Organisation during a global pandemic (not convinced this had any real impact on anything and will be reversed)
- government shutdown due to his incompetence
- the worst aspects of immigration i.e. separating children
- open white supremacy (but perhaps it's helpful that he made the racism of the Republican Party so visible rather than a generic Republican who would have kept it concealed)
- open attacks on democracy and elections (but again perhaps it's helpful he made it so visible rather than a generic Republican who'd keep voter suppression and dirty tricks more concealed)
- surely any other president couldn't have been quite so disastrous on Covid

As a counter balance, Trump was such an idiot that he failed to overturn Obamacare and a generic Republican might have been to organise Congress to wreck it. Plus a generic Republican might have retained the House in 2018 instead of switching to a large Democrat majority.

We got incredibly lucky. Trump could easily have done far more damage and he threw away a highly likely reelection. But most of the indictments laid at his door in the post above are simply because the USA is an incredibly right wing country with highly influential Christian extremists and deep seated racism. Tens of millions vote for Republicans because they want Republicans, and the vile stuff Republicans do is because they and their voters are evil f.ckers.

Mostly agree. Over 70 millions evil and/or deluded f.ckers still voted for him.

[bolo]

- government shutdown due to his incompetence

Not sure I buy that this one was unique to Trump. There were also government shutdowns under Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, and Obama.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governmen ... _shutdowns

[FlammableFlower]

- government shutdown due to his incompetence

Not sure I buy that this one was unique to Trump. There were also government shutdowns under Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, and Obama.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governmen ... _shutdowns

The Carter and Reagan ones barely count. No comment on the latest Trump ones - but that wiki reports that in general the Republicans were perceived negatively for the shutdowns against Clinton and Obama.

[lpm]

It takes some doing to break the shutdown record when your party controls House and Senate, and it's over funding the fantasy of a wall you promised Mexico would pay for.

[bolo]

It takes some doing to break the shutdown record when your party controls House and Senate, and it's over funding the fantasy of a wall you promised Mexico would pay for.

"government shutdown due to wall fantasy" I would accept as being uniquely Trump.

[sTeamTraen]

Something that seems to me to be positive, at least on its face, about Trump's time in office is/are the peace deal(s) with the UAE and other rapprochements between Israel and the Arab world. I don't know at what cost these have come, but in the same way that at close of play in a Test match if you're 275-3 you might say "We'd have taken that if we'd been offered it before play started", it seems that we would not have expected this five years ago. I guess Trump still has 45 days left to nuke Iran, but I was a lot more pessimistic about what his presidency would mean for the Middle East than what seems to have transpired. (Maybe Jared is actually a genius at diplomacy? )

I have also heard non-frootloop Americans suggest that the Trump administration's prison reform programme may not be an unmitigated disaster, but I know nothing about it.

He can still get to f.ck and I will cheer if he ever goes to jail, but maybe a stopped clock has its uses.

[FlammableFlower]

Just to add to his charge sheet of "why I'm an evil bastard"

Justin Amash
@justinamash
The federal government under Donald Trump has executed more individuals in recent months than had been executed in the preceding 60 years. The death penalty is inhumane and fraught with error. No government should have this power. It’s past time to #AbolishTheDeathPenalty.
4:48 AM · Dec 11, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

[Gfamily]

Just to add to his charge sheet of "why I'm an evil bastard"

Justin Amash
@justinamash
The federal government under Donald Trump has executed more individuals in recent months than had been executed in the preceding 60 years. The death penalty is inhumane and fraught with error. No government should have this power. It’s past time to #AbolishTheDeathPenalty.
4:48 AM · Dec 11, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

And for the first time in 130 years the administration hasn't suspended executions during a presidential transition period.

[Chris Preston]

The Secret Service may not miss Ivanka and Jared.

[Grumble]

The Secret Service may not miss Ivanka and Jared.

What an unpleasant pair of entitled tw.ts.

[tenchboy]

The Secret Service may not miss Ivanka and Jared.

What an unpleasant pair of entitled tw.ts.

what's the point in having all that money, if you've got to share yer thunder-box with poor people?

[Little waster]

The Secret Service may not miss Ivanka and Jared.

What an unpleasant pair of entitled tw.ts.

what's the point in having all that money, if you've got to share yer thunder-box with poor people?

I mean even from a completely selfish point of view (the only one the Trumps have) if my life could depend on the split second decision of one of my detail to throw themselves in front of a bullet meant for me, I wouldn't want them hesitating, even for a moment, because I was an irredemably obnoxious twunt.

Still drain the swamp, own the libs, blue lives matter, show those sneering elitists, etc. etc.

[Bewildered]

No, it's not a great post, and his laziness and incompetence definitely did mean his impact has been greatly reduced. The post's flaw is that most of that list would have been done by any Republican President. It's pretty inevitable there'll be a Republican in the White House in 8 of every 16 years on average over the decades and that Republican will be an evil f.cker.

Any Republican would have significantly reduced refugees, attacked DACA, taken out of Paris Climate and reduced fuel efficiency standards, exploited transgender issues for cultural war, reinstated the global gag rule and attacked abortion rights, ignored Puerto Rico, loaded the Supreme Court with three right wingers, stacked the lower courts, reduced taxes for the wealthiest, f.cked up on Iran, probably moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, probably gutted the CDC and Pandemic-Preparedness, and try to destroy Obamacare.

On that entire list, the only actual "achievements" of Trump that are unique to him and wouldn't have happened under a generic Republican president are:

- withdrawing from the World Health Organisation during a global pandemic (not convinced this had any real impact on anything and will be reversed)
- government shutdown due to his incompetence
- the worst aspects of immigration i.e. separating children
- open white supremacy (but perhaps it's helpful that he made the racism of the Republican Party so visible rather than a generic Republican who would have kept it concealed)
- open attacks on democracy and elections (but again perhaps it's helpful he made it so visible rather than a generic Republican who'd keep voter suppression and dirty tricks more concealed)
- surely any other president couldn't have been quite so disastrous on Covid

As a counter balance, Trump was such an idiot that he failed to overturn Obamacare and a generic Republican might have been to organise Congress to wreck it. Plus a generic Republican might have retained the House in 2018 instead of switching to a large Democrat majority.

We got incredibly lucky. Trump could easily have done far more damage and he threw away a highly likely reelection. But most of the indictments laid at his door in the post above are simply because the USA is an incredibly right wing country with highly influential Christian extremists and deep seated racism. Tens of millions vote for Republicans because they want Republicans, and the vile stuff Republicans do is because they and their voters are evil f.ckers.

Well I found fishnut’s post remarkably refreshing. She listed things trump actually did do, providing links for them (I didn’t click, but on past history my guess is they are good) and I didn’t spot any exaggerations based on what I know. It astonishes me how rare that last one is with trump. He is is a terrible person and yet the most of the news I watch repeatedly exaggerates things, as do posts here, as if the facts are not enough to show how unfit he is to be president. In fact your own post I quote here contains one exaggeration i can spot, namely “ - open white supremacy ”. Open white supremacy would be him giving a white power speech explicitly saying stuff like “white people are superior to black people” etc. There are horrible shits doing that, but trump has not afaik. he is just supported by them and not condemning them, giving dog whistles etc. If you wrote “thinly veiled white supremacy” I’d accept your interpretation, or you could state facts that lead to such inferences, like fishnut actually did. Of course just one exaggeration means you are way ahead of the average, so w/e.

I’d add the so called so called “Muslim ban” to your list of things that are uniquely trumpian and would not have been done by a typical republican, I don’t think other republicans would have gone as far as what he managed to do there, and it likely cost lives.

But yes I agree that in terms of actual impact he is not so exceptional. The biggest thing* is probably COVID, where he was exceptionally incompetent and hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost, but i don’t know how many lives his incompetence cost in the end, and that’s a question that needs another thread. I think whatever the answer is to that GW Bush will still come out as much worse in impact. I also agree he got lucky. Not sure those things contradict anything fishnut wrote though.

* Actually it could also be that the biggest impact will be the precedent he has set for how politics can be done and how easily they can evade accountability and scrutiny by very blatantly lying etc, allowing them to do awful things they never previously thought they could get away with.

[lpm]

What a strange post.

You'll notice on the Impeachment thread nobody has ever discussed whether he's actually guilty or not. We all take that as a given because we were there. We've followed along throughout the months of his incitement and lies. 5 years ago we were talking about how vile the man is.

It'll be a bit weird if in 5 years time someone posts careful links on why Trump was guilty in Impeachment 2, or starts arguing SARS-CoV-2 was bad for people's health, or explains Brexit led to trade barriers.

Your claim that Trump isn't openly racist is stupid. He's been openly racist for decades. Language itself is an encoding of ideas and all of us add more layers of encoding with metaphors and references. Under your argument, a racist with 88 tattooed on his face is not explicitly a white supremacist on the grounds that he hasn't said the magic words you require. 88 is a code that is easily translated by other racists but can be vaguely explained away to ignorant fools when you want to appear on a woodworking TV show. Trump doesn't use codes like fourteen words but instead invented his own codes and got them recognised by fellow white supremacists - he created birtherism 10 years ago. His other obvious codes are things like calling the "Chinese virus" kung flu, claiming immigrants are criminals and rapists, telling non-white Congresswomen to go back to the crime infested places they came from, and so on and so on...

Sure, these are encoded messages rather than direct language claiming the superiority of white people. But this is out-and-out open white supremacy. Every single person can decode the language and reference to see it as such, just as we can all decode "White Lives Matter" and "You Will Not Replace Us".

[Stranger Mouse]

His approval has hit a new low but is still too high in my opinion

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/20 ... -job-mark/

[Grumble]

Who are the 4% of democrats who still think he’s doing a good job?

[dyqik]

Who are the 4% of democrats who still think he’s doing a good job?

They're Republicans lying about their political identification.

[Stranger Mouse]

Who are the 4% of democrats who still think he’s doing a good job?

They're Republicans lying about their political identification.

Seems likely

It appears Azar has been lying about vaccines too

https://twitter.com/rich_fox/status/135 ... 21248?s=21

When they finally get into the White House I th8nk we’ll be even more horrified by what Trump et al have been doing

[Little waster]

Who are the 4% of democrats who still think he’s doing a good job?

TBF if I was a Democrat I'd approve of the job Trump's doing too ...


... he's single-handedly destroying the Repugs and if there is any justice it'll be another century before there's another Repug POTUS.

[Stranger Mouse]

Who are the 4% of democrats who still think he’s doing a good job?

TBF if I was a Democrat I'd approve of the job Trump's doing too ...


... he's single-handedly destroying the Repugs and if there is any justice it'll be another century before there's another Repug POTUS.

You mean just like the Iran Contra and Watergate scandals erased them from the political landscape?

[Stranger Mouse]

CNN Jim Acosta says Trump's departure ceremony at Joint Base Andrews on the morning of the 20th is expected to be like a state visit departure event, per admin official familiar with planning. Color guard, military band, 21 gun salute and red carpet all under consideration for event, at the moment.

[nezumi]

I'd just kick him out the door shouting "off you f.ck, and don't let the door hit you in the arse on the way".

[Grumble]

CNN Jim Acosta says Trump's departure ceremony at Joint Base Andrews on the morning of the 20th is expected to be like a state visit departure event, per admin official familiar with planning. Color guard, military band, 21 gun salute and red carpet all under consideration for event, at the moment.

I’m all in favour of this, give him something to look forward to and boast about, take his mind off active fascism for a bit. He loves a bit of fuss. When it’s all over slap the handcuffs on.

[Bewildered]

What a strange post.

You'll notice on the Impeachment thread nobody has ever discussed whether he's actually guilty or not. We all take that as a given because we were there. We've followed along throughout the months of his incitement and lies. 5 years ago we were talking about how vile the man is.

It'll be a bit weird if in 5 years time someone posts careful links on why Trump was guilty in Impeachment 2, or starts arguing SARS-CoV-2 was bad for people's health, or explains Brexit led to trade barriers.

So yes, there’s little chance that people being casual with facts will cause anyone to suddenly support trump, if that’s your point here.
But having misinformation go unchallenged is still bad, e.g. it’s how odd bubbles where distorted views of the facts get created.

Your claim that Trump isn't openly racist is stupid. He's been openly racist for decades. Language itself is an encoding of ideas and all of us add more layers of encoding with metaphors and references. Under your argument, a racist with 88 tattooed on his face is not explicitly a white supremacist on the grounds that he hasn't said the magic words you require. 88 is a code that is easily translated by other racists but can be vaguely explained away to ignorant fools when you want to appear on a woodworking TV show. Trump doesn't use codes like fourteen words but instead invented his own codes and got them recognised by fellow white supremacists - he created birtherism 10 years ago. His other obvious codes are things like calling the "Chinese virus" kung flu, claiming immigrants are criminals and rapists, telling non-white Congresswomen to go back to the crime infested places they came from, and so on and so on...

Sure, these are encoded messages rather than direct language claiming the superiority of white people. But this is out-and-out open white supremacy. Every single person can decode the language and reference to see it as such, just as we can all decode "White Lives Matter" and "You Will Not Replace Us".

This feels like a lot of sophistry to avoid accepting you made an exaggeration. Trump is not openly declaring he is a white supremacist and if asked about it publicly he would deny it and despite just how much they already tolerated, I hope he would have lost a lot of voters if he had come out and announced he was a was white supremacist or held racist views . So he is not an open white supremacist. I think the 88 symbolism is well enough known, that having it tattooed on your face seems like an open declaration already, so it’s a weird hypothetical. However if someone with such a tattoo on their face did try to claim they were not a racist, then they would not be being open about what their views are. They would be attempting to conceal them, just incredibly poorly.

Actually I guess your argument really comes down to claiming that hidden messaging and dog whistle signalling about certain views is being “open” about them. So its really a semantic argument, but one I find a quite odd.