Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
In Response to Dennis Prager: Yes, the Tweets Matter
I need to take issue with something @dennisprager said in his recent appearance on the Ricochet flagship podcast. He was there as part of the larger conversation around his recent National Review piece about why conservatives continue to attack the President. At 44:48, Prager spoke of his puzzlement about why conservatives fixate on what the President says. Specifically, the President’s tweets. Prager said, “I don’t give a hoot what he tweets,” and explained that it matters what he does, not what he Tweets.
Okay, so here’s the problem with that: We can’t just ignore Donald Trump’s tweets. They matter because each tweet is a public statement by the President of the United States. What he tweets cannot be separated from what he does because public statements are part of what a President does. This isn’t something overheard at a cocktail party or caught on a hot mic, these are public statements the President makes under his own name.
So when Donald Trump publicly accuses his predecessor of illegally wiretapping him in a manner akin to Watergate, it’s the President of the United States doing that. When Donald Trump publicly threatens a former FBI director, it’s the President of the United States doing that. When Donald Trump makes easily disprovable, factually incorrect statements, or threatens foreign nations, it’s the President of the United States doing that. If some underling did this, even in error, they would be fired. It is only the fact that they continue to come in such rapid succession that we’re not fixating on each incident for months at a time.
And this was an entirely foreseeable turn of events. Those of us who opposed Donald Trump tooth and nail did so because we understood that he was and remains unfit to be President. That he lacks the common sense or the impulse control (or both) to keep from saying these things in public is part of the reason why he’s woefully unfit to be President. The fact that he continues to make these statements says something either about the sycophants he surrounds himself with and their inability to control him.
Donald Trump is no longer just some crank with a Twitter account picking fights with beauty queens and Gold Star mothers. He’s the leader of the Free World. He’s sits atop the most powerful military ever created by man. He commands troops and planes and ships and missiles, enough to devastate the entire world. His public statements matter.
To choose to ignore his public statements is to choose to neglect our civic responsibility hold this man to account for his actions.
Published in General
Let me help you Damocles. It appears that your vision is failing you or you did not read adam’s cartoon. “One critic summed it up this way: Sure it worked for him one thousand times, but no way will it work 1,001 times”. The number of times mentioned by adams is 1,000 and then 1,001 as if every time trump does tweet it helps him (and the critics are wrong). There is a reason the robot follows up with the insult of medical experts checking into their sanity. My example refutes that by highlighting a point when trump tweeted and it hurt him.
But as to cognitive dissonance that refers to anxiety. How do you know if I am or am not suffering anxiety? It would be great if you actually tried to argue the substance of this discussion rather than using the pathetic tactic of ad hominem speculation. #Sad.
@docjay do you have a post on these rules? Love to read them.
Maybe it will curb my redactions.
@couldbeanyone
@damocles read the cartoon, but he was quoting your restatement of it.
Please address your restatement. Particularly the use of the words “always” and “every”.
It’s amazing to see a refutation of the absurd absolute being made by becoming even more absurdly absolute!
Your posts sound anxious. Also, you lowercase names of people that make you anxious. It’s a complicated brain thing, so you’ll have to trust me on that.
But, as Scott Adams says,
[I]f your debate partner leaves the realm of fact and reason for any of the diversions I mentioned, you just won the debate. Declare victory and bow out.
So ta-ta for now!
Right on!
God, I am so tired of the Left and the NeverTrump constant whining. I will almost be glad when they finally kill Trump off, except I am pretty sure that even then they will complain that Trump did not die as a President should.
Hear hear.
It’s not whining, it’s politics.
Trump and his supporters have their point of view. Conservatives and libertarians have their point of view. Each side is trying to defeat the other.
Personally I think @Damocles is right. I think the November election killed off Reagan conservatism for good. Well, for a generation or two anyway.
But the way things are going so far, Trump may not be able to consolidate his gains and Conservatives might regain their voice in the Republican party.
“I won so critics need to shut up,” is in the Constitution? I must have missed that clause.
From your keyboard to God’s eyes directly I say. Amen.
Still Trump shows some signs of being led by Conservatives on may important issues and his left leaning stuff might be kind of walled off to him and his family. He might damage free trade long term but right now I think the basic foundation of Reagan Conservatism will be there for the Republicans to build on again. Trump has not discredited it yet and he may not discredit at all. Let’s hope.
Nah, nothing is damaged long term except for the wreckage left by incorrect Supreme Court rulings those take generations to undo.
Economic stuff – nah – takes about 3-4 years. Case in point.
Before the election, I was #nevertrump. When Trump won, I decided to hope for one of two things to happen. Either,
1. Trump would magically stop blurting out stupid things, and would become thoughtful, measured, and Presidential (I didn’t really have much hope for that one); or
2. Trump would continue to be Trump, but would surround himself with people who would translate his unfiltered brain farts into some sort of sensible public policy.
So far, my hope #2 seems to have largely come true. And I am grateful for that. So grateful. It may not last, and everything Fred says has an element of truth to it, but things are still much better than I expected.
Well, both, and in this case those two things are not in conflict. The manner in which the president is elected — the electoral college — is not Obama “logic” but the normal constitutional order.
And my point is that Trump won.
you got it the wrong way around. Reagan conservatism was already dead which is why Trump won since Reagan’s coalition no longer could and nobody wants to keep losing to the Left.
I was recently redacted for that.
Well yes. I agree but people like Cruz and Rubio et al were Republican leaders. So conservatism was still relevant to that extent. Trump exposed the lack of foundation there. November was the final plug pulling.
Yeah. We know. The rest of us have moved beyond the “he won” phase to the “How is he doing?” phase.
Nfn, but it sounds like you’re the one who needs to “Deal with it.”
“The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.”
This tweet can’t get any more clear. He has little to no idea what he’s doing. Did he forget, or just not ever know, that he’s the boss–that he can tell the Justice Dept. what he wants in the E.O.? He could just as easily tweet, “I should have stayed with the original Travel Ban…..” and it would mean exactly the same thing.
Our President, who may have respectable conservative instincts (Gorsuch, the latest foreign trip) as to what he would like accomplished, is a political ignoramus. I can hear the response already: “That’s why we wanted him. We’re sick of the establishment. We want to drain the swamp.”
He’ll get his political wins here and there (he does have the House and the Senate), but to drain the swamp, you might need someone who is a little smarter than what’s in the swamp. He ain’t.
I think that the world would be far better off if Trump were an adult like the sainted GWB and voluntarily gave up his smartphone while in office.
However, that is not going to happen- old arrogant dog, new tricks, etc. But this statement by Fred does not appear to me to be true any longer, and indeed, it seems to me that Trump deliberately likes to induce chaos and uncertainty to keep the other sides off balance:
Okay, so here’s the problem with that: We can’t just ignore Donald Trump’s tweets. They matter because each tweet is a public statement by the President of the United States. What he tweets cannot be separated from what he does because public statements are part of what a President does. This isn’t something overheard at a cocktail party or caught on a hot mic, these are public statements the President makes under his own name.
Yes, that is how it always was. But it seems to me that the various parties are rapidly realizing that a “public statement by the President of the United States” simply does not mean what it once did. Crises are not crises after adaptation, and here adaptation comes into play quite rapidly.
Didn’t Dennis Prager basically admit this in the podcast? I can’t remember who it was, maybe Rob?, who pressed him on the fact that Trump needs people around him who can call him out on missteps, and Prager said something to the effect of “he wouldn’t listen anyway.” That is a problem.
How is it a good thing that we’ve lowered our standards to “Yeah, we know he’s President, but don’t pay attention to the insane stuff he says”?
It is called strategic ambiguity and it works well enough in the rest of the world.
That supposes there’s a strategy behind it, instead of chaos and poor impulse control. There’s more evidence of the latter than the former.
It’s true that we’d generally infer that someone talking about it working 1000 times but failing on time 1001 wasn’t cherry-picking the first 1000 times from a mix of more than 1000, some of which worked, and some of which didn’t. But this is Adams we’re talking about. He has no qualms with that kind of cherry-picking, or the equivocation.
Adams, among other things, apparently enjoys trolling, and giving advice on how to troll. It’s not worth taking seriously.
Is it “strategic ambiguity” when he undercuts his own Justice Department and executive order?
The Roberts court is very concerned about its image. So much so that he voted to preserve Obamacare out of legislative deference (which is why it failed as a use of the commerce clause, but prevailed as a tax). So if SCOTUS truly allows itself to be swayed by public opinion or “tweets not in evidence” then it truly deserves the scorn that will be heaped upon it. There is already tacit admission by other courts and court observers that had any administration (other than the Trump administration) put the same moratorium in place it would have prevailed on appeal. President Obama imposed a 6 month moratorium and nary a word out of the courts.
It is a good thing to see where the rot exists in our institutions and it seems that President Trump has an uncanny knack for bringing them to light.
Side note, if Notorious RBG doesn’t recuse herself (based on comments she made during the campaign season regarding this very thing) you will know the court for what it has become, rule of man instead of rule of law.
I think the requirement for RBG to recuse herself only applied to a Bush v. Gore scenario. If disliking the President were enough to require recusal, then half the court would have to recuse itself in every case.
I think we can all agree on that.
This is the one thing that I just don’t understand: why it seems that many “Conservatives” refuse to admit or notice that Reagan “Conservatism” was already jettisoned from the Republican Party as it relates to policy action. Oh sure, the GOP platform still read as though it was written by Goldwater’s ghost writer, but nothing would happen outside of tax cuts here and there and some semblance of free trade. But beyond that: nothing. More government. More debt. More forked tongued platitudes about “American values.” Trump–whether you wish to admit it or not–filled a void that was once held by credibility, meaning the GOP no longer had any. So when Rubio, Bush 3.0, and even Cruz failed to win the nomination, it should have been obvious: folks who came out of the ranks of the GOP were automatically in a bad way because they lacked credibility in the eyes of enough of the primary voters. The fact that Trump won the nomination should be a wake up call to how destroyed Reagan “Conservatism” was at the time. It wasn’t Trump’s doing, it was Reagan “Conservatives” who did that.