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Trump After One Year: As Bad As We Expected
Honestly, what did we expect would happen when we elected a corrupt fascistic misogynistic xenophobic madman to the nation’s highest office?
Well, for starters, we expected the electoral process itself to be subverted, of course. And look! It turns out that the Democratic Party’s primary process was rigged, an undemocratic farce, a charade designed to string along enthusiastic Bernie Sanders supporters while the outcome – a Clinton nomination – was guaranteed by the fact that Mrs. Clinton herself was secretly bankrolling the DNC party apparatus and calling all the shots.
We expected sinister collusion with hostile foreign powers, naturally. And look! It turns out that the Democratic Party, under the control of candidate Clinton, was paying foreign spies to cook up salacious (albeit fictitious) dirt on the opposition candidate, and then, with the help of a surprisingly helpful FBI director, foisting the results on Congress as credible intelligence without mentioning the DNC connection.
We expected a war against women. And look! It turns out that the only thing the hard-left, Democratic Party-supporting movers and shakers of Hollywood enjoy more than bashing Trump 24/7 is, wait for it, turning women and children into sex objects – or discretely looking the other way to avoid seeing what everyone knew was going on.
We expected fascistic mobs rioting in the streets. And look! Fascistic mobs riot in the streets, protesting the inauguration of a duly elected President, protesting the public appearance of people they don’t like.
We expected the suppression of free speech. And look! Scholars are silenced on our university campuses by students and faculty fearful of ideas that don’t comport with their hard-left preconceptions.
Okay, some things didn’t go as expected. We were told we’d have a lawless executive, but it turns out that this supposedly authoritarian President accepts the ruling of the courts, tells Congress to do the legislating, and generally keeps his executive actions confined to reversing past executive actions, avoiding the overreach to which we’d grown accustomed.
And, okay, the stock market is at record highs, unemployment is low, consumer confidence is up, energy production too, and economic growth is over three percent. Excellent defense staffing choices and a string of quite good Presidential speeches to international audiences have allayed concerns that World War III is one mad tweet away.
We don’t have a wall. We haven’t repealed Obamacare. We haven’t passed any of the major legislation promised by the new President – this despite a slim Congressional majority. A more ambitious President would grab his phone and his pen and just make it happen, Constitution be damned. But the would-be dictator in the Oval Office, in a refreshing break with practices of the past few years, seems content to color within the lines of his executive authority and leave the lawmaking to the legislators.
Oh, we did expect tweets. And, honestly, they really are as bad as we feared. But, strangely, thus far the tweeting seems to be the worst thing about this administration. The rest is not too bad — and certainly not what I expected.
Published in Politics
Amazing, isn’t it?
Spot on.
And still we have alleged “conservatives” demanding he be impeached.
Because Tweets or something.
Henry Racette, thankyou for making a pro-Trump post that honestly and decently tries to talk to Never-Trumpers. We need more attempts at persuasion.
I call it Strategic Projection, accusing the opponent of ones own sins.
(I don’t know if it’s an actual Goebbels quote or not.)
But it’s a very powerful and effective tactic. Because 1., the opponent is not going to be doing a Peewee Herman “IknowyouarebutwhatamI?”, 2., the accusation suggests the press and interested folks search through the opponent’s history for anything that could be interpreted as confirmation, and 3., the accuser’s actions are ignored.
Rockin’ Donald, tweet, tweet, tweet
Rockin’ Donald tweet, tweet a lee deet
I do wish he’d put down that phone sometimes, great post.
I have been pleasantly surprised and would vote for him again. If the ungrateful whiners don’t vote for him and let the Dems back into the White House, they can save their future whines for they will fall on my deaf ears.
I am sick and tired of fearing what the Dems will do next, of wondering how long my guns will be safe from their grabbing ways, of having to fear their anger over my thoughts, and fear that identifying as a Christian will be akin to being a racist.
And even reversing it, by a ratio of 13 to 1! What an unexpected delight!
And the covfefe is always hilarious.
I could have written this if I were more clever!
Crow tastes better with Ketsup. But given what the alternative was, I will use the economy sized bottle, and take it like a man.
(see I can say “take it like a man” again)
Great headline, too!
At the risk of being labeled a Trump sycophant, I think this is unfair. I’m not a Twitterer, but I have it from reliable sources that roughly 90% of Trump’s tweets are uncontroversial, but the press only brings your attention to the controversial ones (which, btw, turn out to be correct, if crudely stated, roughly 90% of the time). Dems have said way more “deplorable” things, sometimes while speaking from the people’s house — like expressing open hostility to the 1st and 2nd Amendments.
Don’t get fooled again.
And, as a bonus, we can thank our lucky stars we have the gracious and drop-dead gorgeous Melania Trump for a First Lady. The alternative was Bill Clinton, who, I’m told, does not have the legs for stiletto heels.
Try to get that image out of your mind…
Oh, some members have an evil streak!
Isn’t this aggravating! Why can’t Trump be the thug that we all wanted? Now, to criticize, we must wear blinders to what is actually happening. Darn it.
Drew-Trump is an anti-freedom authoritarian side show. Conservatives would fare much better if Mike Pence became president. Arguments claiming impeachment advocates rely on Trump’s tweets engage in the straw man fallacy.
Great post Henry. I reluctantly voted for him, but now I whole-heartedly support him. Go Trump! Transform America.
Says what I was thinking, so I copied it.
Perhaps. Except that Mike Pence will never win a primary let alone a presidential general. That is gross speculation on my part, of course.
Why are we even talking about it?
Do you say those words every night before you go to bed? Besides some kind of foggy iteration of a partial leak of Mueller’s filing against Papadopoulos for lying (mis stating/ mis remembering) by an antagonist reporter with dubious authenticity do you have any action Trump has taken that validates your claim?
I find the continual conflation of evidence and innuendo to be tiresome. Let’s take Lichtman’s comment apart and see what it says.
“Already, Mueller’s filing in federal court of just partial information from his plea deal with Papadopoulos, contains stunning new revelations.”
Okay. Stun me.
“At a minimum, top campaign officials with access to Trump showed an openness to collusion with the Russians.”
“Show an openness?” Is it a crime to maybe be willing to collude with Russians — if you don’t actually, you know, collude with Russians? And what is the significance to the “with access to Trump” part, if in fact Trump knew nothing about the collusions — sorry, the willingness to perhaps engage in collusion?
“The filing confirms that the Russians hacked Democratic emails to disseminate “dirt” about Hillary Clinton and help Trump.”
First, last I heard, the forensic evidence of just who hacked the server(s) is inconclusive. It could be a lone-wolf Romanian hacker, or someone using hacking tools left over from previous probable-Russian hacks of German systems. Secondly, someone is presuming to know the motives of the hackers — whoever they were. (And are these supposedly the same Russians who provided the “dirt” for the infamous anti-Trump dossier the DNC produced?)
But, more to the point, even if the Russians hacked the Democratic emails in an effort to help Trump (which makes almost no sense for a variety of reasons), that isn’t at all the same as saying that Trump colluded with the Russians to do that.
“Papadopoulos’s Russian contacts informed him of this hacking more than a month before any public disclosure of such hacking and six months before a report by the U.S. intelligence community confirmed Russia the hackers.”
Presumably Papadopoulos provides some evidence that this is true. But, again, so what? How did the Russian know? Did he do the hack, or did he hear about it from someone else? And, more to the point, what does the sketchy personal knowledge of a low-level campaign volunteer — knowledge which implicates neither Trump nor his campaign in any illegal act — have to do with Trump and collusion?
“The filing also provides not just circumstantial but also direct evidence that Trump knew of efforts within his campaign to collude with the Russians.”
Okay. We know that Papadopoulos asked the campaign, repeatedly, for permission to talk to Russians about dirt on Clinton. Such a conversation wouldn’t actually be criminal collusion unless it included participating in lawbreaking, and talking to Russians, even about the Clintons, is not against the law.
But apparently the Trump campaign told him to knock it off. Now imagine that Trump is copied on an email exchange that includes Papadopoulos asking if he could talk to Russians (“collusion,” in the fevered minds of the left) and the Trump campaign saying “no.” That would be direct evidence that Trump knew of efforts within his campaign to “collude” with the Russians.
(It would also be direct evidence that he declined to do so. But that isn’t as interesting to report.)
We’ve been here before. I’ll wait until we see real evidence that Trump knowingly engaged in or encouraged criminal activity in an effort to undermine the election.
Lichtman is a hack.
Aside from Trade, Trump is inarguably governing as the most conservative President since Reagan.
Hee hee.
Love stirring it up on here. I know Reagan would have hired wannabe Russian colluders, just like the incompetent Trump. Trump is an authoritarian, and some conservatives are cool with it.
I have a low opinion of Trump. But I’m not seeing him doing authoritarian-style things, just yet.
As I said, not what I expected.
Instead of doing the Obama thing and doing end-runs around Congress to pass things by executive fiat, President Trump is working within the system.
If Trump really was an authoritarian, he’s pretty awful at it.
And stirring it up is all you care about doing. I graduated high school many years ago and moved on. You might consider doing the same.
“I’d like to buy a post please……”
Exactly. Pence would not last ten minutes. Do you know how much the Left hates him? He’s the guy they think wanted to force all gays to have ECT, the guy they think wants to turn the women into cloistered slaves like in The Handmaid’s Tale.
I’m wretched for President Trump. “Thin-skinned”? He must be the toughest man ever, to endure the filth and slander lobbed at him and his family every day! But the thought of Pence having to deal with the onslaught if he found himself prez is just–harrowing.
If only people would take notice of the facts the OP cites. I’d be happy even if only “our side” did so. But any attempt to normalize this President is immediately shot down. Look at the koi-feeding incident last week.
It is incredible, it beggars the imagination, that so many can be so vicious and bitter, while riding a tide of increasing prosperity, good government, and optimism in our country. It’s like Plath wrote in The Bell Jar, they are trapped in a prison with their own stale air, and everything they see in the world is distorted by the cloudy, imperfect glass.
Plath (who was a darn good poet) was susceptible to the same cloudy distortions because of her horrible depression. It seems like the hatred of Trump, (and I don’t have a particularly high opinion of him) has become some sort of widespread mental illness.
Henry, wonderful article. You are unremitting in your tracking of who-said-what-to-whom-at-what-time-and-in-what-format. You’re also clever.
The machinations of the Left are too Byzantine for me to follow. Like a kid, I also bore easily. Would you please continue to do my thinking for me? Thanks.
Kent