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Trump, in My Opinion
I think it would help everybody if, we just acknowledged a few things.
1. Trump is an [redacted]. It’s fine, we have a proud American tradition of [redacted] presidents including LBJ and Harry Truman. Sometimes it also allows people to be necessary change agents. Just say it. “Trump is an [redacted].” It’s not a problem.
2. Trump isn’t a conservative. He is a center-left moderate who cut a deal. He gets to try some new foreign policy stuff and we get judges. There isn’t a single thing he ran on, outside of judges, that wasn’t the bipartisan consensus position before the left exited the American political spectrum, and the right collapsed into a grifter-led minarchist purity spiral. We have to honest with ourselves to be honest with others.
Thank you. That is all.
Published in General
We can argue about what he is all day, but I’d say his suspicion of foreign entanglements, and attempts to curtail both the regulatory state and illegal immigration (successful or not) mark him as something different than a “center left moderate.”
It’s hard for me to keep up without a scorecard. Who are these folks again?
Does he, and what would that evidence be? The founders, mostly, feared a strong executive. The founders believed, strongly, that virtuous men should be in office. One can cite volumes written by the founders, none of which Trump is aware of.
I do not know what Trump believes in. He believes in a one way loyalty, that is certain. He is certainly not dedicated to telling the truth.
So try a comparison between Trump and Madison or Adams.
He has his own, often mystifying, foreign entanglements: Putin, Kim, Xi. And seems to want to detangle from relationships with allies.
There is no left or right there, just mystifying.
He believes in loyalty, perhaps to a fault. I doubt we have any real way of knowing the degree to which it’s “one way.” So, no, it isn’t certain.
I don’t consider Trump’s concept of diplomacy–right or wrong– to be an entanglement. The term is normally used to denote military involvement of some kind.
What rubbish.
The entanglements with Putin are the ones invented by Democrats and Never Trumpers. Which are you?
The entanglements with Xi are the ones to unentangle from the relationships established by Democrats and Never Trumpers to allow China to be the manufacturer of almost everything for the world. So which are you, a Democrat or a Never Trumper? Not that there’s much difference. It’s understandable considering how deep you are into Xi’s pocket.
It is the failure of the neocons in their foreign policy that he is having to correct. A world in which Iran was empowered because of the idiotic wars in the Middle East and Central Asia.
As for allies, you neocons and Democrats have never understood that the EU is the single power in Europe which you have helped promote. The EU has established what Napoleon and Hitler dreamed of doing. And you idiots helped them do it. And yet you expect us to pay the military bill until they can establish their own military, which they will do soon enough. The stupidity of you neocons and Democrats is dangerous.
The founders believed, strongly, that men were NOT virtuous and so created a limited government of separated, countervailing powers and one constrained by a written constitution. They gave us a government where even a [redacted] like Trump or Jackson or Johnson could be President.
Regarding foreign policy, Trump knows enough to talk nice to your enemies, but be frank with your friends. I really have never had a problem with him buttering up Xi and Putin while telling NATO allies to pay their fair share.
Trump’s style is more akin to your average New York City mayor, where the 100-year history of the job is if you want to effect change or simply do 1-2 things that the normal liberal governance of the city doesn’t agree with, you have to be a miserable SOB who is willing to bruise some feelings in order to get your way.
That was what Giuliani had to do when he became mayor in 1994, because if the Democrats who had been running the city had their way, nothing would have changed from the six-murders-per-day status quo, since it wasn’t as though any of them were dying. Even Bloomberg had to be a jackass against the progressives in a couple of areas, such as on maintaining the Giuliani-Bratton police reforms and keeping the budget in check. Going back to the 1930s, LeGuardia had to buck Tammany Hall to get the city back from bankruptcy, and even Ed Koch had to bruise a few progressive egos under similar conditions in the late 1970s.
The Koch-Guiliani world is what Trump debuted in as a public figure, and what made his NYC real estate holdings more valuable, as Rudy vastly improved the city’s quality-of-life and made more people with money to live in Trump properties want to move there. That’s what you’re getting with Trump — someone with the F-U ethos of a successful NYC mayor bucking the system, writ large to Washington and the rest of the country (while at the same time you can also be an a-hole and be an unsuccssful NYC mayor, as the current occupant of City Hall has been demonstrating to the world for the past seven years).
Hmmm….
I don’t think Trump would have had much luck grabbing Rudy by the —-.
Think the “Lincoln Project” and their ilk.
Trump is conservative enough for my tastes – particularly considering what else is on offer.
He is more conservative than the Bushes by quite a lot.
But he’s our [redacted].
Okay.
James Madison has not done a single thing for this country in over 184 years.
John Adams has not done a single thing for this country in over 194 years.
And for fun, we could throw in Reagan and Coolidge, neither of whom has done much for us lately, either.
Donald Trump has spent the last nearly four years fighting for this country. He has put us in much better stead regarding jobs and wealth creation as well as our foreign policy and position in the world. He has helped eliminate all sorts of regulations and strangulating red tape to free people to create wealth. He has nominated hundreds of originalists to the federal bench. In doing so, he has turned around several of the circuits from being “living Constitution” majority to having a majority of judges who can actually read and respect the Constitution. He has made progress on criminal justice reform. He has done several things that career Republican politicians have been promising they would do for decades, like moving the embassy to Jerusalem. He got rid of the individual mandate. When a “Republican” Congress had a chance to get rid of Obamacare, they betrayed President Trump and the American people. (Note the President Trump part is only incidental, but I mention it since the deciding vote to screw the American people was because a certain petty, mean, little man didn’t like President Trump.) Trump has gotten more done on our agenda and pushed back more on the Progressives than any PotUS I can remember, and all of that time he was being illegally investigated, impeached, etc.
I’ll take a live [expletive] of a man who advances our agenda over a dead man any day.
Thank you, that reminds me of something else regarding Trump. He follows the law and judges’ orders. He believes in federalism. Can’t say that for someone like Mr. Pen-and-Phone who was before him.
I think we can narrow that down to one person – John McCain.
What’s disappointing is Republicans fell for the “must have an alternative” before repeal (also called “repeal and replace”) . . .
Someone posted a tweet on The Lincoln Project’s donations vs. expenditures. Basically if you give money to these people — even if you hate Trump — you’re a chump:
Pres. Madison hasn’t done anything to this country like declaring war on the world’s superpower while unprepared and getting the White House and capitol burned. Pres. Trump is unlikely too either. Madison was a terrible president.
IIRC the reason it is the White House is because it was white-washed after the fire.
He’s dead, man. Give him a break. It’s not like he was President Wilson.
Adams was an unpleasant scold (and distant cousin of mine) whose notorious Alien and Sedition Acts which shaped a naturalization process for emigrants, the denial of entry of citizens of hostile nations, the imprisonment and deportation of immigrants deemed to be dangerous, and the criminalization of false statements critical of the federal government. The last, the Sedition Act, was a stinker that contributed to Adams’ non-reelection. Adams was nominated to the Continental Congress to meet Boston’s desire for a break from the constant harangues and tirades. Adams was a one man outrage campaign. He had a mouth on him in that hectoring, charmless puritan tradition and, if transplanted to the 21st Century, would likely be tweeting venom deep into the wee hours. Socially, his only redeeming asset was Abigail, his wife, who was a capable scold in her own right but capable of charming the socks off of the most brilliant men of the age. I believe that Adams was nominated Vice President and then elected on the shoulders of men who wanted Abigail to be a part of those tedious political social functions. Adams was born to succeed in an age when over 90% of the voters never directly experienced the candidate’s personality. If we acknowledge Trump’s unfortunate insistence on threatening slander and libel suits against the
lying trashmedia I think it is safe to say that Trump is the new Adams.Madison was the philosopher king of the Constitution who inherited the mess left by Jefferson in European relations that led to the burning of the White House and the great Johnny Horton song, “Battle of New Orleans“. That the idiot British would start another land war in America was unfortunate, but it places Madison squarely in a position to end four decades of belligerence (and the impressment of American sailors) by the blowhard British. Otherwise he is remembered as the Jefferson protege that succeeded him as president and preceded Monroe and his doctrine. So Madison fought a war he never made and established peace. Trump is in the process of doing the same in the Middle East and his knack for recognizing and challenging hostility is serving us well with regard to China and Iran.
Not one way? He attacks former members of the administration, and current.
We ought to call it the “The Stinkin’ Project” . . .
And you know enough about what goes on behind closed doors to be sure that it’s “one-way”? You’re sure that the individuals themselves are loyal?
To summarize: it takes a big [redacted] to get rid of all the [redacted], as any student who has taken basic human anatomy knows.
I don’t get it. What would it help?
He only attacks when betrayed.