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Trump Is Done
Trump gets full credit for destroying himself and his Presidency. And he finally did it single-handedly. We have all put up with his rudeness, crassness, and inconsistencies, and I was willing to go along.
Until now.
Trump’s protesting the election was understandable. But once he voiced his protests, he should have just done his job and limited his comments; instead, he kept inciting his most passionate followers and everyone else within shouting distance. Yes, I think it’s entirely possible that those who crashed the Capitol were not just his fans, but those who were just waiting for an opportunity to incite violence, just like the riots we saw in several major cities. And Trump gave them the cover to attack.
I hate violence. I hate breaking the law. I hate those who threaten others. And Trump essentially encouraged all of it. Even when he told people to go home today, he had to say just one more time that he was cheated in the election. He should be ashamed.
But he doesn’t have the decency to be ashamed. He’s just angry. Which justifies his insulting his vice president who put up with his abasement of him for years with class, diligence, and allegiance. And Trump thanked him by trying to discredit him.
I can tolerate a great deal from a person when they get things done. But to a great extent, Trump brought much of the hatred towards him on himself. Those who sabotaged him were incited by his disdain for them and his nastiness.
Yes, Trump did many good things during his Presidency. But those accomplishments will be overshadowed by his lack of discipline and lack of respect for those who had tried to serve him well.
He’s done.
Published in Culture
Would you at least concede that several people (I’m not going to name names–you know who) have moved on down the road?
And I’m still stuck on the “disdain” thing.
Oh definitely. And I do well remember that you personally were a consistent critic of Trump all through the 2016 election. Some people have moved on, but there is a vocal core who have not, and will not, and make their presence well known time and again. Even now some of them are in high dudgeon defending Trump’s behavior this week, or attacking others (such as me) who are known to be Trump skeptics, just for the sake of reminding me that they still hate me.
Indeed. Beyond that, President Trump can be praised and criticized on several levels, and praise or criticism directed at him in one respect needn’t indicate praise or criticism in any other respect.
So one could observe that he had by far the better positions, in terms of policy, in his first debate (and I think he did) and that he made far more sense than did his opponent, and yet he mishandled the presentation so extremely that it cost him the debate. He’s good at some things, not good at others, and that night he was poor at the showmanship aspect of debate. We can argue that that shouldn’t matter except to shallow people, but if we consider that part of his job was to persuade those same shallow people, then we kind of have to acknowledge his failure.
He’s really a fascinating character, a larger than life tragic figure who burst upon the scene, stirred things up, tore things down, pleasantly surprised many of us, and ended his term as disruptively as he began it — leaving everyone with a different sense of exactly who and what he was.
Anyway, I’m glad we had him.
Indeed. But to put it bluntly, it can be impossible to convince stupid people of something, not because you didn’t make the argument well, but because the people you’re trying to convince are stupid.
Let’s make the lens work both ways. As you’ve no doubt gathered, I find some of the rhetoric–especially coming from the PTB- -less than persuasive. And I stand by my comment which started our interactions that we are hearing from some who are rather new Trump critics, or at least some who don’t post much. That’s not a bad thing, and, if reading an editor’s intemperate call for impeachment encourages their views, that’s fine too.
But there’s going to be, and should be, push back on a discussion site. If much or most of those pushing back can all be dismissed as “high dudgeon,” I’m just not on board with that. I checked your recent interaction and it’s been clear to me that the person is very blunt and not in the mainstream of comment here. YMMV.
Agreed. I’m not about to defend Yeti’s approach to customer service, for instance. I was rather in more agreement with Jon’s sentiments, but don’t have any issue with those who thought him over the top.
Understood, but in fairness you did use the term “piling on”, which I thought went too far.
I agree that pushing back is fine (and the site would be really really boring without the sparring), but I’m referring to a specific set of people who are more than pushing back.
There are causes for concern, but it would take a PM to unpack it all.
Well, perhaps Pence but up a good front. And Trump trusted him too much. Pence was in fact in charge of the coronavirus task force, and Fauci and Birx we disingenuous at best, and also pushed the fatally flawed British estimate of deaths, and pushed the continued lockdowns. And Pence was the point man on every issue. Everyone on the left says that Trump mismanaged the epidemic, but maybe Pence should take the responsibility. But he hasn’t.
Sorry for the grungy attitude, but this just occurred to me. Trump takes the heat for the bad response, and yet he gave Pence credit every day for all the hard work he put in. In light of Pence’s recent actions, and how far they were from his words of never giving up and fighting the election fraud, maybe Pence was manipulating the covid response just as much as fauci, and for the same reasons.
And as far as I can trust anything at all from any media, I tend to believe the current Pence/Ryan 2016 website is real. It really made me question my view of Pence, and that was before he started going back on his word to the American people.
Uh, oh.
Don Jr.
Don’t look now but the Romney train is boarding passengers.
Obama was a great debater.
Yours is splendid. Is that a bird of paradise?
The problem there is that “debate” is only about “winning,” not being truthful. Obama is a very convincing liar. At least, he can be very convincing to those who don’t know he’s a liar.
I think the difference is clear. She was a candidate, he was the actual President of the United States of America. There is a quantitative and qualitative difference. If that escapes you, perhaps, you should reexamine your views.
Also, her name starts with H and his starts with T. No comparison whatsoever.
I was thinking more this:
Yes, my father took a section from my grandparents’ plant in the early 1960s. The family has guarded that plant ever since, dividing as necessary. I have two right now as does my sister. Offspring plants are all over, among friends. We keep them in big pots on heavy duty carts, so we can roll them into the garage when it gets below 38 degrees. It is resting now, won’t bloom again for months.
Their protesters destroyed cities for six months and are still at it. Except for a few rabble rousers, ours destroyed nothing, burned nothing, and stayed between the ropes as they paraded peacefully through the building. They shouldn’t have done it but Teump didn’t incite it. Those who led the way and broke the windows came to the rally prepared to do what they did.
LOL, who are his sycophants? They are abandoning him by the droves.
It was mixed. As someone else said, don’t take the media’s word. But I do maintain he lost the election after the first debate. He did recover a bit in the second (it would have been the third but they had to cancel the second) debate, but he only regrouped his base.
Some people seemed to think Trump shouldn’t have been so hard on the decrepit old man, apparently not realizing that the decrepit old man was the other candidate for President.
Where are the passengers going to ride? In the coal car?
When I was a wee tyke I rode in the caboose with my grandfather on the Soo Line in North Dakota. There were no passenger cars, but there were a few wooden seats in the caboose for passengers. Probably enough for Romney supporters.
There was a lot of talk on Ricochet that encouraged that point of view. I don’t know if people here took that approach from following Trump’s lead or vice versa.
Passengers? What makes you think there would be any passengers?
It’s…odd? interesting? amusing? something…that a line of argument which seems, on the one hand, largely devoted to Trump’s perceived capacity for self-delusion and ignoring reality seems, on the other, about equally based in visions of an unknowable and rosy future of “what if’s.” Sorry, no sale on the President Hillary fantasy. Or any of the rest of it.
Well said. The only difference with my experience was that I did reluctantly vote for him in 2016 after an evaluation of alternatives. I still feel I made the right decision. In a short amount of time I grew to appreciate Trump and have supported him since. Until the last two months. You’re right it was a surprise he even came close but he did. There has never been solid evidence of wide scale fraud. That has been delusion and fake news. He was fortunate to have come close. With the events of the other night, it’s time to give up the ghost on supporting him further.
Over the next few months, Democrats will remind you of why Trump was the better choice.
I was just thinking–I do that now and then–that maybe the last couple of months just overwhelmed Trump. He had finally just had enough. And that was possibly the reason he was so extreme and obsessed.
I don’t want to overdo this tweet, but here is an example: