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Trump’s Failures, According to Trump Supporters
This is a thread for those of us who generally support Donald Trump and his presidency to discuss his failings. I would ask that Trump opponents please do not post here, since we already know what you dislike about the man.
I think it is important to document what we see as his mistakes so we can avoid them in the future.
One of the bigger failures in his COVID campaign was not letting scientists/physicians discuss scientific findings for him, since they can be precise and technical, while he is relaxed and acting as the everyman leader. This could have prevented a number of scandals. Also, have Fauci and company explain themselves better. The mask-or-not-to-mask flip-flop, excessive social regulations, and the excusing of protests destroyed public trust in public health.
He also missed the chance to push for long-lasting reforms, like destroying “certificate of need” rules.
Trump also massively failed in underestimating just how deep the swamp went. He ended up cycling through a lot of people needlessly – get the mass firing out of the way on day one.
Published in Politics
IMO, having been a Pennsylvania state employee for many years, I don’t see the unionized employees as a big threat. They do not set the direction of the agencies. The real dangers are the upper-level managers who hold their positions at the pleasure of the political powers that be. That is not to say that I am pro-union. The unions provide slackers with cover, but the rank-and-file are not the ones involved in the organizational intrigues. The unions merely provide a reliable and substantial source of income to the politicians’ campaigns. The politicians and the well-connected managers would get rid of the unions in a heartbeat if they did not need their financial and propaganda support. Weakening the unions would weaken the politicians, but not destroy them. They would probably just form more alliances with powerful industries as seems to be happening.
I think the same sort of reasoning holds true in the military. The enlisted men are not going to be planning the coups.
I think Trumps biggest failure was the Democrats also. Trump is a deal maker, he thought the Democrats were reasonable and make deal and he could further his few agenda items. He did not understand how hateful they can be.
Is not winning a game of monopoly when the die is loaded and the bank is corrupt, and the rules change to suit your competitors really a failure?
I respectfully dislike this post. Donald J. Trump has been subjected to enough abuse. O.P., why in the world did you suggest this.
Maybe it’s an after-action critique. Trump only made
threefive mistakes: eminent domain; civil asset forfeiture; blowing out the budget; not using his EO to have the US Marshals do a televised verification and recount in six selected states; and taking on the deep state in the first place.I can say unequivocally that his biggest failing was spending money like drunken Democrats. There wasn’t even an attempt to reign in spending. It would have taken unbelievable courage however, because the Republican base has pretty much folded on this issue and just swept it under the rug, so there wasn’t much incentive. There is probably no politician strong enough to curb the tide of inevitable fiscal collapse.
Pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the single best hope for marginalizing China’s manufacturing dominance by building a Pacific trading bloc that didn’t include China.
We printed off trillions, before Covid.
He messed with the 2nd amendment via executive order. All federal gun control laws are unconstitutional.
Despite his TV show persona firing so many people, he showed remarkable lack of judgment in keeping disloyal people around.
Next term, he also needs to upend the entire ranks of the civil service and pay them off after the inevitable law suits. Deal with their mess later, get them out now.
I didn’t know that. Good move.
I know that caused a bit if a kerfuffle when he first took office. The way it was phrased was that he had to transition from his private security to the Secret Service, which caused some confusion. I notice that Mar a Lago doesn’t have the Secret Service’s standard flight restriction over it, either.
I felt the
Muslimtravel ban right off the bat was a bad political mistake. It gave the left something tangible to brandish as proof that he was racist and a scalp when it was overturned in court. I discount the effect on the left here as nothing would have made any difference to them, but I do think there were a large number of people who were glad that Hillary didn’t get in but were still nervous about Trump and how he would behave. It just struck me as unnecessary as I don’t recall any pressing reason to do it just at that point.I also think he left too many of Obama’s creatures in place.
I was also speculating just today about what his presidency might have been like had he been elected before twitter. I know he claimed he needed it to get his message out, but I’m not sure that was true.
And in these last few months, I wished that he had some political and oratorical skills to navigate the election mess. I wish he could have spoken rationally and calmly to the American people to lay out the case as to why he felt he had to challenge the election and led them through the process with the assurance that when all legal avenues were exhausted he would leave office. But rational and calm are not in his repertoire. I could tell that even Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham were frustrated that he could never make a logical and clear argument for why the Russia investigation was an assault on the Constitution and why it was important that he not concede just yet. So I can’t really call this a mistake as that suggests he could have acted otherwise.
(I edited the post to correct my use of the term Muslim ban in response to comments that followed. But I still think it was a mistake.)
It wasn’t a muslim ban. No matter what he did, the press was going to label whatever he did as racist, homophobic, kid killing, whatever. He did NOT ban muslims. It’s unbelievable that even people here would parrot the communist talking points.
I’m sorry, I should have clarified. I know it wasn’t a Muslim ban. But the ban at that time just struck me as unnecessary as I don’t recall any particular flare ups with those particular countries at that time. I felt that once he started going after Isis he could have made the case better.
It wasn’t a Muslim ban, that’s what the left mislabeled it as to make it sound religiously bigoted (Islam is not a race, it’s a religion). Citizens of Indonesia, the most populous majority Muslim country on earth were not nor ever restricted in their travel to the United States (Turkey, a very populous majority Muslim country was never on the list either). The list of countries and the specific restrictions were as follows. Notice some of the restrictions are very specific and do not necessarily ban someone from coming to the US, but rather prevent certain types of visas from being available to them:
Going through the list, the specific reasons vary as to why each of these countries had travel or immigration restrictions placed on them. In general, for many countries it had a lot to do with lack of secure control over issuing passports and visas. In early 2017, ISIS was still active, controlled significant territory in Iraq and Syria, and had committed and was attempting to commit mass casualty terrorist attacks all over the world. They had already been successful in committing multiple deadly attacks in the US during the Obama administration. The media = leftists hated it, but polling at the time indicated that it was a popular policy.
Mea culpa. I edited it to travel ban. But I still think it was a mistake.
I had a pretty good sized list of Trump’s failures (and I believe all of them were valid).
However, I looked back on some of Biden’s “greatest hits” this past week and realized Trump wasn’t so bad after all.
So, to quote Emily Litella, “Never mind”.
Correction noted, but I’m going to disagree with you that it was a mistake. First, specifics of terrorist threats are going to be classified for the most part. Second, I’ll repeat that the restriction was way overdue but no matter what the reason the communists controlling the democrat party were going to put their objectives ahead of national security or even common sense to promote their agenda and impugn a populist leader.
To help determine what can be done better going forward, without the distraction of TDS-addled commentary.
That is a claim that would need a lot more substantiation before I would accept it.
His biggest failure, in my view, was failing to appeal to enough independent voters to win the election. I know that he faced serious headwinds from a hostile media, but I think he could have done better if he had given up twitter and the New York tough guy routine.
But, he did. His biggest failure was in not overcoming the mail in balloting rules.
Your objection is recency bias. There were ongoing terrorist threats at the time. We had several attacks during Obama’s presidency. That we had blessed few (if not zero) attacks during the Trump admin should be evidence enough that the restrictions carried some boon with them.
This assumes no monkey business. He made huge gains among independents. I’m not sure we could have expected more from him in that regard.
Spending – he didn’t get elected addressing it but he blew out the deficits.
I wish he would have carved out half a day each week and listened to – not read or have others read to him – seriously, the several podcasts many of us listen to: Ricochet, Klavan, Shapiro, Levin (does he have a podcast?), Loury – but with a chaperone, Coulter (does she have a podcast?), Paglia – why not?, Lawtalk, and VDH. Just listen. And then seriously consider their words of counsel. That was mostly: turn down the personality, get your smart people on the air (Carson, Cuchinelli, Barr, Semonite, et al) – and let them drive. His colorful enemas, er, enemies, like Schiff, Swallwell, whoever the hell else, all got time because they blabbed in full sentences and were a tad better tempered than Trump. He could have made himself liked by more media people. Reagan knew how to do it; maybe he should have hired a speechwriter like Peter Robinson?
I figured, after about a month into 2017, that he’s going to be another Jackson or Polk, and I welcomed that.
He got great things done, with plenty more to do. The issue: he “only” had half the country behind him. Half is not enough to win, ever. I think that he ought to have had 75% behind him and that would have meant just a bit more of the press on his side. Alas, ‘‘twas not to be.
This. I wish he would have just let Ann Coulter pick out all his personnel and went for one term including replacing the ACA as the priority.
Getting reelected in the era of asset bubbles really makes it difficult for people on the right to stick to rightist policies.
He could’ve spoke more frankly about the actual spending and structure of the government like our local Trump hater has in his head as an ideal.
This.
It is absolutely shameful how they didn’t just let him govern. I know local never Trump thinks it’s all fine, but it’s disgusting.
I think this is all very accurate. Also include exposing China.