The Trump Presidency

[Kiwi]

Has anything changed for the better in the four months since the following opinion-piece was written?

Please limit your reply to fewer than 2,000 words. 

Manawatu Standard,  Tuesday 30 October 2018, page 12
Reality always has last word
Leonard Pitts Jr, The Miami Herald

     "If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. Just knock the hell – I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees.’’ – Donald Trump, February 1, 2016
     ‘‘I’d like to punch him in the face.’’ – Donald Trump, February 22, 2016
     ‘‘You know, part of the problem... is nobody wants to hurt each other any more, right?’’ – Donald Trump, March 11, 2016
     ‘‘Any guy that can do a body slam... He’s my guy.’’ – Donald Trump, October 18, 2018, praising Republican representative Greg Gianforte, who was convicted of assaulting a reporter.
     ‘‘We have to come together and send one very clear, strong, unmistakable message that threats or acts of political violence of any kind have no place in the United States of America.’’ – Donald Trump, October 24, 2018

     Lord, this guy...
     He just can’t help himself, can he? Seems like every time he opens his mouth, out falls the bovine excreta, great lumps of hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance.
     He was at it again last Wednesday. The mind reeled as Trump, arguably America’s most enthusiastic proponent of political violence, made a statement deploring political violence. This, as investigators sought the person who sent explosive devices to CNN as well as to Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Maxine Waters, Eric Holder and other prominent critics of Trump’s chaos presidency.
     No, Trump isn’t the first president to say something at sharp variance with what he said before. Obama once claimed he never said: ‘‘If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.’’ George W Bush once claimed his administration never advocated ‘‘stay the course’’ in Iraq.
     But this guy, Lord, this guy, with him, it’s not a sometime thing. Rather, it is every day, all the time, as if in his world, words have no fixed meaning and people, no memory.
     So that what he said with seeming sincerity on Tuesday can be demolished by what he says with seeming sincerity on Wednesday and he doesn’t care – indeed, he marvels that anyone does – because, hey, Tuesday’s gone. And Thursday’s coming.
     This ongoing insult of reality, this daily denigration of truth, is epidemic among Trump’s people. Unable to face what is, they live in a kingdom of lies, seek sanctuary down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. Indeed, Trump cultists – Lou Dobbs, James Woods, Rush Limbaugh, Candace Owens and more – suggested the bombs were part of a Democratic plot to sway the coming election.
     Meantime, this guy, this morally deformed 72-year-old brat, had a theory of his own. After bombs were sent to people he has spent years insulting – ‘‘low IQ’’, ‘‘crooked’’, ‘‘ignorant’’ – and to a network he has spent years condemning – ‘‘enemies of the people’’ – Trump tweeted that the ‘‘anger’’ in our society is a result of media’s ‘‘false and inaccurate reporting’’.
     So in other words, if reporters would just stop challenging him, stop questioning him, stop behaving as if words have meaning and people, memories, all will be well. He probably even believes that.
     But the issue here is not news media. Nor is it civility or Republicans being yelled at in restaurants. No, the issue is reality and the fact that it becomes no less real because you don’t acknowledge it.
     That’s what the Trump cult has never figured out. Reality will always have the last word.
     And you may run from it, but you can never escape.
     Not even down a rabbit hole, not even in a kingdom of lies.

[ka9q]

Well, one thing has changed for the better since then. The Democrats took the House and now they have majorities on all the relevant investigative committees.

[Peter B]

Well, one thing has changed for the better since then. The Democrats took the House and now they have majorities on all the relevant investigative committees.

That may be so, but understand the possibility that Trump has so much poisoned the well when it comes to his rusted-on supporters that they'll simply reject any findings the committees make. We only need to look at how Republicans behaved on that committee that Michael Cohen gave evidence to: apparently rather than point out inconsistencies * in his evidence they just called him a liar - barely a step above sticking their fingers in their ears and saying "La-la-la, I can't hear you!".

And this is the problem with the editorial: continue on down this path and reality may come back to bite the USA in revenge, but the price could be catastrophically high for the USA, for liberal democracy everywhere, and potentially the world.

Having said that, it's fun to point out that Trump can be called a supporter of socialism: Venezuelan Juan Guaido's party apparently holds centrist social-democratic views...

* Inconsistencies: at one point Cohen said that Trump didn't intend to win the Presidency, merely gain some free publicity in the process; at another point he said that Trump was willing to do anything to win the election.

[ka9q]

I didn't see that as an inconsistency. It was perfectly possible that Trump would do anything to win and still didn't expect to win, but would at least garner some free publicity.

[gillianren]

Frankly, given his personality, the idea of not going all-out to win even if you don't want to seems unlikely to have occurred to him.

[Echnaton]

* Inconsistencies: at one point Cohen said that Trump didn't intend to win the Presidency, merely gain some free publicity in the process; at another point he said that Trump was willing to do anything to win the election.

Trump wants attention more than anything else.  In some ways, he is like the hoax believers we get around here.  He and they are cranks the talk nonsense then complain about being mistreated.  It would be no surprise to me if he did it for a publicity stunt.  Kind of the counterpart to Robert Redford's  character in The Candidate.

[twik]

Frankly, given his personality, the idea of not going all-out to win even if you don't want to seems unlikely to have occurred to him.

Here's my own take on Trump pre-election. It wasn't his plan to win. At the beginning he didn't expect to win. The idea of running was originally to get lots of publicity, play the victim of "deep state" forces when he lost, and set up a media empire as "the guy who *really* knows what's going on," and build that Trump Tower Moscow he'd been dreaming of.

But then, as the months went by, he realized he had a legitimate chance. Russians were giving him the wink and the nod, "Any help you need, comrade? We can make it happen, no?" He realized he could win, crush his enemies and remake America in his own image. He certainly wasn't going to throw the chance away.

[Bryanpoprobson]

Am I really reading this stupidity in US policy under Trump?

US objections to wording on climate change prevented Arctic nations signing a joint statement at a summit in Finland, delegates said.
It is the first time such a statement has been cancelled since the Arctic Council was set up in 1996.
A Finnish delegate, Timo Koivurova, said "the others felt they could not water down climate change sentences".
There is international concern that Arctic temperatures are rising twice as fast as in the rest of the world.
On Monday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addressed the forum in Rovaniemi, northern Finland, with a speech welcoming the melting of Arctic sea ice, rather than expressing alarm about it.
"Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade," he said. "This could potentially slash the time it takes to travel between Asia and the West by as much as 20 days."
"Arctic sea lanes could become the 21st-Century Suez and Panama Canals," Mr Pompeo said.
At short notice he cancelled talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Tuesday, in a surprise move.

“Opening new trade routes??” What an idiotic viewpoint.

[Zakalwe]

Who gives a damn about the future when there's a buck to be made today?


http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html

The GOP really is toxic...

[raven]

Apparently, Trump is talking about removing birthright citizenship again. He backed off from it last time, but who knows if he will this time.

[Obviousman]

I'm just wondering how many US allies he can piss off. God help the US if it faced something where it needed international support because right now, because most countries would dump the US.

[Peter B]

We can only hope that Western leaders will be mature enough to follow their strategic interests rather than react personally.

And, for me, this is problem with a lot of critics of Trump - the people who are so opposed to him that they oppose whatever he says, does or proposes, regardless of whether it's sensible or not. As they say in Australian Rules football, "Play the ball, not the man." In other words, respond to the statement or the policy, not to the fact that Trump said it, and give him credit when he says or does something good.

Hyper-partisanship isn't going to help the USA in the long term, which is why I think the best Democrat Party candidate for beating Trump is a moderate.

[ka9q]

Or, to quote the old saying, even a stopped clock can be right twice per day (or once per day, depending on the clock).

[gillianren]

What do you think he's done right?

[LunarOrbit]

What do you think he's done right?

I was wondering the same thing. The only thing Trump could claim as a success was the economy... and even if you ignore the signs that point to an impending recession, I think it is safe to say that the economy was doing well despite Trump not because of him.

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