The Trump Presidency

[Peter B]

He used the same excuse when called on his comments about having the Russians spy on Hillary Clinton.  Nobody really bought it then, either.

If you listen to the whole briefing, the President did walk back his claim -- sort of.  When Sec. Bryan was asked to clarify whether topical disinfectants could be used in the way the President suggested, the President interrupted Bryan's answer to say he wasn't really talking about injections, but about a "cleaning, sterilization of an area."  He added, "Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't work."  If you're going to interrupt the answer, that's the right time to say, "I was just kidding, folks."  Instead he let Bryan answer seriously, and gave every indication he was still being serious.  If you go back to the time he first made the suggestion, he was looking to his science experts.  One could easily interpret that as a nonverbal request to back him up.

The initial spin from the White House is consistent with this interpretation.  They did not claim the President had been joking.  They claimed instead he had been misinterpreted by the media.  The "misinterpretation" angle is consistent with the walk-back.  It is less consistent with the President's new claim.  The claim that it was a joke came only after the whole world laughed at Trump's apparent ignorance, and after the walk-back failed to satisfy commentators that he wasn't still talking about the medical use of topical disinfectant.

This explanation is why I don't accept the idea that there's any mental deterioration in Trump - he's all there as far as I can see. That is, he's aware enough of how people respond to what he's said to shift his position, to blithely try another explanation until the ridicule dies down. In that sense he reminds me of my kids, who when caught out will try a cover story, then when that gets shot down by evidence shift to a second story, and maybe a third, depending on how much evidence we have against them. So in that sense, rather than being mentally incapacitated in some way, he comes across as mentally immature. (The obvious difference between our kids and Donald Trump is where the power balance lies - our kids are in a weak position relative to us, but Trump has no equivalent power stronger than him.)

I wonder, then, if Trump was somehow able to get away with poor quality fibbing as a young kid (perhaps lack of socialisation, or not facing any consequences for his fibs) and so never had to develop more sophisticated techniques for lying. So now, when people call him out for his hopelessly inept lies he responds with outrage - how could someone possibly catch him out, plus where do these people get off calling the most powerful man in the USA a liar?

On a related matter, I remember an old saying that the best way to make a small fortune in business is to start with a large fortune. Trump seems to be an exemplar of that, in that he seems to be constantly losing money as his businesses go bankrupt and then get re-enabled by some new finance deal or other which involves Trump losing a portion of his ownership of those businesses. And yet no matter how often these businesses go under he always seems to be out there sticking his finger into some new deal or business venture - an airline, a 'university', a talent quest, all sorts of endorsements. He also seems to have been involved in a lot of litigation, although I don't know how he compares to other businesspeople. I'd be curious to know who the people are who he's litigated against: are they people at his own level of wealth/power, or are they 'only' moderately wealthy people who potentially have a lot to lose (proportionately) if they lose a court case to him and so who are motivated to settle quickly and reasonably generously?

Combining his apparent ability to make a hash of so many businesses, his litigiousness, and his (to me at least) emotional immaturity make him look to me more like a bully full of bluster who's managed to get his own way for decades, and in the process convinced a lot of people that he's a lot more powerful and clever than he really is.

But, because he's managed to get his own way for so long, he's come to believe his own propaganda is the reality. In that sense that makes him like the charlatans who start out cynically exploiting people but repeat their li(n)es so often that they come to genuinely believe them.

So no, not mentally deficient, but emotionally immature, powerful enough to threaten a lot of people to back off, and with nothing internal and virtually no one external to tell him, 'No don't do that.'

ETA: Another image which came to mind was the Norse gods in Terry Jones's 1989 movie "Erik the Viking", who turn out to be petulant children - lots of power, no restraint.

[JayUtah]

It looks like they've withdrawn from that deal, at least according to current headlines, but they've already spent $800,000!

Yes, that story broke after I put my computer away for the night last night.  It's very encouraging.  And yes, the initial purchase contract is under review and can be rescinded if necessary.  It appears the people responsible hoped it would fly under the radar, but we have a Pulitzer-winning local newspaper that tends to notice these things.

Certainly, governments all over the world are helping businesses through difficult times, but I would have thought bailing out someone who was effectively looking to profit from the crisis might have been seen as a step too far.

I see this particular instance as a step too far.  Things like natural disasters -- cases where the proverbial tide raises and lowers all boats -- I think are good candidates for spreading public funds around judiciously.  It would be better if businesses learned to have some cash reserves, but how many smaller businesses can survive 2-3 months of lost revenue?  But the deal we're talking about has all the hallmarks of an unwise business decision motivated by greed.  The fact that it happened during a pandemic should not qualify him for a bailout.  Besides, there's some dramatis personae parts to the story.  But I don't want to turn this into a Utah politics thread except insofar as it relates to Donald Trump.

Having watched or listened to briefings and press events by leaders from all over the world, three of them stand out, at least to me, as being able to get their message across clearly and concisely.  Angela Merkel in Germany, Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand, and dare I say it, our own Nicola Sturgeon here in Scotland (and I say that as not a Scottish Nationalist!).

I can assure you that we in America are watching these same leaders with not more than a little envy.  And I have a significant percentage of Scottish ancestry (Bell, MacFarlane, and MacLaren), so it's okay to tout Scotland around me, nationalistically or otherwise.  There are quite a number of Scottish ex-pats living in our city.

We also have Governor Cuomo of New York.  I wouldn't necessarily put him in the same category as, say, Merkel.  But he has the advantage of being entertaining in a characteristically New York sort of way.

[Peter B]

He can go his merry way after the Presidency and totter off into antiquity, yelling at clouds and lawn boys, until he succumbs to old age (or one too many taco bowls).

I suspect that after Trump leaves office he'll become the next Rush Limbaugh and continue to spew lies and fan the flames of division. He will push conspiracy theories about Joe Biden etc. in order to give the Republicans a chance of regaining power. So unless he goes to prison or descends so far into dementia that he can't function, he will still be dangerous.

But yes, I agree that his enablers need to face some serious consequences. The United States also needs to shore up it's checks & balances so something like this can't happen again. One place to start is to make it clear that no one, not even the President, is above the law. That means they can't stonewall an impeachment investigation, and they should have no power over the investigators. And any Attorney General that aids the President in obstructing an impeachment investigation should be immediately removed from office.

Boy, I'm just hoping he does that - leaves office, that is. One thing that worries me is that if the election is at all close (which it seems likely to be) Trump will claim there were electoral irregularities and that he was robbed, and refuse to accept the result. Then watch to see how many of his supporters come out and repeat that line, brandishing their rifles. I have a nervous feeling many of them will act a little more aggressively than Democratic Party supporters did in 2000.

Even worse if he wins a second term and decides at the end of it that he wouldn't mind a third.

The other thing that makes me nervous is from an article I linked a couple of weeks ago - a hypothetical in which Trump convinces a bunch of states with Republican governors to change their voting laws so the state governments allocate the Electoral College votes...

[JayUtah]

This explanation is why I don't accept the idea that there's any mental deterioration in Trump - he's all there as far as I can see. That is, he's aware enough of how people respond to what he's said to shift his position, to blithely try another explanation until the ridicule dies down.

That's a good point.  I don't have children, but your analogy immediate makes sense.  I'm looking at instances where the President just rambles from point to point without necessarily making sense, or latching onto some minute irrelevancy.  Other instances where he iterates through a series of excuses for a single gaffe suggests ongoing cognition.

In this particular case, the President returned to the notion of injections, but only when reminded of it by a reporter's question.  The other spin I mentioned -- misrepresentation, and now blaming it all on Sec. Bryan -- were explanations provided by the White House, not devised by the President on the spot.  And other, different explanations were given by various media supporters the President.  His own explanation that he was joking came a day later after he had time to think about it and possibly be prompted by White House media operatives.  So he personally may not be as responsible as it seems for staying on topic, but let's consider it a serious possibility.

In sum, yes any hypothesis that the President is mentally deficient has to be able also to explain behavior that requires normal cognitive function.  Dementia sufferers can drift in and out, but with all things considered it may not be the most parsimonious explanation.

On a related matter, I remember an old saying that the best way to make a small fortune in business is to start with a large fortune.

Tony Bruno is famous for saying that about aerospace engineering.  He obviously didn't invent the phrase, and it obviously applies to many lines of work.

What it means to me is that if you're too conservative with your seed investment, you probably aren't going to do anything that matters enough to bring in revenue.  So there is an element of risk in any profitable business.  The skill in business is managing and hedging the risk as best you can.  Fail at that often enough, and you lose all your money.  Disclosure:  other people run businesses for me because they're demonstrably much better at it that I am.

In engineering ethics we talk about avoid amoral calculation, the quantification of risk without considering the special nature or value of things like human well-being.  There's a related business concept, the moral hazard.  This is simply the straightforward concept of one person making decisions about risk where he reaps the profits of success and others bear the consequences of failure.  As you point out below, Trump seems to have conducted much of his business that way.

Trump seems to be an exemplar of that, in that he seems to be constantly losing money as his businesses go bankrupt and then get re-enabled by some new finance deal or other which involves Trump losing a portion of his ownership of those businesses. And yet no matter how often these businesses go under he always seems to be out there sticking his finger into some new deal or business venture - an airline, a 'university', a talent quest, all sorts of endorsements.

Yes.  If you treat your brand itself as a commodity, you can ride a sort of Ponzi scheme of credibility that lets you lurch from one failure to another without ever really having to bear the responsibility for it.  If he loses a part of a business, he can just tell himself that other people whom he hired ran it into the ground and that if he had been more involved it would have succeeded.  Blaming others for his failures is Page One of the real art of Donald Trump's deals.

Hyping one's brand, buttressing one's reputation, and credibly claiming to be the victim of others' incompetence can work for a while.  That is, it can be the basis for attracting investors and securing credit.  It takes a long time to work one's way through the world's creditors with this strategy, especially if one simply lies all the time.  It is no secret that Donald Trump never expected to win the 2016 election.  It was all a strategy to boost the Trump brand.

Eventually in business all such bubbles have to burst.  There are all sorts of conspiracy theories about such things as the extent to which the President is personally in debt to, or compromised by, Russian interests as part of this bursting bubble.  Donald Trump was already a pariah among New York businesspeople and all the banks in the United States.  He was already having to reach farther afield, where his true reputation hadn't yet gone.

The problem for the nation is that he's at the pinnacle of risk.  Quite a lot can go wrong with the United States when its President has spent his whole life basking in the moral hazard.  A President who has consolidated the executive power in himself can't simply declare bankruptcy and walk away.  The stakes are much higher than simply business.

He also seems to have been involved in a lot of litigation, although I don't know how he compares to other businesspeople. I'd be curious to know who the people are who he's litigated against...

My impression is that they are people of lesser means who have a claim against his business practices, chiefly cheating them or refusing to pay them for their services.  His money management skills seem to be the root cause of his difficulty in obtaining credit and contracting for further services.  He can't or doesn't want to pay his debts.

Remember where I suggested Trump sees the world largely in terms of winners or losers.  Defrauding people and thereafter being relatively immune to the legal consequences of doing so makes him a winner and them losers.  If they can't touch him, even via legitimate means for legitimate causes, then he is a powerful winner.  To that sort of mentality, lawsuits aren't about justice or equity, but simply about who has amassed the most influence that can be used to defuse threats.  It's just another business tactic that has nothing to do with right or wrong.

Now any large company is a target for lawsuits simply because they are perceived to have deep pockets and will settle lawsuits for a fraction of the cost required to defend agains them.  Very few of these are though to have much merit.  At a certain point it is just the cost of doing business.  Many of the suits I vaguely recall against Trump's business interests seemed to have merit.

...more like a bully full of bluster who's managed to get his own way for decades, and in the process convinced a lot of people that he's a lot more powerful and clever than he really is.

But, because he's managed to get his own way for so long, he's come to believe his own propaganda is the reality.

I really can't disagree with this analysis.  I think it's been reasonably self-evident for most of Trump's business career, at least in the later stages of it.  It jives with the President's strenuous efforts to keep people from discovering the facts regarding his past.  I think this is a highly plausible alternative to Dunning-Kruger, dementia, and so forth.

...and with nothing internal and virtually no one external to tell him, 'No don't do that.'

Especially now that the constitutionally nuclear option has been applied and failed.  This gets into a huge topic that touches on the architecture of American government and the style of its practice recently.  I have too much to do today to pontificate ignorantly on that.  As the kids say, the tl;dr version is that hyper-partisanship has seriously undermined the checks and balances that ordinarily would have given other branches of government more control over the Executive.

But this didn't start with Donald Trump.  He is merely the beneficiary of a system that began to break long before he even ran for office.

Another image which came to mind was the Norse gods in Terry Jones's 1989 movie "Erik the Viking", who turn out to be petulant children - lots of power, no restraint.

The films of the ex-Pythons have made for wonderful quarantine viewing.

[gillianren]

The difference I've always given is that my children can learn from their mistakes--but my children are young, and their brains are considerably more plastic than someone my mother's approximate age.  What he's learned is doubtless that he doesn't have to change and is just fine the way he is.  Which is both true from his perspective--he's never really had to change--and a serious problem for the rest of us.

It's interesting to me that Trump comes, at least ostensibly, out of a party that's made a great deal of hay in recent decades about the "flip-flopping" of its opposition, because the Democratic Party has shown an ability to change with the times that the Republicans either can't or don't want to.  But when you get someone like Trump, whose stance on any given issue depends on what time it is, how recently he's eaten, and who talked to him last, they don't call him on it and will still talk to you about his firm leadership and unchanging positions.  Now, there are some things he's very firm on--"losers" and so forth, and yes, those lawsuits do tend to have considerably more merit than those against, say, Disney--but by and large, he's even beyond "flip-flopping."  He's definitely beyond "changing your position based on additional evidence," which I support.  But he doesn't care about additional evidence.

[JayUtah]

Trump will claim there were electoral irregularities and that he was robbed, and refuse to accept the result.

This is plausible, considering that's how he characterized the election he won.  It wasn't enough that he won the electoral vote and secured the office.  He had to come up with some explanation for why the popular vote should also have been in his favor.  Not surprisingly, he claimed polling irregularity and refused to accept the popular votes report.

Then watch to see how many of his supporters come out and repeat that line, brandishing their rifles.

This is no empty threat.  Consider what happened with Pizzagate, and that's a relatively small-scale claim.

Even worse if he wins a second term and decides at the end of it that he wouldn't mind a third.

To do so legitimately would require an amendment to the Constitution, but we live in strange times.  I won't predict what three-fourths of U.S. States will do.

The other thing that makes me nervous is from an article I linked a couple of weeks ago - a hypothetical in which Trump convinces a bunch of states with Republican governors to change their voting laws so the state governments allocate the Electoral College votes...

Interesting.  I'm not sure there are many States whose governors have that ability themselves.  I think the legislatures would also need to comply.  The U.S. Constitution specifies that each State is free to choose its electors in whatever way it desires.  In practice I want to say that's typically established in each State by statute, which needs a legislature to make changes.  That's the short version.

In Utah, presidential electors are chosen according to our statue 20A-13.  Each party that has registered its intent to field a candidate for U.S. President and Vice-President nominates candidates for electors.  Qualifications for registration as a party are established by statute.  Non-partisan candidates may qualify by collecting at least 1,000 signatures, paying the filing fee ($500), and completing the required paperwork at the Lt. Governor's office, including similar requirements for the associated candidate for Vice-President.  The independent candidate as a party per se simply chooses the appropriate number of persons as his candidates for elector.  I believe, according to the 12th Amendment, he cannot serve as his own elector.  In any case, there must be the proper number of electors as set forth in the U.S. Constitution -- for us, six.  And, of course, in order to really matter, the candidate must be on the ballot in more than one State, and will have to comply with that State's particular practice of choosing Electors.

Utah recognizes six national political parties and one state party.  The latter is pertinent to this discussion.  The United Utah party is trying to attract moderates from both major parties.  I don't think it is recognized as a party in any other State, so any candidate it would field for President would be effectively ineligible.

All elections in Utah are administered by the Lt. Governor and conducted by the county clerks.  The election of presidential electors is by a plurality of the general plebiscite.  The Lt. Governor certifies the results of the election to each elector.  If he certified a different elector, he would be in violation of state law.  If he failed to certify any or all electors, he would be in dereliction of his duty and susceptible to a judicial writ of mandamus and any punishment attached to disobeying that.  (We still have a number of Federal judges who aren't Trump appointees.)

If an elector refuses or is unable to vote, the relevant party appoints a substitute according to their by-laws, or the independent candidate names an eligible substitute by any means of choosing.  Although not required, it is customary for candidates and parties to submit and pre-certify a list of alternate electors.  Utah has a faithless-elector law; if an elector votes for any person other than the candidate for President who nominated him, he is considered no longer an elector, his vote is disregarded, and a new elector is selected by the customary means.

The electoral vote must take place in the State.  The statute names the Lt. Governor's office as the place of the election, and there is a formula established in statute for determining the date and time.  Again, if the Lt. Governor abdicates any part of that, he is personally liable in various ways.  Further, if the place becomes unavailable (e.g., the Lt. Governor locked the door), then statute provides that the U.S. Congress may designate a new time and place for the duty of elector.

If the Governor himself tried to interfere in any way, since he has executive authority over his lieutenant, then he would bear the consequence of suborning whatever illegal act he directed.

What if the Governor and the Utah Legislature conspire to change the laws?  The Utah Constitution has a voter initiative provision by which propositions that attain enough voter support can be placed on the general ballot and voted upon, whereupon if they pass they become law without executive assent.  This includes repealing laws passed by the legislature by anything less than a two-thirds majority vote.  Ironically this provision harks back to Utah's colonial days when, upon becoming a state, Utah feared that the Federal government would attempt to install legislators, governors, and judges of its own choosing.  It left nearly all ultimate power in the hands of the people.  So at least someone else was thinking about this possibility.

Typically the Secretary of State in each State prepares and certifies the electoral vote, and transmits it under seal to the President of the U.S. Senate in the manner prescribed in the Constitution.  Utah has no Secretary of State.  The Lt. Governor performs all the duties typically assigned to a Secretary of State, for federal purposes.  Conceivably he could certify a different vote fraudulently, but this could not happen without discovery or without remediation.  The electoral vote of each state is carried under seal into the Senate chamber by the State's delegation to Congress, unsealed, and announced in the presence of the entire Congress.

In the 2020 election, this duty will be performed by Vice-President Mike Pence, the nominal President of the Senate. Conceivably Pence could ignore the certified vote and fraudulently announce others.  But there is a provision in the counting of the electoral vote that allows any State's vote to be challenged.  This was actually done during one of the votes that elected Barack Obama -- it was a Birther claim challenging Obama's eligibility.  When this happens, the House meets to hear the challenge and vote on it.  Here again, presuming that the Trump organization and not any Utah agent was the guilty party, the Utah delegation to Congress could indeed raise an objection at this point to any shenanigans on Pence's part.  The House would then have to consider it.

This lengthy elaboration is meant to show how much tampering would have to occur before the operation of the Electoral College, as Utah is concerned, became so compromised as to elect a President by executive fiat.

[JayUtah]

Which is both true from his perspective--he's never really had to change--and a serious problem for the rest of us.

I agree, and it's more than just being stubborn or being accustomed to getting one's way.  If not checked, that attitude can progress to failing to realize that change is even an option.  Suggestions that he's wrong or needs to do something differently will come across as nonsensical.

On the question of guzzling Chlorox, he walks it back to say, "Well, maybe it will work and maybe it won't."  But, in keeping with what we learned yesterday, the subtext is, "If I don't know it then it's unknowable."  When making the argument that the President is inflexible, you have to account for statements that seem to express flexibility or uncertainty.  That's when we get the "Nobody knew..." parachute.  If tomorrow doctors come out and say, "No, you can't cure this virus by internally applying household cleaning products," he'll accept that and then try to say we all just now found this out because he brilliantly directed others to go find that out.

I think he'll be flexible, but only if there's a way to make him look like a winner by doing it.  Or more to the point, if there's a way to make someone else look like a loser.  Donald Trump seldom wins, but he can blow a lot of smoke that makes others look like they failed by comparison.

It's interesting to me that Trump comes, at least ostensibly, out of a party that's made a great deal of hay in recent decades about the "flip-flopping" of its opposition, because the Democratic Party has shown an ability to change with the times that the Republicans either can't or don't want to.

You can make the opposite case too, toward a different point.  You could say that the GOP used to be reasonable, even if you didn't agree with a conservative agenda.  But with the rise of the Tea Party, the Republicans have allowed themselves to be overrun by radicals.  They've certainly changed, at least along that dimension.  Conversely, I see the biggest problem with the Democratic Party as not having radicalized enough in response.  They still believe they can stand in the center and calmly portray themselves as the voice of reasonable centrism, and keep holding out olive branches for compromise.  The message isn't landing.  There is no more compromise.  Not that I want the left to radicalize.  I'm posing a cynical view, not the one I wish could be the case.  But I fear it's the only way the far-right agenda will be challenged on terms that people can see.

[The President's supports] don't call him on it and will still talk to you about his firm leadership and unchanging positions.

And I think this is the Stockholm syndrome.  It's long been the case that you support your party.  You backed up the elected people from your party no matter what they said.  The problem is that "no matter what they might say" hasn't always been so egregiously wrong, or so discoverably inconsistent.  It was always politically motivated, and always factually murky to a certain extent.  But you could credibly offer support and chalk the rest up to interpretation or innocent political difference.  Now politicians simply don't know how else to behave, so they pretend it's all good.

All this is made easier by Fox News.  We have a President who is largely divorced from reality, and a political party that has squandered whatever credibility it may once have had on obtaining power, and a large media organization telling people exactly what needs to be heard as "news" in order not to see that any of this is happening.  Moreover, as I brought up earlier, no one seems to want to care about governance.  Politics these days is no longer a struggle between policies or even ideologies.  It's about raw tribalism.  The only thing politicians seem to care about these days is "owning" the other party as if it's some frat rivalry.

But he doesn't care about additional evidence.

I don't think he cares about evidence at all.  He brazenly makes up "facts" all the time.  I think he goes almost entirely from his gut on everything.  I don't think he considers actual facts even one-sidedly.

[LionKing]

https://www.facebook.com/341163402640457/posts/3362782440478523/

why doesn't he try it himslef as a preventative measure 😆

[gillianren]

I don't think he cares about evidence at all.  He brazenly makes up "facts" all the time.  I think he goes almost entirely from his gut on everything.  I don't think he considers actual facts even one-sidedly.

No, clearly not.  Which is why it was so frustrating to be called a conspiracist for not assuming the best of him and told I was moving goalposts to keep up my dislike of him.  Which, for the record, I have had since the late '80s, as soon as I knew he existed, and long before I knew or cared what his personal beliefs were.  He's an objectively terrible person.

[Jason Thompson]

Which is another manifestation of two major annoyances when it comes to these things. The first is, as has already been mentioned, the notion that all of this is new. MBDK could not conceive of the thought that we had had these views on Trump for a LONG time, and this wasn't just a knee-jerk reaction to his presidency. The other is pervasive when calling out oppressors, which was his insistence that we had to be rational and detahced, and emotional responses somehow invalidated the argument. I never got a satisfactory response when I asked him when it was appropriate to get emotional in the face of a literal torrent of bullshit. But this is a tactic of oppressors everywhere. Ignore the rational arguments. Dismiss the sensible conversations. Then when the oppressed can finally stand no more and respond emotionally, dismiss that as invalid because it's not a calm and reasoned argument.

Trump is not a new phenomenon. He has been this way for a VERY long time. He just hapens now to be in a very public position and disturbingly the consequences of his dickish behaviour have worldwide repercussions. Now is a very apt time to get emotional and angry about that, I feel.

[JayUtah]

Indeed, the "Are you serious?" reaction to Donald Trump being a candidate for President wasn't just because he was almost certainly unqualified, but also because his reputation by then as a failed businessman was hardly a secret.  He was a known credit risk, a known collaboration risk, and an obvious bully.  Multiple failed businesses, multiple failed marriages, and obvious ploy to sell his imprimatur and personality (e.g., his reality TV show) instead of creating anything of actual value -- these were warning signs long before he decided to enter politics.

Outrage is not intended to be an argument, nor is necessary presented in lieu of one.  Nor is outrage a necessarily improper response to other people's egregious behavior.  The same argument employed here (which I watched from afar and decided not to engage), is used against liberal members of Congress.  The outrage they express at the egregious conduct of their colleagues and other operatives in government is written off as emotional instability unbefitting the debate.  On the contrary, a measured expression of anger accompanying an otherwise cogent argument hits both sides of the equation.  It's rhetoric, but there's nothing wrong with rhetoric used properly.

Yes, a lot of us noticed Donald Trump's behavior a long time ago.  But it was not necessary to say anything because I didn't move in any sphere of influence he affected.  What he did on the East Coast, thousands of miles away, hardly concerned me.  I don't work in his industry, and I don't live anywhere near him.  The rest of the world must deal with the same things the New York real-estate, financial, and construction industries have known for decades.  It's newly relevant, but it's not new.

What is new, however, is that other people who are like him have been emboldened and liberated by his actions.  Not only do we have to deal with Donald Trump as an international travesty, we also have to deal with our own little petty local Trumps who receive new encouragement and support from his supporters.

[Obviousman]

The story of Trump courtesy of The Dollop:

Part 1
https://allthingscomedy.com/podcast/the-dollop/300a---donald-trump-part-one-1

Part 2
https://allthingscomedy.com/podcast/the-dollop/300b---donald-trump-part-two-1

[Jason Thompson]

Yes, a lot of us noticed Donald Trump's behavior a long time ago.  But it was not necessary to say anything because I didn't move in any sphere of influence he affected.  What he did on the East Coast, thousands of miles away, hardly concerned me.  I don't work in his industry, and I don't live anywhere near him.  The rest of the world must deal with the same things the New York real-estate, financial, and construction industries have known for decades.  It's newly relevant, but it's not new.

This, exactly. I knew who Donald Trump was of course. But to me, being in the UK (and nowhere near Prestwick...) he was a punchline in sitcoms, a TV personality, someone who made occasional cameos in TV shows and movies, but not someone who had any real impact on my life. Now I can't go a single day without seeing his stupid smug face and hearing his incoherent ramblings, and he is having an impact because now my government has to deal with him. His actions have direct consequances for my country's economy and for the industry I work in. So now I weigh in to discussions about him. It's not an anti-Trump agenda kicked off by personal dislike of the man, it's an anti-complete-and-utter-narcissitic-f***wit-who-is-patently-unfit-to-run-any-country-and-is-possibly-going-to-screw-my-own-and-others-with-hisignorance-and-cult-of-personality-bullshit agenda, which frankly seems a reasonable one to have!

What is new, however, is that other people who are like him have been emboldened and liberated by his actions.  Not only do we have to deal with Donald Trump as an international travesty, we also have to deal with our own little petty local Trumps who receive new encouragement and support from his supporters.

And this. We saw the same thing here with the Brexit referendum. Once the 'leave' motion passed, racism and bigotry shot up here because now people felt it was OK because we were going to go back to a nationalist, Britain first course led from the top.

[Zakalwe]

Yes, a lot of us noticed Donald Trump's behavior a long time ago.  But it was not necessary to say anything because I didn't move in any sphere of influence he affected.  What he did on the East Coast, thousands of miles away, hardly concerned me.  I don't work in his industry, and I don't live anywhere near him.  The rest of the world must deal with the same things the New York real-estate, financial, and construction industries have known for decades.  It's newly relevant, but it's not new.

This, exactly. I knew who Donald Trump was of course. But to me, being in the UK (and nowhere near Prestwick...) he was a punchline in sitcoms, a TV personality, someone who made occasional cameos in TV shows and movies, but not someone who had any real impact on my life. Now I can't go a single day without seeing his stupid smug face and hearing his incoherent ramblings, and he is having an impact because now my government has to deal with him. His actions have direct consequances for my country's economy and for the industry I work in. So now I weigh in to discussions about him. It's not an anti-Trump agenda kicked off by personal dislike of the man, it's an anti-complete-and-utter-narcissitic-f***wit-who-is-patently-unfit-to-run-any-country-and-is-possibly-going-to-screw-my-own-and-others-with-hisignorance-and-cult-of-personality-bullshit agenda, which frankly seems a reasonable one to have!

What is new, however, is that other people who are like him have been emboldened and liberated by his actions.  Not only do we have to deal with Donald Trump as an international travesty, we also have to deal with our own little petty local Trumps who receive new encouragement and support from his supporters.

And this. We saw the same thing here with the Brexit referendum. Once the 'leave' motion passed, racism and bigotry shot up here because now people felt it was OK because we were going to go back to a nationalist, Britain first course led from the top.

IMHO, the biggest impact is because we have a pound/dollar store version of him in Boris Johnson, enabled by a bunch of clueless politicians who got their place in the Cabinet by jumping on the Brexit cause. Witness Priti Patel, a woman who was sacked for running a shadow foreign policy, for lying to her boss and for deceiving Parliament. The same woman is now in one of the most powerful roles in Johnson's cabinet. Last week she got up and boastfully told the public that our world-class police force had caused the numbers of shop-lifting, car and burglary crimes were lower than this time last year. Nothing to do with most shops being closed and people spending longer in their homes. 

[Peter B]

What is new, however, is that other people who are like him have been emboldened and liberated by his actions.  Not only do we have to deal with Donald Trump as an international travesty, we also have to deal with our own little petty local Trumps who receive new encouragement and support from his supporters.

And this. We saw the same thing here with the Brexit referendum. Once the 'leave' motion passed, racism and bigotry shot up here because now people felt it was OK because we were going to go back to a nationalist, Britain first course led from the top.

Just to veer a little off course, I'd suggest the person who has to shoulder a lot of blame for this is Jeremy Corbyn.

I'd long wondered why Corbyn campaigned so little during the Brexit referendum, particularly as I'd assumed (yeah, okay, far side of the world, remember) he was pro-Remain. The conclusion I'd reached was that he wanted Labour to sit back and not draw attention to themselves during the referendum campaign while the Conservatives publicly tore themselves apart.

It was only during the weeks leading up to the last election that I discovered that Corbyn was a Brexiteer, and so presumably stayed quiet because he didn't want to be seen to be associated in any way with very public Brexiteer Boris Johnson (as well as the earlier-mentioned small target strategy).

The reason I mention Corbyn is because he's the polar opposite to Trump and Johnson in terms of being an ideological absolutist rather than ideology-free zone, but I think in his own way just as odious for that. It's easy to criticise Trump and Johnson for never being consistent on a policy, but Corbyn can be criticised just as much for stubbornly refusing to change views and policies that are just plain wrong.

There must be a sweet spot somewhere between these two extremes where politicians can be given the wriggle room to change their views, but have to expect to be challenged about both the things they won't change their views on and the things they have changed. (And it doesn't help that many in the media are obsessed with their "gotcha!" moments in interviews when uncovering some apparent inconsistency in a politician's views, leading to politicians in turn being obsessed with giving pre-planned non-answers to questions.)