Donald Trump has been banned from Twitter
The Electoral College formally convened this week, and with it expired the last faint hope of Donald Trump retaining the presidency. While the outcome had never been in real doubt, Trump and innumerable Republican boosters had for six weeks kept up the mirage of frantic irresolution, with Trump issuing a daily barrage of ALL-CAPS tweets claiming that despite what you might have heard, he’d actually won.
In any event, all states have now ratified their results without serious incident, and the hucksterish post-election litigation efforts undertaken by Trump’s various sundry representatives have predictably gone nowhere. Yesterday, Republican senate leader Mitch McConnell even declared Biden the “president-elect” and now the Democrat is faithfully filling his forthcoming administration with a cast of characters drawn directly from the pits of the Washington, DC Democratic Party professional class — the same people whom he openly campaigned on rehabilitating and restoring to power.
The election is well and truly over, whatever toothless protestations may continue to arise.
What’s far from over, however, is the political influence of Trump. No one can say with total certainty what he’ll do when he eventually leaves office; no one can even say exactly on what terms he’s going to leave. But in just over a month now, we may face a scenario that would be a first in modern US history: an aggrieved former president making a competing claim to the presidency and refusing in perpetuity to acknowledge the reality of his defeat. In other words, a “shadow” president.
Trump’s lack of compunction about doing something like this would seem to solidify his position as the most thoroughgoing “post-exceptionalist” president since at least World War II. That is, he is entirely unmoved by the kind of bipartisan “American exceptionalism” dogma that had previously bound together the elite US political class, across partisan lines. It’s the dogma which holds that, in short, the US possesses a singular uniqueness that sets it apart in all of world history. Often blended together with notions of Christian providence, it ascribes the very foundations of the US Constitutional order with a kind of divine import.
But over the last four years, Trump has thrown these old assumptions into doubt. For one thing, the Constitution certainly makes no provision for a “shadow” president. How could a country with a mystically-endowed “exceptional” nature — the “shining city on a hill,” Ronald Reagan once proclaimed — be said to retain its “exceptional” status if its elections are, as Trump vigorously maintains, structurally and systematically fraudulent?
“The whole world is watching, and the whole world is laughing at our electoral process,” Trump recently charged, during the same rant in which he also condemned Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State as “an enemy of the people”. He’s also taken to referring to the US as a “third world country” on similar grounds. A president for whom the doctrine of American exceptionalism was a genuinely animating principle would be less inclined to encourage the impression that America’s system of choosing its elected leaders is so hopelessly corrupt that it deserves to be the object of international ridicule.
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SubscribeGiven the non-exceptionalism, isolationist policies and troop withdrawal, Trump has to qualify as one of the least colonial presidents for a long time. You would have thought the progressive left would have loved him. Just proves the point that policies matter far less than whose mouth they come out of.
Exactly. It demonstrates the mindless superficiality of the ‘progressive left’. For some reason they prefer a good looking, Wall St-worshipping warmonger (Obama) to Trump, and a corrupt authoritarian (Biden) to Trump. And, of course, the progressive left hates the working classes, which is why they don’t respect Trump’s actions with regard to creating full employment and at least starting to bring jobs back from China and elsewhere.
much of the left DID love him. Until he won the presidency. The same media could not interview him often enough as Citizen Trump. Many of the same politicians showed up at his door, hat in hand. NBC paid handsomely for his tv show. There are all sorts of pictures with athletes, entertainers, and others, many of them minorities, apparently before he became a ‘white supermacist.’ The flip is almost comical.
He was a sleb ! A TV clown who played the part of a ‘businessman’. Larger than life, vain orange buffoon, great for laughs but completely implausible in real life. No-one predicted that the American public was stupid enough to confuse a fictional character with reality.
Had it not been for the Wuhan Virus released by the Red Chinese, Trump would have been reelected based on a booming economy and achievements like the reform of the judiciary and would have finished his second term with a solid claim on being one of the greatest presidents in history. Watch the usual suspects lead us into an Obama-like recession and more war. They can’t help themselves.
Trump may be a shadow president in the sense that it will be very hard for Biden to return to imposing anything on other countries by force. For one thing, Trump has made so many moves to withdraw US troops from around the world (and hopefully he will pull many more before Jan 20) that justifying sending them back won’t go well.
Americans seem to like no new wars under Trump, not to mention the shake up in the Middle East that has reduced tensions between Israel and other middle eastern countries. If he is smart Biden will build on that rather than return to the failed policies the last time he was in a presidential administration.
Yeah, I don’t think that’s the case. Most of what people have reacted to here in the US if they’re of…whatever nominally passes as a Left persuasion here is a revulsion to Trump and his actions. By and large though, I don’t think most people actually care about US foreign involvement. Not in the sense that they oppose it. I remember the ’04 election and what was rallying opposition to Bush was not the war in-itself but it’s management. The war was fine, how it was being conducted was the shambles.
Foreign intervention doesn’t capture the attention of most political persuasions in the US because we still have the belief that we are correct in utilizing, as long as it is for good and moral reasons which almost always seem to coincide with the idea that we as a nation are the only truly righteous place on Earth that can justify the use of force.
What I keep coming back to in the aftermath of this election is just how little people actually cared. Four years of fascist fear mongering, six or seven months of “vote as if your life depended on it because everything in this country is fucked” on my social media and now? As the next bailout looks like it’s stripped more away from people but giving, essentially, more to the defense budget; as the president-elect looks just as demented and deranged as his predecessor shouting at the head of the NAACP; as all the same old people people cling to their jobs or return to new ones with more power than before to start the process of moving some…I dunno, confrontation with China that’s been slowly moving off the back burner from before ’01, just how many of these folks have just…checked back out. They’ve gone back to brunch. Oh hey, Disney is thinking of rebooting Firefly so…why should we care again.
This election was about two things in my mind and people can say it all they want that they didn’t like Trump for whatever high minded bullshit they want to claim but I would stake out two claims that people I think are relatively uncomfortable acknowledging. One, they didn’t like Trump because of any sense of political policy but because of aesthetics. He made them feel bad about themselves and didn’t look they part. Oh, they may think presidents before him operated from some position of authentic, noblese oblige, but seem to forget or pretend that every single one of those appearances and speeches isn’t stage managed to the finest detail. That’s all been bullshit since Kennedy’s people realized how to use TV to their advantage. And two, they want to go back to not thinking about things too much again. Trump was a break in regularly scheduled programming. They had to look outside with atrophied eyes and realize how bad this really all was. Biden was like hastily reaching for the snooze button: soothing but deep down you know at some point you’ll have to wake up and you’ll probably sleep too long.
I don’t know, I’m rambling a bit here but I’ve had this pent up for awhile now and kinda just stream of consciousness-ing it a bit.
You don’t think it’s the case that it will be unpopular for Biden to send troops back after Trump brought them home? Or to continue to lose American lives in places like Afghanistan?
Yeah, good luck with that. Check out the satellite photos of the Washington approach roads. Two thousand trucks full of slurry waiting to refill the swamp. Biden is bringing back all the grifter’s warpigs and the drone salesmen are booking their new BMWs at the luxury car franchises.
Maybe. And you may be right that Americans will look forward to the start up of the war machine, with troops shipped everywhere.
“If he is smart.” You’re talking about Joe Biden remember. The people who advise Biden and, presumably, actually run things are smart but, unfortunately, are convinced of their own infallibility and dedicated to reinplementing those failed policies. Plus, as noted elsewhere in the replies, it’s immensely profitable for them.
Yes, but again, how happy will Americans be to watch troops shipped all over the world again to die in places the US should not be?
Is that how you think the media will characterize it? Think again. These will be their wars as much as the Progs and military industrial complex folks.
Depends on the media, of course. But you’re confusing the media with families of soldiers who will be shipped to die in far off places where the US has little to no interest.
Fat Chance!
Of what?
I dunno… Obama has been pretty active both on and off the scene since leaving office, meddling in quite a number of things that should no longer have been his concern.
Agree.
Yes. In fact he even made the phone calls that fixed it for Biden to win the nomination.
You mean commenting on matters of state? Or being involved in party politics? It’s actually a pretty common practice for ex-Heads of State.
They’re allowed to comment on political matters, hold political views, and campaign for whoever they God damn please as a free citizen. Or should we just send them to the taxidermist to be stuffed as soon as they leave office?
How about BEFORE they take office?
the point merely highlights the hypocrisy of the article. Since the practice is so common, this piece serves little purpose beyond suggesting that Trump might take it to a new level.
Do you really believe that that is all that Obama was doing..?
No, it’s actually uncommon for ex-presidents to be commenting on matters of state after leaving office. Most just go home and shut up, leaving the job to whomever is subsequently elected president. The Bushes did that, as did Reagan and even Bill Clinton. Carter was the first one to hang around taking pot shots at his successor and Obama did too. But they are outliers, not the norm. The vast majority of ex-presidents have had enough respect for the office they held not to attempt to make it tougher for successors.
This is pure nonsense, Annette. And especially ironic considering Trump has – more than any other president in recorded history – made it ‘tougher for his successor’ to assume his role. He’s blocked Biden at every turn, so not sure he has much of a leg to stand on in terms of ‘shutting up and leaving the job to whomever is subsequently elected.’ And I doubt that will change much over the next few years.
Your comment is also just factually untrue. George Bush Jr. has been a frequent critic of Trump – watch his 2017 speech for evidence if you don’t believe the depth of these sentiments. Bill Clinton’s on record taking digs at Trump and Brexit, and supporting his wife’s presidential bid. Reagan is on record line-vetoing the Brady Bill and others years into his post-presidency, and he made many public appearances at Republican Conventions etc until his Alzheimer’s diagnosis limited his public affairs.
Anyone else you want to throw into the ring while we’re at it?
You’re simply ignorant of past presidential behavior. You also appear oddly unfamiliar with the timeline of US presidents. The vast majority of American presidents have gone home and gone about their lives. That’s because they respected the office. Appearing at a convention is not weighing in on their successor. Neither would be supporting their spouse for office.
Carter was the first to hang around trying to take pot shots at Reagan.
Reagan himself went home to California after his terms and didn’t weigh in on GHWB’s presidency. If you disagree, provide examples.
GHWB left Bill Clinton alone, not weighing in on every issue. If you disagree, provide examples.
Bill Clinton did the same with GWB’s presidency, he didn’t hang around taking shots at GWB. In fact he is rather close to the Bush family and he may have moderated his behavior because GHWB didn’t hang around weighing in on Clinton’s own presidency. If you disagree that Clinton didn’t remain circumspect during GWB’s presidency, let’s have some examples.
GWB went back to his ranch in Texas after his term and started back ranching. He didn’t choose to weigh in on every issue during Obama’s presidency. If you believe he did, let’s have a few examples.
Obama followed the Carter model.
So didn’t we spend 3 out of the last 4 years with the Democrats saying that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election from Hillary? I mean there was a whole organized political machine behind that with most of the big news outlets pushing that, and there was millions of taxpayer dollars spent on it, and investigations and accusations of Trump’s illegitimacy and all of that. So if this kind of thing now happens to the left and now its somehow strange, and a shadow presidency? There is something strange about the fact that things work out that way.
It would have helped had the investigation not been hindered every step of the way.
What was hindered? Not the Mueller effort. Not Adam Schiff’s insistence on having evidence of this collusion, yet producing not a single shred of it. The transcripts of Schiff’s House Intel Committee show that; not a single witness was able to even hint at a single piece of evidence, let along provide it. And in the end, Mueller himself said that no American conspired with any Russian.
I see you’re using Barr’s corrupt measure of success rather than one that makes sense. A measure of special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutorial success is the list of former top Donald Trump aides brought to justice: A jury convicted Paul Manafort (who shared polling data on the 2016 election with a Russian man linked to Moscow’s intelligence agencies – to most people, that can reasonably be described as collusion). And then there’s Flynn, Cohen etc.
Another measure is the tally of defendants that Mueller’s team charged (34), the number of new guilty pleas he netted (five) and the amount of money he clawed back through tax fraud cases ($48m).
Mueller unsealed indictments that described a coordinated Russian hacking and election-tampering effort conceived as early as 2014 and carried out using stolen US identities, camouflaged IP addresses and phishing scams, as well as physical spying inside the United States.
Surely if Trump is bullshitting about the deep state and the corrupt electoral process then the thing to do is ensure all sides agree that its squeaky clean, but what appears to be happening is that Trumps accuasations are being ridiculed and ignored in exactly the way a deep state would.
How are they being ignored? I see absolutely no evidence of this, especially considering his legal challenge to the election results takes up literally 50% of the news cycle in America (a fair bit here in the UK, too) and his ‘case’ has now been heard and thrown out – for lack of evidence – by over 50 of the nation’s top courts. That’s quite a lot of effort going into ‘ignoring’ somebody’s case.
It’s being ridiculed because – over 50% of the time – Trump’s representatives in court brought absolutely no evidence to back up their spectacular claims. As soon as the threat and penalties associated with perjury are involved, they fold. If you can’t see how this leaves them open to ridicule, I can’t help.
Nobody agrees that the electoral process in America is ‘squeaky clean’, in the same way that nobody agrees that it is entirely corrupt. There is low-level corruption, gerrymandering and game-playing everywhere, in both political camps, and this works both ways – but this is a long, long way away from Trump’s claim of massive, widespread, and heavily orchestrated electoral fraud.
Is it really, I am impressed at how you have all this inside knowledge and certainty. Perhaps you should produce evidence to this effect or are you just making assertions. See if there is a lot of suspicion about just how corrupt the US now is the smart thing to do would probably be to try assuage fears but hey I am sure assertions will be fine.
Do your own research and I’m sure you’ll find plenty of specific examples for yourself of individual acts of electoral fraud. Elections in the U.S. happen every four years and over 150 million people vote each time, so there’s bound to be a huge pool to draw from there. In fact, why not just search ‘electoral fraud jailed’ into Google and see for yourself that this indeed happens.
Sorry, just to quickly clarify, do you believe that the U.S. Electoral System is squeaky clean or systemically corrupt? As far as I can tell, I only posited that it was certainly somewhere in between because the other two positions are demonstrably untrue.
It is self-evident that there are individual acts of corruption in both political camps, albeit very rare – there are a number of cases throughout electoral history of individuals managing to register and vote in two different towns, or people fraudulently obtaining a number of ballots, voter suppression, ex-convicts voting illegally or mistakenly, and much more in between. Once you throw in a healthy and obligatory dose of human error and technological incompetence, the process by definition cannot be ‘squeaky clean’, as in flawless.
However, this by no means amounts to a widespread, partisan, and heavily orchestrated electoral fraud campaign against Trump, which is what he suggests took place. The burden of proof is very much on him on this one, and he and his litigators have produced absolutely nothing to indicate this took place.
Is it really? Its not self evident to me nor do I believe its rare anymore.
Well look Trump tended to be much more right than wrong, you know impeachment and Russia and almost endless lies by his opponents. So would I be at all shocked to see the corrupt US establishment backed by the WEF and China commit widespread fraud and close ranks, not for one second.
Also consider this racism is a subset of corruption are you ok with just a little racism or do you believe its a systemic thing.
So it’s neither self-evident, nor is it rare. Right-o. I think we’re making progress.
I do agree with you that Trump has been proven right on many things (a large reason why I’m not infected with TDS to quite the same degree as some of my friends, family, colleagues and peers) and that the US political & media establishment itself is seriously corrupt, hyper-partisan and dysfunctional. I think our point of departure is that whilst you believe that this corruption and electoral fraud was mainly a one-way street, quite well-coordinated and directed 100% against Trump, I believe it was a loose collective of thousands of voters of all political stripes chaotically and independently engaged in isolated cases of voter fraud for a panoply of reasons, ranging from calculated malice to plain incompetence and human error.
I guess one of my main reasons for thinking this is that I just don’t believe fraudulent or incompetent behaviour resides in any one wing of the political spectrum. It relies on a bunch of human traits that are pretty evenly distributed irrespective of your political leanings.
RE your point on racism: I believe there is no acceptable level of corruption in politics, although it exists, and that there must remain stringent laws against and punishments for transgression in this regard, in the same way that there is no acceptable level of racism* in society, despite the fact that it clearly exists. However, neither of these things are widespread, unidirectional nor coordinated enough to be called ‘systemic’. And this is for many of the same reasons – being a racist relies on a bunch of human traits, like being an a**hole, that are pretty evenly distributed on the political and racial spectrum. An a**hole’s an a**hole, it doesn’t matter what colour their skin is or whether they think Noam Chomsky’s a nice guy or not.
So, in short, and to put it a bit more simply, I believe systemic, anti-Trump electoral fraud in the 2020 US Elections is as farfetched a concept as an institutionally white supremacist, or systemically racist, USA (or UK for that matter) and that these things exist far more on a chaotic individual level, rather than organised structural level.
*I mean that in the old fashioned sense of treating somebody differently based off the colour of their skin, rather than the 2020 definition of just being a white person.
I actually agree with you on systemic racism. In fact “Systemic racism” is a very useful tool for the super rich to distract from massive disparities in wealth and talk instead about identity.
That though is why logically I do think there was coordinated electoral fraud and that the massive vested intersts arrayed against Trump (big tech, CCP, WEF etc) could easily coordinate this. Not that I think Trump would have done much about disparity in wealth but clearly he was pissed off with big tech and was attacking critical theory in the government.
I mean seriously do you in your heart of hearts believe that Biden who appeared half dead/ demented throughout much of the campaign, has a great line in creepiness and a very dodgy son got the amount of votes he did?
Your position makes some logical sense, and I can see where you’re coming from – although respectfully I’m going to disagree with you based largely off my own logic that I’ve outlined above.
And that’s a very good question, and not one I’m sure many have the answers to just yet. If I were to hazard a guess, though, I’d argue that it was Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic that provoked the number of mail-in votes against him. I also think a large percentage of Biden’s vote count was a result of a similar push towards ‘not Trump’ and a desire from the not-so-politically-engaged for bland and predictable politics they can forget about again, rather than a vote FOR Biden in any real way.
What I do know for sure is that I don’t buy the mainstream media’s bedtime story that Biden’s ‘love and hope’ defeated the hateful, racist white supremacist Trump. Mainly because analysis has shown that Trump actually increased his vote share among Latino & Black American voters – it was actually middle-aged white men where the swing towards Biden was most pronounced, which alone would make Trump the least effective white supremacist in history.
Not sure what else that shows, exactly, in terms of Biden’s electability or potential foul play, but it certainly shows that the media and intersectional narratives are a long way wide of the mark.
Imo it shows that that a large section of US society feels completely disenfranchised. They voted Dem/Rep for 30 years and nothing has changed. Globalization keeps destroying US manufacturing while wealth inequality keeps growing. Trump is a last roll of the dice, by people who probably know how bad he is, but don’t know what else to try. (Possible they also think, even if he makes it worse, so what if some of the white-collar elites end up like us).
Perhaps there are enough people who equally believe the fairy stories about dealing with covid and ignore the fact that democrat governors who lockdown for fun (except when BLM are about) have an even worse record and perhaps there are people who despite having not much real improvement in relative income under the establishment just decided they fancied a quiet life where politics was all happy and consensual again. and perhaps all the mail in ballots were legit, yeah perhaps…
I haven’t fallen for any ‘fairy stories’, far from it. I believe the lockdown issue is an incredibly complex one that has been woefully oversimplified and over-politicised in the media and among politicians. Same, to a certain extent, goes for the coronavirus more generally, but this is a separate topic.
I am simply making the point that I believe that many voters, in the end, held their nose and voted for Biden after seeing Trump’s chaotic handling of the coronavirus – partly because it was indeed chaotic (u-turns, initial bravado then contracting COVID, spreading false ‘cures’ and misinformation, promoting quacks, ducking press briefings etc) and partly because the issue had become hyper-politicised and partisan, meaning that Biden was easily able to fill the vacuum and claim the symbolic high-road on lockdowns and thus appeal to the more vulnerable mail-in voters for whom the virus was perhaps more of a priority.
And I think it’s less about having a ‘quiet lift where politics was all happy and consensual again’, it’s more about wanting a life where the POTUS didn’t make daily news and they can start focussing a bit less on politics and more on getting on with it. Of course, America has many deep issues that will persist irrespective who’s in the White House, but one thing for sure is that it’ll be quieter around Pennsylvania Avenue.
Maybe you should distinguish between votes for Biden and votes against Trump. There would appear to have been quite a few voters who didn’t want Trump and also who didn’t want to vote Democrat.
However, the massive amount of mail in ballots that were sent opened new opportunities, even legally as Zuckerbergs investment shows.
I guess I missed it, but what US court, State or Federal, has allowed any evidence to be presented?
unless I’ve missed something, cases have run aground over some procedural issue, not a lack of merit. Beyond that, though, I cannot grasp how people can so easily dismiss numerous red flags. Not one shady instance, several. Maybe there’s nothing there, but you don’t ignore smoke outright.
What evidence? If you don’t pass the evidentiary threshold in the first place, the case gets thrown out. Otherwise it’s a farce. Go away and get evidence (if it exists), then try again.
Indeed, a number of Trump’s crack squads of lawyers, such as those in Pennsylvania, withdrew their cases on their own – some the night before the hearing – at the threat of perjury. The Republican-dominated Supreme Court had to throw out the case since it didn’t meet basic requirements for a hearing on legal, theoretical grounds – let alone factual. Even his own Attorney-General admitted that “we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”
I’m sorry, but with things like this you have to look at the canary in the coal mine. In Trump’s electoral fraud case, when you consider that even his closest allies and legal representation have in effect admitted defeat, his canary is dead and all its feathers have fallen out.
I present you $350,000,000 invested by the Zuckerbergs in subsidizing election offices… Legal it seems, but is that a ‘fair’ election when ex Democrat officers run the foundation?
And the googles of this world added on top of this pile.
I really do not understand the lack of interest in the computer voting software issue…it seems that, because it has been flagged by one “side” or “team”, that those that are not on, or are against the other side, or team, ignore the appalling and inherent danger to all sides that computer based, non-physically verifiable voting poses to us all. This political divide has become a seemingly unbridgeable chasm where any crime is willfully ignored if perpetrated by the home team. We need to eschew the partisan and completely put to rest these doubts by seriously investigating this matter. No one, left, middle or right is safe until this is clarified.
The results are physically verifiable though.
‘This dark ” but again, not-entirely-wrong ” view of everything from the US intelligence services, to the principles undergirding US foreign policy, to the motives of workaday state and local election officials, always set him rhetorically apart from his more guarded predecessors.’
On this and many other subjects Trump was not ‘not entirely-wrong’, he was almost entirely correct.
Then this:
‘That will be far harder to rationalise when a former president dedicates his life to insisting that American democratic customs are”¦ a farce.’
Again, Trump is correct. American democratic customs and processes are largely farcical.
Ok, but is that enough to make him “President for Life”?
Nobody is suggesting that he should be ‘President for Life’. If Trump suggested it, he would have done so in jest. This is a big part of the problem, the Left has no sense of humour or irony.
Sophistry of the highest order. He’s on record repeatedly saying he wouldn’t accept the results of the election (only if he loses, though, of course), falsely and needlessly throwing the whole process into disrepute and undermining faith in American democracy. Against that backdrop, I’m pretty sure the ‘President for Life’ comment is at best in bad taste and entirely unfunny, and at worst stokes existing tensions and – most unacceptably of all – raises the spectre of American autocracy.
Did Trump come out witht this of his own accord, or was it in response to a question from the media? If the latter, has any previous seitting president been asked teh same question?
Of his own accord. During an after-dinner speech [referring to Xi Jinping]. “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”
He also doubled-down on this a year later when – again, completely unprovoked during a trophy presentation speech he rambled on about ‘for at least six years.. maybe even 10?’.
In May 2019 he again made the same comments, this time talking about serving five terms.
Asked by The Hill how his legacy would be remembered:
“Well, we have to go through the six years or whatever it may be when ” when you know, would I like to get a ride out of some of your compatriots, say, go through the six, 10, 14, maybe 18 years, whatever it may be.”
I could find more but I’ll leave it there for now.
Please do.
Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”
I recall NYT columnist Thomas Friedman having similar fantasies and in far more serious fashion. And none of the usual suspects clutching their pearls over it.
Even if that was true about Friedman (source?). Can you not see any difference about that sentiment being expressed by a journalist, and being expressed by the encumbent P.O.T.U.S ?
google ‘thomas friedman china for a day’ The source is the writer himself. I can also differentiate between a throwaway line and a column or two that required deliberation.
In his first 2,5 years in office, Trump tweeted over 17,000 times. Nobody could ever tell what was a brain-fart and what was now official US government policy. A lot of them were obviously kite flying ideas he’d throw out to the mob to see which ones they liked. But you, seemingly uniquely, are capable of knowing which parts of this tsunami of tosh were real and which were ‘throwaway lines’.
If you think there was no deliberation in Trump’s repeated use of this ‘President for Life’ trope across his 4 years in office and beyond, then I’d argue that you can’t.
Whataboutery isn’t a great argument style, I have to say. It tends to derail conversation rather than further it. But here’s the full source of that quote, anyway:
Now I’m not saying I agree with all of his analysis or that I share the majority of these views (I happen to think democratic models are clearly superior – even my wildest of fantasies – since I believe the measure of a society’s success is the development of human dignity alongside material prosperity), but to me it reads like he was speaking out of a sense of frustration at the partisan mess U.S. politics has become whilst putting his finger on the irony that autocratic, rather hellish regimes like China can actually get far more done in a day than the supposedly hyper-advanced, civilised Western democracies could.
He also at least qualified his (rather ill-judged) comments with ‘I have fantasized…’, ‘I don’t want to be China for a second…’, etc, rather than Trump’s rather open-ended, and intentionally-ambiguous ‘jokes’.
The irony of Trump’s claims escape me.
I think that perhaps a computer may be needed to keep track of what escapes you…
Non-sequitur-you viciously attack a straw man.
Having followed the post-election process assiduously and with no particular dog in the fight, I have come to the conclusion that there is indeed huge prima facie evidence of electoral fraud on a quite enormous scale. More worrying than this problem which is potentially remediable with appropriate measures, is unwillingness of the political, media or legal establishments to engage with it. Trump has very successful exposed the corruption that runs through all of them to the point that they are rotten to the core. America is not governed democratically, it seems, but by a set of tacit understandings between certain politicians, media moguls and judges.
Hopefully Trump will spend the next four years hammering this truth home at every opportunity. America is not currently the land of the free. It is a stitch-up.
(And expect to see one man and his dog at Biden’s inauguration.)
Huge prima facie evidence of the sort that failed to impress a single one of the judges Trump himself appointed? And you have no particular dog in the fight? Oh my sides.
Actually George Soros has bought off most of the judges in America
Oh, I thought it was Winnie the Pooh who’d done that.
No, I didn’t believe it at first, but it’s in many newspapers including the NYT: ‘Soros Adds Intrigue and $800,00 to DA Race…’
I’d take two lessons from this election. One, that there is an appetite for Trumpism without Trump; that is to say economic nationalism, isolationism and anti-establishment populism. That is if the Reps can tale “ownership” of minority voters away faster than the Dems can import new client-voters. And two, that in the future populists are, like Berlusconi, going to have to own their own news channel if they want any kind of favourable coverage.
That’s a great idea. Trump should’ve used a massively partisan TV network to shill relentlessly for him 24/7. If he runs again he could get one and call it something like ‘Wolf News’
When individuals can slide from one sex to the other when they feel like it, ie re-write the most basic facts in their own existence, is it any wonder that institutions societies, countries seek the same right to re-write their own histories? This is just part of the crumbling of the West.
Last time it was the huns and the vandals and the visigoths who saw an opportunity. This time the process might be egged on a bit by the Russians or the Chinese… But this is primarily a crumbling from within. We are killing our own civilisation. All the huff and puff about Messrs Trump and Biden is just part of the process of damping down the glorious fires that have illuminated the West’s post-Renaissance ascendancy.
“How could a country with a mystically-endowed “exceptional” nature … be said to retain its “exceptional” status if its elections are, as Trump vigorously maintains, structurally and systematically fraudulent?”
Just replace Trump in that sentence with Hillary, and you will see that this is not such a big deal.
As others have suggested, and I’m pretty sure is true (60+ year old US citizen), our elections are far from squeaky clean with guilt on all sides, and at all levels, from dog catcher elections (amazing how much some people lust after that job!) to POTUS.
But this last presidential election is a couple of orders of magnitude worse. An out an out coup. Too many really smart, apparently un-biased people coming forward with evidence and analysis that is extremely compelling, not just that fraud occurred (duh!) but on a scale that changed the outcome, and not by a small bit. It was a Trump landslide…I think? we don’t really know since 10s of millions of votes are questionable.
Where is this evidence of which you speak? The idea that there’s been any actual evidence presented by “really smart, apparently un-biased people” is risible. FFS even Barr won’t back that horse.
did this writer miss the four years of ongoing effort to proclaim the administration as illegitimate, from the pink hat marchers to Hillary’s refusal to go away to the endless investigations? Those things did happen, right?
Bush 2 went away quietly. And was blamed for everything under the sun for years. His successor took a different tack, and Team Biden looks much like Obama 2.0. I wonder when the droning campaign will start, and how the media will justify ignoring it this time.
Clinton conceded on election night and Obama immediately co-operated with the transition. Historians in the future will look at Trump’s behaviour over the last 7 weeks with bewilderment closing on contempt. I don’t know how many have seen the video of the Trump Baby on the bouncing ball needing to be dragged out of the playgroup screaming “I don’t wanna go”.
Sadly it is not funny, his refusal to concede and enable Biden’s administration to formulate plans to deal with Covid will probably increase the number of deaths by 10s of thousands and his constant allegations of electoral fraud, never remotely substantiated will undermine the authority of elected officials and the process electing them.
Actually it is not totally his fault, it is the fault of those elements in the GOP who have remained craven to Trump and are only just (like Mitch McConnell) realising what will be the priced of this. There are checks and balances to deal with bad presidents but these were not activated
I would be doubtful of a future political career, he will almost certainly be fighting bankruptcies is the evidence of his tax returns are to be believed; probably for him the presidency was the top of a vast Ponzi scheme when his failure to put his businesses into a Blind Trust and his using of Trump properties for Government business channelled a lot of much needed cash into his empire.
Clinton conceded on election night
Actually, John Podesta came to speak for her, and Hills spent the ensuing four years working to undermine Trump. Let’s not pretend she was a profile in grace.
Obama cooperated because the outcome was clear. You left out the part where his administration engaged in a surveillance plot of the Trump campaign, or that his people like John Brennan engaged in an ongoing disinformation campaign about nefarious Russians. I seem to recall “traitor” being used early and often.
Sadly it is not funny, his refusal to concede and enable Biden’s administration to formulate plans to deal with Covid will probably increase the number of deaths by 10s of thousands
How so? There are a couple of vaccines coming online, something Trump’s critics said would never happen on his watch. If Biden has some sort of plan, who exactly has stopped him from discussing it? In truth, Biden has no plan. He never did. In fairness, a one size fits all plan for a place the size of the US would be foolish anyway.
This article seems to have triggered a mass TDS hysteria.
Trump has been proved right on so many things – China and Iran being just two. Long may his ‘shadow’ hover over the new administration of Harris-Biden.
That’s right, and injecting bleach really does cure Covid.
Faux News, Urban Myth…Trump never suggested that at all…run the tapes…
Ha. We all saw it.
Not the word bleach you didn’t.
Here it is in black and white:
[SOURCE]
Not sure what exactly he was suggesting, but it was batshit. All the worse, in the aftermath of this statement, disinfectant poisonings were up as much as 121% in some parts of the country.
But they must’ve all just misinterpreted, eh? Because he never suggested anything of the sort.
Could you point to the word “bleach” in there? Looks to me he is talking about light. He is also not suggesting that anyone do anything themselves. So a fail all around actually.
So.. your argument comes down to the minute and trifling differences between ‘bleach’ and ‘disinfectant’ when it comes to the safety of of injecting into ones body?
Cool. You keep grasping for those straws, Annette. I’m not going to bite. The quote is there in black and white as I said, and it’s batshit.
No, my argument is that if someone hasn’t said something, it’s going to be pointed out when they’re accused of doing so. Did you really think it would not be pointed out?
Bleach and disinfectant are not synonyms. Neither are bleach and light. Hospitals use all kinds of disinfectants that are introduced into the body in one way or another. Surely you must know this. On top of that, the quote clearly shows Trump saying that doctors would have to look at ways to accomplish this.
Lastly Trump says whatever he’s thinking and like most politicians says plenty of questionable stuff. There’s absolutely zero need to embellish what he says or cherry pick what he says. You’re right the quote is there, it just doesn’t say what you claim it does.
This is a pointless argument. If you, in your heart of hearts, can’t honestly see how this quote may be interpreted by some as suggesting we put disinfectant inside ourselves then I can no longer help.
Btw disinfectants are NEVER introduced inside the body in a hospital setting, or any setting as a heads up – please don’t try it. While medical treatments and disinfectants have a common goal”killing germs”their mechanisms are completely different, and they are designed for different environments.
As helpful as they are at zapping germs on your kitchen table or door handles, bleach and disinfectants are indiscriminate destroyers, disintegrating human cells as well as microbes. The main ingredient in household bleach is sodium hypochlorite, which reacts with water to form hypochlorous acid, which breaks down organic matter.
Have a nice day.
The media certainly helped people see words in what Trump said that aren’t there. To the point that you yourself thought they were there. The media also cherry picked what Trump said. For example, when did the media report that Trump said that doctors would need to look to how they might use light to disinfect inside the body?
And you’re quite wrong about disinfectants used in hospitals. Open wounds are disinfected in hospitals on a daily basis. Try visiting any wound care department in a hospital. Open bed sores are also disinfected which introduces disinfectant inside the body.
You continue to conflate bleach with disinfectant. They are not synonyms.
Obama is currently the most populist polititian, and what appears to me a real shadow president. It is not convincing to me that Biden has more saying about his team if any than a Promised Land author. If dems win the Senat, we will be witnessing the the least accauntable, an every bit nontransparent, the most populist, fact-free government ever. It already started with the president-elect catching “the cold”.
Let’s face it -Biden’s not ‘all there’ – so someone has to be President lol.
US elections are almost always determined by the “donor class”, …the “oligarchs”. The only exceptions are Jackson in 1824 and Trump in 2016. The model for “American democratic elections” is the shareholder election of the executive of a publicly held corporation. The large shareholders are the only voters that matter. They chose the final candidates. It is the definition of bourgeois electoralism.
In 2016 an exception occurred. The citizenry was so sick of the neolib/neocon project they refused to ratify the selected nominees. Sanders had been cheated out of it already, but Trump, rightly considered a buffoon who didn’t stand chance anyway, was left standing.
Wonder of wonders, he won. This, actual democracy, was a big problem for them. So they did “russia-gate” to try to at least neuter him. Then in 2020 the same thing occurred. Had they not put their thumb on the scales, it would have been a genuine “free & fair democratic election” between Sanders and Trump. This couldn’t be allowed.
So, in desperation the oligarchs threw in a ringer. Biden was “deus ex machina’d” the new president. Nobody believes he “won”.
I don’t know, I’m more pessimistic. I think that Americans may well start to say “oh, no, we’re just one country among others!” But I think what they’ll mean is, “we shouldn’t have to hold ourselves to any kind of standard. We should get to do whatever we want to, whenever we want to! Because that’s what every other country does, right?”
Self-deprecation is not the same as humility. It’s more often an excuse for bad behaviour – “hey, I never said I was a saint!” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, let’s see America actually take someone else’s lead for once instead of always insisting that it knows best. Then I’ll believe that it’s learned humility.
Want some suggestions, Americans? Get rid of the guns, you’re not John Wayne and you don’t get to shoot injuns anymore. Socialise healthcare, dying from preventable diseases isn’t romantic hardship, it just sucks. Oh, and agree to some environmental standards, we’re all out of virgin continents to go off to rape and pillage because it’s easier than staying and working on the old ones. Get over, all in all, the idea that you’re fearless pioneers carving a new Jerusalem out of the wilderness. You weren’t to begin with, and you’re even less so nowadays.
I mean, you’re not gonna do any of that, but if you did, then I’d actually start to think you’d gotten over yourselves.
I have no problem being one country of many. Does this mean that some of the rest of the world will pay for its own defense so we don’t have to? Because I’m all for an end to endless war and foreign adventurism.
As to the rest, come take the guns if you dislike them. They date back to when the country was the colonies, and they’re not going away. People die from preventable disease in every country on the planet, and sorry, but people who can barely manage potholes are not qualified to manage health care. We have enviro standards; water and air are cleaner today than 40 years ago, and more trees stand that they did a century ago.
Guns were not about shooting “injuns” back in 1776. Even at the height of US Indian Wars, I suspect for most Americans, having a gun was not about defending themselves against, or attacking, Indians. It was always about defending ourselves against the government, against tryanny.
That’s still what it’s about. When the only ones left with guns are the ones who only here what Big Tech, the Deep State, and other such “institutions” have to say, it will be too late for anyone to do anything about whatever they want to do to you or me. Anything they want to do! What are you gonna do without a gun…hold an election? Ha!
All the “virgin continents” were “raped and pillaged” by Europeans…and get over the gun thing-lawful owners are not a problem. I don’t think you are “gonna” win any debates with this puerile attack. John Wayne..? Please-have you ever been to America-outside of a metropolitan area?
This situation is just one more nail in the coffin of the American Empire. It is all part of the spiritual and moral decline which with the march of History, particularly the rise of China, will bring end to its world dominance.
Yes, I posted to this effect yesterday. It’s over for the US and, by extension, the West. To be honest, there is little worth defending any more. The Chinese will at least bring law and order and a degree of competence in public office.
I think I’d better put this author straight. Trump is not the “former” president, he is the incumbent President, and will be so for the next 4 years, (once the voter fraud has been fully exposed). Just because the mainstream media are denying, and hiding its existence, doesn’t mean the evidence, has disappeared. They (the Trump administration) have it all. It may have escaped this publications notice, but on election night, the former CIA directer (Gina Haspel) was caught red-handed, at the headquarters of “Dominion” voting machines in Frankfurt, Germany, manipulating the election count remotely. A gun battle ensued, (five US special forces killed) in which she was wounded, and is now in custody. I have no doubt, she will be singing like the proverbial canary, and implicating all those involved in the attempted “coup de tat.’ This election is not over by a long chalk, as we will see.
This better be satire. This QAnon propaganda belongs on 8chan, Russ. Not here.
The ‘news’ article you got this from can’t even spell Gina Haspel’s name properly, Scytl have come out to say (with proof) that it is a US-based and operated company, with no servers or offices in Frankfurt – or anywhere in Germany for that matter – and the US Army has denied any raids took place.
If there is evidence, why, in 59 cases, did Trump’s lackey lawyers not produce any?
This has been debunked thoroughly by the US Army, by Scytl, by Dominion, by Reuters, by Snopes, by the CIA, and any other fact-checker you care to mention so not sure why UnHerd are just allowing propaganda to circulate BTL unchallenged, and yet if somebody so much as puts a LINK or refers to a male member in their comment it never makes it past the censors.
A couple of pertinent facts:
– Scytl has NO presence in Frankfurt, Germany. It doesn’t even have German offices.
– Scytl did NOT provide any electronic voting machines to US jurisdictions and does NOT tabulate, tally or count votes in US public elections.
Seriously, try and find the Frankfurt offices of Scytl. Or the voting machines they supposedly provided. You may be in for a long hunt.
They 9the machines) were in the CIA offices in Frankfurt Germany, (according to the report I saw) when it was raided. I’ll tell you what Harvey, Just try contacting miss Haspel yourself. Good luck with that.
Are you seriously suggesting I try contact the head of the CIA as though that’s some sort of argument?
Should I try contact The Queen while I’m at it? Email should be okay, what do you reckon?
And if she doesn’t reply, she must’ve been assassinated by the CIA.
Jesus wept.
How you go about discrediting the info I gave you is entirely up to you, and whether you choose to believe it, is again up to you. I stand by what I told you.
Take the YouTube test Russ. Go to the site and scroll down to see what you’re prompted with. Area 51, lizard people, hoaxes (JFK, 9-11, sandy hook, hebdo), flat earth, chemtrails. If you see any of those, the algorithm has decided it’s being viewed by a conspiracy theorist. They are very accurate.
Define “conspiracy theory” for us Keven. In my day, it was called investigative journalism, and that’s exactly what I do. The term conspiracy theory is just a cheap slur to try and discredit and ridicule anyone who gets too near the truth. Here’s a little test for you. A chance to discredit me. Try giving her a call.
He won’t be able to do much from prison.
Far from being a “shadow president”, Trump will whinge and moan from the sidelines, spreading conspiracy theories and quack remedies. If he manages to escape prosecution, he’ll follow his nose for attention wherever it leads, perhaps into the bosom of QAnon, or maybe as a figurehead for whacko militias. He might unseat Alex Jones as the country’s top purveyor of lies, or try and spark armed clashes between police and the KKK.
Whatever he does, America itself will move on to try and clean up the mess he left.
Didn’t HRC do the same thing?
It is just not credible that Biden won a greater majority, in those swing states, than Hilary Clinton or Obama (during their election bids), with almost zero actual campaigning. He has the charisma of a wet floor rag. In all those swing states (by sheer coincidence) vote counting was stopped mid-count and each one suddenly had thousands of Biden votes by the next morning.
“In all those swing states (by sheer coincidence) vote counting was stopped mid-count and each one suddenly had thousands of Biden votes by the next morning.”
So Andrew… where’s the beef? 1 for 59 in courts all over the states, before DJT appointed judges?????? Put the koolaid down and step away from the bottle for your own self respect.
Now where have we heard that before? Lol
the second Trump’s self manufactured spotlight goes dark his shadow disappears.
Truer to say that Obama is the shadow president. His fingerprints are all over this election and its result. He is at the head of a long queue of people who will wish to see his stance and methods resume under his old protege. Early signs are that BLM might have to wait a bit for the quid pro quo that they were counting on as reward for their efforts but the domestic cultural revolution now will proceed as designed.
I agree that Trump’s influence will be felt well into the future but as time goes on that influence will be seen less as sinister and more as an honest and fair-minded acknowledgement of his real, solid achievements. At least he will be seen that way by the majority of Americans. Of course he will always be hated by politicians and diplomats because his use of unorthodox approaches to geopolitical problems has been very successful and shows up the failures of those who have proved inadequate to deal with them.
I don’t believe the Obama regime can be raised from the dead for a couple of reasons. The main one is that Trump appointed so many federal judges with an interest in following the constitution plus his SCOTUS nominees probably will insist that the president and congress follow the Constitution. I’ve heard it said that someone above is always looking out for the US (not a believer myself) but there has to be something to it in the timely ACB SCOTUS seating to prevent future disaster. Could not have worked out better time wise.
The second reason that the Obama regime can’t be raised from the dead is that Biden isn’t Obama. Obama tried really hard to talk Joe out of running, a really odd thing for any president to do to his own VP. If Obama had had even a smidgeon of confidence in Biden he would not have done this. He did this because 1) he knows Joe has dementia and 2) Biden isn’t as radical as Obama was and 3) what does it say about Obama that he had Biden as his VP? Biden constantly embarrassed the Obama admin, now he gets to do that for possibly 4 years. I personally think it’s going to be quite a kick watching Obama attempt to justify what we all know is coming from the lying dog face pony soldier.
In the mean time as Brexit comes to a sad end we are preparing to stand in the shadow of the most influential British politician for decades. The never elected Nigel Farage friend and supporter of the rejected Donald Trump. “Have you seen your catalysts baby standing in the shadows.” Agents of change who will never change themselves.
This article puts tremendous emphasis on the concept of “bipartisan ‘American exceptionalism’ dogma”, without explaining what it means.
The fact is, America is exceptional in its wealth, power and the success of its political model.
Previous administrations, however, understood the need for the US to get involved, as one country among others, to tackle complex problems that require international cooperation, such as the Paris Accord, the WHO, and the Iran nuclear deal. That’s not exceptionalism, it’s mucking in to help.
Trump withdrew America from the initiatives, but didn’t stop trying to call the shots on the international stage with sanctions and threats of war. He wants a dog-eat-dog world because America is top dog. If that isn’t the very definition of American “exceptionalism”, I don’t know what is.
Trump withdrew America from initiatives that did not help America. Like the Iran nuclear deal and the meaningless Paris Accords.
Define “help America”.
Benefit America. It’s not complicated. Getting involved is one thing; getting involved in things that harm your country is stupid.
So you can’t define it. It is a meaningless generality of the sort Trump trades in.
I did define it. What I cannot do is make you understand it.
A nuclear deal that allows Iran to continue toward developing a nuclear weapon is in no one’s best interests.
The deal was historic, and was negotiated by the US, the UK, France, Germany, Russia, the EU and China. It wasn’t perfect, but it acted as a break on Iran’s nuclear development, while integrating this huge country into the world trading system. The benefits in terms of peace, cooperation and economic prosperity for Iran and the US would have been huge. Trump’s petulant withdrawal, and his return to US form of long-distance assasinations and threats of war doesn’t help America at all. It creates another angry, isolated and volatile adversary in a tinderbox part of the world, and robs Americans of prosperity through expanded trade, not to mention influence. It was a stupid, harmful thing to do for America.
Neville Chamberlain thought his deal was “historic,” too. How’d that work out?
Oh, I see. You don’t know anything about the Iran JCPA, so you reach for absurd comparisons.
Unable to refute the message, you attack the messenger. How predictable.
Apologies. I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just that comparing the situation in Europe in the run up to the Second World War to the situation with Iran in the run-up to the JCPA is absurd, in that there are vanishingly few similarities.
Iran is the only country I can think of that has ever talked of using nuclear weapons in an offensive capacity. The others who have them do so for deterrence. Various Iranian leaders have talked of using them as pre-emptive strikes against perceived enemies. Forgive me if my BS meter reacts to promises of Iranian proclamations of having no interest in such a weapon.
I don’t know what was said. I do know that Iran is very sensitive about foreign interventions, such as the US and the UK toppling its democratically elected leader in 1953, and the US and UK invading Iraq in 2003 on the flimsiest of pretexts. That’s why North Korea is so keen on a nuclear deterrent: it works.
You weren’t rude, you just have them on the ropes because their points are vague and incoherent – turning all the way back to the 1930s and Neville Chamberlain for inspiration – so they resorted to outrage.
Alex, I’m sorry but your definition of ‘help America’ is a mere synonym of the same rather vague phrase, not an actual unpacking of the concept or how Trump’s policies ‘help America’ or even your average American. So would you mind trying again for the sake of conversation? See if we can grasp it?
Personally, I’d argue for nuance – that some of the things Trump did in terms of foreign policy, like calling on NATO members to cough up more and disbanding NAFTA, were, on the whole, good moves that will benefit a large number of Americans and more besides, and that other things – like withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal and Paris Accords – are short-sighted, mutually damaging and churlish moves that will cause net harm to the American people and the wider world.
Correct – Trump actually thought through ideas, stupid and otherwise unlike past Presidents and politicians who do things rotely. We needed/need a leader who thinks about things creatively and out-of-the-box. My only regret is that he didn’t back out of NATO entirely. It’s been 75 years since WW2 – time to go.
Hard to see how contradictory tweets reflect things having been thought through.
Given how Trump’s cries of duplicity have been received I’m beginning to assume that this stuff is so ubiquitous that calling it illegal is seen as deeply ungentlemanly and only to be ignored. There’s an interesting video about how vulnerable it has made America. https://m.theepochtimes.com…
Shadow president? Much as he would like that to be true, what’s actually going to happen is this. Reentry to private life will bring a variety of legal problems, some potentially serious, that will keep him whinging and whining as he continues the “everything Trump touches, dies”, story of his life. However, his kool-aided followers will stay with him… which will simply guarantee to split the Republican party in two as Pence, Cruz, Rubio, Hailey, Hawley and Cotton fight for the banner. In that fight, they’ll soon realize that there’s only room for DJT himself on the Trump wagon, and so they will be forced by political laws to offer a saner and softer version in their attempts to find a way to the 2024 nomination. That will attract all the conservative but not crazy Republicans, and voila… the party is dead. It will be unable to unify, unable to nominate, and the way forwards for Democrats in both the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential will be a cakewalk.
One think you can count on with Trump… the craziness will not end, so the party will split. It is only, ever and always about Trump… which is why whatever he touches… dies.
Well, you lot also said his election campaign was dead back in 2016, that he would be impeached because of your Russia stories, that it would be a sweep for Biden in 2020….
Anyway, have fun managing the black, Asian, muslim, Latinx and crazy loonie white liberal groups that make up the party of identity groups. Now that you have no excuses.
He was impeached, though.
Political. That’s it. Same as Clinton.
Well, shouldn’t be a problem. After all, Clinton dug us out of Bush I’s recession, Obama out of Bush II’s financial collapse, so no worries, were used to picking up after republicans succeed at smashing the economy. This time will be no different, picking up after your hero’s debacle. No excuses will be offered or needed.
Clinton, good president, nowhere as good as Reagan and by today’s Demrat standards a far right bigot and rapist.
Obama, worse for immigrants than Trump and the one who built the cages, worse for starting needless bloodshed and wars, worse at the economy, worse at soaking the middle class to pay for his “care”, worse at formenting racial strife and black grievance…..
But he was black, hence proof against criticism, and he did have a platform on positivity rather than hatred for the deplorables….
It’s going to be a bit worse for you lot this time. Just a tiny bit.
Yes, what Reagan shares with DJT are the high number of people in their political circles getting indicted. Always a good thing.
What a lot of nonsense. You’d think that constitutional governance, in place of arbitrary rule, was all well and secure before Trump. Think again.
There have always been efforts to supplant constitutional governance with arbitrary rule. Presidents from the early Republic, including John Adams and James Madison, veterans of “76”, got a few hard lessons on this from the Supreme Court. See, for example, Marbury v. Madison (1803). Note, also, that much of the early Progressive Era reforms amounted to efforts by the Deplorables of the age to contain the abuses of the elites. States like Wisconsin and California were leaders in this kind of thing with such innovations as recall elections. (Gavin Newsome, governor of California, just might soon become acquainted with this.) Georgia was quite the pioneer in that it subjected the selection of state judges to voting processes as early 1814. Georgians did this to contain the abuses of the elites. The elites would simply place their friends in the judiciary. The Deplorables managed to fight back effectively.
But, people like Woodrow Wilson really started to promote the arbitrary rule of the expert class by building up the Administrative State.
Trump has led a revolt against the Administrative State. Brexit was also a vote against the Administrative Super-State (the EU) and its class of self-anointed best-and-brightest experts.
Is that note what is going on? The proponents of centralized governance, of government by the elites, for the elites, and of the elites, is being contested by … everyone else?
It doesn’t seem like Trump’s revolt against the Administrative State has gone very well. 304,000 dead, the economy in tatters, trade deficits up, manufacturing jobs vanishing, broken promises on everything from infrastructure to the wall. Perhaps Americans are ready for some effective administration after this happily brief period of Rule by Incompetent Dolts.
Lol. Over 2.9 people died in 2019. Sure over 3 million will this year. So a few more older people who are sick and at the end of their life died this year because of a bad respiratory virus. Biden is going to prevent death? How stupid do you have to be to believe that. Are zero people going to die when Biden takes office?
You think all those judges Trump appointed are going to let Biden try to go around congress?
“A president for whom the doctrine of American exceptionalism was a genuinely animating principle”
This is a complete misunderstanding of Trump. He has consistently been AGAINST that doctrine and his adherents – something that contributes to Trump Derangement Syndrome. The Trump view is that the USA is a normal country which should pursue its interests in a normal manner. His utterances become a lot more understandable once you realise this.
He forgot to mention that Trump is a Russian agent and the only reason he won is because Putin helped him cheat. The “exceptional” US elites finally have beaten back this insurrection. They should have no problem getting back to “exceptional”. They just have to keep the Russians out.
Mr Tracy, first shadow president? Where has Obama been for the last four years? Where are his offices in DC? What happens in those offices? Who does he work with? How has he been influencing and guiding the Left both in and out of government? You are possibly correct that Trump will claim to be the real President after Jan 20 and that is a significant difference between him going forward and Obama these last four years. But it is not a defining difference.
It’s quite funny to see the author try and make out that Trump has any sort of “underlying worldview” beyond ratings and self-aggrandisement.
Actually, Trump does have an underlying worldview. He believes that the people who govern a country should govern in the interests of the people of that country. In terms of foreign policy he believes, unlike the last few presidents, in peace or non-intervention, not war. Most normal people agree with this worldview, it is just the media and the progressive left that opposes it.
I think you’d have to have a fairly peculiar view of “the interests of the people” to claim that Trump has governed in service to them. Health, for instance, wouldn’t feature.
Trump is the first president ever to take on Big Pharma by reducing the prices of prescription drugs. He also introduced the Right To Try policy. A friend who works for Eli Lilley expected to be out of job if Trump won this year, such was Trump’s assault on their gouging.
I agree that the US healthcare system is immoral and criminally expensive, but nobody else has done anything about it given that Obamacare, by all accounts, has created as many problems as it solved.
‘US Healthcare is so bad that no one anywhere else in the world wants to come here for treatment. And no one has benefited from US health care related research. We should tear it all down and while we’re at it, all the other corporations that shamelessly profit by their efforts.’ Am I hearing you right?
How has the ACA “created as many problems as it solved”?
Why do you think Pharma hid that they had the vaccine until AFTER the election? Pharma has turned me against them now, after their election meddling. They took our money to develop a vaccine that will make their profit go through their collective roof, only to make contracts with other countries in priority over our citizens, then meddle in our election bypurposefully delaying an important announcement because Trump was continuing to go after their profiteering. They know Dems are all bark about “Big Pharma” but wont’ actually DO anything to lower prices and increase access to meds.
Trump, far from delivering the peace he promised, doubled down on the worst of Obama’s policies, particularly in regard to the nation’s covert and proxy wars. In Libya, Syria, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen, U.S. allies still do most of the fighting while the U.S. military provides devastating air support, special operations “kill or capture” raids, training, and weapons for its proxies.
As well as this:
– More troops currently in Afghanistan than in 2016.
– Record number of bombs and missiles dropped by U.S. in Afghanistan in 2019 – over 7,000.
– U.S. military manoeuvres in the South China sea at the highest level ever.
– Stationed 23,000 extra troops in Japan, Guam, Australia, and South Korea.
– Sent 14,000 more U.S. troops to the Middle East in 2019 and ramped up drone strikes in Somalia and West Africa.
His presidential records show that he by no means believes in ‘peace and non-intervention’ once in office, any more or less than any other president. He knows how to give the impression that he does, though, with loud words and gestures that fool the likes of you. Problem is you have to look at the actions and bald stats, which show that Trump in many ways doubled-down on the worst Warhawking excesses of the Obama administration.
Exactly. There are no ‘layers’ to unpeel with Trump. The lack of engagement with NATO, WHO, Paris Agreement were because he couldn’t see anything in it for him personally.
I didn’t even bother to read this drivel as your title shows your ignorance. Until all legal challenges are answered the election is not over!
It wasn’t that bad. Read the article or don’t comment
George Washington excluded, there seems to have never been a a president of the Excited States that was considered legitimate during his own time. Trump is just more boorish in ratcheting it up.
Really Vince? In my life time, I can count Truman, Ike, Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, Reagan and Clinton. None was deemed ‘illegitimate’ by the losing side. They weren’t happy, but it really wasn’t until the SCOTUS intervened unlawfully in Florida to stop the recount that illegitimacy crept into the conversations, and even after that the second Bush election wasn’t considered illegitimate. Obama was only considered illegitimate by those offended by the very thought of a black man named Hussein could even be the president… but there was never any doubt about the votes. Trump? Russia leaned heavily on the scales and certainly created enough doubt that the losers didn’t consider it the ‘normal’ political loss.
Why could no one find any Russia Trump link then? Not like the dems didn’t try. No one found so much as a single vote changed because of Russians. Drop the crackpipe, HRC was a horrendous candidate. Democrats never consider it normal when they lose. There’s always some excuse, never that they just lost.