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@Swagnarok
You believe Trump would make himself a Mussolini-style dictator and value judgments like evil have never popped up in your mind?
My worldview is apparently a bit more nuanced than yours. I don't Trump as evil, I see him as a narcissist who is incapable of empathy and only recognizes the world in terms of what's good for him thus he is incapable in understanding why anyone else would see it differently. He doesn't understand the value of democracy because to him the world is just one big game of winners and losers.
Evil is for superhero movies. Once we grow up we recognize the world is far more complicated than that. Everyone is the hero in their own story.
It's about a systemic bias in one direction against the other by the most influential voices in society.
And why do you think that is?
On the other hand, if the headline "Trump threatens a 'bloodbath' if he loses reelection" were to appear on CNN (even though, of course, Trump was talking about the US auto industry and anyone who bothered to watch the original clip should've known this), people believe that kind of stuff. It's much more effective propaganda than anything Trump or Biden is capable of. They have an outsized power to shape public opinion and they're using it solely against Trump and his campaign.
The bloodbath thing was taken out of context and many on the left including Biden did take it too far, but it wasn't nothing. If Trump had not already tried to overthrow a violent election and demonstrated as president a tacit endorsement of violence in an effort to attain it, people would not be interpreting his words the way they did.
And one would figure, if they're being accused by a massively large swath of the country of being a dictator wannabe, they would be a bit more careful of the language they use. But it's Trump so of course not. His refusal to change anything about his approach given what's already happened suggests that these kind of quotes in many cases aren't as out of context as they seem. Because context isn't just about the sentence before or after.
With all that said, you're acting as if people believe the framing of these quotes because places like CNN reported on then the way they did. You have it backwards. It's because people see Trump this way that the media puts it in that light. The media is only reflecting the impression Trump is giving, and those impressions whether you accept it or not are for good reason.
That's not to say that there is no propaganda or public opinion shaping going on here, but the viewers understand much better what's going on a play a much bigger role in the shaping of the narrative than you seem to think.
And I say that when journalists decide elections
They don't, what silly thing to say.
Taking the high road doesn't mean pretending that your political opponent isn't the threat that he is.If you're gonna go with this, then anything and everything is justified
Complete nonsense. Calling reality what it is and anything else are not the same. That's common sense.
If Ted Bundy were running for president his political opponent would call him a rapist and a murderer. That's not resorting to political insults, and it would be absurd for any campaign to treat him as a normal human being in the name of taking the high road.
It's not the democrats fault that the republican party for the third time has nominated a man who is one of the worst kinds of people we've ever seen in American political life, so it's not their responsibility to ignore it.
I'm talking about the guy who suggested we drop a nuclear bomb in a hurricane, thought the solution to California wild fires is a rakeThat's a lack of knowledge, not stupidity.
How much knowledge do you need to know that raking the forest is not a solution for CA's wildfire problem?
Should anyone have followed Trump's advice and raked the forest floor? No, but what it demonstrates is that Trump can think flexibly, a skillset that suits any President of the United States well as they go about doing what the job entails.
Demonstrates that he can think flexibly... Wow.
I accuse him of that because he is, as evidenced by the fact that he constantly fawns over dictators because of how tough and in control they are of their countriesFor what it's worth, it's not an unpopular opinion that some countries are unsuited for democracy.
This has nothing to do with my point.
Calling a lie hyperbole doesn't mean it's no longer a lie."Gee, I'm so swamped today. I've got a million things to do." Was this a lie or hyperbole?
That isn't what we're talking about and you know that.
When Trump says democrats support the execution of babies after birth that's not hyperbole, that's a lie.
You mean like loudly declaring that if a NATO ally doesn't "pay up" he would tell Russia to "do whatever the hell they want"?You mean things he was saying back in 2015/2016, before he proceeded to become President and not touch NATO?
Do you seriously believe nothing has changed since 2016?
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@WyIted
Please explain how I was psychologically tricked to support Trump and Kamala Harris will implement more policies I like.
No one said anything like that. It's not in the video, nor does that have anything to do with the point of this thread. I don't mean to be a dick, but are you dyslexic? You seem incapable of understanding anything you read. Cause if so I apologize and will adjust my responses appropriately.
What the video went into that I was interested in here is the part about Trump not being seen by his supporters as a person, which is a large part of why you guys let him get away with things you would never excuse from any other politician. If you have any thoughts on that let me know.
This is why ai can never vote for a Democrat. This sort of lie that this was a serious policy proposal and not a thought experiment.
And yet again, you are having a whole conversation with yourself. No one is claiming it was a seriously policy proposal. I said he made the suggestion... As in he brought it up to his aides as a possible way to combat a hurricane, as in he actually thought it might be a good idea, as in he is really stupid enough to think dropping a nuclear bomb inside of a hurricane had a good enough chance of being a good idea that he decided to suggest it, out loud, to other people.
That's insane.
What is really remarkable though is that aside from you pretending it is the left who is lying here and not your own imagination of what others are laughing at here, is that your comment suggests you really care about not being lied to, so much in fact that you wouldn't dare vote for the side that shows themselves to be liars. So instead you are voting for Donald Trump, the literal, most prolific liar in American political history. Ok.
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@Greyparrot
You really love chatgpt don't you?
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@Swagnarok
The party which you support is pure unadulterated evil
For all of my ire with Trump and MAGA specifically and the republican party broadly, it takes a palpable level of brainwashing to believe it's all about being evil. My take continues to be that MAGA is deeply wrongheaded. Even I wouldn't stoop down to the level of labeling it evil, that's just intellectual laziness.
The civility you espouse is of no real substance. Biden and Harris are backed by a limitlessly cruel and sociopathic propaganda apparatus that, on a given Tuesday, matches or even exceeds the nastiness of Trump.
There are always going to be people out there saying nasty things. When I talk about civility in politics I'm not talking about people on Twitter, I'm talking about prominent figures within the political left. When it comes to that, there is no comparison between the left's attacks on Trump and his on them. The left attacks Trump for things he actually does and makes the argument as to why his words and actions should be interpreted that way. Trump just calls them stupid. That's not the same. At all.
If Biden wanted to "take the high road" in any way that mattered, he would've gotten together with the party bosses 4-5 years ago and convinced them to let up on the omnidirectional partisan attacks on Trump. Said attacks would've then ceased.
Taking the high road doesn't mean pretending that your political opponent isn't the threat that he is. If he lies the left will point out the fact that he's a liar. If he uses Hitler's language and tactics to manipulate his base the left will point out the remarkable parallels. That's how it works. There is nothing about that which conflicts with "taking the high road".
You're talking about the guy who, without a day of political experience in his life, waltzed onto the scene and wrested control of the GOP nomination from the son and brother of two former Presidents (Jeb Bush) and...
I'm talking about the guy who suggested we drop a nuclear bomb in a hurricane, thought the solution to California wild fires is a rake, and thought clean coal is when you take it and scrub it with a brush. The fact that an ignoramus was able to appeal to ignorant people is not a sign of intelligence.
Since you're accusing him of being an authoritarian dictator-wannabe anyway
I accuse him of that because he is, as evidenced by the fact that he constantly fawns over dictators because of how tough and in control they are of their countries, his constant need for adulation, his irritation and blatant contempt for every institution that holds him accountable for anything, and oh yeah... that time he tried to end American democracy.
Much of what the media calls "Trump lies" is Trump hyperbole.
Calling a lie hyperbole doesn't mean it's no longer a lie.
And in practice, Trump has done nothing to prove that he wouldn't.
You mean like loudly declaring that if a NATO ally doesn't "pay up" he would tell Russia to "do whatever the hell they want"?
Trump took a harder line against the dictators of China, Iran, Venezuela, and Syria than any Democrat has.
Harder line? What does that even mean?
You left the dictators of Russia and North Korea off that lost. I wonder why.
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@Greyparrot
When Kamala's handlers made the decision to not spend a good bit of time at the DNC blaming Trump specifically for inflation, they are letting the swing state voters decide on their own who to blame...that is NOT how to do election propaganda and win.
No, it's not. That's what the RNC was for.
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@Swagnarok
Pre-Trump, the right was making no concerted effort to push the Overton Window. Maybe somewhat back in the '80s and '90s, but such efforts had since stalled. The left was, however, trying to make the politics of normie Republican guys seem unthinkable to the average person. They had the news media on their side, save of course for Fox, and were working overtime to realize this objective. But then Trump pushed back.The mere fact that somebody like Trump was elected, "got away" with holding the positions and saying the things that he did, and had a term in office that nobody was able to stop him from living out would basically kill efforts to render anathema in the popular imagination or at the ballot box the regular conservative wing of the Republican Party. The farther Trump pushed, the more assured this outcome would be. And so, to this day, I still support Trump and will see this through to the end.
You never explained what Trump pushed back on that made you loyal to him. You say he pushed the Overton window. I agree. Since Trump came along we no longer expect our politicians to be:
- Civil
- Mature
- Intelligent
- Truthful
- Respectful of democracy
- An example to the world
- To stand up for our allies
- To stand up against dictators
- To respect US institutions
Etc. I'm curious what he did in your eyes to offset all of that .
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@Greyparrot
The 2021 American Rescue Plan Act injected a lot of money into the economy to help people and businesses during the pandemic. This extra money increased the amount of money circulating in the economy (money supply), which led to more people spending and buying things. When everyone has more money to spend, demand for goods and services goes up. But if the supply of those goods and services can't keep up with the increased demand, prices start to rise, which leads to inflation.
Even though you probably didn't write any of this...
If you are going to argue that injecting money into the economy is the reason for inflation, then you would also have to acknowledge that Trump did the exact same thing twice in the months prior to the passage of the ARP. Funny how all of Trump's bills get a pass.
What is especially noteworthy about this argument is how divorced it is from the actual reality at that time. Stores were not raising their prices because consumers were buying up their products so fast they couldn't keep up. They were rising their prices because of the increased costs of goods due to a major shortage of supplies following the aftermath of COVID.
Gas is a perfect example. After people stopped traveling gas prices plummeted due to oil distributors having literally more product on their hands than they knew what to do with it. In some cases they were paying people to take it off their hands. As a result many refineries closed down, so once demand returned to normal levels the remaining producers couldn't keep up so prices rose.
This was happening all across our industries. Meat plants around the country had to close due to dangerous working conditions, leading to shortages, leading to price increases. It wasn't because restaurants were full of diners blowing stimulus money, it was because there was little product to go around.
After the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law in August 2022 which Kamala also cast the tying vote, inflation in the U.S. gradually began to decline, but this change was influenced by a variety of factors beyond the law itself.
Funny how when good things happen after the law is passed, suddenly other factors "beyond the law itself" become relevant.
Yeah, I agree with you, the average swing state voter won't come close to understanding all that. They just know the prices are too damn high, and someone needs to take the blame.
Great. So why do you pretend as if democrats not talking about inflation is indicative of anything meaningful beyond how poorly educated the average voter is?
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Interesting video. Although much of it is the standard stuff we've heard before, the one part I found a illuminating is where he talks about the fact that Trump is, neither in his mind nor in the minds of his supporters... A person. Despite many attempts by biographers and interviewers, he's never shared a enlightening story explaining how he came to be the person he is today. There's just nothing there. He's like a TV character who's past was never written or delved into, all that matters is what twists his presence will bring to the story.
I thought this did a lot to explain why Trump supporters grade him on the insane curve they do and why they hold him accountable for nothing. He's not a person to them, he's a caricature that provides for them a conduit for everything they hate about the world and a safe space for everything they hate about themselves.
I added in that last part but you get the point. What do you think, does this help explain the insane phenomenon we've witnessed for the past decade now? If not, what alternative views can you offer?
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@Greyparrot
She literally cast the deciding vote on the inflation augmentation act. J.D. voted nay.
The bill was passed in August 2022, inflation plummeted after that. So what's your point?
Saying nearly nothing about inflation (again it was mentioned only 3 times over all the DNC speakers) is far, far worse and less effective than the bare minimum of at the VERY LEAST.... blaming Trump for inflation.
Again, inflation was caused by the aftermath of COVID, and it's over now. That's a fact. So to the extent you are arguing anything meaningful, it's that people are too stupid to understand how it works.
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@Greyparrot
Wrong, he is also personally responsible for all the global unrest and inflation while he was not president as well.
Another unserious response from an unserious person.
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@WyIted
I think I may have used the word vermin before. Be less retarded
You aren't running for president genius. And if you were, you would benefit to educate yourself as to what the word means and what it's implications are before taking shots at the intelligence of others.
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@Greyparrot
So they are too stupid to realize Kamala made the best policy choices regarding inflation. It's gonna be real hard for Kamala to claim victory laps when she can't convince a crowd of mostly paid actors and convinced volunteers that she is a winner regarding inflation. Even harder for the swingstate voter. Saying nearly nothing about inflation (again it was mentioned only 3 times over all the DNC speakers) is far, far worse and less effective than the bare minimum of at the VERY LEAST.... blaming Trump for inflation. In most swing sates, it is the top voting issue. Not a good first impression.
So yet again, when you have no substantive response to offer you divert back to "oh yeah well people agree with me".
Second... Paid actors? WTF? Are you forgetting which of the two candidates actually paid people to pretend to support him so he could brag about the size of his crowd?
Also... You love to pretend Kamala Haris as the VP is responsible for everything that Joe Biden did meanwhile pretending that JD Vance is irrelevant. You guys really need to pick one, but of course you won't.
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@Greyparrot
Next thing you will be spinning is...
Blah blah blah. Another meaningless response in the absence of any rational thought.
"the left" is brazenly dishonest,
lol
Selectively splicing a quote to completely change it's messaging while arguing someone else is dishonest...
A Biden appointee was directly in charge of protecting Trump, and allowed the assassination to take place.
Right... So Trump is personally and directly responsible for every bad thing that occurred while he was the president... Correct?
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@Greyparrot
You left out assassinating and jailing the opposition before an election.
Trump was convicted because he committed actual crimes.
The assassination attempt was carried out by a 20 year old kid who was a conservative and registered republican, who also searched political figures on both sides of the aisle to try and kill. Pretending that he has some inherent tie to "the left" is brazenly dishonest, but that describes you perfectly so of course you would continue peddling such obvious bullshit.
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@WyIted
his ideology of genocide was not a problem it was his tactics for obtaining power?
Of course this is what you heard, because you don't read. You skim through looking for trigger words and phrases so that you can attack arguments no one ever made.
I am not sure that the people in control of institutional power want to argue that Hitler's tactics such as obtaining control of institutional power, creating censorship and prosecuting people for wrong think, want to argue that those tactics are the problem and not his policies and ideologies themselves.
What I actually said is that his tactics are "more significant for us to learn about". The reason they are more significant for us to learn about is because unlike learning about his actual policies, learning about the tactics that he used will help us (along with every society on earth) to ensure a Holocaust type of event never happens again.
If everyone for example was to hear him use the word "vermin" to describe his political opposition and was able to instantly recognize that Hitler did the exact same thing... the mainstream media wouldn't need to educate us about it, which means that bad faith political actors who have every interest in propping up Donald Trump wouldn't be able to get away with manipulating the idiots among us into thinking that the left is engaging in violent rhetoric by comparing Trump to Hitler. Instead, we as a society would all be able to step back and say "oh wow, I see what he's trying to do there".
So once again, the literal reason we teach history in school is to ensure the populace knows it's history so it doesn't repeat it. Stopping it from being repeated doesn't just mean leaning what happened, it's learning how it was able to happen. Learning about the former is useless if you don't bother to learn the latter.
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@Greyparrot
Can you point to a single thing in your AI generated OP that is wrong?No, it's a 100% correct interpretation
Yeah, that's what I thought. Thanks.
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@Mall
They did say he was stupid. Why is this so difficult for you?
Correlation =/= causation. The fact that someone can be stupid and still make a ton of money does not mean that making a ton of money is a result of being stupid. Do you understand that?
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@Greyparrot
It's TDS week all week.
Can you point to a single thing in your AI generated OP that is wrong?
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@Greyparrot
So what's wrong with "Duh, we beat inflation?"
The fact that people are too stupid to recognize that beating inflation doesn't mean sending the economy into a deflationary spiral.
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@Greyparrot
Let's count the superlative hyperboles here...shall we?
No, we shall not.
Wake me up when you have an actual, substantive response.
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@Mall
Hey if it takes being stupid to have a lot money, maintaining it ,I've been going the wrong direction seeking education .
No one claimed or insinuated that his stupidity made him rich.
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@Greyparrot
This departure from the established process can be seen as undermining the democratic ideals of transparency and voter engagement that have been foundational in the selection of party nominees for over a century.
There is nothing about democracy that forces the nominee to continue after they decided to exit the race, and once the vacancy is created the party followed it's rules to select a replacement.
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@WyIted
Okay I take it back. And change it to it can't get worse than comparing him to hitler and insinuating he is
Hitler is a significant historical figure for more than one reason. Of course everyone thinks of the millions of Jews he slaughtered, but what I would argue is more significant for us to learn about is how he attained that power in the first place. The way he corrupted the minds of the people of his country to support the atrocity he lead and the way he seized control of Germany's government... It is those tactics where Trump shows remarkable similarities, and it is the obligation of any educated adult to inform people of them so we don't make the same mistakes. It's the literal reason we teach or children history in school.
This talking point of democrats calling Trump Hitler is breathtaking in how ignorant and wrongheaded it is.
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@Greyparrot
But of we want to talk about the tweets themselves, I'll turn it over to factcheck.org:Literally wtf....if you need a 3rd media party to read a tweet for you, you have no business voting.
Oh, my mistake. Too many words for you to process apparently.
1. He was the president. He could and should have done way more than tweet. He didn't. That in an of itself is pathetic.
2. His tweets were terribly insufficient. Everyone knew this at the time, including his own aides. Only Trumpers years out think these tweets exonerate him.
3. He didn't even want to send them. It took all of his people pleading with him to get him to say ok and he didn't even write them.
That clearer?
So Kamala wisely didn't take a "victory lap" on defeating inflation.
Because inflation is a complex topic and people don't have the attention span needed to understand it. That's why they go "dUh inflation is high and Biden president so Biden bad". Politics 101; you have to learn how to appeal to the stupid people.
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@Owen_T
Note Grey parrot's lack of an actual rebuttal
He never does. I interact with him only because I'm bored.
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@Greyparrot
meanwhile “inflation” three times, “crime” six times, and “border” only eight times.
Because inflation is already down to optimal levels, and the crime epidemic is a made up right wing fantasy.
I agree they should have talked about the border more. The fact that Trump tanked the toughest border bill we've seen in our lifetimes so that it could remain a problem he could use to scare his voters should have been emphasized way more.
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@Greyparrot
- The Capitol building is breached by rioters. At this time, Trump was reportedly watching the events unfold on television.
- Trump tweets: "Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!"
3:13 PM:
- Trump tweets: "I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence!Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!"
Okay. Then explain the three hours it took for Trump to call for peace on January 6th.That's easy. The media never reported these tweets calling for peace and discouraging violence.Go google these tweets and see for yourself. It's not the first or the last time media has lied to you for their own profit.
He was the president of the United States. His job was not to tweet about what was going on, it was to get off his ass and get on the phone with the national guard or whomever he needed to ensure an actual real world response was put together as soon as possible to protect the Capitol. To this day there is not a shred of evidence he did any of that, instead electing to watch it all on TV wondering why those around him were not as excited about what was going on as he was.
But of we want to talk about the tweets themselves, I'll turn it over to factcheck.org:
"As the violence at the Capitol escalated, the report notes, Meadows’ phone was flooded with messages from supporters urging the president to intervene. For example, at 2:32 p.m., Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham wrote to Meadows, “Hey Mark, The president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home.”
And at 2:35 p.m., former acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney wrote, “Mark: he needs to stop this, now.”
As Trump watched Fox News images of “the chaos and attack, with tear gas filling the air in the Capitol Rotunda,” he issued a tweet at 2:38 p.m., stating: “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!”
But many in Trump’s circle believed that wasn’t enough.For example, at 2:53 p.m., Donald Trump Jr. texted to Meadows, “He’s got to condem [sic] this shit. Asap. The captiol [sic] police tweet is not enough.”
Matthews, the then-deputy press secretary, said she told her boss, then-Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, that she didn’t think the president’s tweet went far enough and “that I thought there needed to be a call to action and he needed to condemn the violence.”
Matthews said McEnany told her “in a hushed tone” that Trump didn’t even want to include “any sort of mention of peace in that tweet and that it took some convincing on their part, those who were in the room. And she said that there was a back and forth going over different phrases to find something that he was comfortable with. And it wasn’t until Ivanka Trump suggested the phrase ‘stay peaceful’ that he finally agreed to include it.”
Trump wrote another tweet at 3:13 p.m., asking everyone at the Capitol to “remain peaceful. No violence!” and to “respect the Law.”
But again, Trump did not tell everyone to go home.
At 3:31 p.m., Fox News anchor Sean Hannity texted Meadows, “Can he make a statement. I saw the tweet. Ask people to peacefully leave the capital [sic].”
According to the committee’s report, “Almost everyone, including staff in the White House also found the President’s 2:38 p.m. and 3:13 p.m. tweets to be insufficient because they did not instruct the rioters to leave the Capitol.” And despite urging from numerous White House aides and Trump confidantes, “None of these efforts resulted in President Trump immediately issuing the message that was needed,” the committee’s report states.
According to the committee’s report, “Evidence showed that neither of these tweets had any appreciable impact on the violent rioters. Unlike the video-message tweet that did not come until 4:17 finally instructing rioters to leave, neither the 2:38 nor the 3:13 tweets made any difference.”
The fact that these tweets were insufficient because they did not tell the rioters to leave or even condemn what they were actively doing is common sense, and everyone from Mark Meddows to Shawn Hannity understood that on real time. The fact that Trump supporters find this argument convincing is a testament to how partisan hackery destroys the brain.
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@sadolite
maybe his supporters don't drink the media narrative Kool aide.
Every one of the controversies he listed that Trump was involved in are not disputable. They all happened, that's a fact. This whole thing about anti Trumpers only feeling the way they do only because they "drank the koolaid" is stupid and intellectually lazy. If a democrat was embroiled in just one of those the right would never stop talking about it. But that's pretty much the point of the thread, Trump is graded on an insane curve.
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@Owen_T
Okay. Then explain the three hours it took for Trump to call for peace on January 6th.
They won't.
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@Greyparrot
Maybe that's why the poor like him. You can be a fuckup and still do OK.
What does the fact that fuck ups can still be ok have to do with Trump?
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@Mall
So you can be dumb being a successful business person. So much for all these people paying money to go to school.
Just because one moron became a billionaire doesn't mean that every billionaire is a moron, nor does it mean that intelligence doesn't matter. That's common sense.
What's notable about the Trump example is setting aside that he inherited $400 million from his dad and his net worth would likely have been bigger if he just trough it in the stock market... Is that as far as I can tell the man hasn't offered anything to society. All of his business ventures where he was actually selling a product (Trump steaks, Trump vodka, Trump university) have failed. Even his casinos failed. The only thing the man has ever been good at is coning people into thinking he was some successful business genius. When we think of the Trump Org. what is it that he's selling? Himself? That's it?
The man is literally a poor man's version of a rich man.
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@IwantRooseveltagain
Tim Walz is a big, big problem for the Republicans
Nah, they got JD Vance
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@IwantRooseveltagain
They love to talk about what people are doing with their dicks. It's insanely bizarre and creepy.
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He has more money than you and all your family members combined.So, he is smarter than you.
Wow, I didn't realize there was an intelligence requirement on receiving an inheritance.
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@Greyparrot
You already said many times you hate Biden
I never said I hate Biden, don't know where you got that from. I have said I'm not a Biden fan, which I never was. I didn't vote in the primaries because by the time they got to NY it was pretty much decided, but I was happy he won because he consistently polled better against Trump than anyone else, which is all I really cared about.
I have come around more to him over recent years though as he's accomplished far more than could have ever been expected given these polarizing times. He has consistently shown that he's better at the job than most president's we've seen in our lifetimes, assuming of course that we're judging president's by accomplishments rather than TV performances.
he is however the only president who has had the majority of his own employees tell us he is unfit to serve.That typically happens when the opposition party invests millions paying them off with book deals and MSM shows.
No, it doesn't. Again, we've never seen that before.
And also, you're just a flat out liar. You have zero evidence the Democratic party paid any of these people anything, and their book deals only happened because their claims have credibility given the absurd behavior of the person they're talking about.
Moreover, you think former Biden officials couldn't have gotten booked every night on Fox news, OANN and News Max and sold books claiming Joe Biden is being controlled by some puppet master conglomerate lead by Hunter Biden and Barrack "Hussein" Obama? Of course they could have, yet no one has. Gee, I wonder why.
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@FLRW
He hires the best people
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@Greyparrot
nothing says 'trustworthy' like someone who was dismissed from a job for not going along with the program, right? These brave souls, who now definitely don't have any axes to grind
You frame this as a matter of trust out of projection. Clearly you don't understand how Occam's razor works and therefore don't recognize when others apply it, so instead you can only explain it to yourself as cultish blindness.
Donald Trump isn't the first president to fire people in his administration, he is however the only president who has had the majority of his own employees tell us he is unfit to serve. And the reasons they give us for his unfitness corroborate what we see from him everyday, so all they're confirming is that our eyes and ears work. Accepting their word as an accurate portrayal of the reality isn't mindlessness, it's the only rational response.
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@HistoryBuff
You do have to legitimately wonder if he knows that he's lying, or if the legitimately thinks this could be true.
I've stopped trying to decipher what is going on in that man's head a long time ago, it's a scary place to be. Trump is a walking paradox, whether you're talking about his intelligence, his racism, his narcism... There are just so many rabbit holes you can go down and many of them contradict eachother.
I think Sam Harris put it best when he said 'if Trump were half as bad he would seem worse, because at least then he'd be recognizably bad'. Because Trump is so terrible in so many ways nothing sticks to him because no one fault can maintain the spotlight long enough to come into focus, and with every fault there are a host of other faults that can potentially explain why he does or says the stupid or abhorrent things he does.
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@Greyparrot
Sorry, but that's your go to. Everyone you don't agree with is in a cult.
No, just those who show themselves to be cultists. I've never accused Thett of being a cultist. As much as I disagree with ADOL and don't think he applies any of the same standards towards his political views that he does anywhere else in life, I at least respect him for showing the capacity to think for himself. All you do is parrot talking points you heard on your right wing podcasts. That's why I lump you into that category.
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@Greyparrot
Lumping everyone you disagree with into one category is what you do, don't be sorry about it, just stop doing it.Why are MAGA cultists so incapable of fathoming ....
I wasn't referring to calling people names genius, I was talking about attacking people for positions they never supported.
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@Greyparrot
I am sorry if I unfairly lumped you in the "fine people on both sides, all Mexicans are bad people, and ingesting bleach" Cult.
Lumping everyone you disagree with into one category is what you do, don't be sorry about it, just stop doing it.
He did say there were fine people on both sides, and while he did try to say he wasn't talking about the neo Nazis that's just typical Trump playing both sides of the fence. There was no one else there he could have been referring to, certainly not in the images we all saw.
No on is claiming Trump said *every single* Mexican is bad, that's just your BS strawman.
The "he told people to ingest bleach" charge is deeply exaggerated and I've never framed it as such.
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@thett3
I never said his performance is impressive (I even said it’s terrible by the standards of politicians!) what I said is that it’s way way better than an average member of the public would be able to do, which is true.
I don't disagree with you that it's much harder than people think, especially when doing it in front of thousands or even millions of people. But for someone who's been doing it his whole life, it's hardly an excuse. And we're not just talking about standing up on a stage, we're talking about interviews, podcasts etc. There's never been an example during Trump's political career where he was "caught" sounding intelligent, certainly not on tape.
Idk how you can say that Biden is clearly so much better at this considering that like two months ago he lost a debate against Trump so badly that he had to drop out.
Biden's problem is not that he can't speak intelligently, it's that he's old so he suffers from repeated "senior moments". That's why I keep pointing out that Trump never shows the ability to speak extemporaneously while sounding intelligent, it's just not within him.
And it wasn't Trump that beat Biden, please don't pretend that Trump was just so intelligent in the debate that Biden was forced to step aside to the superior debater. Biden beat himself with a few bad moments. Most of the debate he was fine but but then the impression had already been made so it was too late.
Even before his severe cognitive decline he was known as a gaffe machine.
Gaffes are irrelevant to what we're talking about. This isn't about whether either of them can speak without bad moments, the conversation is about whether they show that they have the capacity for deep intellectual thought. Biden shows this regularly, senior moments aside. Trump doesn't.
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@Swagnarok
You act like signing a piece of paper is equivalent to the work Congress put in to draft, negotiate, re-draft, and re-negotiate a several thousand page bill. Newsflash: it isn't.
Why do you assume that the President, the one person who can singlehandedly decide whether the bill becomes law has no role in negotiating legislation?
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@Greyparrot
And in 9 years as a politician I've never heard him go into any kind of detail on any complex subject.That's understandable when the only exposure to Trump involves snippets taken out of context.
Why are MAGA cultists so incapable of fathoming that people don't have to get their news from podcast clips and can just watch a speech or interview for themselves? Do you know that you can just use Google? Or do you think only podcasters have the original footage?
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@thett3
Oh you said SOUNDING intelligent.
Not sure how this changes anything. We generally judge people's intelligence by the way they talk. A person's words are a window into their mind. Sure, in some cases when someone is nervous or speaking on a subject where they're out of their element we might need to consider such circumstances but with Trump he's been doing this for almost a decade and is the same everytime. The only time has ever shown himself capable of uttering a string of coherent and meaningful thoughts is when he is reading from a teleprompter.
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@thett3
Yes, I can’t tell who is more intelligent between Trump and Biden, Harris I would guess is more intelligent than Trump but by a small margin.
That's insane. Even grade school children listen to Trump and remark about how dumb he sounds. He has the vocabulary of a 4th grader, he'll make a statement that was meaningless the first time and then repeat it over and over again to fill up space because that's as deep as he can get, he talks about everything as a contrast between "good people" and "bad people", and in 9 years as a politician I've never heard him go into any kind of detail on any complex subject. You can't say any of that about Biden or Harris.
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@IwantRooseveltagain
According to the latest NY Times and Sienna College polling, Trump is leading in households that have a washing machine or a refrigerator on their front porch.
Don't forget households with gas stoves
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@Greyparrot
What would you know about arguing in good faith? You have zero experience with that concept.
And yet you can't provide a single example of me doing anything but.
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@IwantRooseveltagain
Queue the onslaught of right wingers attacking your 4 listed legislative accomplishments while making no effort to name another Trump accomplishment...
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@thett3
Even politicians who are very bad at it like Trump, Biden, Harris are better at it than probably 95%+ of the general population.
Are you suggesting that Trump, Biden, and Harris are basically the same when it comes to sounding intelligent?
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