A pro Trump thread to balance the 154 anti Trump threads!

[Carpediemtoday]

Thought I’d be brave and start a pro-Trump thread for a change, after all, there are so many anti-Trump ones , we need some balance!
I even tried commenting on an anti-Trump thread today… and wow, just kept being told to go away, my comments were not well received. Honestly, I feel honoured to feel as if I have been officially deported, what an achievement!😂

I have been through some of them before. Already in the judicial system.

Well, in the first term I was worried he'd immediately start global wars and he didn't so that was a pleasant surprise. Unfortunately it all went from 'I prefer the others but he's not failing' at the point he committed various crimes in office and incited a coup and has only got worse.

Stopping men from going into women's changing rooms

Well yes, it's the 2nd amendmemt.

Does that make it right then? Not sure I follow.

There are hateful racists in every country. And child raping , self serving , addled sociopaths.

The trick is not to make them supreme leader.

The Second Amendment means the right to bear arms. A US citizen who was legally carrying a firearm (and had a permit to do so) was shot because he was carrying a legal gun.

I think you’ve misunderstood the Second Amendment.

That's only in capitol hill. Men are still going in women's changing rooms all over the country. There was only a recent one in Planet Fitness where a bloke was jacking off in the womens change room.

Trump's rule only exists for congress and the senate buildings. No where else in the country.

Lets face it, it is mainly the MAGA pro gun crowd that misunderstand the 2nd. " a well regulated militia" keeps getting ignored.

Judge Biery signed the order with a photo of Liam and two bible verses:

The first is "But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven."

The second is simply "Jesus wept."

Oh I couldn’t agree more- no it’s not remotely right , I was responding to a poster saying well people here would agree with the ice methods and would vote for it -

My friends son is at uni in the US and it’s a running joke that college (uni) fees are so ridiculous- tuition alone is 60k/year- that they need to shop a few international students as it’s something like a 10k reward.

what makes it not funny is while they are all there legally on F1 visa’s, all they need to add to that phone call is they’re working, or hold certain opinions, or wrote an essay disagreeing with US politics, or whatever minor infraction invalidates the visa.
Ice doesn’t ask questions, there’s no due process to evaluate if the accusations are true, they’ll deport.

Let’s be serious for a moment and acknowledge that there is a certain level of hysteria around Donald Trump on MN which makes serious discussion almost impossible. This thread is trying to balance that.

Statements like “He is deranged”, “orange fascist”, “fascist dictator”, “He. Is. A. Paedophile.” do not constitute debate. They are expressions of emotion. And a lot of what is said about Trump on MN is emotional rather than analytical.

I am not a Trump supporter. I am neutral. I am interested in politics, geopolitics, and the broader world order (whatever that currently is). And there is my disclaimer.

Trump supporters credit him with economic and policy outcomes, not his personality. They credit him with reducing unemployment, with wage growth (particularly pre-Covid), tax reforms that made US businesses more competitive internationally, and which they argue encouraged investment.

They also argue that deregulation benefited entrepreneurs and small businesses, particularly sectors weighed down by excessive regulatory constraints.

Despite the belief on MN that Trump was about to invade Greenland, and that anyone who saw his rhetoric as hyperbolic rather than literal was somehow delusional, Greenland has not been invaded. See past threads!

Trump can also be credited with being the first US president in decades not to start a new international conflict, which appeals to his supporters who want America to stay out of other countries wars.

His supporters also credit him with helping to establish a diplomatic framework that enabled negotiations between Israel and several Arab states.

Whet one likes Trump or not, it’s hard to deny that Europe has been forced to wake up to the reality that it must pay for its own defence.

I read widely across respected international news outlets that cover geopolitics, economics, nationalism, internationalism, populism, liberalism, centrism, the whole spectrum. On these platforms discussion is at a completely different level to that of MN. Serious arguments are made without hysteria.

By all means criticise Trump. There are legitimate criticisms to be made. But endless emotional labelling shuts down debate rather than encourage engagement.

If we’re interested in politics rather than venting, we should at least try to engage with serious discussion and debate.

But vent away MNetters!

There’s no hysteria here in Canada. We just want him out of office and locked up. Happy for some of the more moderate states to become a part of Canada 🤣

He hasn’t settled any wars - Palestinian is still getting bombed as is Ukraine.

He has zero understanding of finances - he still doesn’t get how tariffs work. Unemployment in the US is on the rise as is the cost of living.
If you listen to his speeches, he hadn’t ruled out military action to take Greenland. He still thinks he made a deal - listen to what the Prime Ministers of Denmark and Greenland say - there is no deal or framework for one.

What has he achieved. Real achievements not what he says he's done. Quantifiable results?

If there was something quantifiable that he has achieved, it's all cancelled out with the fact he has sewn division. You are either with him, or you are the enemy. It doesn't matter what your position in life is... a Senator, a famous person, a writer, orator, a lawyer, a media outlet, or just a decent guy trying to put food on the table. You are painted as the enemy of the States. He will either sue the arse off you, or rally his nutjob fans to attack you if you stick your head above the parapet. Or murder you in cold blood like Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Freedom of the press and the people is under threat, he targets people and organisations for retribution. He will persecute you, mock you, because he wants to sew the seeds of division. He has made America at its most divided since the Civil War.

So, sorry, I don't care what good he has done, the above cancels it out.

Trump supporters credit him with economic and policy outcomes, not his personality. They credit him with reducing unemployment, with wage growth (particularly pre-Covid), tax reforms that made US businesses more competitive internationally, and which they argue encouraged investment.
They also argue that deregulation benefited entrepreneurs and small businesses, particularly sectors weighed down by excessive regulatory constraints.

Well, I also read, watch and listen widely across many sectors, and the facts are that Trump supporters crediting him with those things doesn't make them true. If you want to assert those things, you need to back them up with statistics and facts, and no credible news outlets credit him with more than very small and occasional positives on these things on the balance sheet, with more many potential negatives should his proposed policies end up being carried out. You cannot, at this point in time, realistically factor in things that happened pre-Covid, when he was surrounded by more serious staff with some credibility and desire to influence his behaviour. You particularly can't point to them without a serious analysis of the second-term Biden economy which he inherited and which, by all serious accounts, was quite robust, albeit a lot of people weren't feeling the benefits.

The point isn't whether he was actively going to invade Greenland. The point is the destabilising of the framework of international accord that has kept us all safe and living in relative harmony for a long time. There may not be soldiers invading Greenland, but the shock waves and their effects are going to be felt for a very long time, leaving all of us, not only less secure, but creating international alliances that may not be particularly beneficial. You also can't claim to have started no new international conflicts when you are committing war crimes by executing people on boats in international waters with no due process, and that's without getting into the ongoing situation in Venezuela, which by all accounts in that serious international media, of which you claim to be so fond, is continuing to be extremely troubled and unstable, despite Trump's deposit into his Qatari bank account.

I will give him some credit on the Israel/Palestine framework, although that would seem to be a pretty fragile accord, particularly if you look at the events of the last couple days. It's hard to give much credit, however, to his plan to turn Gaza into a branded resort, headed by his son-in-law, after the native population has been dispersed.

You can pretend to yourself that you're reasoned and neutral, but in this instance that requires denial of the facts.

They credit him with reducing unemployment, with wage growth (particularly pre-Covid), tax reforms that made US businesses more competitive internationally, and which they argue encouraged investment.
They also argue that deregulation benefited entrepreneurs and small businesses, particularly sectors weighed down by excessive regulatory constraints.

Yet there is absolutely zero evidence of this, it is Trump lies. In fact, on the contrary. He is tanking the economy.

Fair enough

This. With bells on

And sorry to add to such a long reply, but it also seems to me that in your attempt to analyse things factually and neutrally, you're not looking at any of the potential longer-term ramifications of his actions. You can't look at actions as discrete, in isolation. Everything has larger ripples.

Taking the dismantling of USAID as one example. If you are a complete psychopath and didn't care that it has already led to somewhere around 500,000 deaths, you could cheer that. But you are hardly likely to ultimately cheer the vastly increased soft power that it hands to China or the inevitable mutating of diseases that were under some control, such as TB and HIV, to new and more transmissible strains.

He absolutely hasn’t. Maybe turn off Fox News.

Foreign relations are at an all time low, regular Americans pay more for their everyday living, medical care is more expensive.

Not to mention his highly antagonistic rhetoric.

It’s like saying I’m dating this guy who is really hot, but he’s generally an asshole, is terrible with money, treats me like shit and can’t hold a job. Him being hot doesn't make up for all of that.

Your naivety is astounding and frankly unless you are American you don’t understand the situation.

Facts are facts🙄
Sad

@expatme I am not claiming Trump personally caused low unemployment or wage growth, or that every supposed positive in my post stacks up. My point was that these are the arguments his supporters make, and that they aren’t all reducible to stupidity or fascism, which is how they’re often treated on MN.

Obviously outcomes don’t exist in a vacuum. Global cycles, inherited conditions, Covid, institutions all matter. But acknowledging context doesn’t mean debate becomes illegitimate, or that it should be shut down with caricature.

On Greenland and rhetoric, I am not saying words don’t matter. I am saying MN has a habit of taking Trump’s language in the most literal, catastrophic way possible. Hyperbole and signalling aren’t new in international politics, whether we like it or not.

On “no new international conflict”, I am not suggesting that Trump has a spotless moral record, or denying his controversial actions. I’m pointing out that he didn’t initiate a new large-scale foreign military intervention in the way several of his predecessors did. That distinction matters to a lot of voters, supporters, even if others think it shouldn’t.

I don’t disagree that Trump is destabilising. But I think the reaction to him, the loss of proportionality, the refusal to distinguish between rhetoric and action and the constant moral escalation, is destabilising too. Politics and political opinion conducted in panic and hysteria isn’t more ethical, is it?

Criticism grounded in evidence is necessary. As
your post addresses. So is the ability to discuss why millions of people support a politician without assuming they’re stupid, immoral or acting in bad faith. That was the space I was aiming to address. “His supporters”.

The reason I posted was because thread after thread on MN about Trump, are challenging to read, and I do, not in defence of Trump, stand by my point regarding hysteria.

The problem for you is that Trump has increased unemployment, wages have stagnated, the economy is tanking, farmers are walking off the land, and Trump's approval rating from Fox to CNN and in between is at record lows.

That's the problem with your argument. There is nothing Trump has achieved, at all. Except for destruction.

Which country do you live in?