to be watching with my jaw dropped as Trump goes into full meltdown at his press briefing?

[sadpapercourtesan]

Is anyone else watching this?! He is literally ranting like a man possessed, I've never seen anything like it. He's declared war on the media (I know we're used to him lashing out at journalists but this is on another level)

I'm watching it on CNN and they have breaking news straplines like "Trump uses task force briefing to rewrite history on coronavirus response", "Angry Trump turns briefing into propaganda session" and "Angry Trump uses propaganda video, produced by government employees at taxpayers' expense"

He has just said, verbatim: "When somebody is President of the United States, that authority is total"

I thought our daily briefings were bullshit

It sounds a lot, but when you consider the US's Department of Health of Human Services has a budget of $1.4 trillion, you see why the World (rightly or wrongly) looks to the US

But that department looks to domestic health, so not sure they would be in a great place to cover global health. If the rest of the world looks to US leadership on health it is sorely misplaced then!

As the US is the biggest funder to the WHO, I would expect the rest of the world to
increasingly step up as the US does not have your best interests at heart (though better than China I suppose). They are paid with US taxes to look after their own. This isn’t going to change even if Trump is gone

And while we're all sneering at American leadership can I point out that we had more deaths here yesterday.

Per capita, sorry, posted to soon.

Ever since WW2, the world - at least the democracies - have looked to the US president, as the leader in times of crisis

Trump is trashing decades of soft power and respect, in his belief that only force matters
only the USA matters

He leaves a vaccum for Russia, China, regionally other dictatorships, to fill
No Western country is able to step up and replace US leadership
The UK has also been going through a Stupid Phase, that prevents other countries looking to us instead, which might just have happened under a Blair, Thatcher, Major

Future US presidents will be cursing Trump for the new world order he is bringing about,
in which the USA has lost its pre-eminent position
and old enemies have surged in power

What really irritates me is his very limited vocabulary which seems to consist of twelve words, 'beautiful' , 'nasty' etc. He seems to be emotionally stuck at about age 7

SAD!

HellotomyKitty The polls of the issues important to Trump voters consistently list these issues

I said one or more issues, not all of them

• many voters will have 1-2 important issues, no more

btw, anyone who thought Trump would be good for average - not well off - working people should also avoid giving their money to Nigerian princes

Hilary was a weak candidate
So weak that apart from Obama's first term, she got more votes than any other presidential candidate In history! The problem is the system.

No Western country is able to step up and replace US leadership

Where is the EU on this? They have plenty of resources and experts, one should ask why they are relying on US leadership.

Future US presidents will be cursing Trump for the new world order he is bringing about,
in which the USA has lost its pre-eminent position
and old enemies have surged in power

This is the problem right here. How does the US jockeying for top position on the world stage help the average American? How did the Middle East conflicts, where people looked to American leadership, help anyone in the US?

The voter doesn’t give any shits about world leadership and it shows through their voting patterns.

My American neighbours are West coast educated liberals, lifelong Democrats , but couldn't feel they could vote for Hillary Clinton

My late mother's huge extended family are nearly all Trump supporters

They are mostly wealthy Arab Christians, Evangelicals with dark brown skins - but the latter point never affects their voting

Lower taxes for the rich and stopping abortion are all they care about
They ignore absolutely every other issue
Anyone who criticises Trump is an enemy (so I'm long NC)

BigChoc then you are exaggerating things. Did the polls literally ask if they wanted:

Lower taxes for the better off

Maybe they wanted lower taxes for everyone, it’s a legitimate POV

unrestricted rights to buy as many powerful guns as they want

No, it probably just polled their support of the second amendment, not unrestricted rights to buy as many powerful guns as they want

Keeping most African Americans poor and away from power

I’d like to see this poll. I bet it didn’t happen.

Your interpretation of what Trump voters wanted is very off and subject to your biases. Think about that.

Trump keeps congratulating himself on 'stopping' flights from China, which of course he didn't, he just stopped non US citizens coming from there. The problem was that apart from that he did nothing for 6 weeks. He tried to deny it could be serious and belittled anyone who suggested such. He could have started campaigns to ensure hand washing, reducing numbers meeting in groups, social distancing, checking there was enough stock of all the equipment available and encouraging preparedness. But no, he just poo hooed anyone who questioned his stance. He made it all about him, suggesting Governors had to be 'nice' to him or he wouldn't give them equipment. He has no moral fibre or a social conscience at all. He partisan approach is appalling.

The whole things was a farce.

I’m suprised the tv screen didn’t turn brown given the amount of bullshit flying around in that room.

It would be funny if it’s wasn’t such a serious situation

The hate of some Democrats for Clinton is an example of the self-harm many on the left indulge in
Not just in the USA

Their factionalism, demonisation of any politician not in their clique, their lack of ability to compromise is why the right is in power most years

The politicians of the right are only interested in keeping power - perks for them and lower taxes for their wealthy backers
Their other policies are just to get votes - Trump doesn't give a shit about God or abortion

So they'll push "Compassionate Conservatism", "America First" or any other strategy that they think they can sell to voters

Even those conservatives who despise everything about Trump will nearly all vote for him.

The fact that 48% of Americans think he’s the best person to be President puts them all in a very bad light imo. I struggle to understand why he has so many adoring, worshipping acolytes when he’s clearly completely unstable and unsuitable for the job.

@HelloToMyKitty

This should never be the responsibility of the US president, as they should be doing this role for the internal states....

One of the issues that Trump campaigned on was, 'America First,' which appealed to lots of Americans, and not just the blue collar workers in the traditionally held Republican states, but some who felt that the US shouldn't be in Iraq/Iran [enter name of country here] and shouldn't have so much of an international presence.

The WHO doesn't have the power of USA/China/Russia that would be needed to implement a global response.

But agree with you that the President should be coordinating the effort in the USA which he is almost definitely incapable of doing, side stepping the intelligence issue, there simply isn't the federal infrastructure to be able to respond.

Actually kitty that sums up my Trump voting BIL really well, as it goes.

HelloToMyKitty Read the many analyses of the values and beliefs that Democrats and Republicans have

Of course no respectable poll will ask whites whether they wish to keep power, keep African Americans out of power

Trump is the rare exception in a democracy:
a genuinely evil, corrupt leader who doesn't even bother to hide this

If he had risen to power in a country without such long democratic conditions and without a federal structure, his true colours would be more obvious

He had this right
"If I shot someone in Times Square, my supporters would still vote for me"

And no, I'm in the centre, not on the left
In fact, in the last EU elections in Germany, I chose CDU, which is right of centre

God, this thread is pure Trump Derangement Syndrome.
I don't like Trump but to suggest he is somehow the devil compared to St Obama is nonsense.
In 2015 people were fed up of Washington. Government doing nothing for them. The rust belt destroyed by trade deals which sent jobs overseas.
Also bear in mind that Clinton started the campaign way out in front of Trump but the more people heard her, the less they liked her.
If Trump did half the stuff that Obama did then you would all have a fit:

• Obama's war on whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning _during Obama's two terms the number of foreign interventions rose from 2 to 8. Libya is now a failed state where open air slave trading takes place

• Drone killings overseas which a leaked document showed that 90% of drone strikes killed the wrong people. Deaths included a 16 year old american citizen. Obama had a kill list (and a nobel peace prize!)

- Guantanamo remained open despite Obama's campaign promises - Obama's cabinet filled with Wall St elites - Failure to help people impacted by the 2008 banking crisis including removal of bankruptcy protections I could go on - these are all in the public domain.

Trump is rude and uncouth but he has a point with the media. He says out loud what has been whispered privately before. Politicians are all the same and if you don't get that then you are at best pretty naive.

I don't know about this, a friend of mine who follows everything US related nearly as a hobby said out of everyone they could have put forward Hilary was a weak candidate, it wasn't that she was a female, it was simply that they felt she represented more of the same, and the average voter didn't see her as having anything to give them

I’m American myself and am going off US history. First female elected into Congress was in the 1890s, first black elected into Congress 1870s. The right to vote was given to black men in 1870 (being able to exercise that vote was another matter) while white women weren’t able to til 1920.

The US also has a tendency to like people they recognise and political dynasties. Hilary was a weak candidate, but she at least had political experience and did win the popular vote. Trump was a weak candidate too and him winning was unprecedented when he had never held a political office, worked for the government or served in the military. Only 5 presidents out of 45 have ever been elected without political experience, three of them served in the military and one had worked for the US government. Trump is the only president out of 45 that hasn’t. He doesn’t even have a law degree.

If you're on here and you're American, do you appreciate that Trump is at best a laughing stock and at worst a dangerous egomaniac in the eyes of most of the rest of the world?
And that Fox News just seems to play the role of what rubbish newspapers like The Sun in the UK do? I don't think our TV media has any equivalent to Fox News, that just praises whatever Boris Johnson does and laughs at any criticism?

The USA has for decades regarded itself as the leader of the West
Of course, if the US chooses to step aside from this, they lose a great deal of power and needn't expect the support they always demand in return for their foreign policy objectives

Personally, I'd welcome the US concentrating on its own country
and especially stopping its wars and regime changes etc around the world

Unfortunately, Trump's foreign policy strategy for MAGA is trying to wreck every international body:
WTO, NATO, UN, EU, WHO .....

This actually hurts the rest of us

Rainbunny I read that Yale Medical School Forensic Psychiatrist Bandy Lee has branded Trumps behaviour as ‘anti-human psychology. That”Criminality combines with mental pathology” in his handling of the CV pandemic. She quotes “ The group he has isolated may not be ethnic, but it is his own cultural grouping of ‘non-voters’ or ‘critics’, when he has withheld lifesaving equipment from states where governors have criticised him, while giving a surplus to states with sycophantic governors. When criminality combines with mental pathology, this kind of large-scale violence becomes possible. Eventually, it will be destructive to all. “

Fox is a state propaganda machine. Much like North Korea's one TV station praising the dear leader.

And yet his approval ratings continue to hover in the mid to high forties. If it was just his 'base,' it would be half that.