To ask if Donald Trump could actually be president again?

[tinkertee]

I've just seen a headline about him now being the front runner for the Republican nomination. Which I assume means it's entirely a possibility that he could then win.

I'm British (English) so I know our current government is a complete embarrassment. But I will never get my head around DT having been president once never mind possibly twice.

How could this happen??

@jasflowers It wasn’t so much Trump pointing out the idiocy of Germany’s energy policy it was the fact that they visibly laughed at him for doing so. The complete phasing out of nuclear energy in Germany coinciding with a reliance on Russia for half its gas and over a third of oil hasn’t played out well.

Personally I prefer a balance of media sources. I read the Times and FT every day and listen to R4 but also listen to a huge range of podcasts. I would hate to have one without the other as podcasts provide so much more depth, context, nuance and investigation. These days I find the BBC in particular superficial and rather patronising, sometimes I feel like I’m listening to something aimed at children!

I don’t see the problem with Biden tripping over. I trip over occasionally and am half his age 🤷‍♀️ He may be POTUS but he’s only human!

But It’s not really about tripping over is it, what about all the times he has been visibly confused and all the very embarrassing verbal gaffes, calling out to a congresswoman who died sometime ago and so on. There are too many to list.

I honestly believed that Melania would divorce him after his presidency was over. Surprised that didn’t happen. She does seem to have a lower profile these days, and it looks like Ivanka has subtly distanced herself too.

Which isn’t great but he’s still a safer pair of hands than Trump (who stumbles, fumbles and gets very very confused too). At least Biden is a bit benign whereas Trump is bloody dangerous.

Id rather have a basically benign idiot than a psychopathic giant toddler idiot!

The US has lost its taste for foreign wars. Trump is the only president for about half a century that didn't embroil the US in an interventionist war and he will pull funding from Ukraine on day oner which is what a majority of US voters say they want.

US votes no longer want the US to be the democratic enforcer / police of the rest of the world. Understandable tbh even though their withdrawal from the foreign stage will be very bad for Europe and Asia.

I think the problem with the BBC is largely the rise of 24 hour news channels.

If you watch the 10 o'clock news, it normally comes across as pretty good and balanced. That's because they don't really have time to comment on the news, just try to report it as is. It all seems pretty reasonable, although you can sometimes see an agenda showing through in the stories they report.

But when you delve into the 24 hour channels there is a lot of agenda pushing. TBH when you have so much time available it is hard to fill it with just news. And once you get into the business of making commentary, it becomes exponentially harder to remain impartial. Because it is not just reporting the facts, it is also interpreting the facts and that is almost impossible to do neutrally.

IMO I think they are a lot more careful about how they report UK news than international news. Probably because they know if they are seen to be biased in UK politics that is going to have some real consequences, but they can maybe get away with being a bit more opinionated on US issues because the chance someone will kick off about that that has some power to influence their funding is less. Personally I don't like the idea of having a state funded broadcaster that can have its own independent agenda on the interpretation of international politics - whether the BBC actually does this or not is open to interpretation.

I think it is a real problem for any organisation that wants to be seen as unbiased to also have commentary. Personally I would like them to stick to the facts (which is often difficult enough) without going down the rabbit hole of interpretation. Whether a 24 hour news channel can be made out of that alone I don't know.

Yes I don’t think pp who scoff at US learning from their vote or as often seen on here deriding them for getting involved are thinking through this impact closer to home

Yeah I mean the US has basically been the world's peace keeper since 1945, sometimes they 'kept the peace' through armed conflict and some interventions worked better than others but fact is there's not been a world war since then.

Trump was an isolationist who has said numerous times he doesn't want the US to carry on being the world's policeman and this is a very popular stance with voters who see many problems closer to home.

The madness going on in the Middle East and to an extent Russia/Ukraine is partly driven by the knowledge these belligerents have that the US under another Trump presidency will no longer intervene and this emboldens them.

It's easy to slag off the US and a lot of people do but I believe we will really miss their presence when it's gone as a world peacekeeper.

I think things could get quite nasty actually.

No, I don't think it is most, evidenced by this thread. Clearly many who have strong anti-Trump-no-matter-what opinions have no idea about the border issues and the wall specifically.

I'm not sure what your point is here, about the media, I've not suggested that people should abandon anything. But the centrist and left media in the UK were terrible at reporting on Trump, and in some cases downright dishonest, often through omission rather than lies as such.

Genuinely, can you expand on the omissions in left/centrist UK media that amount to 'downright dishonest'?

I have family in the US, my work for years (until last summer) was in the US, and I definitely have a foot in both places.

I am anti-Trump-no-matter-what, I know the border issues in all kinds of ways, but I can't square that with the rest of your comment.

Loathing everything that Trump is doesn't mean I've somehow missed a chunk of vital narrative.

You may well be more informed, but do you think that's true of most on the thread?

I think the one that shocked me the most was the business about the statue, where it was presented as if he said "both sides" - which supposedly meant protesters and neo-nazis - had good points. People were of coursed incensed that he seemed to think neo-nazis had some good points. It's quite clear from recordings of the whole thing that he didn't say that at all, he clearly said the neo-nazis were to be condemned totally, and "both sides" refereed to people with varying views about statues. It just seemed like such a clear abdication of normal journalistic practice - which is where the mainstream media ought to be outperforming alternative media IMO - and not just lazy, but deliberate, and also not just one media source, but all of them (or at least I don't think I saw any that didn't do it, I may have missed some though.)

In general the media gave a very poor sense of what kinds of policies Trump was proposing that were really new. A heck of a lot of his policies were very similar to Obama's, but were presented as if they were unique. A failure to cover things that might have put him in a good light, such as meeting with black conservative groups. Just not the kind of balanced coverage of normal political stuff that you'd expect from major media.

It seems much worse in the UK though. It's understandable to an extent since it's not local, but people seem to have the strong sense that they know what went on. Look at the first few pages of the thread. There are posters who have strong opinions about how terrible Trump was, but no idea at all about why people are saying Biden isn't popular, or the extent to which he's adopted Trump policies. I don't know if I've seen any who are aware of the questions around Biden's support for minority groups, which are pretty significant if that's something that people feel is important.

People will vote for trump if their lives were better when he was president - which was the case for loads of Americans he also took popular ideas and tried to make them work - huge boarder wall. If you’ve spent any time in the US you will quickly realise that they are vastly different to brits in terms of their political and religious attitudes we tend towards apathy while in the US fervency is very much the order of the day

I'm not fan of Trump but I don't really understand the media hysteria over him becoming president. Trump says bad things but Biden does bad things - even Obama (despite all his good talk) in terms of actions was worse than Trump.

Trump will scrap any pretence that the USA might have on climate change (which he did first time round) he'll withdraw from NATO, he tried to overthrow, using violence & his own personal threats to officials, an election result.

What exactly did Biden & Obama do that even comes close?

We in Europe had better get ready to massively re-arm and that means large tax increases and less public services, we wont use Nuclear weapons, so thats no deterrent to Russia.

What? Trump sexually assaults women and brags about it. Are you a woman? Do you have daughters?

And that’s just one thing. But alone, that is enough to rule him out in my view.

its been shown that he made no positive difference to peoples lives. Or very little. He was actually very ineffective. Just like he’s a crap businessman. He has less wealth than he started out with.

It’s all perception though isn’t it if people felt like things were better under trump then that’s how they’ll vote. as a visitor to the US things felt better there under Trump than they do now under Biden, but not as good as things felt under Obama it’s all completely subjective.

I still find it staggering that US voters can completely ignore the multitude of racist, homophobic, misogynist, disablist and generally hugely offensive remarks he's made though. Mind you, Johnson is another example of how people can totally disregard values and common decency in favour of a 'character' who is actually deeply hateful.

people do what’s best for them in their circumstances - society and altruism go out the window when it comes down to it everyone likes to think that they make the ‘right’ choice for the bigger picture but no one actually does.

Yes it could

And more so for Europe than the US. If they pull up their borders and stop funding they’ll likely be better off anyway

I find it a bit silly and self defeating when I see pp decrying US funds.

I don't agree with this. The whole essence of socialist belief is that shared responsibility improves quality of life for all. It was Thatcher who promulgated the belief that there is no society, only individuals. Over time the electorate swing either right or left, most are centrists by nature. Left wing supporters are less likely to support tax cuts and cuts to public services. It's a fallacy that everyone is in it for themselves.

And that is is a huge falsehood. US corps repatriated BILLIONS of dollars back into the US economy, low income Americans made their first gains over cost of living in DECADES, H1 Visas were enforced for the first time in decades, illegal immigration slowed dramatically, The US came up with the fastest most effective vaccine for Covid, Germany started paying more of its obligation for NATO, and on and on - but heyho, why let facts get in the way of bias?

And this I agree with! Which is why I would love to see Nikki Haley and Mike Pence as the dream team for republicans. Biden is crooked and ineffective!

Absolute rubbish. Lots of people vote for left wing politicians when they know it may make them personally financially worse off. The only way in which your comment is true is if you widen it out and say left wing voters think a caring society with less inequality is ultimately better for them (since it’s better for everyone).