I really, really hate it when people normalize Donald. I’m serious.
He’s not a normal candidate; he’s not even a normal human being. He is a subnormal who happened to be born into a lot of dough.
Lakai: Trump is good at marketing? How do you figure?
Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, the Trump shuttle, all the failed and shuttered Trump Casinos…how do you lose money RUNNING A CASINO?
Trump is good at NOTHING that creates value. If the world were reduced to primitive existence, Trump would be dead in a week.
I would say “eaten by the other feral humans,” but I have a delicate stomach.
Trump University was a great marketing scam, that is, great for everyone named Donald Trump. Everyone lost money except him. I’d be in jail if I had done that.
Loser!
You could not be more correct. There is something stopping what Trump says he wants from becoming reality, and that is the fact that he has no political power. Keeping his ideas in the realm of wild speeches is the duty of every American.
As others have pointed out, Clinton has 30 years of experience as a politician to serve as an indicator of how she will lead. Regardless of what you think about the emails, Bengasi, the Clinton Foundation, her crack team of assassins and whatever else she is accused of, you have something to gauge her policies on.
Trump’s only experience would appear to be being Donald Trump. And from what I am seeing, that is mostly experience being a shady businessman.
Trump also shows a incredible lack of emotional intelligence or basic economic, geopolitical and historical knowledge that would be required to govern effectively.
Here are common excuses I hear from Trump supporters:
The press/DNC is baiting him / ganging up on him
He will tone it down once he’s in power
He will delegate most of the actual day to day
His handlers aren’t doing a good job of handling him
He makes most of that up for the election
All these statements make Trump sound like a thin skinned loose cannon who doesn’t know what he’s doing, is mostly full of shit, and will do a half assed job. But everything will be ok if we just elect him and let him enact his policies that most experts in their fields think are unworkable.
Suit yourself, it’s your thread - but I sincerely hope most voters aren’t of the “candidates get a free pass to say absolutely anything” school of thought.
I’ve got the impression–and I could easily be mistaken–that the OP is trying to psych himself up to vote Trump. If that is the case, then the myriad facts which are inconvenient to Trump are likely to be unwelcome.
That would give Trump Steaks a whole new meaning…
I don’t see the point of this thread. “rational” and Trump not only don’t belong in the same sentence, they don’t even belong on the same planet. Trump is a naked opportunist, he’ll take whatever position benefits him at that exact moment and contradict himself whenever it’s convenient.
However two things that he has claimed long before he ran for president is that climate change is a fraud “invented by the chinese” and that vaccines are somehow linked to autism. Those two things are enough to disqualify him as president on their own in my opinion.
Trump is great at marketing. But remember, he’s not marketing vodka to drinkers, he’s marketing the Trump[sup]TM[/sup] name to a vodka company; and at that he’s been very successful. As near as I can tell, Trump gets his money up front for the use of his name, or management and consulting fees, and after that it doesn’t matter if the casino, or the steaks, or the university go belly-up, Trump can still brag about his own success.
Trump’s genius is in convincing people that he is on their side. You go into a deal with Trump thinking that you’re in it together, that with your money and his business acumen you’ll both make a fortune. When the dust settles, your investment is now Trump’s profit. He is now pulling the same con on millions of voters.
Trump has done nothing in government, so I don’t see how he could be judged besides on what he says he will do. His record in business is pretty awful, as Warren Buffett said, and he does not even give us enough information (like his tax returns) to judge that.
We have evidence that he ripped off investors, suppliers and customers. We have the evidence of Trump U. We might have questions about the morality of how Romney made his money, but he at least made money. Trump’s one accomplishment is selling himself as a brand, and that is pretty feeble for a president.
Someone without much experience in foreign affairs has to educate himself, so if he was up to speed, that could be an accomplishment. But as we see from the Ukraine discussion, he isn’t. What he said is just an example of his ignorance. Ditto for the NATO talk.
Another accomplishment would be building a good team of advisers. He hasn’t done that either. His economics team has one PhD and that guy is a crackpot. Understanding or predicting the impact of economic policies is not the same thing as running a hedge fund, and he has no one who can give any kind of advice.
Clinton’s accomplishments are pretty clear. Just like the economy, the Middle East was a mess when she came in. It still is, but she certainly didn’t screw things up as badly as Bush/Cheney/Powell/Rice.
Ok. Let’s talk established facts.
Benghazi -
Fact: multiple investigations, plus the testimony of numerous military personnel say Clinton did nothing wrong.
Trump’s business deals
Fact: Trump has a history of failed businesses and bankruptcies. Multiple banks refuse to do business with him because they’ve been burned on past deals. Trump also has a history of stiffing his contractors.
Email servers
Fact: The FBI criticized Clinton’s use of a private email server but found there was nothing criminal about it.
Trump University
Fact: Trump University was billed as a chance to learn from Donald directly and from his handpicked teachers. Trump is being sued by multiple students for failing to live up to those billings. The outcome of the suits is still in the air.
Trump has claimed that the judge in one of the suits is biased, calling the judge - a natural born American Citizen - a Mexican who can’t be fair because he, Donald, is building a wall.
Whitewater
Fact: 7 years, 40 Million dollars, multiple investigations - no evidence that Bill or Hillary did anything illegal in regards to Whitewater (Bill’s impeachment, which he famously passed without conviction, was related to testimony about his consensual relationship with Monica Lewinsky).
Omarosa
Fact: She’s a former contestant on Donald Trump’s reality show and is currently in charge of African-American Outreach for Donald’s campaign. She’s real. She exists.
That about covers it.
Hillary Clinton has caused the deaths of many people, while Trump has killed none. This is only because Clinton has wielded the deadly instrument of state, while Trump only seeks to.
I think.
Here’s what I know:
Trump professes the same tired old Republican economic policy- cut taxes for the wealthy, gut regulation, and slash the social safety net. It hasn’t worked the previous times it was tried and it won’t work now. The result would be skyrocketing income inequality and exploding deficits. Hillary is much more progressive in her approach to taxes and more practical regarding regulation. She at least recognizes the need to address global warming while Trump refuses to admit that it exists.
Trump has submitted a list of right wing reactionary judges that he would appoint to Supreme Court vacancies. Say goodbye to abortion rights and say hello to our corporate masters. Hillary would of course appoint sound center-left judges who would preserve reproductive freedom.
Trumps foreign policy is to speak loudly and swing a nuclear stick. He asked repeatedly why we can’t use nuclear weapons as if that would be useful in fighting terrorism. Hillary is well respected by foreign leaders and has exhibited sound judgment in this area and would continue Obama’s legacy of working to bridge the gulf with former adversaries like Iran and Cuba.
Still waiting for the OP to make his case. I assume for Trump.
What say you, Saint Cad?..
Facts:
Trump: multiple bankrupted businesses; business model based primarily on stiffing other people and upon making promises that are never delivered - be it to small business owners, to local governments, to banks, to investment partners, or to eager impoverished individuals looking for an educational leg up. Promises in past often include how great the project his name is associated with is going to be, getting others to front for it, and then walking away with profit as the project collapses. Celebrityhood based upon being a “character” who enjoys firing people. No evidence of caring about accomplishing any good for the country, for the world, for any others, or of any public service of any sort. Public persona is dealing with people that he perceives as not having shown him adequate respect or who are his opposition with crude insults and wanting to “hit them so hard” with tweets. What we can observe is behavior consistent with a lack of focus. No foreign policy experience or apparent understanding. No domestic policy experience or understanding. No track record of decisions made that have immediate life and death impacts but clearly a track record of making statements that inflame circumstances.
To some those facts are what they are looking for and they like the promises he is currently making, the “brash” character he presents, and his lack of any meaningful experience.
Clinton: a long record of dedicated public service and persistence to achieving goals that accomplish goods for society and the world, including getting back up and keeping working at it after being knocked to the mat. Many decisions made and is willing to make them, many ones that in retrospect were good ones and some that in retrospect were not best choices. Multiple accusations made after decades of dedicated oppo work. Very little fire for all the smoke. Much public policy experience both domestically and in foreign policy.
To some that fact-based long record of service and dedication is a negative as it represents the way things have been done and they see how things are as something that needs to be blown up.
On the hijack - Trump vs. Blago? I’d pick Blago in a close decision. Both self-serving scam artists primarily interested in their own egos and wallets but relatively Blago’s misdeeds were penny ante and were matched with some actual interest in accomplishing things … Blago less stupid as well.
Trump vs Nixon’s head on a robot body? Robot Nixon.
Trump would win over re-animated Stalin though! And over Zombie Joe McCarthy or the ghost of George Wallace.
You mean, something they said I the past, like this:
In a 1998 People Magazine interview Donald Trump said,
“If I were to run, I’d run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they’d eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific.”