Okay, in an attempt to work with the spirit of the thread, I’m going to bring up the topic of infrastructure repair and upgrading. It’s something the Trump administration has expressed a desire to move on and I think it’s something that would benefit the country.
my apologies to bone, HurricaneDitka, elbows, monstro, et al. seems my rant was a bit premature.
mc
You’ve offered the plausible alternative - NSA, etc. I am willing to accept it. What I’m hoping to hear from the Pro-Trump camp is acknowledgement that those statements and their subsequent defense were in-articulate and contribute to the high level of mistrust among Trump opponents, like me, Monstro, Stranger on a Train, and many others.
Agreed. I am very much in favor of large scale infrastructure repair and upgrades. Everything from brick and mortar stuff to energy and communications. I’m even okay with the increase it will have on the national debt. I know that’s sacrilege to many fiscal conservatives but I believe it pays far ranging economic dividends and improves people’s lives.
Yes, I think mistrust is a clear consequence of poor and inarticulate delivery. I can’t determine if that poor delivery is intentional on behalf of the administration myself. I think our own biases make it easy to see nefarious intent when issues are in conflict with our view of the world. This gets compounded with that poor delivery.
With all due respect, Bone, the accusation was quite pointed and left very little room as to who was responsible for the alleged wire tapping actions. I know you’re not a Trump supporter but agreeing to this simply being a misunderstanding is not sufficient in this particular instance. Do you agree?
Yes. Trump is (and, to a lesser extent, some of the people he has surrounded himself with are) inarticulate and imprecise. He’s definitely not a polished politician that carefully parses his words, or does a good job of explaining what he meant when asked to delve deeper, and I can see how that’s frustrating to his opponents because it’s quite frustrating even to me, someone who (reluctantly) voted for him.
Thank you for this, HurricaneDitka. I appreciate it.
While I appreciate the idea of finding common ground, it is important to point out that Trump has no interest in doing so.
For example, the Republicans have constantly opposed Obamacare. Trump stated he would repeal it. Only now do we see that he has no idea what to replace it with (apart from stopping Lottery winners getting help. :smack: )
Similarly the Republicans opposed **any **Supreme Court nominee by Obama.
They are not interested in dialogue (only in tax cuts for the rich.)
Justice Kagan was supported by five Republican Senators and Justice Sotomayor was supported by nine Republican Senators.
Agreed. This is not meant to frame him in a better light. This is just for us, the members of this message board to come to a better understand of one another. I don’t expect to change the world with this thread.
I’d love to hear from Trump supporters on these topics as long as we all agree to respect the intent and tenor of this thread.
I’m not saying it’s simply a misunderstanding - it could be intentional.
In general, to me any accusation that the president did X is equivalent to saying the administration did X. This is distinguished from saying the president *personally *did X. Obviously it would be preferable to specify the Obama Administration if that is what is being discussed, but then we go back to Trump being a poor communicator.
Agreed. Through it was very unfair, IMO, to deny Merrick Garland a hearing.
I can agree that the Garland non-vote (and non-hearing) was a further escalation in the war on the judicial nomination process that is, I think, unhealthy for the country in the long run. I’d like to see both sides find some detente on that matter, but asking Republicans to do so after Harry Reid eliminated the filibuster (for non-SCOTUS nominees), and asking the Democrats to do so after Garland didn’t get a vote, seems unlikely to succeed.
I don’t know what Spicer or Conway said or didn’t say. But a quick google search returned numerous (generally derisive) articles about how they claimed that “wiretapping” meant surveillance generally (apparently possibly involving a microwave?). The tone of the articles is that no one would reasonably conclude that “wire tapping” meant electronic surveillance broadly (as opposed to an invasion of his telegraph lines). I may not be reasonable, but as that is how I always understood the tweet, the derision doesn’t work for me.
If the claim was limited to “Obama wiretapped me,” then I might agree. And I certainly agree that “Obama did X” is shorthand for the administration. I don’t think it’s a stretch to read that as “The previous administration conducted electronic surveillance of me.” But the other tweets are too focused on Obama himself and his role as “sitting president” (and the references to Nixon). If it turns out that Loretta Lynch ordered it, that might be close enough. But, if the NSA was intercepting his data in the ordinary course (and you know they were), I don’t think that satisfies the claim.
I actually think this could be a position of common ground between Trump and progressives. Assuming it wasn’t a lot of hot air and horseshit. That’s really the problem, though. It’s hard to say when Trump is being on the up and up and when he’s just talking and blowing smoke. I think the recent Republican Healthcare Plan is a perfect example of this. If you actually go through it, you’ll find a lot of things Trump talked about during the campaign are, curiously, missing from this plan.
What the plan ACTUALLY seems to be, to me anyway (and recall I’m considered a ‘conservative’ on this board), is a pretty naked tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, and one that directly takes money from the poorest Americans and gives it to the wealthiest ones (well…takes a benefit they are currently getting, reduces it or eliminates it for some and then transfers that money to wealthier Americans, I suppose is more accurate), substantially cutting or even getting rid of medical benefits for millions. It also seems to selectively gut Medicare, again in a very focused and obviously targeted way (i.e. against the poorer Americans and for the richer ones). Now, I don’t think what Trump was promising was all that great either…some of it was just bad in different ways, some of it was just targeted at his audience such as the state lines thingy which Trump supporters seem to think was the holy grail for some reason. The point, though, is it ain’t in there, along with a bunch of other things he promised.
There COULD be some common areas between some of the things Trump has said on the campaign trail or in his speech and whatever ‘the other side’ is…but, honestly, he’s so loopy that you can never tell when he’s going to go off the deep end and talk himself into a ridiculous situation like the Obama wiretapping fiasco, so it’s difficult to really know.
I oppose the ACA. I think it’s an unconstitutional overreach with no limiting principle. SCOTUS disagreed with me and since they wear the black robes that’s that. I think the ACA was well intentioned and it took quite a bit of sausage making for it to come to fruition. I think it’s a tremendous accomplishment by Obama that I disagree with in principle. While I think it should be repealed, that wouldn’t be sufficient for me. I want it to be ruled unconstitutional so it could never again come to pass. At the same time I think it’s a good thing that people were able to get insurance as a result of the ACA.
I think saying that Republicans are only interested in tax cuts for the rich is cartoon caricature level analysis. I want low taxes for everyone. Since the rich pay higher taxes in both % and in gross dollars, this translates into higher income people disproportionately benefiting. I’m comfortable with that as a consequence and understand that it could appear that Republicans are only interested in tax cuts for the rich.
One thing I can say that I agree with Trump on is that every single person in the US should have health care coverage. I think he truly means universal coverage.
I don’t think very many of his supporters agree with Trump’s statements on this, however. I think his words are reinterpreted by many of his supporters to say things like, “I agree with President Trump that everyone with a job, enough money, and who wants to fill out the necessary paper work, should be theoretically eligible to buy a stripped down catastrophic coverage.”
But that isn’t what Trump said he wanted:
I agree with what he said.
Sure, I think this is what we really need to do. But…was he serious? Because, obviously, it’s not in the Republican healthcare plan at all. Nor are a lot of other things he talked about. And he doesn’t seem to be saying much about that…though, to be fair he doesn’t seem to be enthusiastically endorsing it either (while having his minions mumble something about phase I verse phase II and III of the great plan)…
I am for the ACA. But I admit that it is imperfect. I think it doesn’t go far enough with respect to enforcing cost controls and business practices of insurance companies in the market place.
Perhaps you can help me understand your position better. On the one hand you oppose the ACA, but on the other you acknowledge as a good thing that people are able to get healthy insurance as a result of the ACA. How do you reconcile the two views?