My big fear was that Trump would be a smirking figurehead. That McConnell and Ryan would pump through every conservative wishlist item, and unleash all the infrastructure spending they had been holding back during Obama’s tenure to make the economy better, and people happier.
I was afraid that they’d make Democrats look feckless by getting things done, and I was upset about the injustice of this, because Obama had been stymied by the Republican Senate.
Turns out, Trump wasn’t content to sit on his fat ass and preen while the proles swarmed around him. He actually wanted to be in charge. And he’s stupid, weak, and overwhelmed by sublimated feelings of inadequacy that he has to overcompensate for every waking minute.
So the world’s definitely worse and better than I expected. We don’t have every GOP wishlist item enacted. Just cutting taxes on the wealthy. But we do have the random pathetic evil whims that Trump farts out, and he’s personally responsible for the deaths of upwards of a hundred thousand Americans.
I’m with those who say that we knew he’d be really bad, being an ignoramus, a chronic liar, and a failure at business despite every possible advantage, but few expected that he’d be the absolute disaster he turned out to be, to a degree that staggers the imagination. I remember being hopeful when I heard that he met with Al Gore among the parade of supplicants during the transition period, recalling that the presidency has inspired awe and a sense of responsibility among even the most obtuse of elected candidates. But it turned out that he mainly just enjoyed playing king and having a constant parade of supplicants sucking up to him.
Little did anyone imagine that Trump was completely immune to any sense of mission or even the most basic decency or sense of patriotism inspired by the high office to which he had been entrusted, and would turn out to be far worse than anyone could have imagined, a complete parody of himself and an embarrassment to the nation. In rating himself the best president ever, he’s a comically extreme example of the Dunning-Kruger effect as exhibited by a genuine moron.
Count me as another who thought the weight of the office and influence of sane Republicans would keep Trump from careening off the rails as far as he has. I’ve been wrong about Trump with almost everything.
I think I’m in the minority, because I don’t think Trump is much different than a typical Republican president. He’s more overt in his racism, but since Reagan, the party has been saying that government is the problem and that want to cut taxes and dismantle the state.
I had some hope for him. I knew he’d be incompetent, but as he wasnt a die hard Republican, i thought he might be open to compromise, etc. I thought he get some good advisors, and muddle thru, like Reagan and Schwarzenegger in their first term as Governor.
No, as I didn’t have a tv and didn’t hear all the crap he was saying and doing. I remember a book called the Clothes have No Emperor how the author was disgusted by the fact that, “An actor is playing the president!” Except, Reagan did have political experience. I wonder what the author thinks now.
I mean, Reagan didn’t routinely explicitly call for dictatorial powers, disregard for the Constitution, demeaning and undermining his experts, encourage violence against his detractors, call for summary executions, line his own pockets with taxpayers’ funds and money from foreign governments, but I suppose I can agree that all this stuff was implicit, or else heading in that direction.
I thought the same thing about the “influence of sane Republicans.”
I’ve lived in New York City all my life. I never had any illusions about who Donald Trump is.
But I wildly underestimated the cowardice of more mainstream Republicans. They are nothing but shameless whores.
And they could have stopped this. They could have stopped it before Trump won the Republican primary.
If, when this pig bragged about the size of his dick during the debates, just one of the other candidates had said “to put me on a stage with this person is an insult,” and walked off the stage, at least some of the others would have followed him.
But they didn’t, because they’re cowards.
And they’re whores because they’ll kneel before him now, as long as their masters get their tax cuts and their deregulation.
They’re worse than Trump. “Sane Republicans” are responsible for Trump. They’re the ones who’ve been enabling him. They’re the ones who make everything he does possible.
This, and the fact that they realize (and/or fear) that most of the people who voted them into their current offices are in Trump’s true-believer base, and that to step out of line with him would invoke a shitstorm back home, and a loss in their next election.
Reagan suppressed minority voting, used a racist dog whistles (as opposed to Trump’s overt racism) and dropped any pretense of fiscal responsibility. He also used his authority to undermine the competency of the federal government and then pointed to that as evidence for radical dismantling of federal programs. Trump is the continuation of Regan’s legacy. Let’s not pretend that somehow Trump is an aberration, or that somehow the GOP had been governing in good faith prior to 2016.
Cutting taxes or reducing the size of a government program is a legitimate policy decision. It might be a BAD decision - or a good one, or an indifferent one - but it is a policy decision, and it’s one the federal government exists to make. If it is a poor decision a subsequent administration can change it. That’s why the executive branch of the US government - or any representative democracy - exists.
Trump is doing things that are far, far beyond mere policy decisions. There are things that Republicans and Democrats have always agreed on - loyalty to the USA, general adherence to law and order, peaceful transfer of power, a general respect for the concept of differentiating political differences from personal decency - that Donald Trump does not care for. The thing is that while you can raise taxes next year, or restore funding to something, once you’ve shattered a democracy and the social contract, you can’t just fix that with the next budget.
Almost inevitably, you will consider the policy decisions made by any executive who isn’t your preferred voting choice to be bad decisions. If you are a Democrat, you will disagree with many Republican policies - if you didn’t, you would have voted Republican, and you can simply reverse those names to see how the other half feels. For most of modern history, though, there was a general understanding amongst most Americans that it was a difference in opinion about policy, not about whether the other side was comprised of Americans who generally wanted the best thing for America. George W. Bush wasn’t President all that long ago, and while I think he was a pretty bad President, I think it would be stretching the facts beyond the limits of truth to suggest he was not honestly trying to be a good President for the United States of America. That is no longer a safe assumption regarding Donald Trump, or for that matter the Republican Party.
Trump has arguably been even worse than I anticipated. I’ve thought to myself that Trump is the sort of “leader” that other countries used to have; the kind of countries that we as Americans would point at and say “well, things aren’t perfect here, but at least we don’t live there!”
I figured he would be bad but mostly in scamming the govt. and enriching himself and his cronies. I figured he would mostly be kept in check from causing too much genuine damage to the country by supposed adults around him. When the whole nonsense about the inauguration crowd size blew up and I realized that that he was surrounded entirely by utterly horrendous people it dawned on me it was going to be bad. I guess I am a slow learner or was foolishly optimistic for a better outcome.
I will consider the policy decisions of those who implemented the Southern Strategy to be immoral. I will consider the GOPs efforts to intimidate minorities to be immoral. These are all things the GOP has been doing well before Trump and I’m baffled that people thought the same GOP that lied about Iraq, pandered to white racists for generations, and supported tax cut and spend policies would somehow control Trump. Trump is the continuation of decades of GOP racism, corruption and malfeseance.