# Has the Trump presidency become "normalized?"
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-trump-presidency-become-normalized/829609
**Category:** Politics & Elections
**Created:** [February 15, 2019, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-trump-presidency-become-normalized/829609 "2019-02-15T16:46:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2019, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-trump-presidency-become-normalized/829609/1 "2019-02-15T16:46:46Z")
I don’t mean “normalized” in the eyes of Dopers - I’m sure most Dopers here would never consider him to be a “normal” president - but rather in the eyes of many mainstream/typical Americans. The term “President Trump” used to sound like the punchline to a joke when he was elected, but now, two years on, “President Trump” rolls off many people’s tongues without the slightest humor whatsoever; it’s become almost as normal-sounding as “President Bush” or “President Obama.” It isn’t seen as funny anymore.
There is still endless talk of Mueller and Russia collusion, but many Trump issues are now being covered from much the same perspective by the media as if some other president had done them.
By and large, the attitude of Trump’s opponents has shifted from one of laughter/incredulity to one of cold anger and determination - but the very fact that the attitude is shifting this way, \*indicates \*that Trump has been “normalized” to a certain extent. It has gone from “That’s utterly ridiculous, lmfao” to “we need to grit our teeth and beat him.”
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### Author:  [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2019, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-trump-presidency-become-normalized/829609/2 "2019-02-15T17:06:18Z")
I, for one, never thought it was funny. Not funny at all. Horrific would be the term I would use from the very beginning.
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### Author:  [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2019, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-trump-presidency-become-normalized/829609/3 "2019-02-15T17:12:30Z")
I always thought the liberal’s insistence on “not normalizing” President Trump was bizarre. He is the president. That’s reality. Saying “don’t normalize that” strikes me as a bid to deny reality, and I did not understand what they hoped to accomplish by it.
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### Author:  [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2019, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-trump-presidency-become-normalized/829609/4 "2019-02-15T17:19:54Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#):
>
> I always thought the liberal’s insistence on “not normalizing” President Trump was bizarre. He is the president. That’s reality. Saying “don’t normalize that” strikes me as a bid to deny reality, and I did not understand what they hoped to accomplish by it.
Yeah, that’s it. We libs be 2 dum 2 understand hurr hurr. Ammirite?
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### Author:  [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2019, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-trump-presidency-become-normalized/829609/5 "2019-02-15T17:21:05Z")
> [@snfaulkner](#):
>
> Yeah, that’s it. We libs be 2 dum 2 understand hurr hurr. Ammirite?
If you were one of the ones advocating that we not normalize President Trump, could you do me the courtesy of explaining what the purpose was?
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### Author:  [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2019, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-trump-presidency-become-normalized/829609/6 "2019-02-15T17:27:29Z")
Normalization has a couple of angles on it.
As HD says, there’s nothing to normalize about his being President. That’s an objective fact just as Obama was, both Bushes, Clinton and so forth.
What my lefty friends are talking about ‘not normalizing’ are the habit of using authoritarian attitudes, casual racism and sexism to spur an ‘us vs them’ mentality and a severe allergy to using facts in arguments vs using sales tactics disconnected from using truth and science. Those are things that should never be normalized.
It’s just as todays declaration of national emergency issue. Yes, Trump has it within his power to do so - though it may be challenged. But it’s a terrible precedent to set for the right because it then gives the next democratic President the option to do so on issues like gun rights, drug laws and other lefty issues.
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### Author:  [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2019, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-trump-presidency-become-normalized/829609/7 "2019-02-15T17:28:05Z")
The purpose is to not allow further presidents to act the way he does. There are thousands of threads on that topic. We fully understand that he is in fact the president.
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### Author:  [@Airbeck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airbeck)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2019, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-trump-presidency-become-normalized/829609/8 "2019-02-15T17:29:48Z")
It’s about not normalizing his _behavior_. We don’t want all future presidents just declaring national emergencies any time they want because they can’t get congress to give them their way. That is not normal. Do you want that to be the new norm? Would you have been happy if Obama did something similar when the GOP in congress wouldn’t go along with him?
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2019, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-trump-presidency-become-normalized/829609/9 "2019-02-15T17:32:05Z")
I don’t believe that President Trump was ever “not normalized” in the sense that Velocity gives it. Liberals may have considered him a joke and his voters insane but they didn’t break out into fits of laughter on November 9, 2016. Quite the contrary. They went into mourning for their country. For good reason, as we’ve seen.
I was hoping that Velocity meant normalize in the sense of whether we would ever tolerate another president with similar behavior. That’s a possible line of discussion. On the one hand Trump has broken so many of the norms of how a president behaves that the office may be irretrievably broken. On the other hand, his example may push the majority of Americans into wanting anti-Trumps in deportment for the next generation.
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### Author:  [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2019, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-trump-presidency-become-normalized/829609/10 "2019-02-15T17:36:24Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#):
>
> If you were one of the ones advocating that we not normalize President Trump, could you do me the courtesy of explaining what the purpose was?
The purpose was (and is) to constantly remind _everyone_ at _every occasion_ what a menace this incompetent buffoon is. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t be necessary to blast the President at every game show, wedding, birthday party, chamber of commerce meeting, and summer solstice celebration. I would normally think that we should leave politics out of many discussions. Because this situation is not normal, we must resist at every opportunity. The very survival of our nation is at stake.
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### Author:  [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2019, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-trump-presidency-become-normalized/829609/11 "2019-02-15T17:44:37Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#):
>
> … It’s just as todays declaration of national emergency issue. Yes, Trump has it within his power to do so - though it may be challenged. But it’s a terrible precedent to set for the right because it then gives the next democratic President the option to do so on issues like gun rights, drug laws and other lefty issues.
Probably a topic for another thread, but I don’t see it as particularly “precedent-setting”. Obama used emergency declarations so often that they became routine:
> [@](#):
>
> President Obama has declared or renewed 32 different states of national emergency during his presidency, allowing him to use extraordinary power to impose sanctions, freeze assets or blockade other nations.
>
> Those emergency declarations come with ominous-sounding warnings that foreign governments, terrorist groups or criminal organizations pose an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security” of the United States.
>
> But there’s no need to be alarmed, White House officials said this week. Those dire warnings are really just formalities.
>
> …
>
> “This is a language that we use in executive orders around the world,” Rhodes said. “So the United States does not believe that Venezuela poses some threat to our national security. We, frankly, just have a framework for how we formalize these executive orders.”
>
> The language is necessary because a president needs to declare a state of emergency in order to impose sanctions or block the assets of foreign governments or officials under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. And to declare an emergency, the president must find that there’s an “extraordinary threat” to national security.
>
> “This is how we describe the process of naming sanctions, and there are 20 to 30 other sanctions programs we have,” Jen Psaki, then the State Department spokeswoman, explained to reporters last month. “I understand people look at the context of what’s happening on the ground, but it’s consistent with how we announce and how we describe putting sanctions and putting these executive orders in place.”
>
> …
[USA Today (2015) - White House: States of emergency are just formalities](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/04/09/pro-forma-states-of-national-emergency/25479553/)
And Obama certainly wasn’t alone in that regard. Past presidents have declared national emergencies rather regularly.
Frankly, I’m not overly-concerned that this is going to open up a can of worms on executive gun control above and beyond the powers that Congress has already delegated (far too many imho). The left-wing “you just wait” warnings seem more than a tad over-the-top to me.
> [@Airbeck](#):
>
> It’s about not normalizing his _behavior_. We don’t want all future presidents just declaring national emergencies any time they want because they can’t get congress to give them their way. That is not normal. Do you want that to be the new norm? Would you have been happy if Obama did something similar when the GOP in congress wouldn’t go along with him?
My preference would be that Congress had not delegate so much power to the executive branch. Obama DID do “something similar when the GOP in congress wouldn’t go along with him”. Remember DACA?
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### Author:  [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2019, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-trump-presidency-become-normalized/829609/12 "2019-02-15T17:46:09Z")
> [@Procrustus](#):
>
> … The very survival of our nation is at stake.
Do you really believe this? That the nation is in danger of collapse in the next 23 months?
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### Author:  [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2019, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-trump-presidency-become-normalized/829609/13 "2019-02-15T17:48:28Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#):
>
> Do you really believe this? That the nation is in danger of collapse in the next 23 months?
Everything we cherish about this country is eroding, because of Trump and his supporters. It may take more than 23 months, but we’re certainly on the road to ruin.
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2019, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-trump-presidency-become-normalized/829609/14 "2019-02-15T17:50:37Z")
It’s probably become “normal” to many Americans to have a President that regularly makes juvenile personal attacks against those who disagree with him, regularly denigrates the professionalism of national security professionals and institutions, who bragged about violating the consent of women and girls on multiple occasions, who unapologetically praised and made excuses for white supremacists, and who spent several years spreading an evidence-free racist conspiracy theory.
But it shouldn’t be.
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### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2019, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-trump-presidency-become-normalized/829609/15 "2019-02-15T18:01:36Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> It’s probably become “normal” to many Americans to have a President that regularly makes juvenile personal attacks against those who disagree with him, regularly denigrates the professionalism of national security professionals and institutions, who bragged about violating the consent of women and girls on multiple occasions, who unapologetically praised and made excuses for white supremacists, and who spent several years spreading an evidence-free racist conspiracy theory.
But Trump wouldn’t have been elected in the first place if there weren’t a significant number of Americans for whom such things were already “normal.” In many ways, Trump is a symptom rather than a cause of what’s wrong with America.
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2019, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-trump-presidency-become-normalized/829609/16 "2019-02-15T18:03:47Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#):
>
> But Trump wouldn’t have been elected in the first place if there weren’t a significant number of Americans for whom such things were already “normal.” In many ways, Trump is a symptom rather than a cause of what’s wrong with America.
Yes, that’s very true. And sad.
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### Author:  [@BeepKillBeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeepKillBeep)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2019, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-trump-presidency-become-normalized/829609/17 "2019-02-15T18:14:22Z")
I think it has in the sense that you can expect similar behavior from future presidents. Only less childish.
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### Author:  [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2019, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-trump-presidency-become-normalized/829609/18 "2019-02-15T21:00:43Z")
> [@Procrustus](#):
>
> The purpose was (and is) to constantly remind _everyone_ at _every occasion_ what a menace this incompetent buffoon is. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t be necessary to blast the President at every game show, wedding, birthday party, chamber of commerce meeting, and summer solstice celebration. I would normally think that we should leave politics out of many discussions. Because this situation is not normal, we must resist at every opportunity. The very survival of our nation is at stake.
There was an article - wish I could find it, might have been the Atlantic or something - that pointed out that people crave normalcy. The article basically said that many of Trump’s opponents want there to be a sustained, intense, level of outrage against Trump for the duration of his 4 years in office, but that that level of intensity is only really possible for strong-blue Ds to sustain - that most people can’t keep it up because it is really draining and wearying. It is human nature, even in the worst circumstances, to try to find some sort of normalcy which feels more familiar and comforting and to normalize things.
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### Author:  [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2019, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-trump-presidency-become-normalized/829609/19 "2019-02-15T21:06:16Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#):
>
> If you were one of the ones advocating that we not normalize President Trump, could you do me the courtesy of explaining what the purpose was?
You’re correct up to a point: a president creates his own norms and there’s not much his political opposition can do other than defeat him in the next election.
But by not normalizing the president, I think what people really mean is that we don’t have to accept his behavior and that it ought to be criticized. Sure, over time, strident criticism can end up turning into white noise, as it has often done to some extent in the media. However, what we’ve seen politically is a groundswell of new activism in response to Trump, and that has had consequences - real ones for the president and his party…like losing the House of Representatives, for instance.
The House victory was brought to you courtesy of millions of citizen activists who refused to normalize and accept the president’s racial overtones and undertones, who refused to accept his daily lying, and who refuse to accept his corruption. The media has been an outrage machine, which Trump has exploited well. But underneath it all is real anger and a refusal to accept that someone so horribly unqualified can continue to lead this country past 2020.
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### Author:  [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2019, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-trump-presidency-become-normalized/829609/20 "2019-02-15T21:08:25Z")
> [@asahi](#):
>
> The House victory was brought to you courtesy of millions of citizen activists who refused to normalize and accept the president’s racial overtones and undertones, who refused to accept his daily lying, and who refuse to accept his corruption. The media has been an outrage machine, which Trump has exploited well. But underneath it all is real anger and a refusal to accept that someone so horribly unqualified can continue to lead this country past 2020.
But the House victory paled in comparison to the turnover of seats in the House that took place in the first midterms after Clinton and Obama were elected (1994 and 2010), unless you mean that those two midterms were the result of American voters refusing to “normalize” a Clinton or Obama presidency (those two presidents were utterly normal compared to Trump.)
If the American electorate were truly refusing to normalize Trump, you would have seen a turnover of something like 100 to 200 seats flipped in the House. Something earthshaking. What happened in November 2018 fell entirely within normal parameters.
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