# Is a president that you dislike, still "your" president? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 12, 2017, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-president-that-you-dislike-still-your-president/798671 "2017-10-12T19:19:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2017, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-president-that-you-dislike-still-your-president/798671/81 "2017-10-14T02:30:31Z")
He’s my president and like all presidents, he’s my responsibility as well. ---
**Author:** ![LongTimeLurker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/45deac/32.png) [@LongTimeLurker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LongTimeLurker)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2017, 9:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-president-that-you-dislike-still-your-president/798671/82 "2017-10-14T09:01:19Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > Absolutely not. He’s an unlawful inhabitant of the Oval Office, put there by a hostile power. The day he dies will be the happiest day in the history of humanity. I only hope I live long enough to pour piss on his grave. +1 ---
**Author:** ![LongTimeLurker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/45deac/32.png) [@LongTimeLurker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LongTimeLurker)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2017, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-president-that-you-dislike-still-your-president/798671/83 "2017-10-14T09:02:43Z")
> [@Pabitel](#): > > Trump is not president by any standard I can imagine. He has keepers. There are government officials who lie to him to keep him from wigging out. They don’t let him see some information because it is too important to trust him with. > Right now we don’t have a president. We have a disabled man filling the chair with the whole Republican party covering for him. > > And it scares the hell out of me. +1 ---
**Author:** ![actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e79b87/32.png) [@actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/actualliberalnotoneofthose)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2017, 10:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-president-that-you-dislike-still-your-president/798671/84 "2017-10-14T10:09:34Z")
He’s the POTUS not POM ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2017, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-president-that-you-dislike-still-your-president/798671/85 "2017-10-14T12:29:26Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > It’s never\* my\* president, it’s always _our_ president. Kindly leave me out of it, please. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2017, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-president-that-you-dislike-still-your-president/798671/86 "2017-10-14T13:02:21Z")
A president is a guy in a temp job. It’s an important and powerful temp job, but ultimately he or she is a temporary employee of the public. The words “my” is irrelevant in this relationship. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-president-that-you-dislike-still-your-president/798671/87 "2017-10-15T05:36:45Z")
The president of the United States has no direct relationship to the individuals in the United States. Using possessive pronouns when talking about the head of state of the United States sounds like a vestige of monarchy. This isn’t the way Americans should speak. Definitely some type of social pathology. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-president-that-you-dislike-still-your-president/798671/88 "2017-10-15T06:32:20Z")
> [@Eonwe](#): > > I find calls of “not my president” to be rhetorical drama. Maybe it feels good to say, maybe it expresses a dissatisfaction or extreme anger with the current state of affairs, but it’s a meaningless sentiment. > > A few posts above **BigT** says “he’s not really the president.” What does that even mean? There is an elected human holding office. Signing shit. Tweeting his tweets. Golfing his golfs. Grabbing his pussies. The executive branch may be dysfunctional, but it is functioning. Until legislation in this country bypasses the president’s desk and foreign governments cease recognizing that Trump is president of the US, he is in fact “really” the president. > > Expressing outrage is fine, but trying to build logic that defends a factually meaningless statement like “not my president” starts to sound silly. > > I’ll also echo what **Ann Hedonia** says just above. I’ve never felt like a president was “my” president, as if I owed some allegiance to or had some ownership of them. I specifically told you what I meant. I’m also far from the first person in this thread to say it. The President of the United States is far more than someone who signs bills. They are the leader of the United States of America. They are actually in charge of the Executive Branch. And they swear to uphold the Constitution and American values. Trump has none of that. He’s not in charge–other people tell him what to do and he does it. No one respects him as our leader, whether here or abroad. (That formal UK visit was even cancelled.) The executive branch is basically working without him. And he has come out against freedom of speech multiple times, and wants an authoritarian rule instead of democracy and separation of powers. We have a senile old man who has the title, but nothing that actually makes him President. It’s telling that you had to bring up Twitter and golf to come up with presidential things he was doing. The actual day to day job stuff, you can’t find him doing. Every other man who held the title has actually been a president. Even Nixon, flawed as he was. Even Bush, though he mostly listened to Cheney. But Trump isn’t president. He holds the title, but lacks (most of) that which comes with it. I honestly consider him an enemy of the United States, on the order of Kim Jong Un. He is my enemy (and the enemy of anyone else who is good), not my president. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-president-that-you-dislike-still-your-president/798671/89 "2017-10-15T06:52:18Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Trump doesn’t even know what he is President of: [In a speech Friday, Trump said he’d recently “met with the president of the Virgin Islands” to discuss the recent hurricanes that have devastated Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the island.](https://www.yahoo.com/news/president-trump-doesn-apos-t-154524421.html) Well, sure. Trump is his own best audience. The best there is. He always enjoys those talks he has with himself. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-president-that-you-dislike-still-your-president/798671/90 "2017-10-15T21:18:21Z")
Of course he is. If I claim he’s not “my” president, then who is? ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-president-that-you-dislike-still-your-president/798671/91 "2017-10-15T22:50:03Z")
Some of us feel that we do not have a President at all. ---
**Author:** ![purplehearingaid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@purplehearingaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehearingaid)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2017, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-president-that-you-dislike-still-your-president/798671/92 "2017-10-15T23:54:18Z")
I find it pretty hard to think of trump as a president when so far he hasn’t been acting like one ! I don’t have a president so I voted NO ! ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2017, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-president-that-you-dislike-still-your-president/798671/93 "2017-10-16T05:06:16Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > After Election Day 2008, I saw social media of “Not my president,” and plenty of that after Election Day 2016 as well. They were both wrong. ---
**Author:** ![G0sp3l](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c68b51/32.png) [@G0sp3l](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/G0sp3l)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2017, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-president-that-you-dislike-still-your-president/798671/94 "2017-10-16T20:38:47Z")
I voted yes because generally that is true, the human waste currently occupying the office notwithstanding. I view the current placeholder the same way as all of those racists that were sporting the “My president right or wrong” bumper stickers before President Obama was elected, view President Obama. Only the current occupant’s skin color doesn’t matter to me. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2017, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-president-that-you-dislike-still-your-president/798671/95 "2017-10-16T20:56:33Z")
Prior to Dolt 45, the concept would only apply to illegitimate elections for me. For example, the way Bush stole the 2000 election. Like him or don’t like him (I don’t), the reason I’d reject his legitimacy is procedural, because it was anti-democracy. Like has nothing to do with it. I favored the campaign slogan “Let’s not elect him in 2004 either.” By the same token, I’d reject Rutherford B. Hayes on principle, because he cheated in 1876–77. I’m sure he was a perfectly nice guy and even a competent leader. But _Hayes was Ohio’s favorite son Who took an election he never won. The dirty election of Seventy-Six Was fixed with many political tricks._ That he ended Reconstruction as part of the corrupt bargain that brought him to power, and sold out the whole African-American people to the tender mercies of Jim Crow, does not endear him to me either. But it’s the principle of the thing that electoral legitimacy hinges on. I make an exception for the current Cheeto Benito, who is so filthily venal, stupid, foolish, dishonest, evil, and deranged that, Electoral College or no Electoral College, he is never going to be within a million miles of being considered my president. As for legitimacy, let’s see what the Mueller investigation turns up. So I didn’t vote in this poll because the principle isn’t a question of “like.” It’s about direct threats to our democracy. ---
**Author:** ![Annoying\_Buzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Annoying\_Buzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annoying_Buzz)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2017, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-president-that-you-dislike-still-your-president/798671/96 "2017-10-18T00:47:23Z")
Yes, in the same way that a tumor in my ass is still my tumor. In either case, it needs to be gotten the fuck out by whatever means necessary. Only when it’s been dumped into a trashcan with the rest of the biowaste will it cease to be mine. ---
**Author:** ![Caffeine.addict](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f475e1/32.png) [@Caffeine.addict](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caffeine.addict)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2017, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-president-that-you-dislike-still-your-president/798671/97 "2017-10-18T20:13:06Z")
I’ve never really considered any president to be my president even if I generally agreed with their policies. With that said, I consider Donald Trump to be the President of the nation. I may disagree with his policies, and I may dislike him, but he did win the election. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-a-president-that-you-dislike-still-your-president/798671.md?page=4)