Even in that context it’s obviously false.
Lol @ “moderate republicans”
Pregnant virgins
Virile corpses
You cannot be a part of the GOP after a decade of Trumpism and call yourself or be called “moderate” lest words lose all meaning.
Artificial insemination makes that a possibility.
I’ll leave now.
What were the most extreme policies of the Trump administration? How about Republicans in Congress?
Seriously, it was not that long ago. Tearing up the Iran nuclear deal so that Iran is free to enrich uranium is a bit, I say a bit, extreme. Taking kids from their parents at the border and intentionally not keeping track of who goes with who. There’s a word for it. The mere suggestion that The United States Of America would institute a total and complete ban on people who follow a certain religion from entering the country. Extreme. Off the top of my head.
The most extreme were the campaign promises he made many times over and did not carry out. These weren’t promises to try pushing bills through Congress, but of actual presidential action. The two promises that I saw as the worst were probably:
— “‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”
— “I will have Mexico pay for that wall”
Did he do what he promised? No. But it is normal for a caudillo-type president to make little progress on authoritarian goals in his first term. Putin didn’t make progress in shutting down critical media, in his first term, either.
What Trump will do about immigration, and the media he calls “the enemy of the people,” in his second term, has me worried.
P.S. As for for your question about the most extreme Trump-years congressional action, my answer may not be agreed to by others, but I think it was the repeal of the individual health insurance mandate. No other westernized country lets people go uninsured. All others require care to be paid for, on a sliding scale, through either taxes or mandatory premiums (both being the same to me except for the labeling). When the GOP passed a bill to become, once again, such an international outlier, it seemed extreme to me.
The Affordable Care Act is similar to what was enacted in Massachusetts. Mitt Romney governed Massachusetts as a moderate — even a centrist — but could not get elected as such a moderate in Utah.
Bring back the factory jobs to the Rust belt. That lie gained him the election.
These are not the droids you’re looking for.
Shutting down some trade with Canada for national security purposes was pretty extreme. Stealing children from immigrant parents and then losing the children in the system (I cannot believe this happened, what a fucking nightmare!!) is pretty extreme. Of course, his Supreme Court appointees were very extreme (saying that any Republican president would have chosen the same doesn’t help with this thread, which is about normal people taking back control of the party).
I’m sure there’s lots more.
Just in recent days we’ve had Republicans say they hoped for a time where they would need to “hunt democrats with dogs” and the #2 presidential candidate says he wants to “destroy leftism”. People have been prosecuted for death threats against Fauci (just as one example) yet Ron DiSantis doubles down on his hateful rhetoric.
To ask about policy specifically is misleading as few republicans have even talked about policy. But to the extent that they have, it’s been disgusting culture war things like book-banning and anti-trans laws, pledging to fire anyone involved in prosecuting Trump and implying that they will hire people for FBI Director or head of NIH who will do the GOP’s bidding.
Also on Trump specifically; he did try to overthrow democracy. Which isn’t “policy” per se, but it’s hardly just words either.
I think it’s fair to say that the system, structured as it is, prevented Trump from actually achieving his most extreme promises. But the fact that he made those promises means that people voted for them. So they’re relevant, even if he couldn’t actually do them.
Let’s not forget ending birthright citizenship and asking whether he could use the military to shoot protesters in the legs. I mean, unless Esper was lying and it was a flat-out joke,* that’s pretty extreme and shows a complete lack of understanding of what the US is all about.
*I just want to leave that possibility open, since jokes are sometimes misreported as not jokes
Trump doesn’t really tell jokes like that (and doesn’t really laugh at jokes either, right?). His jokes are cruel, mocking ones.
Does it really matter either way? There are things one just does not joke about as POTUS.
It’s human nature (well, for most of us) to try to find some reasonable explanation for unreasonable behavior. But taken too far, and we get things like this thread, where the bounds of ‘reasonable’ have been stretched and the Overton window shifted so far that we are trying to find excuses for ‘jokes’ about shooting protestors and where ‘moderates’ are people who would have been considered extremists not 20 years ago.
Reagan joked about starting nuclear war and W Bush did a whole bit on trying to find the missing WMDs in Iraq. I suppose those were pretty inappropriate, too, but humans joke about all kinds of inappropriate things. That said, I don’t think Trump was joking.
Trump’s “mean jokes” are ways to keep people on their back foot, to pump himself up as being able to say whatever he wants and assert dominance of the conversation, especially when he knows there’ll be nobody in the room successfully calling him on it to his face. Probably been doing it all his life. You want to seriously question something but then he throws out something like that and he rattles you and gets you off your pace.
I wasn’t suggesting I thought it WAS a joke, but let’s be honest- if Trump ever made a smart-ass comment like Reagan’s or McCains, he would NEVER get the benefit of the doubt. That’s not a defense of the man, but I think it’s true.
And I say this as someone who occasionally meets people who get offended when I say “If I had my way all non-pumpkin pie would be outlawed” leading to a humor-challenged in-law getting offended. No, seriously, that happened.
Well, yeah, he wouldn’t get the benefit of the doubt because he doesn’t make those kinds of jokes. Other, cognitively normal people, make all kinds of jokes about appropriate and inappropriate things. GWB was considered a jokester, Obama is well-known for his sense of humor, Reagan did funny movies.
If Trump were a normal person who laughed at and made normal jokes, he could claim he was joking about that, but that’s not who Trump is. I find Trump’s total lack of a sense of humor to be really weird.
People deserve the benefit of the doubt up to a point. Once I’ve decided that someone is an incorrigible liar, then he loses his benefit of the doubt with me, and it’s practically impossible to win it back ever again. He lost it ages ago.
It’s not something I chose to do. It’s something HE decided to do, to lose the benefit of the doubt with me.
He sold it at the same time he lost his empathy, sense of taste and soul. What a deal!
Well, Chris Christie made it official:
His stated goal is to hobble Trump, but if he ends up with the nomination that will be icing on the cake. I hope Christie’s efforts end up like a slap in the face to the Republican party to snap out of it. He admits to slight brainwashing in 2016 and 2020, but says he wont make the same mistake this time. What do you think - will Christie be successful in keeping Trump out of the nomination? Will his efforts get enough traditional conservatives on board to shift the party back toward center?