More immediately, the House needs to give the Senate one more chance to remove him from office, while there’s still time for it to do some good with respect to our response to the coronavirus. Mike Pence, as awful as he is, would be an improvement. (That by itself is a scary thought.)
Impeachment hearings wouldn’t be necessary; prior to a House impeachment vote, all they’d need would be take a couple hours to list all the things Trump continues to not do that need to be done, and all the ways Trump continues to actively interfere with relief efforts. Then vote and send it to the Senate.
If the Senate Republicans (as expected) vote to keep Trump, then they’ve bought into full responsibility for the effects of Trump’s failures from here on, and the bodies can be laid at their feet this November.
While I agree with the sentiment (and that Donald Trump could be removed by the Senate without an extended trial or witness testimony just as well as he was acquitted) Congress actually has more pressing matters at this moment because it is so utterly clear that Trump (nor Pence) is capable of wielding executive authority in a way to mitigate the effects of the epidemic. Honestly, I feel like Pence would just go along with the Evangelist suicide cult crowd in asserting that this is just a sign of the coming biblical Apocalypse and the faster it does the sooner they’ll all get Raptured. So I am not at all eager to stage hook Trump despite how awful he is in very conceivable way.
Political Reckoning: The first in a series exploring the political dynamics surrounding the coronavirus crisis
[my bold]
Whatever you think of Bush, he actually read books, and in this case, realized he had to do something.
I can’t imagine Trump reading a book, 2) grasping the implications, and 3) taking the initiative to do something that didn’t directly benefit/enrich himself.
Bush was definitely far from the most intellectual president we’ve had, but he wasn’t anti-intellectual. He also showed some cognitive flexibility.
Also, I can’t recall who asked me to do it, but someone had asked me to back up the claim that Bush had anything to do with resolving the Great Recession. As I mentioned, Bush called for and signed into law the first wave of TARP:
Do I blame his administration for falling asleep at the wheel and allowing the housing crisis to explode into a full-grown economic conflagration? Yes, without hesitation. I spent a good 6-7 years huffing and puffing about all the horrors of the Bush administration to anyone who would listen, but there were some things he got right, and even some policies that were somewhat controversial and remain controversial today. The intelligence sharing between agencies and the domestic security responses post-9/11 was, in my view, incontrovertibly a success. Did some aspects of it need to be subjected to more oversight, and do they now? Yes, but the world now is different than the months following 9/11 when were playing catch up in the game of responding to global anti-terrorism intelligence.
He also showed a willingness to adapt the counter-terrorism and foreign policy arenas, and he started by diminishing Cheney’s profile. This probably wasn’t easy given Cheney’s long-standing respect within the community of right wing nationalist hawks. But Bush managed to change and I give him some credit for that. It doesn’t change the totally disastrous foreign policy decisions and his failure to regulate banks, but he made it possible for the incoming administration to have success. By contrast, everything about this administration leads me to believe that should they lose an election and ultimately concede defeat, they would probably do everything within their power to spite the incoming administration. They would scorch the earth.
Bush was a bad president, but Trump is infinitely worse.
One gets the impression some people here care more about Trump being un-PC than your country starting wars that cut short the lives of hundreds of thousands, maybe because its those people over there.
Out of sight out of mind, is that it?
Apparently one can be up to the knees in blood they have spilled and still be considered a better person than the one with a bad personality.
And some of you have the nerve to talk about how Trump makes the US look bad from the outside when, for petty, partisan, situational BS, pretend to believe bombing innocent people to bits by the thousands is less of a sin than what?? What exactly has Trump done that is worse than deliberately starting wars and killing hundreds of thousands of people?
“Americans are quite stupid, or at least have been trained to adhere to some seriously stupid paradigms”
Seriously stupid paradigms, such as believing that there is anything worse than wars of aggression justified with lies.
You seriously think our beef with Donald is having a bad personality? Really? I’ll tell you what he has done: he is attempting to destroy the great American democratic experiment. He extorted an allied government to manufacture dirt on his political opponents. He separated children from their families just to be a mean motherfucker. He is gutting environmental regulations. He has looted the treasury to enrich him and his rich buddies. He has replaced career professionals with toadies who tell him what he wants to hear. He is trying to take health care away from millions of Americans because of a program started by a black president. He has encouraged voices of bigotry and hatred. Yes, these are in my opinion worse than wars started on lies.
On the bright side, we almost had 5 million deaths this year.
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if the stock market didn’t tank on March 12th. Would Trump have kept whistling past the graveyard until things spun out of control?
I don’t think this topic is debatable. On competence alone, Trump is the worst POTUS ever. All other presidents at least tried to lead the nation. Trump had no interest in that whatsoever. He’s there for money and his ego alone.
I suppose it might feel debatable to some people because Trump has supporters, but we have to consider why he has supporters. There are only four reasons a person supports Trump (listed from most to least common):
Ignorance: they’re not paying attention to what’s happening, and don’t realize all the bullshit and destruction he’s causing
Stupidity: They’ve actually convinced themselves that he’s a good POTUS, and they believe all the nonsense about him being a self-made, successful businessman. These are the Fox News types.
Malevolence: They know what he’s doing, and they like it. Basically, they’re assholes just like he is.
Insanity: They are deranged like he is, and have no concept of reality.
I’ve often referred to Trump as The Moron Whisperer, because if there’s a talent he has, it’s attracting other morons to follow him. He’s the Pied Piper of morons. He is deeply in tune with the moron mindset. He leads a cult of personality, where all the morons can get together and feel superior for a short time, even if it’s objectively masturbatory and delusional.
The Trump base is humanity’s lowest common denominator, and the rest of humanity is at their mercy. That’s why people seem to engage in serious debates like this, over things which aren’t really debatable.
If it’s a body count you’re looking for, just give the White House’s response to COVID-19 some time.
This.
And to expand on this, he is a bad person, with a bad personality, who does bad things because he enjoys doing things that are bad. That’s cruelty for its own sake.
He’ll Rave about his ratings and how he’s winning during a pandemic even as the cases in the US climb past half a million. That’s malignant narcissism.
He takes responsibility for anything at all, including the invention of the wheel or the discovery of fire, but refuses to take responsibility for everything he has done wrong or has failed to do. That is a lack of leadership.
He expects everyone to Bow Down and Worship Him and if they don’t do so, he attacks them on Twitter or fires them or forces them to resign. That’s a cult of personality with heavy shades of dictatorship.
He seriously believes that we should nuke hurricanes, that wind turbines cause cancer, and that Californians could prevent wildfires if they just raked the forest. That is abject stupidity and ignorance.
I could go on all day, but the bottom line here is that all of these things add up to a very dangerous and reckless sum.
War certainly causes a lot of death and destruction, but it is not the only thing that does. And people are not the only things that could be destroyed. The Constitution is being shredded while we watch. The rule of law has become meaningless.
This is far beyond just having a crappy personality.
The part you gloss over is the first draft of the TARP legislation: Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, remembers a call with Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. “We need $700 billion,” they told Brown, “and we need it in three days.” What’s more, the plan stipulated, Paulson could spend the money however he pleased, without review “by any court of law or any administrative agency.”
This is the kind of thing Individual-ONE actually does, but the Bush administration would have, if they thought they could have.
You could interpret that in different ways. Obviously it’s better to have oversight, but in that moment, I think one could make the argument that they wanted helicopters of cash, they wanted it fast, and with few strings attached, which was not necessarily irrational thinking in that moment.
The other difference is that Bush didn’t fire his IGs involved with overseeing the implementation of stimulus. Wonder how long it takes before we find out that Trump is using the stimulus to reward his allies and withholding it to punish those who don’t play ball - that’s what happens in Putin’s Russia.
People probably don’t see it this way yet, but the stimulus is establishing the first real foundation of a perpetual kleptocracy.
Well, you must not have noticed where the original proposal wanted it “without review” – IGs would not be very useful if they were not allowed to review Paulson’s actions.
Yes, Trump is by far the worst President of my, or any American’s lifetime. His handling of this pandemic, which has now cost 20,000 lives here (arguably higher, as many have not been tested, including a friend of mine who hadn’t been tested before passing) may prove to be his downfall; but it’s so much more than that.
His placement of foxes to guard the chickens:
Rick Perry, who wanted to shutter the Dept of Energy
Betsy De Vos, school voucher Queen
Scott Pruitt, whose biography describes himself as a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda (Cite)
Ben Carson in HUD?
Ryan Zinke
His use of acting secretaries, enabling him to skirt Senate confirmation and oversight.
His dismantling of the State Department is one that will leave a long lasting hole in diplomacy moving forward.
His grifting. Making the Secret Service pay to stay at his properties and to pay for the rental of golf carts is just the tip of the iceberg here. How much has he profited off of foreign diplomats at his DC hotel and at Mar-a-Lago?
The situation now is not Tramp’s alone but the entire supportive GOP infrastructure. Tramp sucks most because he’s allowed to, encouraged to, by a party in a death spiral. Dems allowed Dubya’s gang to build the security state but Tramp is only the GOP’s fault.
