1 Like
2 Likes
Lol…
4 Likes
Best analysis I have seen of why Trump is popular.
Here is an excerpt from the Atlantic ;
Trump Won’t Accept Defeat. Ever.
His forever campaign is just getting started.
While you watch Donald Trump’s presidency stagger to its ugly end, always keep in mind how it began: Trump entered the political world on the back of the “birther” conspiracy theory, a movement whose importance was massively underestimated at the time. Aside from its racist undertones, think about what a belief in birtherism really implied. If you doubted that Barack Obama was born in the United States—and about a third of Americans did, including 72 percent of registered Republicans—then that meant you also believed that Obama was an illegitimate president. That meant, in other words, you believed that everyone—the entire American political, judicial, and media establishment, including the White House and Congress, the federal courts and the FBI, all of them—was complicit in a gigantic plot to swindle the public into accepting this false commander in chief. A third of Americans had so little faith in American democracy, broadly defined, they were willing to think that Obama’s entire presidency was a fraud.
That third of Americans went on to become Trump’s base. Over four years, they continued to applaud him, no matter what he did, not because they necessarily believed everything he said, but often because they didn’t believe anything at all. If everything is a scam, who cares if the president is a serial liar? If all American politicians are corrupt, then so what if the president is too? If everyone has always broken the rules, then why can’t he do that too? No wonder they didn’t object when Trump’s White House defied congressional subpoenas with impunity, or when he used the Department of Justice to pursue personal vendettas, or when he ignored ethics guidelines and rules about security clearances, or when he fired watchdogs and inspectors general. No wonder they cheered him on when he denigrated the CIA and the State Department as the “deep state,” or laughed and smiled when he called journalists “enemies of the people.”
Not all of this was Trump’s doing. Many Americans had lost trust in democratic institutions long before he arrived on the scene. One recent survey showed that half of the country is dissatisfied with our political system; one-fifth told pollsters that they would be happy to live under military rule. Trump not only exploited this democratic deficit to win the White House, but he expanded it while in office. And now his political, financial, and maybe even emotional strategy requires him to damage America’s faith in its democracy further.
9 Likes
Simple solution to this developing saga,toss Trumps dummy way out into the Atlantic,he’ll be after it and the rest of the toys already out of the pram like a shot.
3 Likes
5 Likes
quite revealing!
I bet the UK’s congratulations was through gritted teeth as well.
2 Likes
2 Likes
It’s kind of weird that this is a thing though, don’t you think? It smacks of fawning because you don’t want to upset Yaya Toure by forgetting his birthday cake. Same with the rush to be the first country visited by the new US President, or the first leader to be invited to the White House. It’s all a little…I dunno…obsequious.
When else is there this scrutiny on how quickly sovereign states must be seen to have kissed the ring? It’s a bit weird. Can’t these things just be allowed to happen privately with nobody giving a shit how quickly a country’s head of state (and/or prime minister) has said well done on being elected President, even before (s)he’s officially been confirmed?
4 Likes
As a side note, I think Trump is the only US president since 1945 who will have never visited Germany during his presidency. Too much honour.
6 Likes
Yeah, I’m also not keen on that pinnacle that the US is on to be honest, especially when you have the country in that broken state they have been. But being where they are, nothing good from a global perspective was ever to happen with Trump in the hot seat. Perhaps not with Biden either but it is a step away from Trump.
I guess there was also plenty of scrutiny when Boris was voted in. We’re still at it now to a certain degree. I bet there’s forum pages somewhere in Europe with a similar discussion to this, but with Boris being the idiot we all know he is. To me it signals a disturbing shift or uprising in discontent with politicians into which an even worse thing comes and fills the void.
1 Like
Germany don’t have time for Jokes.
5 Likes
Merkel is one of the few who dared standing up to him, questioning his isolationism. Of course, that didn’t go down well with the big troll.
5 Likes
I bet he was scared of Merkel. Far too clever for him.
7 Likes
Time for what?
2 Likes
He couldn’t even get himself to shake her hand when she visited, did you see that? Awkward…
5 Likes
I saw that. Doesn’t want to do anything that might emphasise his tiny baby hands.
2 Likes
Vague memory. He is simply a disgusting person IMO. Zero class, humility etc. the list is long.
1 Like
At the very least, it gives everyone a bit of time to take a deep breath and think about whether everyone on the right calling everyone to the left of them Nazi’s and everyone on the left calling everyone to the right of them Nazi’s is a sound basis for political discourse.
Biden has a hell of a job, but if he can sow some unity and row the world back a bit from the insane polarisation that has led us to shit storms like Trump and Brexit, then he’ll have done well.
His pledges on climate, from promising to get the US back in the Paris Agreement on his first day, to his support for a green new deal is a really promising start.
3 Likes
I think what Biden offers, is consistency. Whether that comes from his own political leanings, or the difficulties he has in getting things through a Republican controlled senate. He isn’t going to take one position and then change it with no serious catalyst.
Trump is all hat and no cattle as the saying goes.
2 Likes