LogFAQs > #983863177

ARCHONOIR posted...

Where and how do you get your news? That, for me, is important to know. Do you watch his rallies, interviews, debates, etc. at the source, in its entirety? I ask because nearly every anti-Trump poster on this board does not and only mostly watches clips or reads it on a full on, left slant, site or YT channel. I rarely read anyone speak honestly about him. No one knowledgeable.

Is there any point in answering this question when you've already decided that getting information about Trump from anyone other than Trump means somebody is being manipulated by left-leaning lies and is therefore not knowledgeable?

You cannot sit there and tell me that Trump rarely actually lies and then pretend that you're knowledgeable about the things he does. Or rather, you can be knowledgeable about the things he does, but not about anything else, and that's not much better.

ARCHONOIR posted...

Anyone that believes he was ever racist is not knowledgeable about him whatsoever. Period.

Hence my earlier comment that anything he does that seems racist is likely just posturing for his racist fan club and not a reflection of personal hatred.

ARCHONOIR posted...

but his general policies, especially this term, are pretty great.

His policies this term are overtly just pandering to people that think immigrants, DEI, and environmentalism are the reasons America's economy is suffering, with a smattering of "I don't like that I don't have absolute power over the whole government," "any official that ever did anything that worked against me should be fired," and the occasional ego-stroking like renaming the Gulf of Mexico (because that's obviously a worthwhile expenditure of anything). Notable alarming standouts among his executive orders include "the federal government is no longer allowed to do anything to oppose misinformation campaigns," a commitment to harming trans people as much as he is legally able to, instituting an automatic death penalty for anyone that kills a cop (pandering to the cop worship crowd), what appears to be laying the groundwork to punish everyone involved in prosecuting Jan 6 rioters after pardoning said rioters (under the pretense of "ending the weaponization of the government for political agendas," no less), and "removing political influence" from science by establishing a council hand-picked by the president to advise what research is worth funding (because the president isn't political, I guess).

It's all aggressive showboating with little regard for the practical reality, value, or truth of any of it, quite a lot of which is going to cause significant harm to people that really haven't done anything to deserve harm. I'm sure some of it will end up being beneficial (like treating Mexican cartels as international terrorists is probably actually one of the best things that can be done to help the immigration issue, given that they're one of the main reasons so many Mexicans are desperate enough to immigrate illegally), but the degree to which everything is obviously ego-driven and pandering to some really vile, hateful people is profoundly concerning, particularly how much of it amounts to "stop telling me what I can't do." A micromanaging narcissist in a position of power is a pretty dangerous thing.

ARCHONOIR posted...

Lastly. How do you think Trump mismanaged COVID?

At pretty much every stage, he downplayed the need for a decisive, coordinated response to limit the spread of the disease, including overtly calling it (or at least the idea that lockdowns were necessary) a hoax in the early days, contradicting and publicly undermining the CDC and WHO on many occasions (including trying to withdraw from the WHO because they bruised his ego by disagreeing with him, which he's picked right back up again this time after Biden shot it down), giving backhanded recommendations for countermeasures that ensured many people wouldn't get on board with them (to paraphrase the best example of this, "My official position is that wearing a mask will help, but I won't be wearing one," ensuring that people who view him as a role model would feel like not wearing a mask is a badge of honour/bravado), handling his own infection in a way that made it seem like it wasn't a big deal and he beat it because he was strong instead of because he had access to a $10 million monocolonal antibody treatment that's probably the only reason he survived...

He handled some aspects well, such as Operation Warp Speed (as much as that sounds like a 6-year-old named it), but he very clearly bungled many other aspects. Most notably, his attitude and response to the disease can be pretty much entirely blamed for the fact that Covid turned into a Left vs. Right thing in the US, since he framed the response as him (as a "champion" of the right) clashing with evil big government agencies that just wanted to restrict freedoms for no reason. While it's hard to say exactly how history could have changed, I feel pretty confident guessing that if he'd acted more decisively and not made a point of arguing with public health officials, you would have seen far fewer people rejecting Covid countermeasures as a matter of personal political identity and it would have been much easier to assuage people's fears around the vaccines.