A new poll shows that about 4 in 10 Americans say Trump has been a “terrible” leader in his second term.
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research also found that about 2 in 10 think he has done an average job in his presidency and 3 in 10 says he’s been a great or good president.
44% say Trump’s focused on the wrong priorities in the AP-NORC poll, 21% said an even mix and 10% don’t know
You really got to wonder what that 2 in 10 thinks about the history of presidents of this country.
It’s honestly weird to see people hyperventilating over Trump when I’ve lived through the Bush post-9/11 War on Terror and the Reagan Era War on Crime.
Both had wildly unconstitutional surveillance and arrests, extra-judicial black sites and torture prisons, partisan purges of agencies, corporate multinationals capturing government agencies, and all sorts of naked corruption.
Trumpism isn’t new, it’s just poorly marketed. The biggest difference between Trump and his predecessors is that the media clapped like seals when prior admins were committing these atrocities.
Bush had Liberty University graduates flushing out the Clintonites from the FBI to the SEC to the EPA. He very famously purged the DOJ in order to influence prosecutions, then groomed a new generation of governors and house reps with the replacements. Bush also oversaw the DHS and the militarization of immigration through ICE.
Reagan had the Heritage Foundation hires who oversaw dismantling public sector unions (the FAA most famously). He tried (and ultimately failed) to eliminate the Dep of Energy. His administration also heavily privatized the US military, which cleared the way for companies like Raytheon and Halliburton to assume critical roles in manufacturing and logistics - a role Elon’s Starlink is currently usurping.
Gtfoh I remember all that shit too. You can’t possibly equate the Reagan era with this. They emphasized the neighborhood watch. That’s a big fucking difference between a neighborhood watch and (God damnit, this is gonna be a long list) checks notes deep breath; official memos to report anti-christian “bias”, ignoring court orders, abducting people to foreign prison camps, ignoring the 1st amendment, gangs of masked men flying swastikas and disrupting lives in public, pardons for violent criminals and major fraud crimes, election tampering, political vendettas, money laundering (meme coins and truth social), human rights violations, throwing away global stability for profit, pulling aid from allies, mocking and taunting allies, promoting random nobodies to prominent government positions, a literal felon president, arresting US citizens at the border, promoting RUSSIA, and I know I’m missing like, several dozen other horrendous things that makes Reagan’s presidency comparatively cute.
And that doesn’t even mention paying off a pornstar for silence about leveraging his power to influence her career, also known as rape. Or the other rape and defamation cases, or all of the hardworking Americans who built businesses that were ruined by trump not paying his debts, and drawing out the courts? How many people became homeless or committed suicide as a direct result of trump not paying his debts? Now millions of people are going to die globally because trump is pulling the same shit on a global scale.
America has a debt, and it’s not just the national debt. We have a debt to the world for making it suck so much worse. The globalization of our economy sucked everyone into our vortex of destruction. There isn’t plastic in Tibets glacial melt because of their actions. We owe the world because the reason this is the wealthiest country (for now) is because we shit on the rest of the world to do it. Even the excessive debt and selling of our debt, it’s all just this extravagent hubris… It’s gross. It’s like “yes! Bask in the exuberance! Buy my money so I can have more money!” And now consumers and countries alike are like… Uhhh wtf? No.
This is our downfall. Not just the fascism that’s growing, but that this bullshit is making other countries realize that they don’t need us at all. Not our money, not our defense, not our tech, not even our food! The world doesn’t need us one bit, and a lot of people on every side are just now figuring this out. Unironically, this will actually probably lead to a rise in health and living standards around the world. Except for America, that is.
SWAT Teams were not a Neighborhood Watch. The MOVE Bombing was not conducted by a neighborhood watch. Iran-Contra wasn’t committed by a neighborhood watch. The invasion of Grenada wasn’t done by a neighborhood watch. The Wedtech scandal wasn’t a neighborhood watch affair.
I know I’m missing like, several dozen other horrendous things that makes Reagan’s presidency comparatively cute.
You’re neglecting a litany of crimes and scandals and dystopian expansions of the security committed under the Reagan administration.
Reagan was happy enough to wrap himself in the Southern Cross. Why apologize for him like this?
I could see Trump being average among the atrocities of prior presidents. I see absolutely nothing wrong with hyperventilating at each and every one of them, though. Average doesn’t mean acceptable.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with hyperventilating at each and every one of them, though.
Treating each President as uniquely bad leads to people losing sight of the structural problems with the state because of their fixation on the ideosynchrosis of individual office holders.
Trump isn’t merely using the presidency incorrectly. The presidency is designed as a vehicle for inflicting brutality and he’s just aiming it at people we sympathize with.
