Saturday, December 22

Can you argue convincingly that the Trump presidency is not a disaster?

Can you argue convincingly that the Trump presidency is not a disaster? What presuppositions do you have to make to do that?

(All civil comments accepted. I will tell you in advance that I'm not going to be very convinced by 'he's better than HRC would have been', but I'm willing to listen to specifics.)

This post began with this article from FactCheck.org [https://www.factcheck.org/2018/12/the-whoppers-of-2018/] which includes Trump's top 10 lies of the year. The President regularly lies on the public, global record.

That article also includes reference to two of Trump's extramarital affairs. His comments about sexual assault and the women who have accused him of it should also be considered here.

The Republican Party once claimed to be the party of family values and morality. Is there not even any pretense to that any more? Is it so much more important to back a 'winner'? If Obama had done these things, the Republicans would have gone berserk.

I believe many conservative Christians voted against HRC when they voted for Trump, and especially on the moral issue of abortion. Is your argument here that, even though he's a morally bankrupt narcissist, we have to compromise on that because of the 'wider effect' of abortion policy?

While all of my friends are moral, some may argue for a Kissinger-esque realpolitik. Apart from Trump's moral bankruptcy, here's a non-exhaustive list of recent non-moral issues:

  • Government shutdown in part over paying for a wall between us and Mexico (though I'm open to immigration reform)
  • The market crash, including trade policy
  • Foreign policy most characterized by making friends with dictatorships like Russia, China, North Korea, Syria and Turkey
    • Continuing to pursue friendship with Putin in the face of our own intelligence community which is unanimous that Russia messed with our election
  • SECDEF Mattis's resignation, the last appointee in the Trump administration with any bi-partisan support that I can think of (open to being reminded)
  • Indifference to the rule of law as exemplified by past SECSTATE Tillerson's recent quote: 'So often, the president would say, ‘Here’s what I want to do, and here’s how I want to do it, and I would have to say to him, ‘Mr. President, I understand what you want to do, but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law.’'

What do you think (with special interest in civil comments from conservatives)?

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