Notice that the bulk of the post is bitching about Trump’s construction projects, a default strategy that I have pointed out before. The Trump Deranged always focus on minutia, because it is easy—the President’s tweets, his weird obsession with self-promotion and, of course, the ballroom, the arch and the Kennedy Center. These are all, of course, subject to legitimate criticism, and, in the final analysis, completely irrelevant to history’s ultimate verdict on the Trump Presidency. But when my friend lists the substantive issues regarding which he assumes all good people will nod their woke heads in agreement, he embarrasses himself. He hasn’t thought any of these through, and is just mouthing Axis cant:
- “A President who insists on making himself the news…” The Axis is obsessed with Trump and it makes him the news when any other President would be ignored. Did Trump make his reliance on a female aide suddenly headline news, or was it an asshole Democratic Senator impugning a loyal employee to appeal to Trump-haters like my friend?
- “and communicates in absolutely BIZARRE ways…” 1) So what? 2) One of the ways Trump’s communication style is bizarre is that he isn’t afraid to tell the truth. For example, the news media is “the enemy of the people.”
- “the multiple DC building projects…” The Horror…
- “dispatching the military to American cities…” Washington D.C.’s crime rate has been a disgrace for decades, and Trump’s use of the National Guard was and is prudent, effective, responsible, and saved lives. It is also completely legal.
- “the ignoring of norms..” Maybe the most foolish and ignorant statement of all. I’ve exploded this partisan talking point many times, most thoroughly here under “Big Lie #6: “Trump’s Defiance Of Norms Is A Threat To Democracy.”
- “Congress being AWOL…” Translation: Congress is AWOL because it isn’t blocking Administration policies that Democrats dislike. Congress properly tried to get to the bottom of the pandemic scandal perpetrated by Ethics Villain Anthony Fauci, and knee-jerk Democrats like my friend were outraged.
- “a $40 Trillion deficit…” NOT “deficit,” you boob, debt! I just wrote about how dishonest that accusation is.
- “High gas prices, high food prices…” Trump is responsible for not somehow eliminating the results of the inflation that was caused by the Biden Presidency. See, inflation keeps going up, it never comes down. Yes, gas prices are up again in part because the U.S. is fighting a war in the Middle East.
- “no explanation or plan to get out of this war….” The plan is to win it. War is Hell. Shut up, Weenie.
- “The flouting of Court orders…” Like the illegal and partisan court orders that Supreme Court has condemned? The unconstitutional interference with the President’s constitutional powers?
- “the endless work arounds to get what this administration wants is Not Normal.” Again, pure ignorance. Every President’s administration seeks “work arounds,” in fact, it is every President’s duty to do so. Sometimes they work,, sometimes they don’t. My friend was oddly silent when Joe Biden’s “work around” to get the silly Equal Rights Amendment passed was to announce it had been passed when it hadn’t.
At least he didn’t mention the Epstein files….
Ethics Alarms 
Maybe it boils down to, “He’s not one of US!” At its highest levels, the U.S. is an extremely classist society. And given there is no royal, hereditary class, the dividing lines are arbitrary, hidden, and malleable. I bet Trump’s SATs were terrible!
I remember during Trump’s first term, I made a Facebook post that tried to explain to lefties the concept of “resistance burnout”…. Basically, if you approach everything Trump does with the exact same amount of action and outrage, then you lose the ability to signal what is actually important, and everything just ends up sounding like an adult from Charlie Brown. I used how Trump muzzled the EPA’s Twitter account and how he appointed a man actively being sued by the EPA as head of the EPA as examples of something very low stakes and something legitimately bad.
Because there is some there there, and a sane resistance has a place. I’ll put it out there: I was absolutely more than willing to talk about how awful Biden was, and how the 25th was probably more appropriate for him than any other President in living memory. See: “Weekend at Biden’s” and “President Autopen”… That wasn’t normal either.
Because Trump isn’t normal, but just saying that is insufficient. “Normal” isn’t a moral state of being. What he does is important, and while I could be annoyed at all the capital projects, particularly during a cost of living crisis (I am), or his instinct to rhetorically pee on everything he can in an attempt to get his name on things (ditto), or his desire to add acreage to the American empire by floating ideas that are just… Never going to happen, as some kind of legacy project (also yes), these things are relatively unimportant. We need to be able to walk and chew gum, and separate the annoying things Trump does from the things that are actually problems.
Trump’s second term foreign relations has been… rough. Nothing indefensible, but if we’re going to criticize Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, we can probably squint and see the parallels to Trump’s…. whatever this is…. with Iran. Even if you want to make the argument that the base action was good, the lack of planning is evident.
His economy has also been rough, and he’s picking fights with everyone. It’s not good enough to look to other nations and point out that they’re doing worse either… Trade is not a zero-sum game, theoretically, people are unloading stuff they have too much of and getting stuff they have too little of. His tariff policy has extracted $300 billion dollars from the American economy, and how much better off do you all feel for it?
I think Trump-supporters are willing over overlook not just the small shit, but the massive, systemic problems in Trump’s administration, because you like some of the other things that he’s doing, some of the things politicians have been saying for years that they were going to do, but didn’t. Trump legitimately worked a miracle at your border, as an example, and that’s great, I just don’t understand the…. cultish loyalty to him. You could theoretically have the good stuff without the bad, they aren’t mutually dependent. More… He’s done. Regardless of what happens during the midterm, Trump’s presidency has an expiration date, and how much you love him now isn’t going to matter in 2028, because he will not be on the ticket. If you can’t even signal what you think are excesses to someone who will never run another campaign in their life, what’s the point? You’re just signaling that your party can take your support for granted.
Rational, measured analysis. I also don’t understand Trump cultism, at all. But as I’ve written a lot here, we judge Presidents on their best accomplishments unless their botches are so unforgivable that they cancel the triumphs.Good lord, if it hadn’t been for the Depression and WWII thingies, FDR would be rated as one of the worst Presidents. Four terms? Locking away citizens based on race? Defying Congressional edicts? Handing whole nations over to Soviet slavery?
Purple hair and cutting off the genitals of boys is not normal either, until it is.
Welcome to the new normal, crusty old man.
Wait, why do you assume a friend of mine is a crusty old man???????????
It wasn’t too long ago that an Office of the President repeatedly ignored Supreme Court rulings that forgiveness of student loan debt violated the Constitution. Not to mention that enforcement of Congressionally-passed Immigration Law need not be enforced if an Office of the President said that it didn’t. (The Office of the President is always larger than just one man, sometimes much larger.)