President Trump

Trump messed up.

But what gets me is that some of his detractors (those on the radical left) don't seem to realize that they end up distracting the focus from Trump's foul ups with their extreme overreactions to everything he says and does.

When everything he says is basically the most heinous expression ever made and going to lead to the end of the world, then, when he genuinely messes up, it doesn't seem to have as much impact when (according to the left) every single thing he does is an absolute catastrophe. It's kind of another take on the old "boy who cried wolf" scenario.

To wit: after Trump's displays of diplomacy that seemed to show deference to the word of Russia's leader, we now have lawmakers calling him "treasonous," accusing his summit with Russia as being "high crimes and misdemeanors," and actually calling for "military coupes" as if we are some undeveloped banana republic.

These overreactions seem like Trump's "insurance policy" for when he messes up. They distract from whatever he did or said and become new news stories to focus on, in and of themselves.

The triggered leftists and deranged media are the best thing to happen to Trump (and he knows it while they don't seem to). Who knows where he'd be without them?

You should substitute the word "Democrat" for "radical" or "leftist" -- it's Coke vs. Pepsi, not ideology... Both parties traded positions (trade, for example).. I agree too much attention is given to gossip instead of real issues (taxes, homelessness).



However, if this was all a movie, I'm sure people would think "Man, that was a pretty ********'d up scene!'

Disagreeing with your own intelligence community is not treasonous. Even allowing for differences of opinion on degree, I don't even understand the basic logic of that claim. Nobody swears allegiance to the Director of the CIA, and I imagine most of the people tossing around words like "traitor" would've been a lot happier if, say, George W. Bush had disagreed with the intelligence community back in 2003.

We've got a pretty standard cycle going here: Trump says or does something dumb or ignorant, and everyone overreacts to it enough to distract from what he did, give him cover, and give his less thoughtful supporters a cheap excuse to ignore his mistakes. Over and over.

@ynwtf your entire post is well written, it's an astute observation. I edited it down for my reply, as those quoted parts of your post goes with my own hypothesis: That the bulk of Trump supporters admire his brassiness, as his angry outburst gives vindication to their own unfocused anger. You know 'birds of a feather'.

It's about angry people responding to a leader who's as angry as they are. I don't think it matters to most Trump supporters what he does or what political stances he takes. As long as Trump lashes out in anger, he then gives voice to his angry supporters.

He sells anger, just like other populist leaders of the past have. Anger is easier and quicker, but ultimately anger is weaker.

“There is no question that Russia interfered in our election and continues attempts to undermine democracy here and around the world," - Paul Ryan.

Oh, they definitely try to. No doubt about that. But Trump being carelessly ignorant or reflexively contrarian isn't treason.

I also get the impression a lot of people are confused about "interference" means. As far as I can see it doesn't meant vote tampering. It means things like Twitter bots, releasing emails, and buying Facebook ads to sow discord. None of that should be ignored or treated lightly, but this all seems wildly insufficient to sway the election, and which I assume are probably happening (less obviously) most of the time anyway. I'm more mad about the intent than the effect.

Ell oh ell:

On a more mundane matter... of the many things I'd add to my list of things I'd change about Trump... after just seeing him on TV today, I'd change that hair. I know I've mentioned it in jest before, and I know he likes it, but dang! All I could think of was if you took a homeless person who hasn't been in a clean restroom with a good mirror in a long time, shaved him, put a suit on him and then tried to comb his hair back WITHOUT the benefit of a decent haircut.

So weird!!!

lol I meant the tweet; but yeah, the hair too

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"Ever try to forcibly pin down a house cat? It's not easy." - Captain Steel

"I just can't get pass sticking a finger up a dog's butt." - John Dumbear

Let's hope Trump doesn't misspeak the hostage letter he's reading!

This isn't rationally disagreeing with your intelligence community, this is standing on the world stage next to Putin and taking Putin's side over your own country. It was disgusting and it showed what a stooge Trump is. As for Bush, that was a very different situation and it's also not as clear cut as you make it out, given that administration was actively looking for an excuse to invade Iraq and while some of the intelligence was inaccurate, other aspects of the intelligence was accurate and was ignored, and even misrepresented, by Bush (or those around him).

If you can't get outraged over Trump's display, then clearly Trump is winning by normalizing behavior that never would have been accepted ever by any other president. Even this is getting criticized across all party lines except by the worst of the worst of Trump sycophants. And it's coming on the heels of the 12 indictment of Russians and the charging of the Russian gun rights woman for being a Kremlin spy.

The president doesn't swear an oath to the CIA director, but Trump did swear an oath of loyalty to the U.S. Our elections were interfered with and the extent of that is greater than you're making it out to be, which is still bad enough, without acknowledging that Russia hacked actual vote registrations and also stole Democratic analytics.

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I may go back to hating you. It was more fun.

Just to catch everyone up, go ahead and post all the hard evidence backing this claim. Thanks.

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Here's what I said:

Here's what you said just now:

Please note the absence of me denying that it was disgusting, or outrageous, or worthy of criticism.

If you'd said those things, I wouldn't have disagreed with you. I kinda said the same sorts of things myself when I called it dumb, ignorant (twice), and careless.

What part of that quote of mine isn't backed up by the publicly available information from the reports of the intelligence community or the indictments?

Okay. Sorry if I read you wrong then. The post I quoted certainly seemed as if you were downplaying Trump's behavior, calling it carelessly ignorant. But whatever.

I didn't get outraged, but I did have a bit of a question mark over my head.
But then seeing Trump having words coming out of his mouth isn't a "trigger" for me as it is for some people (like my mom).

His behavior was actually very typical for a President (which is unusual for him as he's often accused of lacking Presidential professionalism).

At summits, Presidents aren't there for confrontation or even debate. In-person summits in the political world have traditionally been intended as a way to make nice. They are usually a way to try to cool things down and work out compromises. Putin even said in his recent interview that leaders don't go halfway around the world to meet face to face so they can accuse or insult each other (they can do that at home), but rather they meet to try to find common ground.

I'm not trying to downplay Trump's apparent deference to Putin (which he has today walked back, admitting he flubbed some words), but when we consider all the details around this whole "Russian probe" and all the "intelligence" that led to it:

• The Trump campaign collusion accusations with, so far, no evidence or even a basis for any charge...
• The exposure of bias surrounding an investigator who was ironically assigned to lead investigations of both Presidential candidates, and who used wordplay to exonerate one of publicly exposed federal crimes, while it was revealed he wanted to come up with an "insurance policy" to "impeach" Trump should he win the election...
• The fact that the DNC refused to let the FBI look at their allegedly Russian-hacked servers (anyone actually concerned about our electoral security would seek out law enforcement and say, "Please show us where and how they got in so we can stop them from doing it again" as opposed to withholding or scrubbing the evidence)...
• The somewhat flexible definition of exactly what "meddling" or "interference" actually is (that Yoda had mentioned in a previous post)....
• The fact that the Obama administration was apparently aware of said meddling, but said and did nothing about it when they were under the assumption that Hillary was the assured winner (and, in fact, had engaged in doing it themselves to other countries' elections, for instance, Israel)...
• The whole "dossier" fiasco and how it came to be (including the fact that it involved "Russian collusion" by Democrats)...
• The new revelation by Rosenstein that no Americans are under indictment for collusion with Russia...

...it is somewhat understandable that when Trump said both sides have acted stupidly in regards to these issues and the resulting political animosity between the superpowers, that he's referring to all this political obfuscation, bias, attempted manipulation and misdirection that has been thrown up as apparent road blocks, first to his campaign, then to his doing his job by attempting to paint him into some chargeable offense.
Of late, our (the U.S.'s) law enforcement and intelligence agencies have proved less than reliable.

Who needs Russians when members of our own law enforcement have been trying to rig elections?

No worries, perhaps just an honest misunderstanding, then.

That is my default assumption going into any scandal, though: that he's careless and ignorant, and that it explains most of this stuff. I find it to be more plausible than the idea that he's actively sinister, given the constant, clumsy walk backs. If he's trying to be devious, he's clearly not pulling it off.

I dunno if "incompetent rather than evil" constitutes downplaying to some. But I have been accused of excusing him a few times this year for being in just the 90th percentile, condemnation-wise. Sometimes it seems like the only two options are issuing the strongest possible objection, or else being thought of as an apologist.

144 pages. Anybody care to catch me up?

Or are we just waiting for him to legalize the reefer and nail down that re-election.

What I like most about this recent 'scandal' is that, if he is lying and didn't just misread something, at least his lies are becoming more believable. Hell, there's almost a humility in admitting you misread something. Well, for him, anyway.

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What exactly do you consider appropriate reactions under these circumstances? Consider the possibility that the reason the left "overreacts" to everything he says and does is that it's just a constant stream of badness that all deserves focus (Russian collusion doesn't detract from internment camps doesn't detract from endorsing neo-Nazis etc.) and his actions don't deserve any kind of conciliatory "eh, it could be worse" attitude because that wouldn't (and arguably didn't) help matters. If you keep waiting for things to get really bad before overreacting, then by that point it'll be too late. So it's a catch-22. Underreact and it looks like nobody cares so Trump keeps going, Overreact and people look like they care too much to take seriously so Trump keeps going. Don't think you can call it a boy-who-cried-wolf scenario when people's first reaction is to tell you to go and be nice to the wolf.

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