President Trump Optimism thread

And to think, all I got was this lousy t-shirt. :(

If you have trouble finding it under “comedy”, look under “documentary”.

*made in china

Haha, nicely done. :)

This is the simple truth. The American electorate, through willful ignorance and stupidity, squandered the enormous power laid upon them and shamed the memory of the patriots who died to enfranchise them.

Because he’s a coward, and doesn’t want to go up against the GOP.

Because he’s an idiot, and doesn’t understand what a veto would mean, or what he’d be vetoing.

Because he’s lazy, and signing a bill is a whole lot easier than vetoing something and being constantly held to account by the GOP to explain why he vetoed it.

He’s not smart enough to know that vetoing it would make him look like a hero.

As much as I dislike what they were voting to do, the hype about a “clandestine” session is just silly. It’s not some secret meeting that unfairly got the necessary votes because no one was watching C-SPAN at that hour. Everyone who could vote knew about and knew what they were voting for or against.

With other Presidents, the legislation itself would be changed by the statement, because the statement would be seen as giving the President room to justify a veto and hemming in his options - he can’t just completely reverse himself, so it would need provisions the President could hang his hat on when questioned about his earlier statement. With Trump, it’s an applause line with no policy heft. Assuming that the GOP leadership has figured that out (and they do this shit for a living, so they’ve definitely figured it out), all they have to do is decide what Trump wants to actually accomplish, explain that the plan clearly does that (whatever “that” is), and make sure the plan is “his” plan. Once that’s done, they know Trump won’t be saying negative things about it, they know Trump and most voters won’t actually connect outcomes to promises unless they make a big deal of a specific promise (like “you can keep your plan”) and they also know that any details the press complains about can be called fake news, so it’s irrelevant what the policy actually is. “Oh, CNN says it’s not giving everyone insurance? They are so bad, folks, so dishonest.”

I’ve seen a lot of people getting up in arms about specific things like this, but the reality is that every candidate has things you support and things you don’t. It’s a sign of the hyper-partisan nature of the times that we expect everyone who voted for Trump to be happy about everything he does. Maybe he will help fix the problem because people who supported him will also feel free to criticize him (since so many people are already criticizing him). We should encourage that, not berate the people who do it.

Apparently I have been unfriended or blocked on Facebook by an acquaintance. I decided I needed to argue with his posts about John Lewis not respecting voting rights because of his statements on DT illegitimacy, and his long serious analysis on why Obama hates rich people and spent his whole presidency working on redistribution of wealth and excessively biased towards Islam. So I guess I should be optimistic about the separation of our two echo chambers for the coming years?

I’m not there yet, sorry. If Trump were a normal Republican candidate, sure. But he’s a fucking menace, so I’m still at the stage of shouting FUCK YOU to any and all expressions of Trumpgret.

I mean, I get being angry at people who voted for him, because, as you said, “what the fuck?” But, at the same time, demanding that those people think he is the greatest thing to ever happen to America and that all his policies are awesome is really counter-productive. I mean, this is the optimism thread, right?

If his damage can prevented, then people learning to… well learn about politicians and the like instead of blindly checking the box with a D or R next to it would be a plus.

That’s about as optimistic as one can be about it. Of course it wont happen, but hey… optimism?

I was trying to come up with snide mockeries of “I voted for Trump, not against Planned Parenthood” – like “I voted for Genghis Khan but not for a mountain of skulls” – but to be honest I can’t think of anything more ludicrous than the original.

Is it true that part of the Republican effort to repeal the ACA also came with the stipulation that the Congressional Budget Office cannot do its usual audit of the costs?

Coming to the realization that Trump is bad is a good thing, but these people need to do more than just say, “this isn’t what I expected!”

They need to realize that they were conned, and their inability or unwillingness to critically analyze information directly led to this.

Otherwise they’re just gong to keep making the mistake.

Strange how that cowardice never showed up during the election, when you couldn’t find a legitimate republican who supported Trump. And he still got the nomination. You need to choose your words better, or maybe just try making sense.

Yeah, he isn’t afraid. He just don’t give a fuck or likely understand any of it.

nah.

She wrote a whole article for USA Today about the imminent defunding of PP and her opposition to him. Clearly this was an important issue to her. Trump was not shy about his intentions to defund PP, if elected.

“My vote for Trump was not a vote against Planned Parenthood” is not factual. If you voted for Trump, one of the things you voted for was defunding (and potentially closing) Planned Parenthood.

Yea, exactly.

Guess this is a good place to put this.

Again, all you are saying here is that you must be a True Believer or you are an idiot. Trump stood for many things - if she had voted for him because she really likes X and he stood for X when he clearly didn’t really stand for X, then it makes sense to say, “what the hell were you thinking, how did you get taken in?” But when you vote for someone you are voting for a bunch of things, and in a normal world you will not just disagree with some of things your candidate says or does, you will actually speak out about them. Her statement is entirely reasonable. “I voted for Trump so he could do X, not because I wanted him to do Y, even though he said he’d do both.” That’s a totally plausible statement, and almost universally true of voters, regardless of which candidate you put in there.