**President Trump 2018 Thread**

[Jerksticks]

28 minutes ago, Reddy said:

There are three types of Trump supporter:

1) Proud alt-right neo-nazi white supremacists
2) Economically disenfranchised working class folks
3) White people who don't realize they're white supremacists, but are subconsciously terrified of the changing American culture that includes space for marginalized communities to have a voice and power where they never had it before, so they feel like they're LOSING market share, and want to fight back. Because of this, they'll rationalize and believe literally anything Fox News, conservative pundits, and Trump himself say because those things support and validate their fear.

This dude falls into category 3.

Man I think this accounts for like .0001% of Trump voters.  99.999% of people aren’t racist or afraid of different nationalities. Most people of all colors just get up and go to work with people of all colors every day.  Generalizing people as racists is disgusting.  Just because CNN sends video crews to a white nationalist meeting with a hundred people wearing Trump shirts doesn’t mean the other 60 million supporters are white nationalists.  That’s beyond stupid to make that assumption.  

 

I’d argue that 60 million or whatever people voted for Trump because they were sick of Washington doing nothing and if anything, hurting them.  

 

The ACA stripped every working American of affordable insurance and low deductibles.  It helped some people get access to insurance sure, but it crushed everybody else   Absolutely crushed.  People didn’t want another 4-8 years of the same trends.   Like it or not, Obama’s legacy will only be remembered as Donald Trump.

 

That’s just kinda how I see it when I step back and look at it without bias.  

 

 

[Soxbadger]

10 minutes ago, Jerksticks said:

Man I think this accounts for like .0001% of Trump voters.  99.999% of people aren’t racist or afraid of different nationalities. Most people of all colors just get up and go to work with people of all colors every day.  Generalizing people as racists is disgusting.  Just because CNN sends video crews to a white nationalist meeting with a hundred people wearing Trump shirts doesn’t mean the other 60 million supporters are white nationalists.  That’s beyond stupid to make that assumption.  

 

I’d argue that 60 million or whatever people voted for Trump because they were sick of Washington doing nothing and if anything, hurting them.  

 

The ACA stripped every working American of affordable insurance and low deductibles.  It helped some people get access to insurance sure, but it crushed everybody else   Absolutely crushed.  People didn’t want another 4-8 years of the same trends.   Like it or not, Obama’s legacy will only be remembered as Donald Trump.

 

That’s just kinda how I see it when I step back and look at it without bias.  

 

 

 

How can you legitimately say "without bias."  and say "ACA stripped every working American of affordable insurance and low deductibles."

My insurance doubled this year due to Trump. Under Obama it went up very little. So you cant say "it crushed everyone else" because that is a biased statement that is not supported by the facts. 

Im single, I personally pay over $500 per month and that is with my employer paying over $250 per month. Last year the exact same plan, I paid $220 per month. BCBS told us the reason was due to the increased chance of ACA being repealed. I had 0 insurance claims last year, 0 health problems, so my risk didnt change at all.

/shrugs

Just because I dont fit into your narrative, doesnt mean I dont exist. 

[southsider2k5]

58 minutes ago, Chisoxfn said:

You missed a broad category of those who don't like Hillary or democrats and just view themselves as republican period and thus vote party line (no matter what).  Maybe you are bucketing them in category 1 and 3 but if you are, you are making the same mistake the democratic party did when they lost the mainstream election (essentially talking down and berating an entire sub-set of people).  

I'd also argue that the inverse largely applies as well. For people to not think that party line voting exists and is, than they are delusional, imo.  This is coming from someone who did not vote party line by the way in the last presidential election and who is no longer a registered republican.  All that said, I'm far from a registered democrat too.  

Can't be the Dems fault tho.

[Dick Allen]

"If our leaders seek to conceal the truth, or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom."

 

Rex Tillerson to VMI grads today.

[Kyyle23]

21 minutes ago, Dick Allen said:

"If our leaders seek to conceal the truth, or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom."

 

Rex Tillerson to VMI grads today.

Did he polish his Order or Friendship from Putin before he stepped out on stage?

[RockRaines]

1 hour ago, Jerksticks said:

Man I think this accounts for like .0001% of Trump voters.  99.999% of people aren’t racist or afraid of different nationalities. Most people of all colors just get up and go to work with people of all colors every day.  Generalizing people as racists is disgusting.  Just because CNN sends video crews to a white nationalist meeting with a hundred people wearing Trump shirts doesn’t mean the other 60 million supporters are white nationalists.  That’s beyond stupid to make that assumption.  

 

I’d argue that 60 million or whatever people voted for Trump because they were sick of Washington doing nothing and if anything, hurting them.  

 

The ACA stripped every working American of affordable insurance and low deductibles.  It helped some people get access to insurance sure, but it crushed everybody else   Absolutely crushed.  People didn’t want another 4-8 years of the same trends.   Like it or not, Obama’s legacy will only be remembered as Donald Trump.

 

That’s just kinda how I see it when I step back and look at it without bias.  

 

 

How many listeners does Alex Jones have?  How many people read Breitbart? How many follow Richard Spencer? ACT for America? 4chan?   Its much more than .0001% of trump voters.

[caulfield12]

Obama TRIED to fix a broken process and ran into entrenched interest groups that have only become harder to move in the days since Citizens United.

The final ACA was actually to the right of the Romney Massachusetts plan.

The fact of the matter is there were many “holes” in that particular law...but that it makes a heckuva a lot more sense to fix those holes (and spend a little more money, mostly for those couples earning $50-100,000 per year) rather than blowing the whole thing apart.

There are going to be just as many, if not many MORE...coming out with Tea Party-ish stories and articles in media that show just how bad the system has become now after Trump (CNN had a really top-notch story about a woman fighting for her life and who was denied a transplant over and over again and how hard it was to get insurance companies to work together proactively with the doctors instead of instinctively denying any procedure that would hurt their bottom line and then daring someone to go to court while the clock ran out on their life)...but I’m not necessarily for Medicare for All unless they can figure out a way to cut down/negotiate the drug costs or push out the insurance/health care industrial complex AND control rising hospital costs/tests.  Good luck!   But I’d rather do that STILL than fight wars in the MIddle East and Asian Pacific.

Somehow, I have a feeling a moderate/centrist health care plan would just be an incremental improvement...but the idea that corporations making billions in profits and recent recipients of huge tax cuts shouldn’t be at least 50% responsible for their employees’ health just doesn’t fly with me (and probably most Americans).

To me, the legacy was not apologizing too much, but not using his first two years of political capital to make the RIGHT changes...flubbing or punting on a lot of important foreign policy areas (due to lack of interest or better solutions)...and running the national party into the ground with huge losses in the House, state legislatures, governors, local elections, gerrymandering, etc.  His ego and aloofness/coolness kept him from being a great president, but he was in a terrible position on race relations because anything other than taking an alt-right stance would have caused him to be perceived as a member of BLM to conservatives.   In the end, he thought his cool factor and popularity could run over Republican resistance...and his choice to be reasonable and attempt bi-partisanship turned out to be a disaster on many fronts, from not getting Merrick Garland onto the Supreme Court but also basically having his agenda hijacked by the Tea Party movement from 2010 onwards.   And he probably was too comfortable with Wall Street to really be in touch with those same voters who originally supported him in 2008 in Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.   They mostly felt he wasn’t really looking out for their best interests, especially on the trade policy front.   They were taken for granted, that they would continue checking the Dem box during elections, and that was a huge tactical mistake, to confuse popularity on the coasts, in Hollywood and Europe with being a leader for ALL of the US, especially flyover territory.

 

[Dick Allen]

38 minutes ago, Kyyle23 said:

Did he polish his Order or Friendship from Putin before he stepped out on stage?

Yes. He being an enabler at the very least makes his quote the pot calling the kettle black.

[Balta1701]

1 hour ago, Dick Allen said:

"If our leaders seek to conceal the truth, or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom."

 

Rex Tillerson to VMI grads today.

F*** you you F***ing enabler why didn't you resign why couldn't you bother to say this while you were in your job you sellout. Your legacy is dismantling the state department and going along with a guy who called a march of Nazis "fine people". Congrats. 

[StrangeSox]

That's a lot of words to defend dehumanizing language from a man who has spent years attacking immigrants and then defending Nazis.

[StrangeSox]

 

 

[caulfield12]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/16/us/politics/trump-undocumented-immigrants-animals.html

The meeting was a lot more nuanced than simply applying this "animals" label to MS-13.

 

https://www.vox.com/2018/5/16/17362870/trump-immigrants-animals-ms-13-context-why

No matter how Trump is portraying his policy, his administration is not focusing on deporting people who have committed particularly heinous crimes; gang members; or people with criminal records. From Trump’s inauguration to the end of 2017, ICE arrested 45,436 immigrants without criminal records.

To be sure, ICE arrests of immigrants with criminal records ticked up slightly from the last year of the Obama administration (in which immigration enforcement was subdued compared to previous years) to the Trump administration. But arrests of immigrants without criminal records have also spiked. During President Obama’s last year, about 16 percent of ICE arrests were of noncriminal immigrants; each month since July 2017, between 32 and 40 percent of arrestees have been noncriminals.

The Trump administration is still deporting fewer noncriminal immigrants than the Obama administration did circa 2011, and the proportion of deportees who are noncriminals is usually smaller than the proportion of arrestees who are. But the Trump administration is aiming not just to ramp back up to the deportation peak of Obama’s first term but surpass it, and that’s going to require arresting and deporting a lot of immigrants without criminal records.

If Donald Trump understands his own administration’s policy, he’s never acknowledged it in public. He sticks to the same rhetorical move every time: refer to some specific criminals, call them horrible people and animals, say that their evil justifies his immigration policy, and allow the conflation of all immigrants and all Latinos with criminals and animals to remain subtext.

This is who Donald Trump has been for his entire political career. The worst-case scenarios about his dehumanizing rhetoric — that they would foment large-scale mob violence or vigilantism against Latinos in the United States — have not been realized. But neither have any hopes that Trump, as president, might ever weigh his words with any care at all, especially when encouraging Americans to see human beings as less than human.

 

[caulfield12]

Let's ask Rabbit this:

And I'm sure we won't get a response.

How many of Trump's "core" supporters (those who agree with 95%+ of what he does, and would happily shout "lock her up" almost two years after an election)...would be able to distinguish that Trump is referring ONLY to MS-13 and NOT to all those from "non-white" countries seeking to gain entry into the US?

Only violent cartel members and not just "any ordinary non-rapist" Mexican?

What about his comments about "caravans" of thousands from Central and South America where the actual number was in the hundreds that reached the San Ysidro/US border crossing?

Shithole African countries?

Positive words for Norwegians...they should send more, why don't they?

When has he ever said a single positive thing about ANY immigrants who were not from Asian countries (and, even here, he's more likely to cite Chinese or Indians taking away tech and IT jobs/working for lower salaries...fwiw, the Trump Administration did side with Asian groups in suing Harvard for "biased" admission processes that favored blacks and Hispanics over whites and Asians, but that was just as much about protecting whites from "political correctness/affirmative action.")

In Trump's idea, apparently, the only good immigrants are Eastern European models AND/OR anyone from the finance industry willing to loan him money or co-partner on a real estate/golf/development project around the world.

 

Edited May 17, 2018 by caulfield12

[StrangeSox]

This is also interesting regarding Trump's false financial disclosure statements.

 

 

[Reddy]

20 minutes ago, StrangeSox said:

That's a lot of words to defend dehumanizing language from a man who has spent years attacking immigrants and then defending Nazis.

*Generic clapping gif*

[Dick Allen]

Is there a breaking point in number of lies or crimes committed or conflicts of interest when the right will actually turn on Trump? I always thought there was, but I am beginning to think there is not. Some will jump ship but not enough to remove him from office before his term ends. 

Edited May 17, 2018 by Dick Allen

[StrangeSox]

Trump used dehumanizing language. Literally. It's part of his very explicit anti immigrant statements and policies over several years. He's used ms-13 to tar immigrants in general many times in the past, so "oh he meant ms-13" doesn't really work as an excuse. He's attacked numerous non-white countries and groups. He will describe crimes in grizzly detail if they were committed by undocumented immigrants or Muslims but is noticably quiet when it's other groups. His administration is deporting hundreds of thousands of people who have been here legally for years or decades. They're treating immigrant children awfully. It's all part of a larger pattern.

Nobody should be tolerant of Trump's rhetoric on immigrants. It's disgusting and hateful. And save the crocodile tears for the "outnumbered" guy who couldn't answer a straight question and didn't have an objection to a single thing Trump's ever said. His morals are unquestionably backing an awful person.

[caulfield12]

18 minutes ago, raBBit said:

When you can’t defend your actions quietly group back into the mob. Gross behavior by the bullies intolerant of different opinions. Read the new guy’s ‘whitesox2**9* or whatever his name posts. Maybe he didn’t defend his opinions in the best way possible but at no point did he attack back at any of his dissenters. It was several against one and he kept his cool against the group attack. I respect him for that. I won’t blame him when he stops posting here. There’s probably a more tolerant community out there for him where he doesn’t have to get his morals lambasted on account of some bullshit tweet that some zealots bit on hook, line and sinker. 

The same thing would happen if most of us who post at SoxTalk entered Ayn Rand chat and tried to argue for Bernie Sanders Socialism.

The fact of the matter is that MOST of the mods here are to the center-right...except for Balta.

I don't assume they agree (in fact, I was a bit surprised to see one saying they were de-registering as a Republican) with LOTS of things that Trump does, but they also (like most Americans) want to put country over party.   They're smart enough to realize you can't win these online arguments, any more than Dems could have convinced Tea Partiers in 2012 or Gingrich acolytes in 1994 to change their positions.

I can even see how "shaking things up" has had some positive effects on the country...but, I go back to "the greatest good for the greatest number of Americans" argument and I fail to see how having friends and relatives refuse to talk to each other, go to Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, de-friending or blocking acquaintances on social media...how any of that is a GOOD/POSITIVE/CONSTRUCTIVE thing.

Since he came into office, Trump's policies have been 90% aimed at his base...and deliberately undoing/vetoing/annulling/blocking everything his predecessor did while in office.

Do you honest expect that we can go in that direction in our politics and not suffer the consequences or repercussions?  That if the Dem's win in 2020 they'll just quietly reconcile with their past bitter enemies in Congress and "let bygones be bygones"?   Maybe this bi-partisan effort to turn things away from McConnell and Schumer in the Senate (to Collins and Bennett) will actually work, but don't count on it.

Some will argue that people putting their "REAL" beliefs out there without fear of repercussion or reprisal is a great or good thing...that political correctness deserves to die...we shall see.   America has gotten through worse times, assassinations in 1968, mass riots in the 60's, Watergate, Vietnam.  This too shall pass.   MAYBE!

[caulfield12]

16 minutes ago, StrangeSox said:

Trump used dehumanizing language. Literally. It's part of his very explicit anti immigrant statements and policies over several years. He's used ms-13 to tar immigrants in general many times in the past, so "oh he meant ms-13" doesn't really work as an excuse. He's attacked numerous non-white countries and groups. He will describe crimes in grizzly detail if they were committed by undocumented immigrants or Muslims but is noticably quiet when it's other groups. His administration is deporting hundreds of thousands of people who have been here legally for years or decades. They're treating immigrant children awfully. It's all part of a larger pattern.

Nobody should be tolerant of Trump's rhetoric on immigrants. It's disgusting and hateful. And save the crocodile tears for the "outnumbered" guy who couldn't answer a straight question and didn't have an objection to a single thing Trump's ever said. His morals are unquestionably backing an awful person.

He even tried to blame separating children from their parents (in the quasi-concentration camps) on Democrats.  Of course!  Or Obama.  Or Clinton.  Or it's all just fake news.   Or it's McCabe/FBI/deep state conspiracy not to let him be the legitimate president, etc.

Of course, he always blames Democrats but conveniently forgets that he has control of the House, Senate (barely) and SCOTUS.

But he did FINALLY call the decidedly-non white WAFFLE HOUSE HERO, weeks later.   After the media kept bringing it up, over and over again.

[LittleHurt05]

4 hours ago, Jerksticks said:

Man I think this accounts for like .0001% of Trump voters.  99.999% of people aren’t racist or afraid of different nationalities. Most people of all colors just get up and go to work with people of all colors every day.  Generalizing people as racists is disgusting.  Just because CNN sends video crews to a white nationalist meeting with a hundred people wearing Trump shirts doesn’t mean the other 60 million supporters are white nationalists.  That’s beyond stupid to make that assumption.  

 

I’d argue that 60 million or whatever people voted for Trump because they were sick of Washington doing nothing and if anything, hurting them.  

 

The ACA stripped every working American of affordable insurance and low deductibles.  It helped some people get access to insurance sure, but it crushed everybody else   Absolutely crushed.  People didn’t want another 4-8 years of the same trends.   Like it or not, Obama’s legacy will only be remembered as Donald Trump.

 

That’s just kinda how I see it when I step back and look at it without bias.  

 

 

The problems the ACA has caused fall on deaf ears here, I've tried to mention all the people it's affected negatively, including my family, and you'd have more luck talking negatively about Mark Buehrle in PHT.

[caulfield12]

11 minutes ago, LittleHurt05 said:

The problems the ACA has caused fall on deaf ears here, I've tried to mention all the people it's affected negatively, including my family, and you'd have more luck talking negatively about Mark Buehrle in PHT.

So instead of complaining or totally throwing it out, wouldn't it be better TO FIX OR IMPROVE IT?

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/12/02/367837115/obamacare-glitch-puts-subsidies-out-of-reach-for-many-families

Most Democrats will acknowledge its flaws, the controversial nature of the mandate (and penalties for not insuring)...the number of working poor (see story above) and especially those middle class families (independent contractors or small business owners) in the $50-100,000 income range hit hard by the law.

We also would argue that pushing all the most expensive to insure people into the high/est risk pools...while taking away the money that was coming from the mandate, is simply going to redistribute the solution away from the government in the direction of MAKING EVERYONE STILL WITH INSURANCE PAY MORE...and having MORE AND MORE people coming into hospitals for emergencies without the ability to pay, CAUSING PREMIUMS to skyrocket even more to subsidize those who go without insurance.

ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, COSTS ARE GOING UP.  It's just a matter of redistribution from the upper middle class and rich via government policy or creating a regressive situation where the the middle class continues to be the one that bears the brunt of the very real financial pain.

Or do you prefer the solution of taxing huge multinational corporations like they're doing in Seattle with Amazon...because the "negative externalities" (lack of affordable housing/increased homelessness) are taking a very real toll on the social fabric of that city?

Shouldn't corporations that are making profits in the billions (and were just shielded by government tax policy) bear some of the responsibility for finding a solution?

[RockRaines]

9 minutes ago, raBBit said:

They blame Trump’s abortion of a plan to save the Obamacare disaster but fail to remember that Obamacare premiums were suppose to increase 15%* each of the two years following him leaving office. 

Trump found a way to replace ACA with something that almost sucks as much as the ACA. 

Also, no one can answer what happens when a poor person who can’t afford medical ends up in the ER. 

 

Didn’t you already do the one about the poor guy in the hospital?

[caulfield12]

6 minutes ago, raBBit said:

They blame Trump’s abortion of a plan to save the Obamacare disaster but fail to remember that Obamacare premiums were suppose to increase 15%* each of the two years following him leaving office. 

Trump found a way to replace ACA with something that almost sucks as much as the ACA. 

Also, no one can answer what happens when a poor person who can’t afford medical ends up in the ER. 

 

This, of course, has absolutely NOTHING TO DO with Trump trying to completely sabotage the ACA for two years now...in a myriad of ways (such as cutting the enrollment period in half and creating utter chaos in the insurance industry in terms of looking for future policy certainty/predictability).   He hasn't tried to hide it.  He's admitted it, many many times.

It's like someone is teaching your kid from K-10th grade...they suddenly change to a teacher who just sits there and teaches nothing (just babysitting) for two years and then parents wonder why his SAT/ACT score wasn't that great in the end?  Which teacher are you going to blame for the final sub-par result?

[caulfield12]

Or let's just call something a DISASTER over and over and over again.

That will only serve to make it MORE popular when you try to take it away.  That's when people will scream and holler and their sad stories will end up bombarding us day after day in the national media.

It's the exact SAME lesson the Democrats are learning about trying to undo some of the Trump tax cuts (or even bringing up the irresponsible nature of exploding the Federal Deficit even more and more for a future generation of Americans to deal with in 2025 or 2030).

 

Edited May 17, 2018 by caulfield12

[RockRaines]

And sorry but I’m never going to stop laughing at pizza gate people who read 4chan for their political fuel. If that’s the “mob” then consider me part of it. That shits ridiculous.