The guy is an idiot. He doesn't care about diplomacy and strategy. I assume he goes by 'gut instinct' that may have got him through business, with various bankruptcies. I think it's sad that the Republicans have sold out to him just to get power. I assume they do stuff behind his back to actually get work done. Even sadder is that so many people believe and trust him. The Democrats just couldn't come up with a more attractive candidate and it wasn't really about policy. I hope he fails spectacularly, but I have to wonder if he will even live out his term as he looks unhealthy and someone may take another shot at him.
I try not to speak in hyperbole (Trump does that for us), but what the Democrats did borders on the criminal. I was a Biden supporter, until I saw how diminished he was. People around him, people who didn't want to give up power, hid it. We (those who didn't want a second Trump term) never had a chance. No viable candidates were allowed to compete fully in the primaries. The nomination was handed to Biden, and I was one or the people who helped hand it to him. After I witnessed his cognitive issues at the debate, I wouldn't vote for him. I wouldn't vote for Trump. That left reasonable voters in my country with no candidate. It was a horrible situation and now the whole world has to deal with our mess. Good luck to the world.
They all have human failings, but then Trump would not admit that. I'm not in the US and so cannot speak for the experience of people there, but in general you need politicians who will take advice and accept criticism. This 'cult of personality' thing is dangerous and is leading to extremists getting power around the world. We've had 'rule by Twitter' last time Trump got in.
Biden would have done the world a service by stepping down much earlier.
Don't get me started on Musk...
The entire enemedia anti-Trump posture, the lawfare, the literally rabidly drooling hatred of Trump, is how that cult of personality was manufactured. The enemedia is the known enemy of the American people. ~12% of people actually trust the talking heads on TV, and the rest put them on a spectrum of hatred running from 'don't trust them' to 'they should be buried alive' to me. When that despised group hates Trump and calls him their enemy, and their audience knows that despised group is their enemy, they just found out who their friend is: Trump. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
The entire left, the Democrats, the Trump haters, manufactured Trump's cult of personality. They're his real support base. They created him.
I'd disagree on much of that. It's a combination of many things.
I can appreciate that. It's a hot take. But Trump's been a Democrat longer than he's been a Republican, and controlled opposition isn't a new thing. His core cabinet, Musk, Gabbard, and RFK have all been Democrats longer than Republicans, too.
Gabbard is an interesting case. I lived in Hawaii for 20+ years - and it's a monoparty state for the most part. Some of the Democrats there are actually Republicans. Tulsi's father Mike Gabbard was a very conservative Republican who switched over to the Democrat Party because that's how stuff gets done in Hawaii.
Political parties in a sense are no longer completely coherent, and particularly younger voters (under 50) don't neatly fit into any of the Party Platforms. Platforms in a sense are just ad copy in any event, the Congressmen vote in blocs or vote in accordance with the dominant lobbying group at the time.
I can see that happening in Hawaii, because it's almost happening here. 100% vote by mail has enabled election fraud to deliver to the Dems a supermajority in both state houses, and has a lock on state bureaucrats too. I read a couple years ago, maybe less, that most Americans of voting age consider themselves independents. That may have changed with the recent initiative shift to the Republican Party. I hope not, but I think it may have.
Pretty sure they vote for who they're told to by their blackmailers, for the most part.
I don't think this is about normal party politics. Trump is all about self-interest (IMHO). He is exploiting the Republicans and they seem to have bent over to take it.
The UK has not yet gone that far, but people like Farage are dangerous. They seek to destroy consensus and sow division. Other countries have tipped over the edge.
I don't either. I think we just watched the Grand 'Ole Party become the OG Democratic Party, and a few diehards like Thomas Massie are wondering where their party went. Like the Democrats in Obama's wake when the party increasingly went full Communist, Racist, Fascist, and oozing cyst. The Republican Party survives in name only, is actually OG Dems, and the current radicalized, extreme degeneracy Democratic Party is dissolving in front of our eyes.
But, Trump is a creature of the swamp that made him. He's got rings in his nose that utterly control him, the real policies he endeavors to implement are the orders of the Rothschild banksters he serves. His rhetoric is different, his promises outrageous, but that's just a negotiation tactic that has served him well. Jump into the fray with both feet and instill as much fear in the opponent as possible to get as many concessions as possible and profit from the deal as much as possible. Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico is bending over backwards to pander to him. He doesn't have to make any concessions there. The claims on UK, Denmark, and Panamanian clay are really offensive and they're alarmed he made them. If he backs down a little they'll really feel great relief, and perhaps give him more than they would have originally just to get the ogre out from under their bridge.
It is impossible for Farage to sow more division in the UK than Starmer, and his predecessors, already have. I am becoming convinced the remnant population of Brits in the UK are all wholly domesticated, because Starmer is still breathing. The UK is becoming a Muslim majority country by the deliberate actions of the Conservatives and Labour. The blatant anti-English racism is far beyond anything I would have thought tolerable to Brits, with English complaining about their family members being hacked to death with machetes jailed for longer sentences than the more melanin enriched murderers are for the killing. People are being jailed for being impolite, for objecting to blatant anti-British racism, or even questioning the indoctrination of their kids to racially hate themselves, hate heterosexuality, hate the C of E, marriage, and everything that the UK ever stood for.
How could Farage even approach that? The UK appears not to have an edge, but only a continual plunge to the third world. Sooner or later, unless things change, someone's going to have to denuclearize the UK so they don't nuke Israel, or whatever a majority Muslim UK will do with it's nukes.
I think a wounded tapir could have won the election on the policy platforms Trump espoused. For some reason, the Republicans didn't slap those policies on such tapir, and Trump won.
I vehemently disagree with you, because it was the policies that made Trump popular, not the reverse.
Trump is a bit of an avatar, the people most enthusiastic about Trump project their hopes or fears onto him, and see him as their agent in a sense.
How he got there is not by fulfilling his campaign promises, but just by making the promises the electorate wanted to hear. People somewhere just re-elected a dog mayor of their town. Must have a solid platform, that doggo. Anyway, the machinations of the people that decide who we get to vote for have a lot more to do with Trump getting elected than even his campaign lies. But, anyone telling those lies would have beat the incumbents.
It's fine to disagree :)
Yes, but it's more productive when reasonable men can agree on evidence, and heave in the same direction.