Debate Now The Trump Years

[Foxfyre]

The context is: how trustworthy can CBS be now, or any of the MSM for that matter, when they have been trashing trump for months and months? And that was within the context of how Trump is doing. I am not likely to use CBS to evaluate that.

And that is not a logical fallacy.

Of course it is. You're attacking the source without looking at the content, or the context in which it is reported. If you don't trust ANY of the MSM because of their reporting in the past, then you're violating the rules of this thread.

You're right that I don't trust much if any of the MSM based on their track record of being untrustworthy. You are wrong that I did not look at the content. And you are wrong that I am violating the rules of this thread. Again I caution you to respond to the post and not your opinion of me--see Rule #1 for this thread or add your own observations.

The topic is how Trump is doing since the inauguration. One of the glaring components of that is the obvious media war between Trump and the media making that appropriate for comment.

If there's a war between the MSM and Trump, that is Trump's own doing. At every single one of his rallies, he told the 20,000 people in attendance to turn and look at the media covering the event, and declare them to be evil people. If he wants "good" coverage, he certainly doesn't act like it.

Your posts reflect a fundamentalist, religious distrust of all media. That makes it difficult to discuss any points with you, as we've seen. What sort of media coverage do you trust?

What media I trust is not the topic of this thread, but I trust media that provides the who, what, where, when, why and how without prejudice. The thread is not about me.

Trump is participating in the media war for sure, but he damn sure didn't start it. And I am happy that he is confronting it head on instead of allowing the media to misrepresent the facts with impunity.

Actually in his handling of the media, I wish he would do it differently, but then it worked for him to get him elected so he may be a lot smarter about that than I am. I do suspect he deliberate dangles red meat in front of them because of the entirely predictable meltdown that will follow. And the more meltdowns there are, the better and more credible he looks.

So all in all, I think he is doing pretty well in that regard.

It's impossible to debate with you if you respond to each reported story containing facts with "well, that's the MSM, and I'll never believe that."

It was my belief that you wished to have a constructive debate. It now seems you do not. CBS is a very old, well-respected media company. I'm not quoting ThinkProgress here.

Please support your claim that "Trump damned sure didn't start" the media war with supporting facts. From what I've seen, Trump has insulted the media at every turn, often in scary fashion. It cannot be easy to be a reporter in the bullpen at a Trump rally and have the leader of the rally tell all people in the audience to look at you with disdain. That's borderline inciting violence. This will not endear you to the press when you behave this way.

Do you believe the media reporting of the inaugural crowd size was false, and therefore Trump was justified in sending Spicer out there to respond so vociferously (and falsely)?

Final warning. This thread is not about me. Please address the posts and not your opinion of me--you don't have to agree but you do have to address the post and not me or any other member directly. Again I am trying to allow people get accustomed to the thread rules before I start reporting. If you don't like the way the discussion is going, I will thank you for your participation and hope you find something more to your liking elsewhere or others on the thread to discuss things with.

Yes I believe the media reporting of the inaugural crowd size was false. I have too many friends who were there and who dispute it not to believe that. Was it as large as Trump claims? I don't know as it is logical that a town with a large majority African American population and a town that voted 22 to 1 for Hillary would show up for Obama's inauguration and not for Trump. Most of Trump's audience would have come from out of town, it was a cold, rainy day, and all that would contribute to a smaller crowd.

Was the television audience larger for Obama? Yes. But a huge number of people watching the inauguration were not watching on television but were live streaming it on their computers, Ipads, and phones. So it is likely that as many or more people watched this inauguration.

But then there was this, this morning that I am still waiting for authentication before I know it wasn't photoshopped:
CNN Quietly Releases Updated Pic Showing Trump’s Inaugural Crowd Size Greater than Obama’s 2009 Inaugural Crowd

The only reason this is pertinent to the thread topic is that the MSM, attack sites on the internet, message boards etc. are keeping it alive so it continues to be an issue for the new administration. Do I think Trump is smart for treating it as an issue? Not really. But he has gotten to where he is by doing it his way, so I have to allow that he may very well be right. Keep poking at them and they sooner or later self destruct.

 

[PredFan]

Today, Trump is continuing to repeat his lie that millions illegally voted for Hillary in the election to assist her in winning the popular vote. His remarks to this effect in the past were met with research by election officials, who found only 4 instances of voter fraud, at least one if which involved a woman in Iowa who voted for Trump twice.

Trump continues to destroy the credibility of his administration, credibility that he will need if he expects to, say, convince the country to go to war, convince the country to get behind sanctions against bad actors in the world, or convince the public to support any number of domestic policy proposals he may have at a later date. It's hard to imagine a president more actively and vociferously giving in to his inner adolescent and easing an emotional impulse at the expense of sabotaging his own administration.

And, according to sources inside the White House, Trump wanted an even MORE petulant response:



The first days inside Trump’s White House: Fury, tumult and a reboot

Pundits were dissing his turnout. The National Park Service had retweeted a photo unfavorably comparing the size of his inauguration crowd with the one that attended Barack Obama’s swearing-in ceremony in 2009. A journalist had misreported that Trump had removed the bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office. And celebrities at the protests were denouncing the new commander in chief — Madonna even referenced “blowing up the White House.”

Trump’s advisers suggested that he could push back in a simple tweet. Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a Trump confidant and the chairman of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, offered to deliver a statement addressing the crowd size.

But Trump was adamant, aides said. Over the objections of his aides and advisers — who urged him to focus on policy and the broader goals of his presidency — the new president issued a decree: He wanted a fiery public response, and he wanted it to come from his press secretary.

Spicer’s resulting statement — delivered in an extended shout and brimming with falsehoods — underscores the extent to which the turbulence and competing factions that were a hallmark of Trump’s campaign have been transported to the White House.

...

Many critics thought Spicer went too far and compromised his integrity. But in Trump’s mind, Spicer’s attack on the news media was not forceful enough. The president was also bothered that the spokesman read, at times haltingly, from a printed statement.



Trump strikes me as a president exhibiting the severest form of narcissistic personality disorder the presidency has ever seen. And unlike some of the other mentally ill presidents we've had in the past (Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy, etc.), it's hard to see how Trump's particular brand of mental disfigurement could benefit the nation.


Some are suggesting that he pulls these stunts in order to distract his "enemies" (Trump's words -- those who voted for him are America, the rest? Enemies) from focusing on his more insidious policies and executive orders, from giving the green light to move the dirtiest form of energy on the planet through the Keystone and Dakota pipelines, to banning funding to overseas GMOs who even provide INFORMATION about abortions to pregnant women. He's pulled down the climate change tab from the White House website, and now he's even pulled any mention of climate change from the EPA website. You read that correctly. Trump is signaling that he does not want federal agencies to even display INFORMATION about the clear scientific consensus regarding climate change.

I suppose it's possible that Trump's continual temper-tantrums are calculated attempts to remove attention from those proposals, but I doubt it for two reasons:

1. Trump's simply not that smart.

2. Trump WANTS his believers (who he believes to be MUCH larger in number than they actually are) to see that he's pulling funds for charities overseas that provide birth control options for women and he WANTS his believers to see that he's purposefully shutting down climate change discussion in the EPA. So why would he try and distract from that?

Trump is certainly authoritarian in the way he operates. I won't go so far as to say "fascist", just yet, but the minute he starts using the presidency to find legal ways to silence the press, we will know we've crossed that threshold.

0bama, Reid, Pelosi, Clinton, Kerry. A quintet of the most agregious liars we have ever seen. You supported them, you have no moral ground to complain.

This kind of trolling has no place here.

That isn't trollling at all.

 

[PredFan]

Today, Trump is continuing to repeat his lie that millions illegally voted for Hillary in the election to assist her in winning the popular vote. His remarks to this effect in the past were met with research by election officials, who found only 4 instances of voter fraud, at least one if which involved a woman in Iowa who voted for Trump twice.

Trump continues to destroy the credibility of his administration, credibility that he will need if he expects to, say, convince the country to go to war, convince the country to get behind sanctions against bad actors in the world, or convince the public to support any number of domestic policy proposals he may have at a later date. It's hard to imagine a president more actively and vociferously giving in to his inner adolescent and easing an emotional impulse at the expense of sabotaging his own administration.

And, according to sources inside the White House, Trump wanted an even MORE petulant response:



The first days inside Trump’s White House: Fury, tumult and a reboot

Pundits were dissing his turnout. The National Park Service had retweeted a photo unfavorably comparing the size of his inauguration crowd with the one that attended Barack Obama’s swearing-in ceremony in 2009. A journalist had misreported that Trump had removed the bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office. And celebrities at the protests were denouncing the new commander in chief — Madonna even referenced “blowing up the White House.”

Trump’s advisers suggested that he could push back in a simple tweet. Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a Trump confidant and the chairman of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, offered to deliver a statement addressing the crowd size.

But Trump was adamant, aides said. Over the objections of his aides and advisers — who urged him to focus on policy and the broader goals of his presidency — the new president issued a decree: He wanted a fiery public response, and he wanted it to come from his press secretary.

Spicer’s resulting statement — delivered in an extended shout and brimming with falsehoods — underscores the extent to which the turbulence and competing factions that were a hallmark of Trump’s campaign have been transported to the White House.

...

Many critics thought Spicer went too far and compromised his integrity. But in Trump’s mind, Spicer’s attack on the news media was not forceful enough. The president was also bothered that the spokesman read, at times haltingly, from a printed statement.



Trump strikes me as a president exhibiting the severest form of narcissistic personality disorder the presidency has ever seen. And unlike some of the other mentally ill presidents we've had in the past (Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy, etc.), it's hard to see how Trump's particular brand of mental disfigurement could benefit the nation.


Some are suggesting that he pulls these stunts in order to distract his "enemies" (Trump's words -- those who voted for him are America, the rest? Enemies) from focusing on his more insidious policies and executive orders, from giving the green light to move the dirtiest form of energy on the planet through the Keystone and Dakota pipelines, to banning funding to overseas GMOs who even provide INFORMATION about abortions to pregnant women. He's pulled down the climate change tab from the White House website, and now he's even pulled any mention of climate change from the EPA website. You read that correctly. Trump is signaling that he does not want federal agencies to even display INFORMATION about the clear scientific consensus regarding climate change.

I suppose it's possible that Trump's continual temper-tantrums are calculated attempts to remove attention from those proposals, but I doubt it for two reasons:

1. Trump's simply not that smart.

2. Trump WANTS his believers (who he believes to be MUCH larger in number than they actually are) to see that he's pulling funds for charities overseas that provide birth control options for women and he WANTS his believers to see that he's purposefully shutting down climate change discussion in the EPA. So why would he try and distract from that?

Trump is certainly authoritarian in the way he operates. I won't go so far as to say "fascist", just yet, but the minute he starts using the presidency to find legal ways to silence the press, we will know we've crossed that threshold.

0bama, Reid, Pelosi, Clinton, Kerry. A quintet of the most agregious liars we have ever seen. You supported them, you have no moral ground to complain.

Please refer to Rule #1 of the thread rules Predfan. I'm pleased you are participating but it is not allowed to disrespect ANYBODY in this thread. The thread topic is about how Trump is doing. I would have PMed you to remove the post if I had seen it soon enough but alas I didn't. So please consider this a gentle shot across the bow so we don't get off track here.

If you catch somebody in a lie about the President that would affect the reality or perception of how the President is doing, that would likely be appropriate. But we can't call people liars without specifying the lie and that has to be on topic.

It is disrespect of the liars we had the last 8 years, it does not disrespect the poster. It's hypocrisy to call Trump a liar when you supported liars. That has relevance to this thread. I didn't just randomly attack the previous administration.

I didn't call the poster a liar.

 

[PredFan]

I see now. You have your own rules for this debate. I thought this was the CDZ because of the blue box.

Before I go, how was calling Trump a liar not disrespecting the present president?

 

[Foxfyre]

There are only two things he has done or said, that I have a problem with:

1. He SAID (but has not yet done) that he will punish businesses who leave the country or whatever. This is not how we operate here in the US. We COMPETE. Take away the shackles on doing business in America and we can compete.
2. Chumming with the unions. They are part of the reason businesses went away in the first place.

The TPP is something I do not understand very well but if 0bama wanted it, it has to be a bad thing. I'll go with a little faith in our President in this one.

All the other stuff has been excellent. Great picks for his cabinet, dumping 0bama-the-Idiot's EOs, moving our embassy in Israel, halting taxpayer funding of abortions overseas, and on and on. Hard to keep track, Trump has been busy.

Your last paragraph disrespects President Obama. That is not permitted per the thread rules. Second shot across the bow--I'm trying to help people get settled in with the rules before I start reporting folks. Again if I had seen the post soon enough I would have PMed you to edit it.

The rest of your post I mostly agree with. I have been watching President Trump long enough though to know that he frequently "thinks out loud" and that was likely the case re punishing out sourcers and he frequently expresses where he's going with something without fully completing the thought. Has he said anything like that since the inauguration? I don't recall hearing it but then I don't watch the news 24/7. But so far he seems to be operating as deal-maker Trump. His goal is always to benefit himself, or in this case America, for sure, but the best deal is a satisfactory win-win for both.

That's why I trust him not to start a trade war or to violate the rights of American businesses. And as for chumming with the unions, I have noticed that too, but have to trust him for a method to that madness. He needs their cooperation and willingness to make deals too in order to keep jobs in this country--they are a large reason so much has been outsourced.

Indeed, I agree that Trump's goal is always to benefit himself. That's what he's done so far as president, namely protecting his own ego from the trampling it receives by accurate reporting about crowd sizes at his inaugural, and accurate reporting about the nearly 5 million people who marched against Trump on January 21st.

At least IMO this honestly reports the purpose of the march, one day after the inauguration, but planned long before, while the organizers claim that it was for peace, love, and women's rights.

 

[Foxfyre]

Today, Trump is continuing to repeat his lie that millions illegally voted for Hillary in the election to assist her in winning the popular vote. His remarks to this effect in the past were met with research by election officials, who found only 4 instances of voter fraud, at least one if which involved a woman in Iowa who voted for Trump twice.

Trump continues to destroy the credibility of his administration, credibility that he will need if he expects to, say, convince the country to go to war, convince the country to get behind sanctions against bad actors in the world, or convince the public to support any number of domestic policy proposals he may have at a later date. It's hard to imagine a president more actively and vociferously giving in to his inner adolescent and easing an emotional impulse at the expense of sabotaging his own administration.

And, according to sources inside the White House, Trump wanted an even MORE petulant response:



The first days inside Trump’s White House: Fury, tumult and a reboot

Pundits were dissing his turnout. The National Park Service had retweeted a photo unfavorably comparing the size of his inauguration crowd with the one that attended Barack Obama’s swearing-in ceremony in 2009. A journalist had misreported that Trump had removed the bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office. And celebrities at the protests were denouncing the new commander in chief — Madonna even referenced “blowing up the White House.”

Trump’s advisers suggested that he could push back in a simple tweet. Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a Trump confidant and the chairman of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, offered to deliver a statement addressing the crowd size.

But Trump was adamant, aides said. Over the objections of his aides and advisers — who urged him to focus on policy and the broader goals of his presidency — the new president issued a decree: He wanted a fiery public response, and he wanted it to come from his press secretary.

Spicer’s resulting statement — delivered in an extended shout and brimming with falsehoods — underscores the extent to which the turbulence and competing factions that were a hallmark of Trump’s campaign have been transported to the White House.

...

Many critics thought Spicer went too far and compromised his integrity. But in Trump’s mind, Spicer’s attack on the news media was not forceful enough. The president was also bothered that the spokesman read, at times haltingly, from a printed statement.



Trump strikes me as a president exhibiting the severest form of narcissistic personality disorder the presidency has ever seen. And unlike some of the other mentally ill presidents we've had in the past (Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy, etc.), it's hard to see how Trump's particular brand of mental disfigurement could benefit the nation.


Some are suggesting that he pulls these stunts in order to distract his "enemies" (Trump's words -- those who voted for him are America, the rest? Enemies) from focusing on his more insidious policies and executive orders, from giving the green light to move the dirtiest form of energy on the planet through the Keystone and Dakota pipelines, to banning funding to overseas GMOs who even provide INFORMATION about abortions to pregnant women. He's pulled down the climate change tab from the White House website, and now he's even pulled any mention of climate change from the EPA website. You read that correctly. Trump is signaling that he does not want federal agencies to even display INFORMATION about the clear scientific consensus regarding climate change.

I suppose it's possible that Trump's continual temper-tantrums are calculated attempts to remove attention from those proposals, but I doubt it for two reasons:

1. Trump's simply not that smart.

2. Trump WANTS his believers (who he believes to be MUCH larger in number than they actually are) to see that he's pulling funds for charities overseas that provide birth control options for women and he WANTS his believers to see that he's purposefully shutting down climate change discussion in the EPA. So why would he try and distract from that?

Trump is certainly authoritarian in the way he operates. I won't go so far as to say "fascist", just yet, but the minute he starts using the presidency to find legal ways to silence the press, we will know we've crossed that threshold.

0bama, Reid, Pelosi, Clinton, Kerry. A quintet of the most agregious liars we have ever seen. You supported them, you have no moral ground to complain.

Please refer to Rule #1 of the thread rules Predfan. I'm pleased you are participating but it is not allowed to disrespect ANYBODY in this thread. The thread topic is about how Trump is doing. I would have PMed you to remove the post if I had seen it soon enough but alas I didn't. So please consider this a gentle shot across the bow so we don't get off track here.

If you catch somebody in a lie about the President that would affect the reality or perception of how the President is doing, that would likely be appropriate. But we can't call people liars without specifying the lie and that has to be on topic.

It is disrespect of the liars we had the last 8 years, it does not disrespect the poster. It's hypocrisy to call Trump a liar when you supported liars. That has relevance to this thread. I didn't just randomly attack the previous administration.

I didn't call the poster a liar.

I know. But disrespect of persons, past or present, is not allowed for this thread.

1. Stay on topic and keep it civil. Do not disrespect the President past or present (or anybody past or present) with insulting names or terms and respond to the member's post and not with your opinion of the member making it. Zone 1 (think Clean Debate Zone) rules are in effect.

The rationale for the rule is to keep the discussion civil and on point. I want members to actually think about the posts and respond to them, pro or con, and using insulting names for anybody, past or present, no matter how accurate we think or know they are isn't conducive to that.

And maybe there was a little method to the madness to see if the avowed anti-Trump folks could actually discuss him without all the derogatory names.

 

[GaryDog]

I see now. You have your own rules for this debate. I thought this was the CDZ because of the blue box.

Before I go, how was calling Trump a liar not disrespecting the present president?

Because it's true.

Facts are facts, not insults.

 

[GaryDog]

Of course it is. You're attacking the source without looking at the content, or the context in which it is reported. If you don't trust ANY of the MSM because of their reporting in the past, then you're violating the rules of this thread.

You're right that I don't trust much if any of the MSM based on their track record of being untrustworthy. You are wrong that I did not look at the content. And you are wrong that I am violating the rules of this thread. Again I caution you to respond to the post and not your opinion of me--see Rule #1 for this thread or add your own observations.

The topic is how Trump is doing since the inauguration. One of the glaring components of that is the obvious media war between Trump and the media making that appropriate for comment.

If there's a war between the MSM and Trump, that is Trump's own doing. At every single one of his rallies, he told the 20,000 people in attendance to turn and look at the media covering the event, and declare them to be evil people. If he wants "good" coverage, he certainly doesn't act like it.

Your posts reflect a fundamentalist, religious distrust of all media. That makes it difficult to discuss any points with you, as we've seen. What sort of media coverage do you trust?

What media I trust is not the topic of this thread, but I trust media that provides the who, what, where, when, why and how without prejudice. The thread is not about me.

Trump is participating in the media war for sure, but he damn sure didn't start it. And I am happy that he is confronting it head on instead of allowing the media to misrepresent the facts with impunity.

Actually in his handling of the media, I wish he would do it differently, but then it worked for him to get him elected so he may be a lot smarter about that than I am. I do suspect he deliberate dangles red meat in front of them because of the entirely predictable meltdown that will follow. And the more meltdowns there are, the better and more credible he looks.

So all in all, I think he is doing pretty well in that regard.

It's impossible to debate with you if you respond to each reported story containing facts with "well, that's the MSM, and I'll never believe that."

It was my belief that you wished to have a constructive debate. It now seems you do not. CBS is a very old, well-respected media company. I'm not quoting ThinkProgress here.

Please support your claim that "Trump damned sure didn't start" the media war with supporting facts. From what I've seen, Trump has insulted the media at every turn, often in scary fashion. It cannot be easy to be a reporter in the bullpen at a Trump rally and have the leader of the rally tell all people in the audience to look at you with disdain. That's borderline inciting violence. This will not endear you to the press when you behave this way.

Do you believe the media reporting of the inaugural crowd size was false, and therefore Trump was justified in sending Spicer out there to respond so vociferously (and falsely)?

Final warning. This thread is not about me. Please address the posts and not your opinion of me--you don't have to agree but you do have to address the post and not me or any other member directly. Again I am trying to allow people get accustomed to the thread rules before I start reporting. If you don't like the way the discussion is going, I will thank you for your participation and hope you find something more to your liking elsewhere or others on the thread to discuss things with.

Yes I believe the media reporting of the inaugural crowd size was false. I have too many friends who were there and who dispute it not to believe that. Was it as large as Trump claims? I don't know as it is logical that a town with a large majority African American population and a town that voted 22 to 1 for Hillary would show up for Obama's inauguration and not for Trump. Most of Trump's audience would have come from out of town, it was a cold, rainy day, and all that would contribute to a smaller crowd.

Was the television audience larger for Obama? Yes. But a huge number of people watching the inauguration were not watching on television but were live streaming it on their computers, Ipads, and phones. So it is likely that as many or more people watched this inauguration.

But then there was this, this morning that I am still waiting for authentication before I know it wasn't photoshopped:
CNN Quietly Releases Updated Pic Showing Trump’s Inaugural Crowd Size Greater than Obama’s 2009 Inaugural Crowd

The only reason this is pertinent to the thread topic is that the MSM, attack sites on the internet, message boards etc. are keeping it alive so it continues to be an issue for the new administration. Do I think Trump is smart for treating it as an issue? Not really. But he has gotten to where he is by doing it his way, so I have to allow that he may very well be right. Keep poking at them and they sooner or later self destruct.

I must insist that you stop falsely accusing me of violating rules. MY reference was to your posts, not YOU. I know nothing of you. YOUR POSTS have expressed a clear disdain for the media, and you apparently are going to continue to refuse to believe anything the media says about Trump, crowd sizes, or anything else. If you're unwilling or unable to accept any information provided by the media (which is the ONLY source we have for verifiable facts) you make the discussion untenable.

IT IS IN THE INTERESTS OF THIS DEBATE THAT I ADDRESS YOUR UNWILLINGNESS TO BELIEVE ANYTHING THE MEDIA SAYS.

I find your argument about you having friends at the rally to be specious, at best. The Nat'l Park service tweeted the photo of the crowd, and everyone in the country without a personal ax to grind in favor of trump readily agrees that Obama's crowd sizes were MUCH larger. And it would behoove Trump to simply admit that, and shrug it off. Why would he expect his crowd sizes to be bigger? The DC area has long been a Democratic bastion, and Obama was the first black president. OF COURSE his crowds were larger. Hell, Spicer even tacitly admitted as much when he said that Obama was the first black president, attracting more people because of this fact....but then he STILL claims Trump's crowd was bigger? His lies were actually rather hysterical and pathetic.

Trump insists on running a presidency as he did his campaign: He throws tantrums, engages in petty feuds, ignores larger ideas to discuss personal vendettas, tweets angrily, and then lies, and tells his press secretary to lie. When the press secretary said it was the "largest inaugural crowd ever", that's a bald-faced lie. Period:

Trump had biggest inaugural crowd ever? Metrics say no

Politifact's "pants on fire" rating is the worst possible. Are you arguing that politifact is wrong??

Additionally, when Trump goes before the CIA and says that his feud with the intelligence agency was manufactured by the media, that's a bald-faced lie.

Trump wrongly blames press for feud with intel community

Not "pants on fire", but "False."

Hell, Trump's own tweets refute his speech at the CIA. He said the intelligence community was behaving like Nazi Germany. Are you kidding me? How can you not see that? How can anyone claim the media is being dishonest when they label that for the lie it is?

 

[GaryDog]

There are only two things he has done or said, that I have a problem with:

1. He SAID (but has not yet done) that he will punish businesses who leave the country or whatever. This is not how we operate here in the US. We COMPETE. Take away the shackles on doing business in America and we can compete.
2. Chumming with the unions. They are part of the reason businesses went away in the first place.

The TPP is something I do not understand very well but if 0bama wanted it, it has to be a bad thing. I'll go with a little faith in our President in this one.

All the other stuff has been excellent. Great picks for his cabinet, dumping 0bama-the-Idiot's EOs, moving our embassy in Israel, halting taxpayer funding of abortions overseas, and on and on. Hard to keep track, Trump has been busy.

Your last paragraph disrespects President Obama. That is not permitted per the thread rules. Second shot across the bow--I'm trying to help people get settled in with the rules before I start reporting folks. Again if I had seen the post soon enough I would have PMed you to edit it.

The rest of your post I mostly agree with. I have been watching President Trump long enough though to know that he frequently "thinks out loud" and that was likely the case re punishing out sourcers and he frequently expresses where he's going with something without fully completing the thought. Has he said anything like that since the inauguration? I don't recall hearing it but then I don't watch the news 24/7. But so far he seems to be operating as deal-maker Trump. His goal is always to benefit himself, or in this case America, for sure, but the best deal is a satisfactory win-win for both.

That's why I trust him not to start a trade war or to violate the rights of American businesses. And as for chumming with the unions, I have noticed that too, but have to trust him for a method to that madness. He needs their cooperation and willingness to make deals too in order to keep jobs in this country--they are a large reason so much has been outsourced.

Indeed, I agree that Trump's goal is always to benefit himself. That's what he's done so far as president, namely protecting his own ego from the trampling it receives by accurate reporting about crowd sizes at his inaugural, and accurate reporting about the nearly 5 million people who marched against Trump on January 21st.

At least IMO this honestly reports the purpose of the march, one day after the inauguration, but planned long before, while the organizers claim that it was for peace, love, and women's rights.

I have friends who participated in the march, and I, too, participated. While there were certainly people there who were angry, it was, indeed, a march devoted to peace, women's rights, and opposition to Trump. It was not about hate. Close to 5 million people worldwide and practically zero incidences of violence and damage to property, and zero arrests. If that's not considered peaceful, I don't know what is, or could ever be. Getting millions of people to gather together in cities, peacefully, is an astonishing feat, and may is unprecedented in U.S. protest history.

 

[GaryDog]

Today, Trump is continuing to repeat his lie that millions illegally voted for Hillary in the election to assist her in winning the popular vote. His remarks to this effect in the past were met with research by election officials, who found only 4 instances of voter fraud, at least one if which involved a woman in Iowa who voted for Trump twice.

Trump continues to destroy the credibility of his administration, credibility that he will need if he expects to, say, convince the country to go to war, convince the country to get behind sanctions against bad actors in the world, or convince the public to support any number of domestic policy proposals he may have at a later date. It's hard to imagine a president more actively and vociferously giving in to his inner adolescent and easing an emotional impulse at the expense of sabotaging his own administration.

And, according to sources inside the White House, Trump wanted an even MORE petulant response:



The first days inside Trump’s White House: Fury, tumult and a reboot

Pundits were dissing his turnout. The National Park Service had retweeted a photo unfavorably comparing the size of his inauguration crowd with the one that attended Barack Obama’s swearing-in ceremony in 2009. A journalist had misreported that Trump had removed the bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office. And celebrities at the protests were denouncing the new commander in chief — Madonna even referenced “blowing up the White House.”

Trump’s advisers suggested that he could push back in a simple tweet. Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a Trump confidant and the chairman of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, offered to deliver a statement addressing the crowd size.

But Trump was adamant, aides said. Over the objections of his aides and advisers — who urged him to focus on policy and the broader goals of his presidency — the new president issued a decree: He wanted a fiery public response, and he wanted it to come from his press secretary.

Spicer’s resulting statement — delivered in an extended shout and brimming with falsehoods — underscores the extent to which the turbulence and competing factions that were a hallmark of Trump’s campaign have been transported to the White House.

...

Many critics thought Spicer went too far and compromised his integrity. But in Trump’s mind, Spicer’s attack on the news media was not forceful enough. The president was also bothered that the spokesman read, at times haltingly, from a printed statement.



Trump strikes me as a president exhibiting the severest form of narcissistic personality disorder the presidency has ever seen. And unlike some of the other mentally ill presidents we've had in the past (Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy, etc.), it's hard to see how Trump's particular brand of mental disfigurement could benefit the nation.


Some are suggesting that he pulls these stunts in order to distract his "enemies" (Trump's words -- those who voted for him are America, the rest? Enemies) from focusing on his more insidious policies and executive orders, from giving the green light to move the dirtiest form of energy on the planet through the Keystone and Dakota pipelines, to banning funding to overseas GMOs who even provide INFORMATION about abortions to pregnant women. He's pulled down the climate change tab from the White House website, and now he's even pulled any mention of climate change from the EPA website. You read that correctly. Trump is signaling that he does not want federal agencies to even display INFORMATION about the clear scientific consensus regarding climate change.

I suppose it's possible that Trump's continual temper-tantrums are calculated attempts to remove attention from those proposals, but I doubt it for two reasons:

1. Trump's simply not that smart.

2. Trump WANTS his believers (who he believes to be MUCH larger in number than they actually are) to see that he's pulling funds for charities overseas that provide birth control options for women and he WANTS his believers to see that he's purposefully shutting down climate change discussion in the EPA. So why would he try and distract from that?

Trump is certainly authoritarian in the way he operates. I won't go so far as to say "fascist", just yet, but the minute he starts using the presidency to find legal ways to silence the press, we will know we've crossed that threshold.

0bama, Reid, Pelosi, Clinton, Kerry. A quintet of the most agregious liars we have ever seen. You supported them, you have no moral ground to complain.

Please refer to Rule #1 of the thread rules Predfan. I'm pleased you are participating but it is not allowed to disrespect ANYBODY in this thread. The thread topic is about how Trump is doing. I would have PMed you to remove the post if I had seen it soon enough but alas I didn't. So please consider this a gentle shot across the bow so we don't get off track here.

If you catch somebody in a lie about the President that would affect the reality or perception of how the President is doing, that would likely be appropriate. But we can't call people liars without specifying the lie and that has to be on topic.

It is disrespect of the liars we had the last 8 years, it does not disrespect the poster. It's hypocrisy to call Trump a liar when you supported liars. That has relevance to this thread. I didn't just randomly attack the previous administration.

I didn't call the poster a liar.

You attacked my morality. You're a troll. Leave.

 

[Foxfyre]

There are only two things he has done or said, that I have a problem with:

1. He SAID (but has not yet done) that he will punish businesses who leave the country or whatever. This is not how we operate here in the US. We COMPETE. Take away the shackles on doing business in America and we can compete.
2. Chumming with the unions. They are part of the reason businesses went away in the first place.

The TPP is something I do not understand very well but if 0bama wanted it, it has to be a bad thing. I'll go with a little faith in our President in this one.

All the other stuff has been excellent. Great picks for his cabinet, dumping 0bama-the-Idiot's EOs, moving our embassy in Israel, halting taxpayer funding of abortions overseas, and on and on. Hard to keep track, Trump has been busy.

Your last paragraph disrespects President Obama. That is not permitted per the thread rules. Second shot across the bow--I'm trying to help people get settled in with the rules before I start reporting folks. Again if I had seen the post soon enough I would have PMed you to edit it.

The rest of your post I mostly agree with. I have been watching President Trump long enough though to know that he frequently "thinks out loud" and that was likely the case re punishing out sourcers and he frequently expresses where he's going with something without fully completing the thought. Has he said anything like that since the inauguration? I don't recall hearing it but then I don't watch the news 24/7. But so far he seems to be operating as deal-maker Trump. His goal is always to benefit himself, or in this case America, for sure, but the best deal is a satisfactory win-win for both.

That's why I trust him not to start a trade war or to violate the rights of American businesses. And as for chumming with the unions, I have noticed that too, but have to trust him for a method to that madness. He needs their cooperation and willingness to make deals too in order to keep jobs in this country--they are a large reason so much has been outsourced.

Indeed, I agree that Trump's goal is always to benefit himself. That's what he's done so far as president, namely protecting his own ego from the trampling it receives by accurate reporting about crowd sizes at his inaugural, and accurate reporting about the nearly 5 million people who marched against Trump on January 21st.

At least IMO this honestly reports the purpose of the march, one day after the inauguration, but planned long before, while the organizers claim that it was for peace, love, and women's rights.

I have friends who participated in the march, and I, too, participated. While there were certainly people there who were angry, it was, indeed, a march devoted to peace, women's rights, and opposition to Trump. It was not about hate. Close to 5 million people worldwide and practically zero incidences of violence and damage to property, and zero arrests. If that's not considered peaceful, I don't know what is, or could ever be. Getting millions of people to gather together in cities, peacefully, is an astonishing feat, and may is unprecedented in U.S. protest history.

I didn't say it wasn't peaceful. But after hearing the interviews and seeing the signs and talking with people who participated, it was not a pro-woman march. It was an anti-Trump march. And as such I think it wrong and bad when the new President hasn't even had a whole day in office.

President Trump comes into office with more people hating him than probably any President in history, though it was really REALLY bad with President Bush too. And Bush was more Democrat than Republican. Trump is neither Republican nor Democrat and therefore is hated by both. He is no partisan, he is no ideologue. He is a problem solver. He see the problem and sets about to fix it. That is unheard of in any politician, which he isn't either, and therefore he is deemed unacceptable.

But the 57% (so far) of those of us willing to give him a chance will have his back until he shows he can't get it done. The Presidents who preceded him didn't get it done.

 

[Foxfyre]

Today, Trump is continuing to repeat his lie that millions illegally voted for Hillary in the election to assist her in winning the popular vote. His remarks to this effect in the past were met with research by election officials, who found only 4 instances of voter fraud, at least one if which involved a woman in Iowa who voted for Trump twice.

Trump continues to destroy the credibility of his administration, credibility that he will need if he expects to, say, convince the country to go to war, convince the country to get behind sanctions against bad actors in the world, or convince the public to support any number of domestic policy proposals he may have at a later date. It's hard to imagine a president more actively and vociferously giving in to his inner adolescent and easing an emotional impulse at the expense of sabotaging his own administration.

And, according to sources inside the White House, Trump wanted an even MORE petulant response:



The first days inside Trump’s White House: Fury, tumult and a reboot

Pundits were dissing his turnout. The National Park Service had retweeted a photo unfavorably comparing the size of his inauguration crowd with the one that attended Barack Obama’s swearing-in ceremony in 2009. A journalist had misreported that Trump had removed the bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office. And celebrities at the protests were denouncing the new commander in chief — Madonna even referenced “blowing up the White House.”

Trump’s advisers suggested that he could push back in a simple tweet. Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a Trump confidant and the chairman of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, offered to deliver a statement addressing the crowd size.

But Trump was adamant, aides said. Over the objections of his aides and advisers — who urged him to focus on policy and the broader goals of his presidency — the new president issued a decree: He wanted a fiery public response, and he wanted it to come from his press secretary.

Spicer’s resulting statement — delivered in an extended shout and brimming with falsehoods — underscores the extent to which the turbulence and competing factions that were a hallmark of Trump’s campaign have been transported to the White House.

...

Many critics thought Spicer went too far and compromised his integrity. But in Trump’s mind, Spicer’s attack on the news media was not forceful enough. The president was also bothered that the spokesman read, at times haltingly, from a printed statement.



Trump strikes me as a president exhibiting the severest form of narcissistic personality disorder the presidency has ever seen. And unlike some of the other mentally ill presidents we've had in the past (Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy, etc.), it's hard to see how Trump's particular brand of mental disfigurement could benefit the nation.


Some are suggesting that he pulls these stunts in order to distract his "enemies" (Trump's words -- those who voted for him are America, the rest? Enemies) from focusing on his more insidious policies and executive orders, from giving the green light to move the dirtiest form of energy on the planet through the Keystone and Dakota pipelines, to banning funding to overseas GMOs who even provide INFORMATION about abortions to pregnant women. He's pulled down the climate change tab from the White House website, and now he's even pulled any mention of climate change from the EPA website. You read that correctly. Trump is signaling that he does not want federal agencies to even display INFORMATION about the clear scientific consensus regarding climate change.

I suppose it's possible that Trump's continual temper-tantrums are calculated attempts to remove attention from those proposals, but I doubt it for two reasons:

1. Trump's simply not that smart.

2. Trump WANTS his believers (who he believes to be MUCH larger in number than they actually are) to see that he's pulling funds for charities overseas that provide birth control options for women and he WANTS his believers to see that he's purposefully shutting down climate change discussion in the EPA. So why would he try and distract from that?

Trump is certainly authoritarian in the way he operates. I won't go so far as to say "fascist", just yet, but the minute he starts using the presidency to find legal ways to silence the press, we will know we've crossed that threshold.

0bama, Reid, Pelosi, Clinton, Kerry. A quintet of the most agregious liars we have ever seen. You supported them, you have no moral ground to complain.

Please refer to Rule #1 of the thread rules Predfan. I'm pleased you are participating but it is not allowed to disrespect ANYBODY in this thread. The thread topic is about how Trump is doing. I would have PMed you to remove the post if I had seen it soon enough but alas I didn't. So please consider this a gentle shot across the bow so we don't get off track here.

If you catch somebody in a lie about the President that would affect the reality or perception of how the President is doing, that would likely be appropriate. But we can't call people liars without specifying the lie and that has to be on topic.

It is disrespect of the liars we had the last 8 years, it does not disrespect the poster. It's hypocrisy to call Trump a liar when you supported liars. That has relevance to this thread. I didn't just randomly attack the previous administration.

I didn't call the poster a liar.

You attacked my morality. You're a troll. Leave.

He did not. And any further posts like this I will report.

 

[GaryDog]

There are only two things he has done or said, that I have a problem with:

1. He SAID (but has not yet done) that he will punish businesses who leave the country or whatever. This is not how we operate here in the US. We COMPETE. Take away the shackles on doing business in America and we can compete.
2. Chumming with the unions. They are part of the reason businesses went away in the first place.

The TPP is something I do not understand very well but if 0bama wanted it, it has to be a bad thing. I'll go with a little faith in our President in this one.

All the other stuff has been excellent. Great picks for his cabinet, dumping 0bama-the-Idiot's EOs, moving our embassy in Israel, halting taxpayer funding of abortions overseas, and on and on. Hard to keep track, Trump has been busy.

Your last paragraph disrespects President Obama. That is not permitted per the thread rules. Second shot across the bow--I'm trying to help people get settled in with the rules before I start reporting folks. Again if I had seen the post soon enough I would have PMed you to edit it.

The rest of your post I mostly agree with. I have been watching President Trump long enough though to know that he frequently "thinks out loud" and that was likely the case re punishing out sourcers and he frequently expresses where he's going with something without fully completing the thought. Has he said anything like that since the inauguration? I don't recall hearing it but then I don't watch the news 24/7. But so far he seems to be operating as deal-maker Trump. His goal is always to benefit himself, or in this case America, for sure, but the best deal is a satisfactory win-win for both.

That's why I trust him not to start a trade war or to violate the rights of American businesses. And as for chumming with the unions, I have noticed that too, but have to trust him for a method to that madness. He needs their cooperation and willingness to make deals too in order to keep jobs in this country--they are a large reason so much has been outsourced.

Indeed, I agree that Trump's goal is always to benefit himself. That's what he's done so far as president, namely protecting his own ego from the trampling it receives by accurate reporting about crowd sizes at his inaugural, and accurate reporting about the nearly 5 million people who marched against Trump on January 21st.

At least IMO this honestly reports the purpose of the march, one day after the inauguration, but planned long before, while the organizers claim that it was for peace, love, and women's rights.

I have friends who participated in the march, and I, too, participated. While there were certainly people there who were angry, it was, indeed, a march devoted to peace, women's rights, and opposition to Trump. It was not about hate. Close to 5 million people worldwide and practically zero incidences of violence and damage to property, and zero arrests. If that's not considered peaceful, I don't know what is, or could ever be. Getting millions of people to gather together in cities, peacefully, is an astonishing feat, and may is unprecedented in U.S. protest history.

I didn't say it wasn't peaceful. But after hearing the interviews and seeing the signs and talking with people who participated, it was not a pro-woman march. It was an anti-Trump march.

Well, you could be right. To be pro-woman is essentially to be anti-Trump. So yes, in some ways it was an anti-trump march. However, it focused more on the issues and ideas that he represents. Specifically, reproductive rights, misogyny, racism, Xenophobia, etc. It was meant to promote unity, love, and appreciation for diversity. With the specific an emphasis on the latter, Trump is against those things.

 

[GaryDog]

Today, Trump is continuing to repeat his lie that millions illegally voted for Hillary in the election to assist her in winning the popular vote. His remarks to this effect in the past were met with research by election officials, who found only 4 instances of voter fraud, at least one if which involved a woman in Iowa who voted for Trump twice.

Trump continues to destroy the credibility of his administration, credibility that he will need if he expects to, say, convince the country to go to war, convince the country to get behind sanctions against bad actors in the world, or convince the public to support any number of domestic policy proposals he may have at a later date. It's hard to imagine a president more actively and vociferously giving in to his inner adolescent and easing an emotional impulse at the expense of sabotaging his own administration.

And, according to sources inside the White House, Trump wanted an even MORE petulant response:



The first days inside Trump’s White House: Fury, tumult and a reboot

Pundits were dissing his turnout. The National Park Service had retweeted a photo unfavorably comparing the size of his inauguration crowd with the one that attended Barack Obama’s swearing-in ceremony in 2009. A journalist had misreported that Trump had removed the bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office. And celebrities at the protests were denouncing the new commander in chief — Madonna even referenced “blowing up the White House.”

Trump’s advisers suggested that he could push back in a simple tweet. Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a Trump confidant and the chairman of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, offered to deliver a statement addressing the crowd size.

But Trump was adamant, aides said. Over the objections of his aides and advisers — who urged him to focus on policy and the broader goals of his presidency — the new president issued a decree: He wanted a fiery public response, and he wanted it to come from his press secretary.

Spicer’s resulting statement — delivered in an extended shout and brimming with falsehoods — underscores the extent to which the turbulence and competing factions that were a hallmark of Trump’s campaign have been transported to the White House.

...

Many critics thought Spicer went too far and compromised his integrity. But in Trump’s mind, Spicer’s attack on the news media was not forceful enough. The president was also bothered that the spokesman read, at times haltingly, from a printed statement.



Trump strikes me as a president exhibiting the severest form of narcissistic personality disorder the presidency has ever seen. And unlike some of the other mentally ill presidents we've had in the past (Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy, etc.), it's hard to see how Trump's particular brand of mental disfigurement could benefit the nation.


Some are suggesting that he pulls these stunts in order to distract his "enemies" (Trump's words -- those who voted for him are America, the rest? Enemies) from focusing on his more insidious policies and executive orders, from giving the green light to move the dirtiest form of energy on the planet through the Keystone and Dakota pipelines, to banning funding to overseas GMOs who even provide INFORMATION about abortions to pregnant women. He's pulled down the climate change tab from the White House website, and now he's even pulled any mention of climate change from the EPA website. You read that correctly. Trump is signaling that he does not want federal agencies to even display INFORMATION about the clear scientific consensus regarding climate change.

I suppose it's possible that Trump's continual temper-tantrums are calculated attempts to remove attention from those proposals, but I doubt it for two reasons:

1. Trump's simply not that smart.

2. Trump WANTS his believers (who he believes to be MUCH larger in number than they actually are) to see that he's pulling funds for charities overseas that provide birth control options for women and he WANTS his believers to see that he's purposefully shutting down climate change discussion in the EPA. So why would he try and distract from that?

Trump is certainly authoritarian in the way he operates. I won't go so far as to say "fascist", just yet, but the minute he starts using the presidency to find legal ways to silence the press, we will know we've crossed that threshold.

0bama, Reid, Pelosi, Clinton, Kerry. A quintet of the most agregious liars we have ever seen. You supported them, you have no moral ground to complain.

Please refer to Rule #1 of the thread rules Predfan. I'm pleased you are participating but it is not allowed to disrespect ANYBODY in this thread. The thread topic is about how Trump is doing. I would have PMed you to remove the post if I had seen it soon enough but alas I didn't. So please consider this a gentle shot across the bow so we don't get off track here.

If you catch somebody in a lie about the President that would affect the reality or perception of how the President is doing, that would likely be appropriate. But we can't call people liars without specifying the lie and that has to be on topic.

It is disrespect of the liars we had the last 8 years, it does not disrespect the poster. It's hypocrisy to call Trump a liar when you supported liars. That has relevance to this thread. I didn't just randomly attack the previous administration.

I didn't call the poster a liar.

You attacked my morality. You're a troll. Leave.

He did not. And any further posts like this I will report.

Re-read his post. He absolutely question my morality and my ability to speak on it. Stop being a sycophant for the pro-trump trolls. If you didn't want anyone to jump on this thread and disagree with you, you should've just started a circle jerk on private message.

 

[Foxfyre]

I see now. You have your own rules for this debate. I thought this was the CDZ because of the blue box.

Before I go, how was calling Trump a liar not disrespecting the present president?

It is definitely disrespecting the president. Past or present. But calling something the President said a lie is not.

I wish you wouldn't go. The rules are not onerous. But if you do, thanks for your participation up until now.