(02-08-2019, 12:55 PM)JagNGeorgia Wrote:

(02-08-2019, 11:34 AM)JaguarKick Wrote: Sure.  I think the villifying of all political opponents to the point of encouraging violence against them is preposterously dangerous.  I know he isn't the only political figure who has done this recently (Maxine comes to mind), but he's the President.  He leads the free world.  Suggesting that he should be the sole source of information and that the media is never to be trusted is equally so.  I think that the media has made this easier by foaming at the mouth every time he does something and has helped to discredit themselves as such, but not ALL media has done so, and Trump continues to act as though he should just be able to pontificate truth and we should devour it.

He has strained relationships with many of our allies, and has praised dictators.  He has gone so far as to suggest that he should be treated the way Kim Jong-Un is treated in North Korea.  Military parades?  Really?  Again, this should send up some red flags.

His stance on climate change is troubling.  The gag order on scientists is practically unheard of.  Threatening to withhold funding from victims of California fires unless California changes its forest care practices (what the hell?) is insane.  The science says that the uptick in fires is a result of climate change.  But Trump doesn't like that, because it conflicts with his narrative to increase oil, gas, and coal production in this country.  

He knows all the buzzwords necessary to keep the support of the Evangelical right, and so it doesn't matter what he does in their eyes.  This is just a personal religious issue for me based on my geographic location, so I won't touch on it here.

There's more, but this is just off the top of my head.

1. Does he encourage violence or did he make a joke about a person at his rally?

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/back-tru...d=48415766

2. Neither he nor his supporters claim he should be the sole source of news. Most news agencies, however, can't be trusted. How many times do you have to see their bias to know they aren't interested in reporting news? Just recently, we saw that the Washington Post decided not to report the allegations about the lieutenant governor of Virginia a while ago because they considered it "he said, she said" just months after endlessly reporting the Kavanaugh allegations. While you may be right that it isn't ALL media, I'm comfortable saying it's most of the media. 

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/1/27/14395978/donald-trump-lamar-smith

So you're half right.  It wasn't him--it was a supporter.  But nevertheless it's a terrifying precedent to attempt to discredit the media.  The media is NOT the enemy of the people.  Even though sensationalism has taken over most mainstream media outlets, that claim is unsettling.  It's the claim all dictators make.

3. I'm OK with "straining" relationships with allies if those relationships are parasitic. The only "straining" comes from asking them to hold up their fair share.

"Well I think we have a lot of foes. I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade. Now you wouldn't think of the European Union but they're a foe," Trump told CBS.

4. Trump hasn't suggested being treated like a dictator. If you think having military parades make dictators, then that's your problem. I'm sure we agree that they're a waste of money, but you're completely twisting it into something it wasn't. 

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/6/15/17467644/trump-kim-summit-fox-news


5. Other federal employee can't speak freely to the media about their jobs. Why then should federal scientist be any different? Having said that, he didn't put a gag order on them. He stopped them from making policy-related statements. He's making them go through the Secretary of Agriculture... like every other employee has to go through their boss first. They're still allowed to talk about climate change.

Yes, he absolutely did.  One of my best friends is an Environmental Scientist.  At a convention, they all received an e-mail that stated that any research that contained certain language would not be funded and would not be approved.  The same has been done to NASA.  Check the rogue NASA twitter feed.  She still has the e-mail saved, if you're interested.

6. He's using the withholding of funds as leverage because California expects the Feds to come in and pay for everything after their failed policies help contribute to the fires. I can't see how holding California responsible for their actions as "insane". The science doesn't say it's because of climate change. The general perception is that mismanaged forestry is the single largest reason for the massive fires.

https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2018/11/the-many-ways-climate-change-worsens-california-wildfires/

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/11/climate-change-california-wildfire/

[url=http://time.com/4985252/california-wildfires-fires-climate-change/]http://time.com/4985252/california-wildfires-fires-climate-change/[/url]

7. It's a myth that Trump is the way he is because he's pandering to the evangelicals. The evangelicals were some of his largest skeptics (on the right) because they saw him as an adulterer that was pro-abortion until recently.

Maybe not where you are.  But evangelicals here have supported him from the beginning, first because Hillary was so staunchly pro-choice, and then because he learned the pro-life vernacular and pretended to be a Christian.  He had endorsements early from Franklin Graham, James Dobson, and others, who implored Christians to vote for him.  There are people I know who vehemently insist he must be Christian, while never entertaining even the slightest possibility that Obama could be.  He isn't the "way he is" because he's pandering.  But he IS pandering to some degree.