(09-20-2021, 09:52 AM)Lucky2Last Wrote:

(09-19-2021, 01:29 PM)TheO-LineMatters Wrote: I hate Trump for a myriad of reasons. It's definitely NOT just one thing. As far as people getting used to politicians lying, what do you expect? It happens so much that people are starting to realize you can't be an honest person and maintain that honesty while having a career in politics. We've become desensitized to the lying, because it's an everyday occurrence. We could whine and complain, but where will that get us? It's certainly not gonna make these politicians grow a conscience. It's just one of those things we come to accept, because we cannot change it. 

I couldn't disagree with that statement more. Things started going downhill with Obama, Trump made them awful and Biden is killing us. It just gets worse with every president. I don't know what kind of news you are watching, that you believe Biden is getting away with things. He's not. He's getting "skewered" all over the place for the terrible job he is doing. His approval ratings are in the toilet, but he was voted in as a direct response to just how much people hated Trump. I knew Biden was a terrible choice, but I certainly wasn't gonna sit through 4 more years of Trump, so I voted my conscience and cast my ballot for the Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen. Putting everything aside, her political leanings were closest to my own and she seemed like a very sensible person. If people ignore the notion that you have to vote either Democrat or Republican and instead just voted for the best candidate, we wouldn't be in this mess where we had to pick from Trump or Biden (two equally terrible choices.)

I saw Trump get rid of Obamacare, promise a bigger and better healthcare system for middle and low income people and then give us nothing in return. He created a huge rift between races with his divisive speeches and failure to immediately call out hate groups and he constantly ticked off our own allies. He was golfing 5 days a week and was never at the white house and when he spoke he acted like an ego maniac. He would get the extreme right all stirred up, because he knew those people were so gullible, he could easily manipulate them. It was these things as well as many, many other reasons why Biden was able to win the election, despite that he is a doddering old fool that doesn't know where he is half of the time. If trump wouldn't have lied about healthcare, wouldn't talk bad about our closest allies and just would've been a reasonable decent human being, we wouldn't be stuck with Joe Biden. Trump needs to accept his part in why we now have Joe Biden as a president. God help us. 

You admit that Trump lied on some minor things, but what about the lies he told about building a wall and having Mexico pay for it? What about the lie he told about replacing Obamacare with something better? Those were bad lies. Those lies along with his crappy personality lost him the election. It wasn't just his personality. I know some of his supporters wanna think that is the only reason, but nothing could be further from the truth. 

I'm not giving Biden a pass on lying, but Trump made me desensitized to politicians lying that I'm just accepting of it now, because that's what I expect. Why should Biden be any different than Trump? Everything that comes out of both of their mouths are lies. I've just become sick of the whole political process. Nothing is ever gonna change. It's just gonna continue to get worse and worse. I'm just gonna do the same thing for the Biden presidency that I did with the Trump presidency. I'll endure it for 4 years and just hope something better comes along, while realizing that it's probably just gonna get worse. 

Look at the bright side. Trump screwed things up so bad, that Biden beat him and the Democrats took over. Now, Biden is screwing things up so bad, that it is inevitable the Republicans will win the next presidential election and probably take back control the government again. That's how it goes. With every failure Biden has now, that just makes the odds swing back in the Republicans favor for the next election.

I feel like you continue to underestimate the role the media is playing in your apathy. Even if we take your two examples of Trump's BIG lies, it's not like he didn't try. Trump never said Mexico was going to directly pay for the wall. In fact, he told Wall Street journal he was going to get the money by renegotiating NAFTA, which he did. It wasn't enough to pay for the wall he was building, but it was at least something. The pundits all said he would never be able to renegotiate that deal. They said he'd never get any wall built, even though he managed to get up 450 miles in the face of super strong opposition. Where's your ire for THEIR lies? These dudes literally used pictures from the Obama regime to admonish Trump for his border policies. The media lies so much you can't even keep track of it anymore. 

As to his second big lie you mentioned, I don't think that was a high priority for Trump, I will give you that. However, in what world would he even be able to bring something like that to the table? He couldn't get bi-partisan support for ANYTHING. He couldn't even get Democrats to make concessions to help black owned business. Even still, which President gets ALL of their promises accomplished in a 4 year term? Do you think it's fair to hold one President to that standard, even though no other President has done that? It's an impossible ask. 

I have said it before and I will say it again: Trump is a narcissist. I think he truly wanted to good, if for nothing else than his own ego. I strongly believed Democrats could have leveraged his narcissism to enact many social policies, but that's not what happens at the political level. It's all about power, and giving the other side any amount of success is political suicide. That's the primary driver for the national Trump hate. The failure of moderates to recognize this simple fact is why their outlook on conservatives is so skewed.

I can't keep doing this back and forth if you're not going to deal in reality. He DID say Mexico was gonna pay for the wall, multiple times without offering any kind of context, because he knew gullible people would buy into it. Here are three examples. In the first one he says Mexico will pay for the wall and they will like it. https://youtu.be/M3cBvP6b8O4. In the second, he directly says Mexico will pay for it, https://youtu.be/l_m1Mm6VERY and in the third, he asks his "sheep" "whose gonna pay for the wall?" and they reply, "Mexico" and he says, "100%." https://youtu.be/cBW8mTHDgvk. You need to accept this. He did state over and over and over that Mexico was gonna pay for the wall and then when he realized it wasn't gonna happen, he backtracked and said Mexico would indirectly pay for it through the NAFTA deal. He got caught in an outright lie and then had to cover his tracks. 450 miles of a wall is like a speed bump. We share about 1954 miles of land border with Mexico. 

Of course healthcare wasn't a high priority for Trump. He and his friends can afford the best healthcare available. They don't need insurance, but if you are someone who makes less than $100,000 a year (and the average household income was $68,400 in 2020) and you have health issues, medical bills make up the vast majority of what you spend each month. He took away the life line of many people (Obamacare), promised them something bigger and better (which was fine), but then gave them nothing (which was another huge lie.) He didn't even try. When asked for details of his healthcare plan, he offered no details at all (because he had no intentions of replacing Obamacare) and he just kept saying "it's coming." The guy was nothing but a "snake oil" salesman. I do think it's extremely fair to hold him to a standard that he promised. He took away something, promised to replace it with something better and had no intentions of doing so. If he did, he would've given some details on his proposed replacement plan. Anything would suffice. He gave nothing. He was never gonna replace Obamacare. He didn't care about average income people, he never did and he never will. 

You keep buying into believing Trump wanted to do good. It's a fantasy. He only wanted to do things that made him look good to the rich and powerful, in order to boost his own ego. He found a gullible base that would keep making excuses for him, every time he lied directly to their faces. That's what is so frustrating. People kept buying into his outright lies. He's like one of those Nigerian internet scammers that get senior citizens to send him all their money, promising that he is a prince that needs their help to get his inheritance and when he gets it, he will share it with them. The old people who are scammed, die penniless, but they go to their graves still believing that their scammer was a real prince who was gonna make them rich.

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