President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

I'm on the record here as voting for Obama both times. Both had, and still have, good credentials and had been in government, unlike Trump. But I voted for Obama because the McCain that was on the campaign trail couldn't say a thing without Karl Rove's lips moving, and eight years of W was enough. But compare and contrast with Trump, who had never been involved in diplomatic talks, making policy or even telling the truth.

 

Colin Powell says hi from underneath the Bush-Cheney 2004 bus.

 

What surprises me most is the opposition among right-wing nationalists and isolationists who were so well identified and targeted by the Trump campaign. Charles Lindbergh would be a Trump guy.

 

Peter Baker for the times:

As he confronted a series of international challenges from the Middle East to Asia last week, President Trump made certain that nothing was certain about his foreign policy. To the extent that a Trump Doctrine is emerging, it seems to be this: don’t get roped in by doctrine.
...
Mr. Trump’s action in Syria was welcomed by many traditional American allies who had fretted over Mr. Obama’s reluctance to take a greater leadership role in the Middle East, and feared that Mr. Trump would withdraw even more.
...
“We have learned that Trump is not so isolationist as many Europeans feared he would be — he appears to care about victims of a gas attack in Syria,” said Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform in London. “We have learned that he understands that U.S. influence had suffered from the perception — which grew under Obama — that it was a power weakened by its reluctance to use force.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/08/...prod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share

For the uninformed:

Peter Baker (born 1967) is an American political writer and newspaper reporter who is the White House correspondent for The New York Times and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.[1] He was responsible for covering President Barack Obama and the Obama administration. After being assigned as Jerusalem bureau chief for the Times he was, in December 2016, reassigned to the White House beat for the incoming Trump Administration.[2]

 

Right. And the Powell and Bush have been rightly criticized.

But, somehow, we're supposed to pretend that the Obama administration didn't have a similar problem.

And, now, we have people suggesting we should treat The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, as some impartial source of intel, despite Powell's UN presentation relying heavily on info provided by the Iraqi National Congress.

 

You might want to check the thread again.

 

So can we trust this liberal rag now or is it a broken-clock-right-twice-a-day situation?

 

LOL. You can search the archives. I've long contended that the Times is -- by far -- the best paper in America, and have even argued that you must read it daily to be considered a serious, and informed consumer of news.

Its editorial board is unquestionably liberal. That can't be denied. And a liberal point of view spills over in its news coverage in deciding what to cover, and not cover, and in how many resources they dedicate to certain stories.

But it's reporting is very good. It's one of the few papers that has the resources to do good reporting.

 

OK, then, let's just have a huge circle jerk and blame everyone, OK? It's what the Republicans do best, blame the other guys, from foreign policy to health care (and how's that new bill working out?). But tbf's question from last night remains: What happens next?

Again: Clinton didn't win. Obama got termed out. Your side is in charge. Govern, dammit.

 

Oh sure he does.

Bill Maher Explains the New Republican Philosophy: 'What Would a Dick Do?'

 

Let's just be honest about the fucking situation.

If you think Trump's fucked up, say so.

But, have the guts to look critically at what's come before January 2017.