Donald Trump has challenged the unanimous consensus of every single scientific organization on the entire planet on climate change, calling it instead a "Chinese hoax." Well, that's certainly a different narrative.
While it is true that he made comments to this effect, this kind of claim does not shock me as exceptional in the context of American politics. It is perhaps unfortunate, but it is nothing new under the sun.
He has turned the narrative of America as the land of immigrants into a narrative of America hostile to immigrants.
Here I think you are not being as charitable as you could be toward his views on immigration. There is a reason why Republicans insist on the legality of the immigration status and although your personal inclination is probably to assume this is xenophobia, you could interpret this in a different light. Conservatives tend to like sharp boundaries between things and people. Here, I think the relevant boundary is a
legal boundary: you are welcome to come, as long as you do it legally. Now, you can make the case that, maybe, the laws in place are not sufficiently permissive, or that the position of Republicans on immigrants who came in illegally and now even have a family is not sufficiently generous. That would be a fair critique, but that's different from saying they're hostile to immigration. I think it's an unfair assessment -- and I think it's especially dangerous to let yourself say that because, as a liberal, you have clear motivations to paint some or all of them as bad people. I often come down the same way on conservatives who exaggerate, by the way.
He tells foreign leaders of allied countries that he will let them fall to the wolves if they don't help him defeat his political rivals here at home, and then looks incredulous when he is told that may not be appropriate, if not just downright illegal.
Let me rephrase that slightly differently. You side with Democrats and you are wondering why the person you are accusing does not share your conviction that their behavior is wrong? The man may look incredulous to you and that might sound curious, but that is only becomes you come at the problem from a peculiar angle. Normal human beings generally believe in their own integrity. You may be right, or you may be wrong, but that's not a surprising reaction.
As for the accusation itself, if I am not mistaken, the other party involved in the presumed quid pro quo denied the allegations. You may believe that they lied, but that makes it a matter of contention to be debated. If you wanted to pick a more solid claim, you should have picked the other accusation. Some choices made by the Trump administration duing the investigation can be construed as obstruction of Congress. Conservatives could point out that Congress did not seek to force the White House into compliance by taking some of the disputes over procedures to court. Still, I think it is a less contentious claim.
For the broader picture, I don't think anything that has happened so far regarding the impeachment investigation or the impeachment vote is credible because it is a one-sided effort. People will make idiotic logical errors due related to motivated reasoning, so imagine what happens with something like that. The whole thing is a farce and coming from someone like me who (1) is on the left and (2) really dislikes Trump's attitudes and comments, it should say a lot.
But his stories stick. People are in shock when you say these may not be truth. Is this because we as a postmodern country have finally taken Nietzsche's advice to heart on the nature of truth?
If I was to look through major news outlets and their publication for every day since Donald Trump won the election, I would be ready to bet you 100$ that I could not find a single day where no one ran a story that threw insult at Donald Trump. I'd even be disposed to restrict the definition of insults only to 6 words (racist, sexist, xenophobic, islamophobic, transphobic and bigotted) and to pick only one channel and one journal (New York Times and MSNBC).
That is what the vast majority of Americans read, hear and see everyday: Orange mad bad. And you think that, somehow, it's Trump that is involved in crafting grand deluded narratives that he forces down the throat of the benighted masses -- and obviously, you know better. If you try to explain what is going on with conservatives as a liberal and your explanation starts venturing into the terroritory of you're smart, informed, good and they're stupid, misinformed and bad... Chances are, that's politically motivated.
