Trump presidency: better, worse, or about what you expected

Would you call yourself a Trump supporter, a never Trumper, or something else?

Would you say the Trump's presidency is better, worse, or about what you expect?

SheWolf said:

Would you call yourself a Trump supporter, a never Trumper, or something else?

Would you say the Trump's presidency is better, worse, or about what you expect?

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What if you didn't vote for Trump but support most of his policies?

Foreign policies (w/regard to war-like interventionism):
- OK so far. We didn't get sucked into Syria, which is a good thing, but we made things worse with Iran (needlessly).

Economics:
- Pretty good. We have good economic numbers in many of the most important categories (e.g. wage growth, GDP growth, industries growth).
- Great. We are addressing the China issue.

Immigration:
- Neutral. Mostly the correct policies are being pushed but Trump's rhetoric poisons the well on it.

Partisanship:
- Poor. His rhetoric and speaking style has not helped the partisan divide. My only counter to that is that it probably wouldn't have mattered to leftists who was elected if it was an R, they'd be nearly as vitriolic. Biden said Romney would have black people back in chains. Romney...one of the most milk-toast centerist candidates you could wish for.

Since the partisanship dynamics probably wouldn't have been much different no matter who was elected and that's all just superficial fluff anyways, I'd say he's doing good. Probably would be doing better if he could lay off the tweets and saying stupid stuff.

Prior to the campaign I barely knew who Trump was. I knew he owned a few hotels. Not being a television person I had never heard of the Apprentice. Once he became a known person in the GOP clown car I paid attention. Not too long after it was apparent to me that Trump was a bombastic asshole, not presidential material. Needless to say, I didn't vote for Trump.

At some point within the first 6 months, I began to believe Trump suffered from the isolation of wealth and privilege. It was also obvious that Trump is not a bright man. He is educated far beyond his intelligence.

Before the first year of his term ended I began to suspect that Trump was "away with the fairies", cognitive challenges. Now I have little doubt.

Trump is about what I expected once all of the above was clear to me. I believe his mental instability is progressive.

1. It is worse than I expected.

2. I believed that cliché about the White House changing the incumbent.


3. I have been disappointed by his "all hat, no cattle" approach: He promises many things but finds that he usually cannot follow through.

4. I have also been disappointed by his lack of a sense of humor (he can dish it out but cannot take it) and by his gratuitous insults directed at many people, most of whom he should ignore.

5. Nevertheless, I would consider it a honor to vote for him again, as the country needs someone to slow down the drastic plans that the so-called "liberal" Dems have in store for the country once they retake the White House and both Houses and when they pack the Supreme Court. They are so cocksure of their beliefs that they are going to set up a dictatorship (as they are doing here in California) and crush all dissent. (Some Dems are already issuing dark threats to Trump supporters: "When we regain power, you guys had better duck.")

SheWolf said:

Would you call yourself a Trump supporter, a never Trumper, or something else?

Would you say the Trump's presidency is better, worse, or about what you expect?

Click to expand...

What about people who are not Trump supporters, but also not never Trumpers?

Redress said:

What about people who are not Trump supporters, but also not never Trumpers?

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You can explain your actual position on Trump, and then explain if he is better, worse, or about what you expected

Trump voter. I voted for him out of spite for what happened to Bernie, but also in the interest of accelerating the slide into the abyse that this country has been doing for the last 20 years.

Sometimes a bad change is preferable to no change at all. Only, Trump wasn't really as radical a change as id hoped for. Not really. If you ignore the media, he's minimal change, in most areas.

Oh, definitely worse than expected.

- Once he was elected, he immediately declared that he wasn't interested in Hillary Clinton, despite riding the coat tails of "lock her up."

This, alone, made me think that his unprofessional and nasty behavior on the campaign trail was just an act to win over the callousness and destructive mood of his base constituency who mounted their entire political revolution on "shake things up." They wanted to see a clown, and so he gave them a clown. But he went on to prove that it was definitely no act. He went on with this behavior and tied America's Foreign Policy to his personal inconsistency, hypocrisy, bad behavior, and ego-driven self-centeredness. Despite being an outsider with absolutely no experience in Foreign Policy and diplomacy, what he has done with the White House was not expected. But Trump figured out fast that the nastier he got, the louder the applause. This is what he has based his idea of "success" on.

But the real kick in the nuts for me is that I was also a Never Clinton. Having to choose between America's most unpopular candidate in history (Trump) and America's second most unpopular candidate in history (Clinton) made me sad for my country. This is the complete garbage that leads? And Trump supporters actually boast "victory" out of this dump?

I never expected it to be easy for him to accomplish what he told the voters he wanted to do. It was a reality that he would face a LOT of opposition.

But I expected him to try as hard as he can and that's what he's done.

MSgt said:

Oh, definitely worse than expected.

- Once he was elected, he immediately declared that he wasn't interested in Hillary Clinton, despite riding the coat tails of "lock her up."

This, alone, made me think that his unprofessional and nasty behavior on the campaign trail was just an act to win over the callousness and destructive mood of his base constituency who mounted their entire political revolution on "shake things up." They wanted to see a clown, and so he gave them a clown. But he went on to prove that it was definitely no act. He went on with this behavior and tied America's Foreign Policy to his personal inconsistency, hypocrisy, bad behavior, and ego-driven self-centeredness. Despite being an outsider with absolutely no experience in Foreign Policy and diplomacy, what he has done with the White House was not expected. But Trump figured out fast that the nastier he got, the louder the applause. This is what he has based his idea of "success" on.

But the real kick in the nuts for me is that I was also a Never Clinton. Having to choose between America's most unpopular candidate in history (Trump) and America's second most unpopular candidate in history (Clinton) made me sad for my country. This is the complete garbage that leads? And Trump supporters actually boast "victory" out of this dump?

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Best line I have heard to describe the Trump administration: There is something wrong when the sanest person in the administration is called "Mad Dog". Mattis's resignation letter was a thing of beauty, polite, proper, and thoroughly devastating.

Redress said:

What about people who are not Trump supporters, but also not never Trumpers?

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Apparently they are Jews.

KevinKohler said:

Trump voter. I voted for him out of spite for what happened to Bernie, but also in the interest of accelerating the slide into the abyse that this country has been doing for the last 20 years.

Sometimes a bad change is preferable to no change at all. Only, Trump wasn't really as radical a change as id hoped for. Not really. If you ignore the media, he's minimal change, in most areas.

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Take a closer look. By adopting the GOP two-decades long methods of political extremism, he has been the catalyst of political extremism in our country, but without the actual care about the country.

- American influence has been horribly reduced in virtually every region on the planet, right after Obama had just spent eight years using his uninspired "wait-and-see" Foreign Policy to reduce America's leadership role.

- Massive permanent tax-cuts to the wealthy came with significant increases in government spending, thus the Treasury selling ever more bonds to China and others (with China already owning most American debt in who those without permanent cuts - Middle Class - will have to pay under a future President).

None of this is actually in America's best interests. In the meantime, as you suggested, he has done nothing to "shake things up." Nothing on illegal immigration, other than to exacerbate the bad laws that even Democrats are on record for pointing out. Nothing on Global Warming, other than trying to shift it from a "Liberal hoax" to a "Chinese hoax." Nothing about exponentially growing mass shootings in schools. And nothing about big business owning Congress (the swamp). What blows my mind is that people voted for a guy who promised to "drain the swamp" who had spent a life time helping his kind create the swamp; and after elected began to fill his Cabinet and Departments with established swamp folk.

What he has obviously done is placate and cater to big money in the country by opening up the environment for unnecessary exploitation (a product of dismissing Global Warming), giving them permanent tax-cuts, and reforming the damaging NAFTA in a way that opens the door to American automobile exports, thereby increasing illegal immigration from yet another wrecked Mexican market (but enriching the wealthy within the car industry).

And isn't it hard to ignore the media, when they are merely responding to his constant Tweetage (<--- copyright) to place himself at the center of all attention? The man can't even deal with Denmark properly without creating drama and making a spectacle of everything. He has disgraced the Office because he seems more interested in living his own television reality show than performing in accordance to the esteem and honor that the Office is supposed to project. There is not a single President in history that comes to mind that has damaged the American reputation as bad as he has. This may be the case because at one time, the DNC and the GOP worked together to keep inexperienced, populist, outsiders out of the game. (reference Henry Ford, Father Coughlin, or McCarthy here). Trump has greatly damaged our global standing on a moral and respectful level, which will make things harder in the future. His behavior and very poor decision-making has changed everything and future Presidents will have to spend time performing international damage control (and maybe one will actually make an attempt to deal with illegal immigration along the way).

SheWolf said:

Would you call yourself a Trump supporter, a never Trumper, or something else?

Would you say the Trump's presidency is better, worse, or about what you expect?

Click to expand...

I voted for Trump, but not as a supporter. As the lesser of two evils. Though he has done some bone-headed things, he has done better than I thought he would.

Have no way of voting in the poll because you limited it tremendously.

Redress said:

Best line I have heard to describe the Trump administration: There is something wrong when the sanest person in the administration is called "Mad Dog". Mattis's resignation letter was a thing of beauty, polite, proper, and thoroughly devastating.

Click to expand...

I always disliked that nickname. It didn't fit the man at all. Aside from being my Division Commander and later my CENTCOM Commander, I had him in my POV in 2015 when I drove him to the Denver International Airport from the CU Denver campus. We had good discussions on the Middle East. Great man. Knowledgeable, reasonable, logical, and very sincere. He certainly did not fit the Trump Administration's theme.

His resignation letter and his refusal to delve into personal attacks on Trump ever since, even after Trump jumped on the chance to "fire" him before Mattis intended to leave, speaks volumes about his professionalism. I doubt I would have have managed professionalism. "Dear President Trump, you mindless piece of ****...."

Redress said:

Best line I have heard to describe the Trump administration: There is something wrong when the sanest person in the administration is called "Mad Dog". Mattis's resignation letter was a thing of beauty, polite, proper, and thoroughly devastating.

Click to expand...

There something wrong with someone's actual understanding of anything past the superficial if they base their characterization of someone because of a military nick name.

It all depends on whether you believe in the boogieman or what is actually going on around you. We are talking to the locals. In 2014, the unemployment rate was around 10%, now it is at its lowest, hovering just under 4%. We checked the data.
People have a better outlook, sm businesses are booming, revenue is coming in, logistics is improving.
When we mention Sanders, we are getting dirty looks.

I try not to vote for incompetent, arrogant, egotistical and narcissistic people but that's about the choices we had in the last Pres. election.

I would have probably voted for the people that run this site. They would (Most likely) be intelligent and fair.

You know my answer. Way worse than I expected. I expected some silver linings.

On another forum, on the day of Trump's inauguration, I started a thread titled, "Things you hope Trump is serious about."

The three things I listed were:

1. Insurance for all
2. Invest massively in infrastructure
3. Buy American and hire America


When I said "insurance" I was talking about his promise of better, less expensive healthcare coverage. That was a promise broken in a huge way. And not because of Democrats.

I soured on the second item as soon as I learned Trump's vision for infrastructure relied heavily on privatization. Well, I tried to give it a bit of a chance. I did research the subject and learned that privatization wasn't always just a euphemism for letting politician deliver less while milking the public out of more dollars. But it often is and in the hands of Trump I didn't trust that we would get the civic-minded version.

The third is interesting to me now because Trump sure has talked about it a lot and about related topics, and he has acted -- boy has he acted -- but he has done it in a way which has done a lot of harm and I don't see the good. And, again, I don't trust Trump to be able to deliver on the good. Trump is the guy who lied about us having a trade deficit with Canada to justify declaring a national security emergency and starting a trade war with Canada. And he pretended over and over that it was China who was paying for the tariffs he levied on that country, when of course it's us who pay. And then on the Central American side we have such things as Trump's outrageous family separation policy (and then fighting against orders to reunite the children with their parents) plus other things such as threatening to ignore the tariff protections Mexico negotiated in the USMCA, one of the many times he showed that he wasn't negotiating in good faith and that America's word meant nothing with Trump in charge. Trump has repeatedly demonstrated ignorance, incompetence, disregard for the law, disregard for the Americans he's hurting, a propensity to be driven by egotistical anger rather than anything resembling reason, disloyalty to our allies, affection for murderous dictators, ....


Even if someone is pursuing a nominally good goal, it's possible to make things worse, and Trump regularly makes things worse. Nothing wrong with a border wall -- but plenty wrong with couching the campaign for the wall in xenophobic terms and in shutting down the government to try to blackmail Congress into providing taxpayer money for something that Trump promised we wouldn't have to pay for. For one example of one facet of the immigration picture that Trump has mishandled. And, no, Trump doesn't get credit for "trying". If he had shown a willingness to use the vast resources at a president's disposal to prepare himself to make a good try, that would have been different. But he doesn't to the preparation to be able to approach the goal in an intelligent manner. He rushes in recklessly, over and over and over. He makes things worse with words and actions. He torches bridges he needs to be building to have a chance to do what he supposedly wants to achieve.



I knew I wouldn't like everything he wanted to do, but I thought he would do it in a businesslike manner. I believed he could and would "hire the best people" ... and that he had good business sense which could be applied intelligently to the problem of governance. Boy did I get that wrong. He has hired some horrible people. He has abused the qualified people that he appointed. Most of those people have left and his searches for new appointees has gotten embarrassing. Fewer and fewer qualified people want to work for him. As his search for a new chief of staff showed, even loyalists find ways to thank him for consideration but politely recuse themselves from consideration.

The Mueller report has recorded for history the dysfunction of his administration and ways that his staff members have felt compelled to disobey him and thus save him from a fast track to impeachment.



I never imagined that anyone who was able to wake up every day and put a business suit on and go to work could possibly be as much of a mess as Trump is. It's astounding how out of control and incompetent he is. Some people say they knew, but I never could have imagined how bad he has been. And he keeps finding new ways to make things worse, new lows to descend to.

Mycroft said:

I never expected it to be easy for him to accomplish what he told the voters he wanted to do. It was a reality that he would face a LOT of opposition.

But I expected him to try as hard as he can and that's what he's done.

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No, he hasn't. You are fooling yourself. For example:

- The GOP owned the House, the Senate, and the White House for two full years. Yet, there only reply to illegal immigration was to exacerbate bad laws that even Democrats knew needed reformed. In the meantime, they simply cried about a nonsensical physical wall for the political points (reference every third or fourth Tweet from Trump) and avoided any and all efforts to actually reform. This is not trying to do anything. What you and others ignored was the fact that American farmers across the country, while supporting Trump, also hire illegal immigrants. The wealthiest farmers in the mid-West, by the way, also received the lion's share of Trump's bail-out money last year (socialism).

What we have here is a farming base that would rather err on the Republican side that consistently rails against "illegal" immigration instead of the Democrat side that consistently supports higher wages. So why would they choose to overwhelmingly support a man like Donald Trump, who made illegal immigration (their workers) a part of his campaign base? Probably because they know which side is earnest and sincere in its ideology and which side is full of ka-ka (<---that means poo poo.) Notice, that the recent raids in Mississippi didn't occur in "liberal" Southern California, where most farmers support Trump, nor in the mid-West, where most farmers received the bail-out money.

In the end, these farmers know that Trump's crack down on illegal immigration is mostly all hot air because their vote buys a half-assed attempt to slow illegal immigration.

Dude, finally wake up to this game. They use you and your ill-thought out ideologies.

Lovebug said:

It all depends on whether you believe in the boogieman or what is actually going on around you. We are talking to the locals. In 2014, the unemployment rate was around 10%, now it is at its lowest, hovering just under 4%. We checked the data.
People have a better outlook, sm businesses are booming, revenue is coming in, logistics is improving.
When we mention Sanders, we are getting dirty looks.

Click to expand...

You forget to mention that Obama inherited the Great Recession from W. It was just getting started when he took office. He spent his first term dealing with it, and brought unemployment down to pr-recession rates by the end of 2015

Access Denied

The U.S. labor market logged another year of recovery in 2015 as the national unemployment rate continued to trend downward and employment expanded. In the fourth quarter of the year, 7.9 million people were unemployed and the unemployment rate declined to 5.0 percent, about half its peak following the 2007–09 recession

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MSgt said:

I always disliked that nickname. It didn't fit the man at all. Aside from being my Division Commander and later my CENTCOM Commander, I had him in my POV in 2015 when I drove him to the Denver International Airport from the CU Denver campus. We had good discussions on the Middle East. Great man. Knowledgeable, reasonable, logical, and very sincere. He certainly did not fit the Trump Administration's theme.

His resignation letter and his refusal to delve into personal attacks on Trump ever since, even after Trump jumped on the chance to "fire" him before Mattis intended to leave, speaks volumes about his professionalism. I doubt I would have have managed professionalism. "Dear President Trump, you mindless piece of ****...."

Click to expand...

I did not really know much about him until his handling of the Korea situation right after Trump took office. Going to SK, diplomatically getting them to expedite installation of the anti-missile system, and generally calming things down. When I looked into him, I discovered a remarkable man. His appointment to SecDef was one of the best things I think President Trump has done in office.

Fishking said:

There something wrong with someone's actual understanding of anything past the superficial if they base their characterization of someone because of a military nick name.

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Something even more wrong when someone cannot recognize an obvious joke...

Redress said:

Something even more wrong when someone cannot recognize an obvious joke...

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The thing is that it isn't a joke so a much as a troll.

Trolling people with no sense of humor is funny to watch, so there is humor, but it's not the intent. the actual intent is to illicit an inappropriate reaction.

I wouldn't say I'm a "never trump" person. I dislike him a lot, but I'm a fairly practical guy, and will generally vote for the lesser of two evils, and there are worse people out there who could run. Nevertheless, I didn't vote for Trump and I certainly don't support him now. But his presidency is going about like I thought it would.