This is what I've tried to explain the Trump supporters. Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but we used to collectively insist on presidents being competent, qualified, and serious. Those were just the minimum requirements before most people would even consider voting for someone.
So, in that way, Trump is worse than every previous president. And by breaking that unwritten rule, he has ruined the prestige of the presidency and damaged the country immeasurably.
This. I hated Bush Sr. with a white hot passion. But the man was a legitimate statesman who had proper gravitas for the office. Same with Reagan (before the dementia). Same with Biden (before the dementia). Same with Obama. Same with Carter and LBJ. Nixon even had more respect for American norms than Trump.
In that and a hundred plus other ways. Trump is absolutely the WORST LEADER in the history of our Republic! Ever. By far. Not close. What is worrisome is as this all crumbles around him, which it is the man will become more and more desperate and convinced in his own fake righteousness. He is going to try and bring a whole lot of good people down with him. Wish he could just take the 35% who still are convinced.
The Republican voter base has suffered a decades long campaign of misinformation and disinformation from their elected officials and right wing media. They've always been racists and bigoted and xenophobic but it's been cultivated to such an extent that the Republican party can no longer control the monster they helped create.
He didn't break that rule. W was still President. Trump is just a symptom of what Nixon set into motion, which has been picking up speed (& supercharged by Reagan) ever since.
In comparison to Trump,I would take 20 W’s in a row for the next presidencies to come… I was among those who thought W was a moron and incompetent, but then I was shown what a real incompetent moron looks like… W at least had experience, could handle a simple debate, and wasn’t hell bent on destroying the nation.
You sure about not being Hell bent on destroying the nation? His admin put a lot of the mechanisms into place that the current admin is exploiting to do what they're doing.
Lying and cheating to the American public makes you unqualified to be President. But maybe you're just making a claim about what was known about him before being President?
That's not what I said. I said W was objectively unqualified by every metric & we got here from a trajectory Nixon set. I never made a comment one way, or the other about Nixon's qualifications. W & Trump were/are empty suits pushing their backers' agendas.
I think any comparisons between Trump and W are woefully misplaced. Hey, I also felt that way about W in 2000, so I get where you're coming from.
But he was the governor of a major state. And, although he wasn't especially knowledgeable or bright, he was self-aware enough to know that. He surrounded himself with experienced people and listened to their advice. And he was essentially honest and decent. In retrospect, he was basically Churchill when compared to Trump.
Honest & decent. Honest when he lied us into Iraq & decent when opposing gay marriage & proposing a Constitutional amendment to solidify, "what marriage is"? Just because one piece of shit is bigger than another, doesn't mean the smaller one's smell is diminished.
Edit: & diminishing prior bad acts/Presidents because the more recent one is worse is exactly how we got here & what I was saying in my initial comment. That's how the goalposts keep getting shifted further Right & normalized over time. & THAT is the Nixon trajectory I was referring to.
You do what many trump apologists or excusers attempt, you confuse actions as to the US government or policies, with who someone is as an individual.
W didn’t run scam businesses, or try to steal an election he lost and cheerlead the ransacking of the capitol in doing so. W didn’t pay hush money to coverup his affairs to help his election chances, and wasn’t impeached twice or ever indicted. W didn’t run for office to seek revenge or avoid jail.
He understood that the office of the presidency wasn’t his personal piggy bank. Trump (and his family related crypto businesses) has made billions off of crypto - and policy by Trump/his administration was changed to help crypto companies. It's pure grift.
I could go on and on. Ýes, the response to 9/11, pushed by the neocons, was an overreaction and the Iraq war was wrong. But that doesn’t make him at all like trump.
W was a governor, an actual elected official before becoming president. Trump was a reality tv show clown, who ran to help his TV ratings. He is a dilletante.
W literally stole an election. The Supreme Court handed him the win after allies such as Kavanaugh & Stone (see: The Heritage Foundation) successfully stopped the count. It was later found that Gore did win more votes in Florida. I am not confusing gov't actions/policies & people. I am specifically talking about the very same people who have been advancing this focused agenda since Nixon. This is 180° from Trump apologea, but when people (as you just did) are so quick to run to some knee-jerk defense of Bush because Trump was worse? That's how Overton windows get shifted & the through line continues unimpeded. Also, Bush raided Social Security & the USPS for his own personal piggy bank, so you're just wrong on that front.
No, W didn't "steal" anything (and I wanted Gore to win). Your post lacks nuance and understanding. Yes, people think W didn't really win (or Gore should have) - but they BOTH followed the lawful, legal process in properly contesting an election.
W filed court challenges (as did Gore), and SCOTUS eventually ruled in his favor. He didn't contest lawful certification - he didn't bully state officials, he didn't run a fake propaganda campaign about the election trying to claim there was election fraud. He didn't cry and whine about nonsense or stoke the ransacking of the capitol. Both W and Gore followed the lawful process, whether or not we like the results.
If anything, SCOTUS handed the election to Bush - but even today many scholars say a full recount would have led to Bush still winning.
That's not what Trump did. Trump claimed FRAUD - when there was none.
Neither W nor Gore claimed FRAUD. It was about counting and what can/should be re-counted in a super close election. Which was done by Florida - NOT done by W himself or Gore.
And there's a huge difference from running your whole life as a scam artist, like Trump, being found liable for fraud and rape, and fomenting a rebellion while the sitting president, and ignoring court orders.
I'm not defending W's wars. But still, none of what he did comes anywhere CLOSE to Trump's indictments, impeachments and Trump's constant lies about the 2020 election.
Again, his people directly interfered to stop the count. The "Brooks Brothers Riot" consisted of Kavanaugh, Stone & others on the campaign payroll directly interfering w/ FLA BOE officials as they were counting the votes. It's on video. The Roberts-led (again, see: The Heritage Foundation) Supreme Court then stepped in to make sure the count couldn't be completed & handed the election to Bush.
Yeah, I get what you're saying and you have a point. I just personally think Trump is so corrupt and such an unhinged narcissist that he belongs solidly in his own category.
Your problems with W seem to be largely policy based. Those are valid criticisms but not relevant here.
We could take your logic and run it all the way back to Andrew Johnson then claim he started the demise of the presidency.
Note: you're always going to get accused of being a Trump apologist if you acknowledge that other presudents had flaws.
Yes & no about going all the way back. The reason I went back to Nixon specifically is because that's when we saw the advent of The Heritage Foundation which has a clear through line in Republican policymaking up through this current admin. Theirs have been the driving policies pushed (Southern Strategy/Patriot Act/Citizens United/Project 2025/etc.). & yes, Trump is a horrible, raging asshole (something everyone who grew up in the tri-state area has been warning the rest of the country of since the 80's - I have family & friends personally fucked over by him multiple times over the years), but while everyone's looking at him, The Heritage Foundation is shoring up power in the shadows. I mean, for a more obvious example, just look at Carr at the FCC. Focusing solely on Trump is being asleep at the wheel. Gotta be able to do 2 things at the same time.
The Yale undergraduate and Harvard Business School grad who turned around an MLB team, was elected twice as governor of one ☝️ f our largest states, and had flown fighter jets for the USAF was unqualified to be President? Dislike the guy’s politics and policies, but he was as experienced and qualified, or more so, than Obama or Gore when he took office.
The guy whose connected family bought his coked-up ass through college, who went on to not explain how he lost his flight status while hiding out in the TX Air National Guard to avoid Vietnam? You mean that guy? & I'm not sure being responsible for TX is the flex you think it is (they also ranked 50th for percentage of children w/o health insurance under W).
He was a borderline alcoholic for a while, but there is no reallity to him doing coke. Pretty impressive that he went cold turkey on the booze too, so more of a social drunk. His flight status was all shown to be above board after the fake documents were proven to be fraudulent.
Yeah, W still gets a bad rap when it comes to qualifications. He was arguably more experienced than Obama. He was nowhere close to Gore, though.
I do have to disagree a little on the "fighter jets" though. He was a draft dodger who used his daddy to get into the National Guard. That was a sure way for rich kids to avoid going to Nam back then. Not beating him up about it. I'm sure I would have done the same thing. But he doesn't get credit for that.
Strapping into an F105 is a bit more of a hazard than those who took the PAO gigs at the Pentagon their connections got them. Gore deployed, and he gets credit for that, but his whole later career was on Capitol Hill. He was 28 years old when he came to Congress, also on his dad's name.
Ok, sure. And significantly LESS of a hazard than the kids without wealthy daddies who had to go fight in a jungle. It's kind of an insult to those guys by comparing them to a rich kid flying around Texas as they were dying.
As for Gore, yeah. Decades in Congress. He was also universally respected as a brilliant guy and a true policy wonk (to the point where he could be really boring).
I've found myself thinking back to the sort of things that tanked a politician's chances that wouldn't move the needle with Trump fans. Extramarital affairs (Too many to list)? Pfft. Illegitimate child (John Edwards)? No problem. Misspelling a tuber? Covfefe. An overzealous rally cry? Child's play.
I'm going to go with a solid, "Meh." We're in social media age, and everyone's skeletons are more out in the open than ever before historically. I'm not saying Trump is qualified or isn't, but I would argue that it's extremely likely that some of our past presidents wouldn't look very favorably today.
I think politicians acting with integrity, decency, and respect of the law is a terrible argument, as most don't. Most are following the money, and will quite literally work towards shaping laws that benefit their donors.
I generally agree but it probably depends how far back you go. Cant forget we’ve had numerous presidents who have owned human beings as slaves.
Although im extremely confident that if Trump was around in those times he likely would have been bad enough to make some of those presidents second guess the morality of slavery.
His "methods" highlight his incompetence. Not to mention his constant incoherent rambling that sounds like the guy on the corner who smells like urine, yelling random things. The only thing trump has succeeded at is making billions by scamming and stealing from American taxpayers.
No he's proven to be extremely incompetent, look at all the bankruptcies. Look at how much money was given to him from his father and how much he had before presidency. He's lost a lot of money, even while stealing from people his whole life.
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u/SoldierofZod 1d ago
This is what I've tried to explain the Trump supporters. Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but we used to collectively insist on presidents being competent, qualified, and serious. Those were just the minimum requirements before most people would even consider voting for someone.
So, in that way, Trump is worse than every previous president. And by breaking that unwritten rule, he has ruined the prestige of the presidency and damaged the country immeasurably.