He is, what he is, officially the worst president in US history.
From The Miami Herald;In response to:
President Trump is a horrible person with a horrible record
by Andres Oppenheimer
Fri, October 16, 2020, 11:18 PM EDT
When people ask me why I’m so critical of President Trump, I tell them that it’s not just because — as I discovered first-hand when I interviewed him in 2013 — he’s a horrible human being and a terrible role model for our children. It’s for reasons that go far beyond his awful personality.
I can’t support Trump because his mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a world record of more than 218,000 deaths. With only 4 percent of the world’s population, America has more than 20 percent of the world’s COVID-19 deaths. The United States suffered many more COVID-19 deaths as a percentage of its population than Canada, Germany, South Korea and other wealthy countries. That’s a fact.
And many of the U.S. deaths could have been prevented. Trump knew about the lethality of the pandemic early on —he is on tape telling author Bob Woodward this in February — but chose to lie to the American people for fears that it would ruin his re-election chances.
Instead of leading by example, wearing a mask and preaching social distance, Trump has mocked people who do that. For selfish reasons, Trump neglected his main duty — to protect the American people.
I can’t support Trump because I can’t back a candidate who has built his political career on racism and xenophobia. He started his 2016 campaign by falsely claiming that most Mexican undocumented immigrants are criminals and rapists; he separated immigrant children from their parents’ and claimed that there are “very fine people” on both sides when neo-Nazi thugs clashed with protesters in Charlottesville.
Emboldened by Trump’s racist rhetoric, neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups are flourishing. There is a huge rise in anti-Hispanic, anti-Black, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States, according to the FBI. Trump’s own former Defense Secretary (R) Gen. James Mattis said recently that his former boss is “the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people.”
I can’t support Trump because his veiled threats not to recognize the results of the 2020 election if he loses, his constant verbal attacks against America’s public servants and his daily claims that an independent press is “the enemy of the people” undermine America’s democracy like nothing else we’ve seen in our lifetimes.
I can’t support Trump because his efforts to dismantle Obamacare without replacing it with any other plan threatens to leave millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions without health services.
I can’t support Trump because he is on the wrong side of the struggle to stop global warming, protect women’s rights and pass gun-safety measures.
I can’t support Trump because his claims to have created the greatest economy on Earth are ludicrous. Before the pandemic, he had largely benefited from, and continued, the Obama years’ recovery.
While former President Obama reduced unemployment from 10 percent in 2008 to 4.7 percent in 2016, Trump only further reduced it to 3.7 percent in early 2020. Since the start of the pandemic, it’s back to nearly 8 percent.
I can’t support Trump because his foreign policy — except for helping forge a peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates — has been a string of failures. His Israeli-Palestinian peace plan never materialized, his love affair with North Korea resulted in nothing and his verbal attacks on European allies have left America more isolated than ever...
President Trump is a horrible person with a horrible record
by Andres Oppenheimer
Fri, October 16, 2020, 11:18 PM EDT
When people ask me why I’m so critical of President Trump, I tell them that it’s not just because — as I discovered first-hand when I interviewed him in 2013 — he’s a horrible human being and a terrible role model for our children. It’s for reasons that go far beyond his awful personality.
I can’t support Trump because his mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a world record of more than 218,000 deaths. With only 4 percent of the world’s population, America has more than 20 percent of the world’s COVID-19 deaths. The United States suffered many more COVID-19 deaths as a percentage of its population than Canada, Germany, South Korea and other wealthy countries. That’s a fact.
And many of the U.S. deaths could have been prevented. Trump knew about the lethality of the pandemic early on —he is on tape telling author Bob Woodward this in February — but chose to lie to the American people for fears that it would ruin his re-election chances.
Instead of leading by example, wearing a mask and preaching social distance, Trump has mocked people who do that. For selfish reasons, Trump neglected his main duty — to protect the American people.
I can’t support Trump because I can’t back a candidate who has built his political career on racism and xenophobia. He started his 2016 campaign by falsely claiming that most Mexican undocumented immigrants are criminals and rapists; he separated immigrant children from their parents’ and claimed that there are “very fine people” on both sides when neo-Nazi thugs clashed with protesters in Charlottesville.
Emboldened by Trump’s racist rhetoric, neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups are flourishing. There is a huge rise in anti-Hispanic, anti-Black, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States, according to the FBI. Trump’s own former Defense Secretary (R) Gen. James Mattis said recently that his former boss is “the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people.”
I can’t support Trump because his veiled threats not to recognize the results of the 2020 election if he loses, his constant verbal attacks against America’s public servants and his daily claims that an independent press is “the enemy of the people” undermine America’s democracy like nothing else we’ve seen in our lifetimes.
I can’t support Trump because his efforts to dismantle Obamacare without replacing it with any other plan threatens to leave millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions without health services.
I can’t support Trump because he is on the wrong side of the struggle to stop global warming, protect women’s rights and pass gun-safety measures.
I can’t support Trump because his claims to have created the greatest economy on Earth are ludicrous. Before the pandemic, he had largely benefited from, and continued, the Obama years’ recovery.
While former President Obama reduced unemployment from 10 percent in 2008 to 4.7 percent in 2016, Trump only further reduced it to 3.7 percent in early 2020. Since the start of the pandemic, it’s back to nearly 8 percent.
I can’t support Trump because his foreign policy — except for helping forge a peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates — has been a string of failures. His Israeli-Palestinian peace plan never materialized, his love affair with North Korea resulted in nothing and his verbal attacks on European allies have left America more isolated than ever...
(continued in first comment below)
Comments (3)
"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth."
George Orwell, 1984
You can look up what sanctions we have where.
From the Washington Post;
Trump, for unexplained reasons, personally has been weak in responding to the actions attributed to Russia during the election. Congress, with veto-proof majorities, in 2017 passed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which imposed sanctions on Russia. Trump only grudgingly signed it, calling it “seriously flawed” because he said it limited his flexibility. “This bill makes it harder for the United States to strike good deals for the American people,” he said in a statement.
Moreover, the administration then refused to implement the sanctions as scheduled, on the grounds that the mere passage of the law had already served as a deterrent. Trump has also highlighted Putin’s denial of any involvement, even though intelligence officials say such an operation could only have been undertaken with Putin’s approval.
Even after special prosecutor Robert S. Mueller III announced the indictment of 13 Russians for seeking to influence the election, Trump has yet to criticize or fault Russia — or Putin — for the election-year activities.
The Pinocchio Test
One often has a sense that Trump operates independently of the vast government he oversees. The administration certainly has taken steps that represent a toughening of the Obama administration’s policies, such as the supply of lethal weapons to Ukraine. But Trump himself has continued with rhetoric and tone that suggests he still wants to be Putin’s friend. He cannot bring himself to fault Russia for its actions, instead accusing Obama of not doing enough to thwart Russia.
It certainly took Obama many years to become a Russia skeptic. But when it comes to being tough on Russia for its election activities, Trump falls short of the actions taken by Obama, especially when he frames it as: “I have been much tougher.” We wavered between Two and Three Pinocchios, but Trump’s use of the personal pronoun tips us to Three.
Three Pinocchios
"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."