2024 Presidential Debate 2 Electric Boogaloo

Would it change your mind if you knew one of his top advisors was an actual ****ing white supremacist?

I definitely agree that Trump is a bad manager of people.

I agree with the bolded in a vacuum, but I'm curious whether we agree for the same reasons. Of the people who have been (or are) close to Trump, can you name a few who you would identify as particularly bad choices and explain why you think they were bad choices?

Edit: I think we are both talking about people in Trump's professional orbit, not people like Stormy Daniels.

Let's be clear about what actually happened.

White supremacists organized a rally in Charlottesville. If you attended the rally, you either knew in advance that you were attending a white supremacist rally or it became immediately apparent to you after you arrived. Richard Spencer wasn't running some sort of covert operation. If, through ignorance or lack of awareness, you show up to a rally that turns out to be a white supremacist rally, and your response is "**** it, I drove a couple of hours so I might as well participate," then you are what you are.

As for Trump's "fine people on both sides," it is true that he said he wasn't talking about the white supremacists. But it is also true that he made those comments 2-3 days after the rally in response to criticism that he had not condemned the rally forcefully enough. By the time he made that comment, there had been wall-to-wall coverage about who had organized the rally and what it was. There is a 100% chance that Trump understood at the time he made the comments that he was discussing a white supremacist rally. The most charitable interpretation of his comments is that he was intentionally talking out of both sides of his mouth.

There is a reason why Steve Bannon thought Trump's comments 2-3 days after the rally were a defining moment in the Trump presidency.

As I've said before, Trump's behavior around the Charlottesville rally wasn't close to the most damaging thing that he did during his presidency. But with the exception of his election denial, I would rate it as among the hardest things to defend on the merits.

You can contrast how he spoke about Charlottesville vs black lives matter protestors. He has no problem painting people with a wide brush and calling much larger groups terrorists unless they are likely to support him. He's always been weak and can't really call out even the most extreme racists out of fear it will upset his moderate racist base.

Grunging: has anyone brought up that the day of Charlottesville trump gave a low energy prepared speech condemning the white supremacists and that only after a couple of days of petulant bitterness and grievances by the white power folk gave his ludicrous both sides speech?

why didn't you just say that then instead of writing what you actually wrote?

But was a covert operation running Richard Spencer?

At the debate, JD Vance’s many troubles went from bad to worse

as far as Trump is concerned, JD isn’t an entirely reliable source
for information about the former president’s position and plans

in 2016, Trump became the first presidential candidate to ever distance himself from
his own running mate during a general-election debate. Eight years later, he did it again

Yes but Harris hasn't always been consistent on her fracking views, so it sounds like both sides are equally reprehensible and you should vote for Kanye West.

How do you read this?

"Why lie about the number then? Is he just incapable of telling the truth? Is that really what we want in a president?"

And not think I'm saying that Trump's incapability to tell the truth is not a trait we should want in a president. Its quite explicitly what I said.

Among other reasons, notably that he is a documented liar who seems incabale of being truthful about anything at any time, yes.

Well Cohen was a fixer who couldn't fix (and stole from him lol), Giuliani an embarrassment to the legal profession, Gottlieb at the FDA an anti vaping fanatic, Bannon an actual Leninist psychopath and so on

I agree that Giuliani disgraced himself, but it is worth remembering that Trump and his proxies did not have the option of hiring good lawyers to press his election claims.

Trump's inability to hire competent people is a symptom, not the disease.

Yeah, by the standards of a national politician, Trump isn't good at anything. As president, hiring and managing competent people in a variety of roles is step 1. Trump fails. It's like saying the main reason Trump sucks at basketball is because he can't shoot, dribble, pass or play defense.

And he's just a horrible human being w/ NPD. Why this isn't a disqualifier speaks volumes to the kind of injured adults we have w/ arrested development.

From Cooper interview last night:

Cooper read a paragraph from Mary Trump’s new book, “Who Could Ever Love You,” in which she detailed her uncle, as a child, being a “thin-skinned bully who beat up on younger kids but ran home in a fit of rage as soon as somebody stood up to him.”

“That is one of the most damning and dangerous things about Donald Trump and that is one of the things that makes him most unfit. He’s never evolved from that. That’s still who he is,” Mary Trump told Cooper.

And that seems completely accurate with how he functions in public life. But no.... there's a deep state. Trump is the only one that can defeat it. He's the only one smart enough, and tough enough to do it!

Swirling the drain my friends... swirling the drain.

The other funny thing about Trump that doesn't get said out loud, and I'm not sure why, but if he just put his $400 million he inherited, into the S&P 500, he'd have over $45 billion today. Instead, he's estimated to have ~$2.5 billion, much of which was gained by ripping off investors, laundering money through real estate dealings, bankrupting businesses and stealing their capital, and stealing money from his supporters.

By every measure he's a failed businessman. But don't try and explain this to the rubes.

The inheritance was estimated by the NYT as 400m of 2018 USD, not 400m nominal in the 90s.

And the sp500 "only" did X4 since 1999 (trump father year of death)

Mmmm... some of these numbers are disputed of course, but Trump was given money starting in the 70's and his father died w/ ~ $300 million. He was given AT LEAST $50 million in the 90's alone. But obviously he got more, as he stabbed his brother in the back and stole money from his nieces and nephews.

Either way, he would have made more in the S&P 500 by A LOT.

is that not dramatically different in tone than your follow up?

your original statement outright says lying is not something you want in a president - deeply implying kamala made no lies

you're not this stupid, you know what words mean, just own what you said

Ya, that's not how living in a society works though. There's a reason you can't own bazookas, and in a rational society, you shouldn't own guns that allow you to mow down large groups of people easily. This is just common sense. That's why the rest of 1st world countries have similar laws and regulations in place.

Now back to the fracking "lie".

When all else fails, ask chatgpt 4o:

Did Kamala harris say she supports a ban on fracking overall, or just on public lands?

ChatGPT said:
Kamala Harris has not supported an outright ban on fracking overall, but she has expressed support for banning new fracking on public lands. During her 2020 presidential campaign and as Vice President, she clarified that while she does not advocate for a total ban on fracking across the country, she does support limiting it on federally owned lands.

Harris's position aligns with the broader Biden administration's stance, which focuses on reducing the environmental impact of fossil fuels by curtailing new oil and gas leases on public lands, rather than eliminating fracking entirely. During the vice presidential debate in 2020, Harris confirmed that Joe Biden's administration would not ban fracking nationwide, reflecting this more measured approach.

I don't disagree. However, I do think among some groups, mental healthcare is still looked at as a weakness.

I also wonder if medications are to blame at all. I haven't done the proper research but someone I know speculated that increased violence coincided with medication for some mental health diagnoses such as add, add, etc. I would love to see if there is any basis to that, or if he is just talking garbage.

It really isnt. The operative word in my initial statement is "incapable" meaning he lies all the time and it seems impossible for him to tell the truth. This does not equate to "therefore anyone who doesnt meet this quality of being unable to tell the truth ever must be truthful all the time."

"Do we want a president who is incapable of telling the truth ever?" does not equate to "Any person we want to be president must never ever lie."

You're trying to semantics your way out of this and you are just wrong. Its ok to say "oh, I see, I read that wrong, my bad." You wont shatter into a million pieces, I promise.