The Devastating Legacy of Obama's Presidency - A Point of No Return | Thomas Sowell

Nominally, yes. But the White House has an enormous amount of soft power on the federal budget.

I used to believe that but i don't agree anymore, especially since by far the most important elements of the budget are:

1) entitlements, to which the president can do absolutely nothing about at all
2) defense, which has strong bipartisan support for ever-increasing expenses
3) interests, which are out of both potus and congress control almost completly. Yes the sec of the treasury can sometimes play the curve a bit by issuing more short term or long term debt but i mean, that doesn't matter too much usually

Then when a recession hits (or a slowdown of the economy in general) , automatic stabilizers kick in and those as well are entirely out of potus control, only congress can change them.

Potus and the whole executive branch have a modicum of power (both hard and soft) to shift around some money withing departments , sometimes also among departments, prioritize this or that a bit, but at the end you need congress to pass everything, often with 60 senators, and potus is powerless there.

Potus can talk can shake hands can promise stuff to individual senators but they will vote their way anyway.

I mean Trump with a trifecta didn't even manage to touch obamacare lol, that's how "strong" potus soft power usually is. Biden didn't manage to use his own trifecta to cancel student debt in reconciliation.

btw rococo i think the soft power idea of a deal-broker in POTUS was actually true when there was less polarization. With lower polarization you can get laws passed with the help of the other party, that makes deal-making by potus much more viable

FWIW, in the video he mainly talks about how Obama dramatically expanded the social welfare state through unconstitutional means with no way to pay for it.

Lol Trump was attempting a coup? The coup was already successful by the exact same people who were accusing Trump. Trump and all the people who showed up on January 6th were attempting unsuccessfully to stop a coup.

Trump was elected president because the majority of voters in the country can see right through these politically motivated weaponized criminal cases that were used against him.

President Trump wanted his people to protest for a "10 day pause before certification in order to examine evidence of possible voter fraud" due to all the ballot drop boxes and mail in ballots in the amount that we've never seen before and thousands of allegations and signed affidavits of actual fraud (which the corrupt courts refused to look at).

Give it some time, eventually the incoming administration's gonna have to show everyone the actual evidence of these things so they can justify why all these traitors are being prosecuted publicly for treason against their country. Then we'll see who the real fools are, the people claiming "Trump attempted a coup" and the ones who know the coup already happened on the other side.

which program?

Mason’s link is a cut up of a longer interview. It doesn’t get into the weeds too much; and I have no idea if the original interview did.

I know Sowell wrote numerous books going into the weeds economically, but he is already in his mid 80s at the time of this interview, so I don’t know how professionally active he still was at this time.

Trump was unable to get rid of Obamacare because he didn't even have the full support of his own party. When is the last time Congress spent a ton of money that the WH didn't want to spend?

The text pop-ups during the interview certainly were cringeworthy.

Actually, he was an initial detractor of Trump. He even stated that you should vote for Trump over Clinton because Trump would be easier to impeach and get rid of.

However, he changed his position after Trump was president for a while because the policies that Trump advocated were policies that he supported. You can find Sowell videos where this is clearly explained by Sowell.

Today Sowell is 94.

Trump is right now trying to argue he can avoid spending appropriated funds for emissions reduction

94 trips around the sun... MORE MILES THAN > anyone else around here!

That's an entirely different issue.

People like you scare me honestly. You're so completely divorced from reality, and extremely easily brainwashed, which makes you capable of doing extremely horrible actions, believing you're acting justly.

I scare you? Don't be scared. Take a deep breath, it's gonna be ok. It was "people like you" that got brainwashed if you actually think Trump was attempting to over throw the new administration so he can remain president.

New Flash: Trump didn't need to call up his "MAGA" people to come to the Capitol with their flagpoles and flags to overtake the United States government in a coup. He could have implemented the Insurrection Act and declare martial law if he wanted to. It wasn't an attempted coup by Trump (lmfao).

This is a severely ******ed take.

He miscalculated and assumed GOPers had a shred of decency, intestinal fortitude and knew right from wrong. He was obviously wrong given that the evidence to convict was overwhelming and yet they still acquitted him. Shameful and grotesque. Their pathetic behavior will not be forgotten. These people will be the end of America.

The ******s are now in charge. And they have no idea what “hubris” means. Buckle up.

People like PB are why America is ****ed. How do we reintroduce these people into polite society when all the lies (2020 was stolen!) come crumbling down? How can anyone take these people seriously ever again? They're wildly ignorant and PROUD of it.

same way you reintroduce people who did this (which is far more insane than anything MAGA could ever come up with ) to society

you simply don't.

you accept you are forced to cohabit with people that are utterly and permanently ****ed up without limit, completely incompatible with everything you consider decent in human life, a direct threat to your life and your family life.

you start understanding politics is warfare, of the most vicious kind, it's a struggle of violence attempted to be used against you at every corner by evil people empowered by low IQ people.

then after you accept that's life in human society, you decide what to do with that reality.

You claimed Trump attempted a coup and you list all this as your evidence?

Where's the evidence that he attempted to overtake a government by force? (hint: there is none. Otherwise he wouldn't be our 47th president).

He asked to "find votes" during a recount, referring to LEGAL votes. Did you think he was asking, in code I guess, for them to manufacture fake votes? He was asking them to count the ballots again because they were off by a small number of votes. He wasn't asking anyone to fake votes fraudulently. Don't you think that if he was, they would of brought those charges up against him? You bought the propaganda narrative hook line and sinker. You should try thinking for yourself one of these days and not "follow along" with what your tribe of Trump haters are saying.

The lawsuit against Fox was civil and it has nothing to do with your false unproven claims and conspiracy theories that "Trump attempted a coup against the United States".

Yeah. but you can tell from context the interview was taken around the end of Obama's first presidency, so he would have been early 80s at the time.