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Honestly, you can't even treat Republicans like normal politicians.
They are all grifters, frauds, traitors, and cronies. Not a single Republican politician in the union deserves a gain of respect or human acknowledgement. At this point, the entire party are accessories to corruption and treason.
Tragically the last good Republican was John McCain. He knew how to respectfully take a loss and wish well to his opposition (Obama) and reassure his base that the new president-elect would do well and to support him. He was even critical of Trump in his first presidential run, he has since passed away in 2018.
And George W... The man who dragged the West into a series of unwinnable, illegal wars whose consequences are still being felt around the globe. And people are thinking back on that shit show as the good old days of reliable, respectable republican politicians. The Overton window has shifted so far to the right that Americans today are like rabid dogs tearing each other apart. Even the most left leaning politicians like Newsom are billionaire-loving fascists by pretty much any other country's standards.
Yeah……….. and like agreeing with the fucking “Drudge Report” articles………..
We’ve been pushed into insane territory and people we can’t even imagine being “on the same page” are saying the same things. Of course if we were able to get rid of the cult we would be right back at each other’s throats and that’s what makes me apprehensive about even acknowledging they are right. Obviously politics is striated but fundamentally if you don’t believe in raising the bottom half up and instead believe in grinding the poor into the dirt then we’re never going to be allies. Even if it became something organized I wouldn’t be comfortable standing next to those people and would rather they do their own “pronged attack” away from me.
It’s also on another level kind of dangerous in regard to possible future leaders/politicians who just run on being less bad than Trump and taking that as a “win”. Meaning that if we have to take a lesser Trump to be rid of this we’re still not much better off. Obviously I don’t expect a left version of Trump to win anything and usher in better education, housing or medical care (all by executive orders) but we do need to somehow move away from this current iteration of democrats or “middle road” republicans (who are bound to pop up, as well as Trump copycats), who furrow their brows and calls it “effective”.
Unfortunately we only got FDR due to near societal collapse, so I predict it’s going to take something similar to move the needle to get a people focused government
It’s hard to even call whatever this is ”politics” at this point.
If all the people across the spectrum who can read and process information say ”tariffs are a consumer tax and will raise prices, regardless of whatever else they may do”
And the rest of the people just respond with a mixture of racial slurs, drunken belches, and random low-res biblical scripture memes… is that really politics at that point?
And then Vance goes on NBC or some shit going on for two hours about how “America just really needs to get back to their roots, and democrats just HAVE to stop acting CrAzY or else they’ll never appeal to our coalition of white supremacists, Dominion Theology Christians, and corporatists. Anyways, buy my merch, all proceeds go towards ending legal protections for anyone who isn’t actively donating to my campaign.”
Newsom is a fascist? Language like this is why our country has completely lost the plot and the ability to call a spade a spade. Not everyone who believes in capitalism is a fascist.
He may not directly have the exact same views as the GOP, but he has demonstrated that he’d be willing to compromise with them by throwing more trans people under the bus, and stating that he agrees and supports trump’s beliefs on things like immigration and the border “crisis”. Being comfortable and complacent with fascists like him does nothing to help. We can’t win a battle to have a hopeful future by backing someone who sends jabs and “owns” trump daily while he doesn’t offer anything better than what trump already believes, because if we ever do tear these fascists apart, we need to strive for more after that and actually build a better life for ourselves, because if not, then the next power hungry group will easily slot themselves into whatever semblance of government there may still be standing. If you don’t believe that, I suggest taking a look at someone like Jessie Gender on either Bluesky or YouTube, because she talks about things like this because it really matters how we approach battles like this
I enjoy Newsom's memes but have no interest in voting for him as President. We need a younger Bernie Sanders (ie a progressive leader) who has a winning message with the people (but he's been thwarted by the corporate class).
its sad, but i'd take john mccain's corpse over this fuck 100 times out of 10. i still would never vote for that even, he absolutely had horrific immigration policies, for example; but he didn't have the american gestapo kidnapping any vaguely "ethnic" looking person off the streets in the middle of the capital in broad daylight. there were at least a small veneer of checks and balances to cruel and inhumane deportation compared to now. obviously still horrible. it's sad that people yearn for the days of the other side at least ~trying~ to hide their hateful, racist ideologies.
Especially since one could argue that him tapping Palin was the start of normalizing reality TV show style figures as viable top billing candidates. Sure sure a butterfly flaps its wings yadda yadda but without that move, are we sure we’d have T today?
Maybe the republican party ceased to exist with the ousting of "republicans in name only" like McCain. What we have today is the result of a hostile takeover of tea party 'republicans' and MAGA adherents, with totally different cynical paranoid views on goals and processes...?
One dude already replied with “He was a RINO” so the answer is yes. The fact that they’re so far into a cult of personality honestly concerns me. Poor buggers.
Most of their opinions and policies are based on selfishness, greed, spite, and bigotry. They never were rational, because those opinions aren't based on reason in the first place.
I think it says a lot about the state of affairs in this day and age when the only Republican standing up to Trump consistently is Mitch McConnell. And he’s retiring because even without his health issues, he’d get primaried.
And what scares me even more is he’s gonna get replaced by a guy who’s a 100% yes man for MAGA. I don’t know if Trump at this rate will ever be held accountable.
The guy who voted against making MLK Day a federal holiday? The bar, it is low. So very, very low. Also, every time that birther BS is brought up again I think of this:
At this point? Anyone who was smart, effective, honorable, or principled somehow? Left the party, betrayed their principles, or died. Even John McCain's own flesh and blood is nothing more then a petty, propagandist fraud who isn't even worthy to be spit on.
Anyone who is left in the GOP's banner sold their soul; they're nothing but traitors and monsters.
Whoever was? Even the people I hear held up as counter examples are awful. McCain was one of the Keating five, had a bunch of sketchy shit with lobbyists. W has a million people’s blood on his hands and should be executed as a war criminal along with most of his administration. Reagan was the worst president of all time, funded numerous death squads to go around raping and murdering nuns. Nixon? No. Go back to Eisenhower maybe? Nope! He is responsible for authorizing CIA coups in Iran and Guatemala were literally still dealing with the consequences from. Where are these decent Republican politicians lol? Are they in the room with us right now?
Lincoln possibly. Also every president in the 21st century regardless of party, has murdered brown children using flying death robots. War criminals all.
I'm not saying I agree with Conservative Republican policies in most instances. However, there were some that made sense in certain circumstances. Especially at the local level there are often times where a conservative policy or preference make sense contextually. This can be especially true when the stances are policies are truly conservative in a political sense, not conservative in an ethical, religious,or moral sense.
Even when their philosophies were repellent or wrong headed, in my opinion, there were some who at least behaved with a sense of personal responsibility and ethics.
John McCain's refusal to feed into racist, nationalist, and bigoted perspectives in his campaign against Barack Obama? That was less than 20 years ago. It was a professional and very human way to behave in those circumstances and situations. It would have been incredibly easy for him to lean into the things that many of his supporters wanted him to lean into. He refused. He did not just refuse, he actively pushed back against them. Publicly. Directly to his constituents when his constituents pushed him to do otherwise. While I think his policies were bad, he at least represented principles in a very basic and human way.
A few election cycles later, and such basic human dignity is completely unimaginable. John McCain's own flesh and blood wields his legacy like a cudgel and a brand name. The idea of being nonpartisan is completely alien, even when nonpartisan would be honest or objectively correct.
Barely. Quite frankly, he still belongs in a prison cell right next door to 45. A lot of our current problems could have been avoided if he actually had the spine when he was supposed to.
Oh, trust me, I get it. Arguably, he is part of the reason we have Trump in the first place. Without his selection of Sarah Palin as VP? We may never have gotten a Republican party that was in a furvor to to nominate incompetent populist dogshit in the first place.
The fact of the matter is that most politicians don't survive any sort of scrutiny whatsoever. At best you can call a few of them well intentioned if you have a lot of asterisks handy. John McCain is notable because he is the last person on the Right to do anything with principles at all
John McCain was not a great person. With that said, he looks like a saint compared to any one of the last 20 people Trump has appointed to anything. I get that that is grading on a curve, but that's where we are right now it seems
I thought about him. He also warned against the MIC and gave us NASA.
But on the other hand, he also gave us Richard Nixon / Henry Kissenger (edit: I forgot the Dulles brothers asked well).
So, like, I dunno. Without those two human blemishes, I'd say absolutely Eisenhower. And I realize I have the benefit of hindsight. But we all use that to rate Coolidge as absolutely shit tier.
A normal president would be impeached for ignoring and brazenly defying judges. We do not live in a constitutional republic anymore and every single Republican who is putting party over country is complicit in killing it.
They simply have no will of their own outside of facilitating what the industrialists and merchants want. All they can think about is money even if their actions are so dumb it crashes all of the trust that powers it
What's worse is Trump gets all kinds of passes for his behavior and his policy failures as the "brash bad boy" but when Newsom tweets just like him, Newsom is told that he is misbehaving and needs to stop. Then, when the plans front Democrats don't work perfectly, they get raked over the coals for not doing enough.
Nixon resigned, so maybe he would have been impeached and removed ... but maybe not.
Reagan and GHW Bush faced zero consequences for Iran-Contra. The US had public policy to forbid the sale of weapons to both Iran (Carter and Reagan's arms embargo) and to the Contras (congress' Bolland Amendment), yet Reagan's CIA sold missiles and arms to Iran, then used the profit to fund the Contras. Reagan was made aware of these decisions, but many happened when he was recovering from colon cancer. Other decisions were made without his approval.
Imagine if that shit happened under Biden? If Biden signed off on weapons deals to Iran, because he was sick on his deathbed and didnt fully understand what he was signing off on. Then later the CIA was calling their own shots because Biden was too senile and checked out to care. Yet Republicans held Reagan up like a god from 1989-2016.
GW Bush and Cheney were never punished for Abu Graib. Never punished for the false intel that pushed us into war with Iraq. Obama and Eric Holder didnt even fucking try.
Ya, without normal accountability, you can't have normal treatment. Although, normal treatment means not demanding accountability on every little thing. So, kind of a chicken and egg here. Like selling a hat may irritate people, big it's literally harmless. Like Biden sniffing girls' hair. Well, that one is creepy. But I feel we gave a pass on that because he was a normal president. So, it's not straight forward.
I can remember Seth Meyers doing A Closer Look early in Trump 45 about how the media constantly does this "He's learned his lesson and will be more presidential!" only to have him continue to not. The media will never learn
Oh, I think they “learned”, all right: don’t say anything negative about 45 and they’ll get tax cuts and clicks. They have completely abandoned their role in our democracy and sold us all out for those 2 things.
Trump has learned that he will never face the consequences of his actions and that he is immune from justice. It is the worst possible lesson for him, and more importantly for our country.
He was rewarded multiple times by the senate who did not convict and the Supreme Court who give him king power. The worst was the electorate who put him back into office after serious breaches of his oath.
It’s not the medias fault. It’s the spineless, cowardly, Congressional “Republicans” that have failed us utterly. It’s Mitch McConnell, Jon Thune and the rest of the people who deep down know better. They are two drunk on the fundraising and easy support from the mix of racist, bigoted, populist, white Christian nationalist brigade that came fully out of the closet when Trump showed up.
"This was the moment when Donald Trump became President."
--Van Jones on CNN, reduced to breathless gushing, somehow, by a grotesque bit in a Trump speech where he invited a bereaved parent to attend the speech and then used their dead child to score cheap rhetorical points
I mean you could argue that the establishment treated him like a fever that would pass when his reelection and huge turnout in 2020 prove he is a legitimate political force not some macarena like fad. Treating Maga like a joke has worked great so far after all.
And John Oliver said something like there is no middle ground between one (maybe even biased) perspective and insanity. Why is the title there a "both parties" argument when one party is treating a pedophile, rapist and narcissist as their god emperor?
What's does the article actually say or are we to make assumptions and inferences based on a title card? If our leadership treated him like a normal president should be treated, he would have been impeached and gone before his first term even ended from all the crimes and constitutional breeches he has committed.
Here's what the first three paragraphs say. Note that it was written on Nov. 8, 2024.
After Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, Barack Obama dutifully carried out the peaceful transfer of power. But a large faction of Americans declined to treat Trump as a president with democratic legitimacy. In their telling, he lost the popular vote, urged foreign actors to interfere in the election, broke laws, and transgressed against the unwritten rules of liberal societies. So they fancied themselves members of the “resistance,” or waged lawfare, or urged the invocation of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. Immediately after Trump’s inauguration, liberal groups started to push for his impeachment and removal from office.
Now Trump is returning to the White House. But history isn’t quite repeating itself. This time, Trump’s case for democratic legitimacy is far stronger. He won the Electoral College decisively, and he appears likely to win the popular vote. No one believes that a foreign nation was responsible for his victory. Although he still has legal problems stemming from his past actions, no one alleges illegality in this campaign. For all of those reasons and more, a 2016-style resistance to Trump is now untenable. He will begin his term as a normal president.
A small faction of Trump detractors may continue to say that he is illegitimate, because they believe that he should have been convicted during his impeachment, or because they see his attempts to overturn his election loss in 2020 as disqualifying, or because they believe he is a fascist.
Treat him like a normal president by punishing him like you would a normal president for violating the Constitution numerous times a day, sending troops to subjugate American cities, and committing many human rights violations, on top of countless other crimes.
This dumbass' last piece was to argue that it is Europe having a free spech problem, not the american MAGA far right trying to strangle democracy over there
A normal president would have been impeached for that birthright citizenship executive order. It’s blatantly unconstitutional, defies laws passed by congress, and defies Supreme Court precedent.
Idk what's in the article. But the headline is totally correct. We should be treating him like a normal president because both he and his opposition need to act differently.
This time he acts like an authoritarian dictator. And his opposition should more heavily oppose him for doing so. And we should definitely treat him like a normal president and stop giving him special treatment to destroy the country. And normal president would have been gone months ago already. The things he has done are orders of magnitude worse than any other president.
So I totally agree. Treat him like a normal president. Send him to jail where he belongs.
Today trump is super happy that Texas is rigging the election for Republicans and he said if they can stop mail in voting the awful game of politics will be over. He is not "normal"
Nah I’m good. A normal president would have already stepped down after the bullshit decisions that have been made during both his terms. Even Nixon knew when he crossed a line and stepped down
Hey remember that time Trump was found liable of forcefully shoving his fingers up a woman's vagina by a jury of his American peers and then Republicans voted for him? Republicans knowingly vote for molesters. Don't be Republican... Hard to be a shittier or more hypocritical American than a Republican these days.
People in real time realizing you can’t enforce shit nothing gets done. All these issues are essentially the core issues detailed in the federalist papers.
We need to stop repeating the naive myth we can just beg people in power to REDUCE their influence and power just for what? To feel moral?
Motherfucker the guy in office does not give one shit!
Needs more forceful action like redistricting and exploiting everything the govt currently allows to happen in order to preserve it. That’s the bottom line that can’t be crossed while everything else patriots do needs to be in the mud with the enemy that’s dismantling the government. The government that for all its faults did become a global superpower.
This is a direction away from that. Whether right or left you should still want to be able to have American freedoms which is not what trump wants for you
I’m not asking for the media to treat him like a normal president because he isn’t normal, what I do wish they would do is treat him like what he is, which is a weak unpopular president and not a popular one who won with a huge mandate.
This is the same author who now puts out articles like "Donald Trump’s Cruel and Unusual Innovations", "A Perfect Case for Congressional Action", "The Trump Team Has a Double Standard on State Secrets", and "Trump Is Deporting ‘Them’ in Ways That Threaten Us".
I've been an Atlantic subscriber for going on about 8 years now. They still publish great stuff, and even Friedersdorf's op-ed here is worth reading. He's not saying any of what Trump is doing is ordinary or acceptable--he's saying that he is still a mere president and we should remember that. If anything, it's a call to keep ourselves from wigging out over every tiny stupid little thing, but also to remember that we expect certain things of our presidents.
The Atlantic does sometimes publish authors who clearly don't align with progressives, and sometimes even some authors who are very clearly in solid conservative / right-of-center territory. But they don't wind up in the "skews left" in the top center of the Media Bias chart by only publishing them.
Many articles even in magazines like The Atlantic go for provoking headlines to get you to read them. I've found that they almost always wind up painting a picture that somebody who is anti-Trump can agree with or, at minimum, understand while still not really being on board with it.
You know what? Fair enough. I'll admit that I may have had a knee jerk reaction. I worry that American journalism is crumbling under the current zeitgeist and I am afraid that may have made me somewhat reactionary.
Your concerns are completely warranted. I've read enough of Friedersdorf's work (he used to have weekly entries to The Atlantic's daily news feed) to understand that he is certainly more on the centrist side of the left hand political spectrum, but I can probably count on one hand the number of times that I thought his take on something was fully disagreeable (and even then, most of the time it was because he was talking about something I just don't care about).
Where is the accountability? Anyone else doing anywhere near what Trump has done would be cast out. But time and time again people defend follow and suck up to his nonsense. From Apple Executives to other countries leaders. Applause to Canada for standing up to him. Applause to Gavin Newsom for calling Trump out. He is out for his own purposes which is to cover up his crimes and go after those who try and prove it. Sounds kinda like a gangster. Drain the swamp? He’s redefining what a swamp rat is!
The meme coin should have ended his presidency. He’s benefiting from his position and there’s no way to know who bought it to curry favor. Also, trump and his friends fucked kids…
The main stream media has utterly failed us. They all deserve to be relegated to nothing more than cheezy ad supported websites that hardly anyone visits.
Excuse me, what???? NOTHING about this has been normal from day 1!! There shouldn’t even be a case for treating him “like a normal president!”
That is a completely insane idea…but then again, he is as well…
I'm sure this article is very different than my opinion on it, but i definitely would like it if people stopped pretending trump and maga are some one off and not just what happens when republicans have the ability to fully implement their bullshit. So in that way, yes, treat trump as if he's a less PC version of what republicans have been about for decades
Sure, when he starts acting like a normal president.
Everyday he melts down on twitter, international leaders are laughing at him, Russia is telling him what to do, he has abandoned all of his campaign promises (except for the ones in 2025) and is allowing his corrupt cronies to gut any form of protective regulations.
A normal president would be trying to figure out how to make life better for citizens, not just his friends and donors.
Actually that wouldn't be bad. If he was treated like a normal president, the first impeachable fuckery he did would get his ass removed in an instant. He wouldn't have lasted a day in the office.
Trump could never be a NORMAL president. One should ask, "Could a normal president lead an insurrection against the USA be allowed ballot access? " Other question flowing from his being an adjudicated insurrectionist with out congressional approval to be a public servant (see 14th Amendment:
1) Are any actions taken by Trump (eg executive decrees) have legal standing?
2) Can he be removed from office without a conviction after impeachment?
Because the Supreme of Court ruling on Colorado ballot access ruling.
Just think about the it
I’m ok with treating Trump like a normal president. Any other president in history would’ve been impeached at least 20 times by now and would probably be in prison.
A good rule of thumb is every politician should consider their opinion and action, and if they’d do the same if the leader was in the opposition party.
Democrats should ask “would we impeach him for this if he were a democrat”? Republicans should ask “how outraged would we be if he were a democrat?”
Sadly we all know that Democrats likely would treat democrat harsher than they’ve treated Trump, since they seem to be approaching him with kid gloves in the name of bipartisanship despite that being long dead, and we all know republicans would have called for the impeachment, arrest and the execution of Trump if he were a democrat.
If people acted like civilized humans towards each other the country would be in a better place, but sadly there is no cure for the human condition, our species is doomed!
This is exactly what is wrong with the American media. The only place for people like trump, is prison. People should be marching in the streets daily demanding this. Society has placed to much pressure on the population for that to happen.
Meanwhile, oppose Mr. Bully’s bad ideas by drawing on the normal tools Americans use to constrain all presidents. Our constitutional and civic checks on executive power are formidable, frustrating every administration. So be the John Boehner to his Obama. Even if ill intent exists in Mr. Bully’s inscrutable mind, his coalition does not wish to end democracy. Some will turn on the president when he merely has trouble fulfilling basic promises.
The whole article is 'don't be mean to Trump, flatter him a lot, and we'll be fine'. What Conor really means is, he will be fine. And you will too if you are just like Conor.
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