Summations Only

You're asking if one of Trump's inimical aspects concerns me especially more than others? I don't think so, no.You seem to have the wrong idea of my feelings about Trump. His country is my country, your country, all our country, and his success or failure will be to our benefit or loss. My every hope is for Trump's success, but having not lived in a hole for the last 18 months I can't ignore all the signs that he may be the worst prepared President short of Grant or Johnson (Andrew), and be in the least possession of what might be called the kind of political temperament necessary to success in such high office. Though I hope that Trump's inappropriate-to-the-task qualities just make him a unique rather than disastrous President, he feels like a walking time bomb.I agree with Trump on some things like corporate tax reform and tax shelter reform, and I am on the opposite side of Trump on a few other issues: climate change, health insurance, immigration reform, and taxes on the rich.--Percy

According to the New York Times, the briefing Trump received last week on Russian election-influencing efforts included "unsubstantiated reports that Russia had collected compromising and salacious personal information about Mr. Trump, two officials with knowledge of the briefing said." The article continues:

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The material was not corroborated, and The New York Times has not been able to confirm the claims. But intelligence agencies considered it so potentially explosive that they decided Mr. Obama, Mr. Trump and congressional leaders needed to be told about it and that the agencies were actively investigating it.

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The nature of the unsubstantiated "compromising and salacious personal information" is as follows:

• Sex videos of Trump with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel in 2013.
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• Russia proposed lucrative deals to Trump in efforts at influence.
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• Trump met with Russian officials several times during the 2016 Presidential campaign to discuss matters of mutual interest.

I want to stress that the information is unconfirmed at this time.Link to article: Trump Received Unsubstantiated Report That Russia Had Damaging Information About Him--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

I've asked that discussion in this thread be civil and rational. The "rational" part of my request means providing factual support and logical argument for your positions. If you're just going to repeat unsupported biased opinions then please get off the thread.But please do not post here about Pizzagate. I know you didn't introduce the topic, but it isn't on-topic for this thread. It more belongs in the The 2016 United States Presidential Election thread.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

I'd like to keep this thread focused on established facts about the Trump presidency rather than on insinuation and innuendo. When news reaches the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Chicago Tribune or the Los Angeles Times or CNN or an outlet of similar quality, then it's appropriate for discussion in this thread. In other words, l'd like discussion to be about what we know is true rather than about what may or may not be true. I'd like to avoid this becoming a thread about digging for dirt on Trump.Trump held a press conference a couple days ago, there's a lot of material there for discussion. Trump called CNN "fake news," he made the news media the story over his possible peccadillos, he said the American people don't care about his tax returns, and he was just generally very combative. The news media is in an uproar about how to cover this unprecedented style of presidency. The Washington Post has begun a weekly What Trump Got Wrong on Twitter This Week column. The New York Times yesterday put together a video of fact checks on the Trump press conference. And last night Trump lashed out at Hillary Clinton again on Twitter, calling her "Guilty as hell."Whatever side of the political divide one is on, there can be no argument that Trump will be, indeed already is in these days before the inauguration, a president wholly unlike any we've had before.--Percy

Those sources are fine, but the sources you cited and quoted from in your Message 106 were Daily Kos and Snopes.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo.

Responding to your last two messages, I want to avoid speculative material. The topic is otherwise fairly inclusive but focused on what is known. That would include anything having to do with the Trump presidency, meaning the entire executive branch, Trump's dealings with Congress, with international affairs, with the military, etc.Since I didn't see the logic myself and since his message contained no explanation, RAZD would have to describe, hopefully in some other thread, how Snopes quoting ABC ties into his message's suggestion that Trump may have been bailed out by the Russian mob.--Percy

In a Saturday evening interveiw with The Washington Post Trump promised to replace Obamacare with "insurance for everybody' (The New York Times). It would be "in a much simplified form - much less expensive and much better." Details won't be made available until confirmation of Tom Price to be secretary of Health and Human Services.Sans details this sounds wonderful, much better than Obamacare, but we await the details. Universal health care seems a most un-Republican position. I would have thought the Republican position to be, "You get the insurance you can afford to pay for - it isn't the government's responsibility to pay for your healthcare." I thought the main Republican objection to Obamacare was that it forced people to either purchase insurance or pay a penalty through their income tax, and that the secondary objection was to the government provided subsidies to those who couldn't afford to pay full price. How does Trump think he will get universal health care past a Republican congress?--Percy

This first day of the Trump presidency is an apt and fitting time to list my greatest concerns about what he might do:

• Start another unnecessary war.
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• Diminish the strength of NATO, thereby increasing Russian influence.
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• Start a trade war with any number of countries, including China.
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• Fill court vacancies with conservative judges, i.e., the Supreme Court and many other federal courts with vacancies.
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• Deport 2 to 3 million (Trump's number) criminal illegal aliens.
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• Deport the rest of the illegal aliens.
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• Build a wall between the US and Mexico.
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• Clamp down on Muslim immigration.
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• Eliminate gun-free zones around schools and military bases.
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• Eliminate and then not replace the Affordable Care Act.
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• Reduce Medicare coverage.
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• Reduce abortion rights.
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• Loosen environmental regulations, especially on coal.
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• Abandon international climate accords.
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• Reduce taxes on the rich.

--Percy

I wouldn't presume to even try to make any ballpark guesses about the particular ways Trump will misstep in military and foreign affairs, I just have a strong concern that he will. Yeah, I realized later I forgot that one. That's another big concern. Yes, not helped by Trump's tendency to appoint people as ignorant and unnuanced as himself. The forlorn hope that Trump's appointments might compensate for his own lacks has already been dashed.--Percy

Here's my reaction to just one paragraph from a New York Times article describing the inauguration (Donald Trump Is Sworn In as President, Capping His Swift Ascent):

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Violence broke out an hour before Mr. Trump was inaugurated when protesters smashed shop windows around Franklin Square in downtown Washington. A Bank of America branch had all its windows shattered and a Starbucks was left with a gaping hole in its glass front door. Police officers in riot helmets used pepper spray to break up groups of protesters, who spread out and kept breaking windows.

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Smashing shop windows? Wrong way to protest.And here's my reaction to Trump's inaugural speech (this link is to an annotated version, I couldn't find the text alone, though the text is led by a video of the speech).

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For too long, a small group in our nation's capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth.

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He's right in one sense. I believe everyone in the Senate is a multi-millionaire, and those in the House probably aren't doing badly either. How is that Obama is a multi-millionaire, $12.2 million according to Google. Politics should not be a route to riches. Those who hear its siren call should fare no better than teachers and policemen.And he's right in another sense. Washington and environs have become incredibly prosperous. Serving government should not be so lucrative. Lobbyists would not be paid so much if lobbying didn't work, and our politicians should not be for sale to those who can afford to put together the right package of campaign donations and charming and skilled persuaders.

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Politicians prospered, but the jobs left, and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation's capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.

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It's true that the manufacturing sector has declined, but it isn't because politicians prospered. Our manufacturing sector is a victim of our nation's success where wages rose to the point where they priced our workers out of jobs. Protective tariffs would insulate manufacturing against foreign competition but increase domestic prices. There are no simple solutions. Indications so far are that Trump favors tariffs.

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The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Everyone is listening to you now. You came by the tens of millions to become part of an historic movement, the likes of which the world has never seen before. At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction that a nation exists to serve its citizens.

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But nations do not exist in vacuum. When one nation in some way restricts access to its markets by other nations, those nations retaliate with restrictions of their own, and now both nations are poorer. This isn't to say that arriving at fairly matched competitive markets isn't complicated and difficult, but trade negotiations are the answer, not unilateral tariffs and dictating terms to trading partners.

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...an education system flush with cash...

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An education system flush with cash? He must be talking about the private schools his children attended.

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For many decades we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry, subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military.

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Depletion of our military? This is just false. We remain the greatest military on Earth, probably by a larger margin than at any time in our history.

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We've defended other nations’ borders while refusing to defend our own...

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Here Trump is improperly conflating the integrity of our unthreatened borders with the defense of western Europe.

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...and spent trillions and trillions of dollars overseas while America's infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay. We've made other countries rich while the wealth, strength and confidence of our country has dissipated over the horizon.

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And now Trump continues on to confusedly blame defense of western Europe for both making those countries rich (obviously they're not significantly different in wealth than ourselves) and making ourselves poor. Our spending on defense did not make western Europe rich and it did not bankrupt ourselves. Our greater spending on defense allowed us to dictate the approach to the cold war, and our military influence added to our economic influence is part of why Coke and Pepsi and MacDonald's and Burger King dominate world markets and not Schweppes and Brioche Dore.

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Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs will be made to benefit American workers and American families. We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength.

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Am I reading this right? Is this a call for protectionism? If so, then that way lies world disaster. Worldwide wealth builds from mutually beneficial trade.

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We will build new roads, and highways, and bridges, and airports, and tunnels, and railways all across our wonderful nation. We will get our people off of welfare and back to work rebuilding our country with American hands and American labor.

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Putting people to work at government expense building infrastructure is a good idea.

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We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world, but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first.

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Nations do best when working out mutually beneficial arrangements with partners.

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We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones and unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the earth.

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I kind of like the tone of this. After all, we broke Iraq in a way that gave birth to ISIS, so we bear great responsibility for fixing it. But the real way to eliminate radical Islam is to bring peace and prosperity to the region, not to conquer it. Military solutions are just another way of playing whack-a-mole. You can conquer them in one place, but they'll just rise up in another.

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At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other. When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice. The Bible tells us how good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in unity.

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Calls to nationalistic fervor like this are scary. This is how wars start. Sure, we all love our country, but we also realize that our own best interests are actually tied up in mutual self-interest with other nations.

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We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action, constantly complaining but never doing anything about it. The time for empty talk is over.

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This is ironic, the man who manages to talk and talk while saying nothing specific calling for an end to empty talk.--Percy

Article: Trump signs executive order that could effectively gut Affordable Care Act’s individual mandateTrump last night signed an executive order directing federal agencies to ease the burden of Obamacare on "consumers, insurers, hospitals, doctors, pharmaceutical companies, states and others." Trumpian in its non-specificity, it apparently gives agencies the right to modify regulations created under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that impose taxes or fees.Trump might think his executive order gives federal agencies the right to create regulations contrary to the ACA, i.e., contrary to current law, but any agency that does this should be challenged in federal court. We still have the rule of law, or at least I hope we do. As the article accurately states, "In general, federal rules cannot be undone with a pen stroke but require a new rulemaking process to replace or delete them."--Percy

This was more a reference to the unusual number of currently open judgeships due to refusal of the Republican Senate to consider Obama appointees. The concern isn't that Trump will appoint conservative judges. Of course he will. The concern is the number of conservative judges he will be appointing at the beginning of his presidency, about double what is typical. If this is true (how are small-practice doctors being harmed?) then fixing it might be considered, rather than scrapping a plan that helps provide health insurance to millions who previously had none. Trump believes the EPA puts American businesses at a disadvantage internationally and is in favor of reducing environmental regulations. He has singled coal out as being especially aggrieved. Indeed, it is tragic that Trump doesn't accept the evidence that humans are primarily responsible for climate change, and that his EPA nominee is a climate change skeptic. I think the only flat tax Trump is proposing is for unincorporated businesses and capital gains, reductions in both cases.--Percy

Who said anything about untoward? It was a general point about the political class in agreement with Trump, that politics seems to be a route to riches when it shouldn't be, and Obama was an example. As an ex-president Obama can now go out on the speaking circuit commanding large fees. It isn't that something untoward is going on with the political class that is wrong. It's that it's possible to become wealthy through politics that is wrong.As with almost all Trump criticisms this one is remarkably free of details. It plays well as a sound bite. But I happen to agree with this one.--Percy

In the short term I think the FOIA request has a chance for some positive results.In the longer term, it seems likely that Trump will commit a number of impeachable offenses during his presidency, but he probably is safe from impeachment while the Republicans control the Senate. The mid-term elections will be the earliest opportunity for the Democrats to take over the Senate, and by that time there should be plenty of impeachment ammunition.Anyone looking for inspiration? Try this: Pictures From Women’s Marches on Every Continent (literally, *every* continent)--Percy

One more item of feedback: Trump is evidently against abortion rights. From today's NYT: Trump Revives Ban on Foreign Aid to Health Groups if They Give Abortion Counseling

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Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence had stated their opposition to abortion during the presidential campaign. Mr. Trump had signaled his intent to make the order one of his first acts as president, which pleased the anti-abortion lobby at home.

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--Percy