If you ever get caught in a discussion on social media that you’d like to end by referring someone to a specific article, here you go.
A lot of it is one-way traffic, politically, but scroll to the bottom for responses to your pedantic progressive pals. Yes, it’s mostly about Trump.
Some people are keeping extensive lists of Trump’s shortcomings and malevolent acts. I’ve tried to keep it short.
Need it to be shorter? OK. Donald Trump is a cruel, willfully ignorant man who places his own whims ahead of expert advice, has no interest in responding to crises, is corrupt to his core and has committed several acts for which he was impeached and should have been removed, makes empty short-sighted gestures instead of attempting to have any sort of reasonable long-term economic approach, takes credit for the momentum of the economy that was rolling quite nicely when he took office, pretends to be on the side of the working man, builds on long-standing Republican unwillingness to face up to climate change, fails to deal with health care and undermines experts in that fields as well, embraces conspiracy theorists, has abysmal character traits, appeals to racists with anti-immigrant fervor (including cruel separation of families far beyond past administrations) and an unwillingness to stand up to white supremacists, is horrible to our military, lies with the full knowledge that his enablers will never accept any rebuttal, and responds to criticism not with reasonable rebuttal but with measures any good authoritarian would recognize.
And people are dying and suffering because of it.
Suggestions welcome.
General
- Owning the “libs,” as insufferable as they can be at times, is a poor way to go through life and elections
- Tons of links on the impeachment (it should’ve led to conviction), corruption, hatred, dictator-ish behavior, the compliant GOP, bullshit (separate page), immigration, guns, health care, climate change, foreign policy, mock religion, debt, veterans/military and basic competence
Incompetence, ignorance and consequences
COVID-19 bungling
Get the whole story. And another.
- Budget cuts added to our lack of preparedness.
- Trump second-guesses experts, leading to harmful misinformation
- Wrecked team that could’ve helped
- Resisted suspending travel with China because he didn’t want to upset trade deal
- Kept insisting it would go away
- Berated aides for scaring the stock market
- Has floated his own ignorant solutions such as ingesting bleach and using UV light internally
- Insistence on hydrochloroquine led to one man ingesting chloroquine and dying
- Fired director of federal vaccine agency, Rick Bright, who then filed whistleblower complaint
Foreign policy
- His disdain of expertise extends to the military, and he simply won’t listen. Corroboration from the author of Black Hawk Down, based on plentiful interviews.
- We abandoned the Kurds, our allies
- Incoherence in important global meetings
- Trump’s foreign policy: Piss off the rest of the free world
Crisis management
- Remember Puerto Rico, which Trump later said he wanted to sell
General
- The Economist: Donald Trump has no grasp of what it means to be president
- Kevin D. Williamson at conservative National Review: “Trump is the political version of a pickup artist, and Republicans — and America — went to bed with him convinced that he was something other than what he is.”
Corruption
Impeachment / Ukraine
- Mona Charen at conservative National Review: Impeachment vote shows GOP senators have “no appetite for the truth”
- Harvard Law professor Nikolas Bowie at The New York Times: Yes, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress are crimes
- Read Mitt Romney’s statement
Mueller report / Russia
- Mueller Report led to many convictions
- Trump was not exonerated
Appointees
- Brett Kavanaugh’s problems (not just sexual abuse) were swept under the rug
Other Trump legal proceedings
- $25 million to settle Trump University fraud case
- Trump goes to great lengths to hide tax records from investigators
Authoritarianism and propaganda
General
- A short checklist of authoritarianism: removal of those who aren’t “loyal,” made-up charges against those who disagree with him (like Joe Scarborough)
- Another general take
Misinformation
- 20,000 false or misleading claims — even if you argue with, say, 2,000 of them, that’s 18,000
- Trump embraced Alex Jones
- Trump embraced QAnon
Vote suppression and the Post Office
- It’s pretty brazen
Character
Sexual misconduct
- Trump bragged about it
- And no, women aren’t OK with it — check the list of women who have accused him of sexual misconduct
- The accusations against Biden were investigated (and no, “believe women” does not mean “completely and without question”)
- While we’re at it, in case any QAnon types come after you equating the Democrat Party with pedophilia, feel free to show them a list of Republican pedophiles and remind them about Trump’s “wish her well” comment on Ghislaine Maxwell. Also, their paranoia is starting to get dangerous.
Self-interest
- Nine-figure tab for his golf habit, far exceeding what he criticized Obama for
- Money shifted from campaign to businesses
Rising hatred
Violence and racism
- Armed militias feel emboldened by Trump
- As does the organizer of the white supremacy rally in Charlottesville in which Heather Heyer was killed
- Trump praised a politician who physically attacked a reporter
- Trump practices “white identity politics“
Treatment of veterans and the military
- His disdain of expertise extends to the military, and he simply won’t listen (repeated from above)
- VFW and other veterans groups called for him to apologize for comments about brain injuries
- A commander lost his post for his concern over COVID-19 on his ship
- He was downright cruel to John McCain, mocking him for being captured
Immigrants
- The notion that immigrants commit more crime than everyone else is a lie, as confirmed by an investigation of the Justice Department
- Immigrants help the economy
- We invited them here, and we lose out when they’re deported
- Making immigrants suffer, including widespread separation of families, is a deliberate strategy
- We sent them back to face death and abuse
- We support legal status, no matter what we’re told
- Bottom line: Those who scapegoat immigrants are lying or dead wrong at every turn
- The Wall is ineffective, drug smuggling comes through ports of entry, people can tunnel under it or climb over it, we’re disrupting Native American burial sites and the ecosystem around the border, and it’s being paid for not by Mexico but out of the Pentagon’s budget.
Economics
General
- Trump didn’t meet a lot of his campaign goals/promises, and a lot of the ones he did have made us worse off.
Deficit
- It was already huge thanks to a tax cut that (A) wasn’t needed and (B) didn’t help many people, and now that we have to spend a lot due to the pandemic …
Growth was nothing more than Obama momentum and even lagged
- Even before the pandemic, growth had actually slowed slightly despite the heavy deficit spending (tax cut)
- See more numbers on growth, the deficit, the trade deficit, etc.
Inequality (especially taxes)
- Corporate America used tax cuts to buy its own stock
- The wealthiest 1% of Americans own 50% of stock, up from 39% in the late 80s
- CEOs 320, workers 1
- Worker earnings are far behind our European counterparts
- Tariffs hurt farmers. And Ford. And Harley-Davidson.
Climate change
Yes, it’s real
- The 3% of papers denying it are all flawed
- Economists and big companies are sounding the alarm or taking action
- Also, the military
- A definitive response to deniers, with their arguments listed and refuted
The problems are immediate
- We’re killing our pollinators, and a lot of us like food
Solutions exist
- And they can be market-based
Other important issues
Health care
- Ban Ki-moon: The U.S. system is immoral
- And it’s inefficient, to the point of us spending far more (percent of GDP) than our peers
- And we can end up with uninsured people because insurance is tied to employment
- And it can kill us, in part by leaving us unprepared for COVID-19
Guns
- We’re going against what an overwhelming majority of Americans want
Why conservatives should vote against Trump
Comprehensive takes from current or former Republicans
True conservative policy
- Mark Salter: “We believe we are acting in accord with John McCain’s charge to put ‘country first’ when we urge Americans to elect former vice president Biden and Sen. Harris the next president and vice president of the United States.”
- Stuart Stevens: Trump is “the most anti-conservative president of my lifetime”
- Peter Wehner: For Conservatives to Have Any Hope, Trump Has to Lose
- “(H)e has also given up on core conservative beliefs in limited government and responsible entitlement reform. He’s shredded federalism and embraced protectionism, both of which cut against conservative principles. It was also on Mr. Trump’s watch that, even before the pandemic hit, the United States set record annual deficits and exceeded $22 trillion in debt. “
- “The president’s conservative defenders point out that he has reduced unnecessary regulations on businesses, but they overlook the fact that he has proudly embraced crony capitalism and aggressively used the federal government to tilt the playing field and pick economic winners and losers.”
- Also: Mismanaged COVID-19, embraced “white identity politics,” used executive orders in ways for which he criticized Obama, undermined NATO, befriended authoritarians, betrayed Kurds, embraced conspiracy theories
Divisiveness
- David Frum: The Platform the GOP is Too Scared to Publish
- Economic policy: Take care of rich people only
- Science: Coronavirus and climate change are overhyped
- Foreign policy: We don’t need all these allies
- Also Stevens: “What is happening now is the inevitable result of a party that embraced fear, weaponized xenophobia and regarded facts as dangerous, left-wing landmines that must be avoided.”
- James Mattis, Trumps’ former secretary of defense: “Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part.”
Lack of respect for truth and the rule of law
- Mona Charen at conservative National Review: Impeachment vote shows GOP senators have “no appetite for the truth” (repeated from above)
- Read Mitt Romney’s statement on impeachment
Organizations
- Republican Voters Against Trump
- Republicans for the Rule of Law
- The Lincoln Project
- Republican Political Alliance for Integrity & Reform (led by former Trump administration officials)
Why progressives should vote for Biden
Biden’s policies
- Consider everything above — especially hatred, immigration, climate change and guns — and whether you can live with Trump
- More progressive than you think
- “Centrist” presidents like LBJ often usher in a lot of change (yes, LBJ failed to deal with Vietnam but also made essential progress on Medicare, Medicaid, civil rights, voting rights and fair housing)
