Just to clarify, for all the times I've commented on Trump's con artist ways, and just overall status as evil ignorant half-wit, I need to spell out EXACTLY why Trump is a disaster, has always been a disaster, and will be a disaster if anyone's foolish enough to vote for him.
The most obvious starting point is his failure as a businessman. He keeps promoting himself as this genius deal-maker, but his genius deals involve talking his way out of bankruptcy court with his ass still in one piece while everyone else pays for his follies. He's done this at least four times, with countless other broken deals in his wake.
His failures as a casino owner in Atlantic City contributed to that city's decline and ongoing economic malaise.
Here at home - Tampa Bay - Trump dirtied his hands with a contemptible condo scheme from the early 2000s where he scooped up people's deposits and fled with barely a skeleton frame of the building in place.
Don't forget: Trump f-cking killed off an entire sports league. The USFL was an upstart football league looking to compete with the NFL, and had done so by playing in a different part of the calendar (late spring) and in more diverse markets. Like all start-ups, the budding league had its financial woes but had established some strong market places and good teams. Trump had bought the New Jersey team from its Oklahoma-based owner and worked his way into the ownership group, arguing that the new league should compete directly with the NFL in the fall months. When one of his rivals arguing against it got sick from brain cancer, Trump gained control and pushed the move. It immediately killed off teams that couldn't share the same stadiums with the NFL, and they basically had to suspend operations while the owners pushed an antitrust lawsuit.
Combined with that lawsuit, the expectation was that the bigger league would cave and deal, bringing in the more successful USFL owners/teams into an expanded super-league much in the way they did with the AFL in the 1960s (It's near-common knowledge among the people involved that Trump was trying to bully the NFL into taking him as an owner). But the antitrust lawsuit fell apart: the jury found the NFL was behaving like a monopoly, but Trump's moving the USFL to the fall schedule was a self-inflicted punishment and the jury dumped the award down to a single dollar. By law, antitrust fines are tripled. The final check to the USFL ended up being $3.76. Ironically, the check itself - never cashed - is worth hundreds of thousands as a collectible.
The USFL never played another game. Good teams in mid-sized markets disappeared. Just on this alone, we need to avenge the Tampa Bay Bandits, by God...
Oh, and there's RIGHT NOW an ongoing story about another of Trump's failures, the so-called Trump University that is the centerpiece of a major fraud court case.
And that's just his past as a businessman. As his potential future as our highest executive officer...
Trump's lack of foreign policy experience is one thing. The more horrifying thing is his seeming unwillingness to learn or take it serious. As President, it's going to be his key job as Chief of State to represent the United States to the world and work as our primary receiver of ambassadors, foreign leaders, allies and enemies alike. Trump's campaigning attitude seems to be one of "bully now, bully later, bully always".
Trump is a dangerous departure for any campaign front-runner or potential President we've seen in the modern era. At least candidates like Romney in 2012 and Obama in 2008, who were inexperienced in foreign policy matters, make serious efforts to earn and learn towards the job (other candidates like McCain and Kerry and Gore in recent times had the foreign policy gravitas to make it moot points).
For the most part, Trump is going to be one of the most willfully ignorant Presidential hopefuls we've had run for office since William Jennings Bryan (I was going to say Bush the Lesser, but even Bush wasn't this willful. Dubya's ignorance as a candidate was sincere, and in some ways forgivable...). He'd be the most dangerously politically illiterate Presidents in office since Andrew Johnson.
The possibility of Trump being the Commander-in-Chief has already sounded a lot of DEFCON 1 notices among the military observers and insiders. There's been Twitter comments about how the Joint Chiefs are trying to figure out ways of keeping Trump away from the nuclear football, and those comments are not in jest...
The last point to make about Trump and foreign policy is how our own allies are going to react to having Trump as our political leader. There's already been a debate on the floor of Parliament - our staunchest ally - about banning Trump from visiting due to Trump's open racism. This has never happened before in my lifetime, and I'm uncertain if this had ever happened (probably during the early days of US vs. UK tensions). Even Sarah Palin never got this treatment.
In terms of personality, I've already tagged Trump as a clear Active-Negative character based on Professor Barber's model. I've heard there are other personality charting methods for Presidents, and I'm looking for one now. What I am finding are articles and reports from psychologists and therapists conceding that Trump shows the traits of a Narcissistic Personality Disorder, From what I'm finding about NPD, it's a fear-driven psychosis that affects decision-making in a way that would be troubling in the person whose decisions impacts upon the lives of the entire planet.
That's all I pretty much want to say about Trump. He's not the successful businessman he claims to be, he promises to be a massive disaster at foreign policy and military leadership, and his personality puts him at the emotional extremes of the likes of Nixon, LBJ, and a whole history book's worth of bad Presidents.
For all that is holy America, for the love of our children and their future, please no. Not Trump. Not one vote more. Please.
2 comments:
I wonder how many of his supporters have researched these matters, and if they would even care. They don't seem bothered by his painful incompetence, which itself is a sad commentary about America.
there's not much said for his supporters: they lost themselves to their rage a long time ago. All they care about is expressing that rage.
they don't see incompetence: all they see is manufactured celebrity and a con artist who's smart enough to "get away with it."
all we can hope for is that there's enough open-eyed, skeptical voters in the general election cycle who denies Trump his dark desire to "win" this "big prize".
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