I’ve talked about Trump quite a bit over the years, but most of it has been kind of scattered. A few comments here and there, usually reacting to whatever thing he said or did that week.
Now that we’re trying to function like an actual publication, it’s time to put it all in one place and make it clear where I stand.
I wanted to like Trump.
When he first got elected back in 2016, and everyone else was either fanatically supporting him or blindly hating on him, I took a more reserved stance and suggested that we should at least give him a chance. Some of his ideas made sense. Bringing manufacturing back to the U.S.? Reducing reliance on foreign countries? Two ideas I’ve always been on board with. Trump felt like he might actually shake things up in a way that benefited the country, and I genuinely wanted to see him succeed as president.
The media absolutely lost their minds over him. Every little thing he did became some kind of world-ending scandal, dialed up to 11. The guy had two scoops of ice cream at dinner and it made the news. Late night hosts and comedians dedicated their entire careers to reminding everyone that “the orange man bad!”, and references to Trump were injected into almost every form of media imaginable. The negative coverage was excessive and, in my opinion, crossed into smear campaign territory.
Unfortunately, instead of correcting the narrative, Trump leaned into it. And he didn’t just lean into it, he leaned into it hard.
Coming back to the present, first-term Trump and second-term Trump feel like two completely different people. The first version at least felt like he had direction, even if you didn’t agree with it. This version feels like a caricature (or, since he was already a caricature, now a caricature of a caricature).
MAGA, “Make America Great Again”, is beginning to feel less like an America-first political movement, and more like a cult of brainwashed lackeys.
I agreed with the original sentiment, which was, essentially, putting America and its people first, rebuilding our economy and infrastructure, and restoring our status as the dominant world superpower. We’re the country that revolutionized automotive manufacturing, split the atom, and put humans on the moon. We can do way better than we’re doing now.
Instead, MAGA has devolved into blind allegiance to a figurehead and anyone that figurehead tells them to support. They will defend to the death every little thing that Donald Trump does, no matter what it is, and no matter what mental gymnastics they have to perform to justify it. It’s like those little red hats cut off all independent thought. At this point, Trump could probably go on stage and announce that all the Epstein allegations about him are true, and MAGA would give him a standing ovation then suddenly start trying to justify lowering the age of consent to 13.
There’s no criticism or questioning, just blind and fervent loyalty.
Whenever Trump does something that seems even more outrageously stupid than usual, his supporters rush to his side, parroting the usual nonsense of “trust the plan” and “he’s playing 5D chess.” These people are living in denial. Trump isn’t playing “5D chess,” and his only real plan is to make himself and his friends richer. At what point do you stop pretending that every bad decision is part of some grand master plan? What’s it going to take for these people to see reality? Sometimes the obvious answer is the correct one: he’s just as crooked as the rest of them.
His priorities are completely skewed.
I won’t argue that Maduro or Ayatollah Khamenei deserved to stay in power, I just don’t think they were serious priorities. Now our war with Iran is driving up gas prices and screwing up global shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
We’ve got aggressive crackdowns on immigrants that Trump and his supporters have framed as this massive win, but nobody can clearly explain what they’ve actually accomplished beyond vague talking points.
“He removed dangerous people.”
Okay. And? The streets aren’t any safer.
“They were drains on our economy.”
And yet, food and utility prices continue to soar with no end in sight. Gas prices are steadily climbing. Buying a home is still unfeasible for most Americans.
What has any of this done to benefit the average American? What did those deportations actually fix?
Then there’s his foreign policy.
Trump’s foreign policy might as well be “Fuck it.” When he’s not alienating America from its allies, he’s picking unnecessary fights. The annexing Canada thing was a joke that wasn’t really funny the first time. Because intentionally pissing off one of our most important neighbors and military partners is absolutely hilarious. You’re the president, not some angry jerk shitposting on Twitter at 2 AM. Act like it.
He’s gotten so bad that I’m starting to question if he’s actually in control.
No, I don’t mean dementia or mental illness (though I’m actually starting to wonder about that too).
We know that Trump appears in the Epstein files in various contexts. That alone raises questions. But when you start connecting it to other events, things get murkier.
It was made public not too long ago that there was a major FBI security breach in 2023 by a foreign hacker, and they managed to get unredacted copies of the Epstein files. Since those unredacted files haven’t been leaked, I have to wonder where that hacker came from and what they did with them. I don’t think it’s crazy to suspect that powerful governments and intelligence networks have leverage on high-profile figures, and that maybe our president has been compromised by blackmail.
The real question is, by who?
Even if Trump hasn’t been compromised, we’re still left with the same core issue:
We don’t have real leadership.
We have a guy who can talk shit better than almost anyone on the planet, but that’s not the job. I don’t need a president who can roast people. If I wanted that, I’d have elected Eminem. I need a president who can run a country without turning every decision into a three-ring circus.
At this point, I support impeachment.
Not because I think the alternative is some magical solution. I don’t think that President Vance would be much better. If anything, we’re probably just trading one set of problems for another.
But what we’ve got now isn’t working. Pretending that this is all part of some genius-level strategy is how you end up following someone straight off a cliff while insisting the fall is “planned.” At some point, you’ve got to snap out of it.
We need a president, not a performer.
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After his first term, Americans voting him into office again just proved my suspicion that most Americans are retarded and have the memory of a goldfish
Americans voted him back in because Biden was a fucking mess. Then, rather than field a half-decent candidate to replace Biden when he backed out, the Dems went with Kamala. They shot themselves in the foot with that one.
But, seeing how Trump’s second term has turned out to be about 20 times worse than his first, I’m starting to think President Kamala might not have been such a bad idea after all.
Impressive how we’ve had two presidents back-to-back with dementia.