What was the point of this? Every single one of these supposed "Never Trump" voters were actually going to be Trump voters in 2024, quietly or not, with the exception of maybe guitar guy, and if not, they definitely weren't Biden voters but maybe RFK Jr voters, so same difference! So not sure what this "proves" about Trump’s first crimin…
What was the point of this? Every single one of these supposed "Never Trump" voters were actually going to be Trump voters in 2024, quietly or not, with the exception of maybe guitar guy, and if not, they definitely weren't Biden voters but maybe RFK Jr voters, so same difference! So not sure what this "proves" about Trump’s first criminal conviction changing anyone's votes or beliefs, other than just a summary of some very common arguments that Trump supporters have been making all along on all these topics.
Also - Maguire guy with his 3500 word Tweet about his "well researched" criteria for supporting Trump - let's just take his bad Afghanistan take. Maybe in his "research" he missed the part where "President" Trump, The Master Of Foreign Policy (and The Universe maybe too? lol - already telling we’re dealing with a Trump Stan and not just a reluctant supporter, literally no actual “centrist” would claim that Trump had a masterful hold of foreign policy but at best had mostly muddled through with the diversions of his staff and luck of timing wrt global events) was the POTUS who negotiated the American surrender to the Taliban, and who excluded entirely from the withdrawal plan the Afghani government that we spent those 20+ years building up. Foreign Policy Master President Trump who had withdrawn the US troop presence in Afghanistan to below 1500 active duty members by the time he left Office - a much higher number than his target, which was ZERO by May 2020 that he had originally wanted to but was only talked out of doing so by his advisors who warned him against a total withdrawal attempt before the 2020 election. Apparently this was a repeated merry-go-round between Trump and his staff over his desire to immediately withdraw from Afghanistan as soon as early Jan 2020 even, that he was also repeatedly talked down off the ledge from, and by all advisor accounts, only by appealing to his naked self interest and obsession with his re-election, and not by anything resembling a strategic national or military interest.
TLDR - the withdrawal was already set into motion by the time Trump left Office, Biden would have had to have *re-invaded* Afghanistan with more troops to execute a different withdrawal, let alone thrown out Trump’s agreement by doing so, at a point when the now marginalized Afghani government had already begun dissolving as well as the fact that *Trump* had also allowed the release of the Taliban prisoners who had begun their resurgence of strength for the withdrawal. So much for the Foreign Policy Master in that regard at least, although maybe Biden and his supporters should have wished for Trump to have finally overrode his advisors on that point and executed the withdrawal as he wanted so that he could be hung with what would likely have been an even messier withdrawal than the one he left Biden to execute on (reminder: it was supposed to be Trump's second term that did that). Let alone, after the first rounds of viral coverage of the plane taking off with people hanging on, everyone forgets the rest of the withdrawal that removed a record number of refugees in regular order in a record amount of time following. And while zero US troop casualties is a great goal, 13 casualties for the scenario that was is actually pretty remarkable considering the conditions. This is not to say “Biden did everything perfectly”, but is to say there is no way to evaluate the withdrawal that ignores the state that Trump left (and again, wanted to execute on with even less!), and to be much more realistic about the odds for a completely clean and orderly withdrawal under *any* condition in the first place.
Trump's other “masterful” foreign policy near-fuck ups include, but are not limited to:
1. The withdrawal of troops and bases on a whim from the remaining Iraqi-Kurdish held bases following a phone call from Erdogan where he was promised some favorable Trump property deals in Turkey if he did so. Putin, Assad and Erdogan swooped in and divvied the assets from fully stocked bases that were left and the damage to our also long cultivated and loyal Kurdish allies is incalculable in terms of our relationships cultivated and trustworthiness. Funny how Maguire's extensive research missed this one!
2. Yes, the shredding of the JCPOA with Iran, along with the re-imposition of sanctions - of which Iran was in compliance with before Trump - that was likely a big factor into Iran's role in the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel. Oh, and Iran is rebuilding that nuclear capability now that it's out of the agreement and oversight. Trump needlessly incited Iranian hostilities there as part of his juvenile revenge policy of “undoing Obama” as his Prime Directive almost entirely because Obama made fun of him in public, and there is definitely reason to believe that was a factor into Oct 7 that might not have happened had we continued with the agreement.
3. The Abraham Accords that ignored perhaps the most explosive problem Israel had in the region: Palestine and Iran, duh. Israel already had informal economic and diplomatic relations with the Accord nations and ended zero active hostilities, the "peace deal" was just a weapons trade agreement at its core, and certainly did nothing to prevent Oct 7, in fact may have created another inciting factor into Iran's role in since the Accords were done specifically to isolate Iran. Whoops. Also - the highly questionable profiting from of both Kushner and Trump in the form of massive investments and “deals” with their private businesses almost immediately after with the “Accord” nations - it’s super weird as well as to why I’m supposed to buy into the Biden Corruption over Hunter name dropping his dad at a time when his dad was actually out of office for leverage as The Worst Corruption In US History, but Trump and his family profiting from a major Middle Eastern trade compact in the form of direct payments of billions of dollars is Nothing To See Here?? Maybe Maguire can break that down for me.
4. The reckless incitement of North Korea Kim Jong Un that escalated into an embarrassingly juvenile set of Tweet attacks of two supposed “leaders” bragging about the supposed sizes of their “buttons” * , and culminated with the humiliation of an American President (The Foreign Policy Master again!) rhetorically jerking off at his rallies about the "love letters" the two supposedly exchanged by the end of his term. Let alone his supposed "Nixon goes to China" moment was sullied by his also embarrassing lack of protocol where he saluted North Korean military figures, while also achieving exactly zero of value. North Korea continued its nuclear program and testing while laughing in Trump's face, he just stopped talking and Tweeting about it. The "love letters" btw were probably not even written by Kim Jong Un himself but by a team of psy-ops experts most likely Chinese, and honestly, maybe not even that high level needed given how grade school easy it is to manipulate Donald John Trump, probably the most easily advertised manipulatable person on the planet: just tell him how great, strong, smart and handsome he is while keeping a straight face. Maybe compliment the buffet food at his country clubs lol and he'll “let you do anything”, to quote the Master (of locker room talk) himself.
5. His subservience to Putin was not just embarrassing as it happened on the public stage, but the stuff of which consequences we may still be understanding. The Helsinki conference where he disappeared with Putin with no aides and destroyed the translator's notes after which he emerged looking like his knees were a bit scuffed, during which he declared on a national stage that US Intelligence was to be less trusted than... Putin. His first few weeks in Office he managed to reveal Israeli intelligence assets in yet another closed door meeting with Russian diplomats after which he displayed the same blushing school girl crush behavior. We still have yet to have a real deep dive of his finances to understand who really owns his debts.
As a reminder, the "disasters" we supposedly avoided under Trump's first term were both a factor of his general incompetence and poor management skills in terms of most of what Trump wanted to do was brushed aside and "managed" by his staff - AND THANK GOD FOR IT. Of course, that's one of the few "lessons learned" by Trump from his first term - to not hire competent experts and "grown ups" but a promise to staff himself with the likes of Kash Patel, Stephen Miller, and a host of other proven "loyalists" - who are loyal to Trump over all, not the good of the nation. Let alone the movement behind him to push that down throughout the Executive under Project 2025. Maybe that makes a guy like Sean Maguire feel cozy thinking that maybe we can look forward to Don Jr running the Defense Department, and maybe Eric in charge of Commerce? Because whatever "relief" he might have felt from the *relative* stability left by Trump's first term is the exact opposite of what is promised with his second term - and Sean! Hey! It's not "the libs" making these predictions, it's Trump, his team and backing orgs behind him. Don't take my word for it, try actually following the current campaign and not your 2016 revisionism.
I'd generally agree that Trump's negotiations for the withdrawal from Afghanistan were not great. The US has not exhibited any skill in any of its negotiations with the Taliban, going back to the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner exchange. Speaking of, didn't Obama kind of set us on this course to begin with? Oh yeah, I think he once spoke of withdrawing all troops by 2014.
As for Biden's role in Afghanistan, he basically took ownership of it early in 2021. No one ever said "Trump left us a mess" until at least August of that year. Meanwhile, Biden promised an orderly evacuation. "Our military mission in Afghanistan will conclude on August 31st. The drawdown is proceeding in a secure and orderly way, prioritizing the safety of our troops as they depart. " Note, also, that he retained Zalmay Khalilzad in his administration. He even brought up the chaotic scenes of the evacuation of the US embassy in Saigon, saying "there going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy from Afghanistan. It's not at all comparable. By the time the entire rigamarole happened, Biden had clearly taken ownership of the withdrawal and promised.
I agree. Reminds me of the weird things I've heard Megan Kelly saying lately about voting for Trump despite thinking he tried to subvert the election because he didn't actually succeed.
Exactly - what sort of rationale is "well he was too incompetent to live up to his corrupt and fascist promises and he was thwarted when he tried by actual ethical grown ups around him" to vote for him again, while the the entire second part of that sentence actively being planned for to cut out in a putative second term. At best, they're voting for his likely incompetence again which is hardly the flex they want it to be, otherwise they're actively ignoring Project 2025 and his now total takeover of the Republican institutional apparatus and how much has changed since even November 2020. In 2016, he was much more supplicant to institutional leaders on his staffing appointments and choices, in 2024 he's in full command of their show. There's no "happy revisionist" take of Trump's first term that predicts the second, and yet that's the most common "apology" framed by the supposed grown ups left in the GOP for continuing to support him.
Actually, I think that is a totally valid rationale in the circumstances. I didn't vote for him in 2016, but one of my thoughts on the topic at the time was "Trump may be crooked in business, but Hillary is rather accomplished at evading responsibility in the political arena." For example, how would ANY other administration have dealt with the aftermath of the call to Ukraine that resulted in Trump's impeachment? He never denied it happened, and released the transcript within a few days. Whatever one might think of the call itself, it's pretty clear that the Bush, Obama, and Biden administrations were not nearly so "transparent." (You might remember the White House Press Corp erupting in laughter when the press secretary claimed Obama was the "most transparent ever."
Oh, and the election denialism supposedly by Clinton and the Dems from 2016 is not even in the same ballpark as what took place in 2020, and disseminated by Trump himself. Unlike the reasonable concerns and criticisms of the Russian interference in 2016 that was based on facts, Trump and his supporters harvested fields of bullshit about his 2020 loss, and every time each wild lie and conspiracy was disproven, just moved the goalposts to another lie and conspiracy with barely a blink. Miss me with this false equivalence bulllshit that pretends that wondering whether fake social media anti-Clinton "reports" paid for by Russians might have swayed some voters into not voting is the same thing as claiming a vast nationwide conspiracy of hundreds of local elections offices were complicit in creating and counting "fake ballots", of foreign hacking "algorithms" to change real vote outcomes, etc. Let alone in conceding the race and conducting a proper turnover. Guess who did and guess who didn’t.
But really - this is disappointing for TFP. Presenting anecdotal accounts of people who weren't voting for Biden to begin with, people who were already quiet Trump voters, in service of trying to sell a desired narrative (of which it is way too early to even tell what the effect is of his conviction) of voters siding with Trump on the issue of his legal problems. Even the first paragraph states the earliest polling states the opposite, yet the authors trotted out these lame "proofs" anyway. News at 11! Trump supporters still support Trump lol. Awesome reporting ;P
* and let’s be frank, two likely very “challenged” in the button sized arena of these two little fat dudes that would be absolutely comedy gold in any other context that did not involve actual nuclear power capabilities, and really it was Kim Jong Un who really “won” the Tweet battle by gifting us all with the moniker of “Dotard” for The Donald, a most fitting insult actually, and despite what Trump supporters think, displayed a much keener sense of insult than Trump himself has ever demonstrated with his lame and repetitive (and diminishing!) limited vocabulary stable of insults he rotates through!
What was the point of this? Every single one of these supposed "Never Trump" voters were actually going to be Trump voters in 2024, quietly or not, with the exception of maybe guitar guy, and if not, they definitely weren't Biden voters but maybe RFK Jr voters, so same difference! So not sure what this "proves" about Trump’s first criminal conviction changing anyone's votes or beliefs, other than just a summary of some very common arguments that Trump supporters have been making all along on all these topics.
Also - Maguire guy with his 3500 word Tweet about his "well researched" criteria for supporting Trump - let's just take his bad Afghanistan take. Maybe in his "research" he missed the part where "President" Trump, The Master Of Foreign Policy (and The Universe maybe too? lol - already telling we’re dealing with a Trump Stan and not just a reluctant supporter, literally no actual “centrist” would claim that Trump had a masterful hold of foreign policy but at best had mostly muddled through with the diversions of his staff and luck of timing wrt global events) was the POTUS who negotiated the American surrender to the Taliban, and who excluded entirely from the withdrawal plan the Afghani government that we spent those 20+ years building up. Foreign Policy Master President Trump who had withdrawn the US troop presence in Afghanistan to below 1500 active duty members by the time he left Office - a much higher number than his target, which was ZERO by May 2020 that he had originally wanted to but was only talked out of doing so by his advisors who warned him against a total withdrawal attempt before the 2020 election. Apparently this was a repeated merry-go-round between Trump and his staff over his desire to immediately withdraw from Afghanistan as soon as early Jan 2020 even, that he was also repeatedly talked down off the ledge from, and by all advisor accounts, only by appealing to his naked self interest and obsession with his re-election, and not by anything resembling a strategic national or military interest.
TLDR - the withdrawal was already set into motion by the time Trump left Office, Biden would have had to have *re-invaded* Afghanistan with more troops to execute a different withdrawal, let alone thrown out Trump’s agreement by doing so, at a point when the now marginalized Afghani government had already begun dissolving as well as the fact that *Trump* had also allowed the release of the Taliban prisoners who had begun their resurgence of strength for the withdrawal. So much for the Foreign Policy Master in that regard at least, although maybe Biden and his supporters should have wished for Trump to have finally overrode his advisors on that point and executed the withdrawal as he wanted so that he could be hung with what would likely have been an even messier withdrawal than the one he left Biden to execute on (reminder: it was supposed to be Trump's second term that did that). Let alone, after the first rounds of viral coverage of the plane taking off with people hanging on, everyone forgets the rest of the withdrawal that removed a record number of refugees in regular order in a record amount of time following. And while zero US troop casualties is a great goal, 13 casualties for the scenario that was is actually pretty remarkable considering the conditions. This is not to say “Biden did everything perfectly”, but is to say there is no way to evaluate the withdrawal that ignores the state that Trump left (and again, wanted to execute on with even less!), and to be much more realistic about the odds for a completely clean and orderly withdrawal under *any* condition in the first place.
Trump's other “masterful” foreign policy near-fuck ups include, but are not limited to:
1. The withdrawal of troops and bases on a whim from the remaining Iraqi-Kurdish held bases following a phone call from Erdogan where he was promised some favorable Trump property deals in Turkey if he did so. Putin, Assad and Erdogan swooped in and divvied the assets from fully stocked bases that were left and the damage to our also long cultivated and loyal Kurdish allies is incalculable in terms of our relationships cultivated and trustworthiness. Funny how Maguire's extensive research missed this one!
2. Yes, the shredding of the JCPOA with Iran, along with the re-imposition of sanctions - of which Iran was in compliance with before Trump - that was likely a big factor into Iran's role in the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel. Oh, and Iran is rebuilding that nuclear capability now that it's out of the agreement and oversight. Trump needlessly incited Iranian hostilities there as part of his juvenile revenge policy of “undoing Obama” as his Prime Directive almost entirely because Obama made fun of him in public, and there is definitely reason to believe that was a factor into Oct 7 that might not have happened had we continued with the agreement.
3. The Abraham Accords that ignored perhaps the most explosive problem Israel had in the region: Palestine and Iran, duh. Israel already had informal economic and diplomatic relations with the Accord nations and ended zero active hostilities, the "peace deal" was just a weapons trade agreement at its core, and certainly did nothing to prevent Oct 7, in fact may have created another inciting factor into Iran's role in since the Accords were done specifically to isolate Iran. Whoops. Also - the highly questionable profiting from of both Kushner and Trump in the form of massive investments and “deals” with their private businesses almost immediately after with the “Accord” nations - it’s super weird as well as to why I’m supposed to buy into the Biden Corruption over Hunter name dropping his dad at a time when his dad was actually out of office for leverage as The Worst Corruption In US History, but Trump and his family profiting from a major Middle Eastern trade compact in the form of direct payments of billions of dollars is Nothing To See Here?? Maybe Maguire can break that down for me.
4. The reckless incitement of North Korea Kim Jong Un that escalated into an embarrassingly juvenile set of Tweet attacks of two supposed “leaders” bragging about the supposed sizes of their “buttons” * , and culminated with the humiliation of an American President (The Foreign Policy Master again!) rhetorically jerking off at his rallies about the "love letters" the two supposedly exchanged by the end of his term. Let alone his supposed "Nixon goes to China" moment was sullied by his also embarrassing lack of protocol where he saluted North Korean military figures, while also achieving exactly zero of value. North Korea continued its nuclear program and testing while laughing in Trump's face, he just stopped talking and Tweeting about it. The "love letters" btw were probably not even written by Kim Jong Un himself but by a team of psy-ops experts most likely Chinese, and honestly, maybe not even that high level needed given how grade school easy it is to manipulate Donald John Trump, probably the most easily advertised manipulatable person on the planet: just tell him how great, strong, smart and handsome he is while keeping a straight face. Maybe compliment the buffet food at his country clubs lol and he'll “let you do anything”, to quote the Master (of locker room talk) himself.
5. His subservience to Putin was not just embarrassing as it happened on the public stage, but the stuff of which consequences we may still be understanding. The Helsinki conference where he disappeared with Putin with no aides and destroyed the translator's notes after which he emerged looking like his knees were a bit scuffed, during which he declared on a national stage that US Intelligence was to be less trusted than... Putin. His first few weeks in Office he managed to reveal Israeli intelligence assets in yet another closed door meeting with Russian diplomats after which he displayed the same blushing school girl crush behavior. We still have yet to have a real deep dive of his finances to understand who really owns his debts.
As a reminder, the "disasters" we supposedly avoided under Trump's first term were both a factor of his general incompetence and poor management skills in terms of most of what Trump wanted to do was brushed aside and "managed" by his staff - AND THANK GOD FOR IT. Of course, that's one of the few "lessons learned" by Trump from his first term - to not hire competent experts and "grown ups" but a promise to staff himself with the likes of Kash Patel, Stephen Miller, and a host of other proven "loyalists" - who are loyal to Trump over all, not the good of the nation. Let alone the movement behind him to push that down throughout the Executive under Project 2025. Maybe that makes a guy like Sean Maguire feel cozy thinking that maybe we can look forward to Don Jr running the Defense Department, and maybe Eric in charge of Commerce? Because whatever "relief" he might have felt from the *relative* stability left by Trump's first term is the exact opposite of what is promised with his second term - and Sean! Hey! It's not "the libs" making these predictions, it's Trump, his team and backing orgs behind him. Don't take my word for it, try actually following the current campaign and not your 2016 revisionism.
You're right about one thing, this is TL;DR.
I'd generally agree that Trump's negotiations for the withdrawal from Afghanistan were not great. The US has not exhibited any skill in any of its negotiations with the Taliban, going back to the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner exchange. Speaking of, didn't Obama kind of set us on this course to begin with? Oh yeah, I think he once spoke of withdrawing all troops by 2014.
As for Biden's role in Afghanistan, he basically took ownership of it early in 2021. No one ever said "Trump left us a mess" until at least August of that year. Meanwhile, Biden promised an orderly evacuation. "Our military mission in Afghanistan will conclude on August 31st. The drawdown is proceeding in a secure and orderly way, prioritizing the safety of our troops as they depart. " Note, also, that he retained Zalmay Khalilzad in his administration. He even brought up the chaotic scenes of the evacuation of the US embassy in Saigon, saying "there going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy from Afghanistan. It's not at all comparable. By the time the entire rigamarole happened, Biden had clearly taken ownership of the withdrawal and promised.
I agree. Reminds me of the weird things I've heard Megan Kelly saying lately about voting for Trump despite thinking he tried to subvert the election because he didn't actually succeed.
Exactly - what sort of rationale is "well he was too incompetent to live up to his corrupt and fascist promises and he was thwarted when he tried by actual ethical grown ups around him" to vote for him again, while the the entire second part of that sentence actively being planned for to cut out in a putative second term. At best, they're voting for his likely incompetence again which is hardly the flex they want it to be, otherwise they're actively ignoring Project 2025 and his now total takeover of the Republican institutional apparatus and how much has changed since even November 2020. In 2016, he was much more supplicant to institutional leaders on his staffing appointments and choices, in 2024 he's in full command of their show. There's no "happy revisionist" take of Trump's first term that predicts the second, and yet that's the most common "apology" framed by the supposed grown ups left in the GOP for continuing to support him.
Actually, I think that is a totally valid rationale in the circumstances. I didn't vote for him in 2016, but one of my thoughts on the topic at the time was "Trump may be crooked in business, but Hillary is rather accomplished at evading responsibility in the political arena." For example, how would ANY other administration have dealt with the aftermath of the call to Ukraine that resulted in Trump's impeachment? He never denied it happened, and released the transcript within a few days. Whatever one might think of the call itself, it's pretty clear that the Bush, Obama, and Biden administrations were not nearly so "transparent." (You might remember the White House Press Corp erupting in laughter when the press secretary claimed Obama was the "most transparent ever."
Oh, and the election denialism supposedly by Clinton and the Dems from 2016 is not even in the same ballpark as what took place in 2020, and disseminated by Trump himself. Unlike the reasonable concerns and criticisms of the Russian interference in 2016 that was based on facts, Trump and his supporters harvested fields of bullshit about his 2020 loss, and every time each wild lie and conspiracy was disproven, just moved the goalposts to another lie and conspiracy with barely a blink. Miss me with this false equivalence bulllshit that pretends that wondering whether fake social media anti-Clinton "reports" paid for by Russians might have swayed some voters into not voting is the same thing as claiming a vast nationwide conspiracy of hundreds of local elections offices were complicit in creating and counting "fake ballots", of foreign hacking "algorithms" to change real vote outcomes, etc. Let alone in conceding the race and conducting a proper turnover. Guess who did and guess who didn’t.
But really - this is disappointing for TFP. Presenting anecdotal accounts of people who weren't voting for Biden to begin with, people who were already quiet Trump voters, in service of trying to sell a desired narrative (of which it is way too early to even tell what the effect is of his conviction) of voters siding with Trump on the issue of his legal problems. Even the first paragraph states the earliest polling states the opposite, yet the authors trotted out these lame "proofs" anyway. News at 11! Trump supporters still support Trump lol. Awesome reporting ;P
* and let’s be frank, two likely very “challenged” in the button sized arena of these two little fat dudes that would be absolutely comedy gold in any other context that did not involve actual nuclear power capabilities, and really it was Kim Jong Un who really “won” the Tweet battle by gifting us all with the moniker of “Dotard” for The Donald, a most fitting insult actually, and despite what Trump supporters think, displayed a much keener sense of insult than Trump himself has ever demonstrated with his lame and repetitive (and diminishing!) limited vocabulary stable of insults he rotates through!
Okay, now you're descending into humor. Is this a parody account?