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Comment by pc86

15 days ago

I can fully understand how people on both the left and the right could have ideological differences with Trump, how they can hate the way he interacts with people, think he's picking unqualified cronies for high level jobs, etc. I disagree with the last one but I can at least see how a reasonable person would get to that conclusion.

"Trump is committing treason because he is instituting tariffs" or "Trump is a Russian asset" is not a position any reasonably intelligent person can come to without being blinded by partisanship. It's simply not a serious position to have.

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pc86

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alex1138  14 days ago

At least some of his appointments make perfect sense as well (Tulsi, RFK, Bhattacharya)

jeremyjh  15 days ago

If Trump were a Russian asset, what could he possibly do to advance their interests more than what he is already doing? Hell, he is running Putin's playbook on Canada and Greenland. Did you vote for that?

NATO is already over because none of our allies can expect Trump to honor our treaty obligations.

  • throwaway17422  15 days ago

    Regardless of what his intentions might be which are all speculations as far as I'm concerned, he managed to convince Europe to rearm in 1 month, which is a net positive for Europe and America (assuming America still sees that as a positive) and a massive blow for Russia.

  • marcusverus  15 days ago

    > If Trump were a Russian asset, what could he possibly do to advance their interests more than what he is already doing?

    Rhetoric is a poor substitute for actual evidence.

    Many moons ago, the fringe right used a similar argument to imply that Barack Obama was pro-ISIS. After his hasty withdrawal from Iraq, ISIS filled the power vacuum. Their "caliphate" grew for years and years, with no significant intervention from the US! At the time there wasn't a great answer to the question "If Obama were pro-ISIS, what could he possibly do to advance their interests more than he already has?". Yet (hopefully) we all know that this was simply bad faith, conspiratorial rhetoric. He was obviously not pro-ISIS, and there was no evidence whatsoever that he was. So how could people possibly have entertained such an idea? Easy--they already hated Barack Obama, so they were willing to give the conspiracy theory the benefit of the doubt.

    Do yourself a favor and apply the old tried and true standard: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It'll save you a good deal of embarrassment.