Donald Trump

PapaLazaru · 15 Apr 2020 at 14:06

Quite scary how out of his depth he is and how he is managing this. I watch the daily updates with a mix of intruige and fear.

Kyo · 15 Apr 2020 at 14:08

FortuitousFluke said:
To be fair my understanding is they're in good company given that only 18 Countries actually recognise Taiwan as a sovereign state. Whilst the WHO is supposed to be an independent body they still rely on the cooperation of nations to function effectively, in the context of a global pandemic and given China's importance on the World stage I suspect Taiwan is not "the hill on which to die".

I don't advocate his actions during the interview but unfortunately in this imperfect World very few organisations manage to do their jobs on a global level without succumbing to some level of hypocrisy, or without making deals with devils.

couldnt have said it better myself.

Jono8 · 15 Apr 2020 at 14:14

Kyo said:
Its crazy now Trump supporters directing their hate on Bill Gates. Trump just encourages divisiveness and his followers obey.

The blind devotion to him is utterly bizarre.

He is objectively awful in almost every metric, even many of the ones his supporters supposedly support him for (not being a wealthy elite (lol), being religious, helping working class people etc).

Its just completely ridiculous. He is an inarticulate, narcissistic trust fund baby who doesn't give a **** about anyone but himself.

Throughout his entire presidency, he has acted in complete antithesis of what America supposedly stands for.

Be conservative, fine, but don't support this absolute car crash of a man.

Angilion · 15 Apr 2020 at 14:18

PapaLazaru said:
Quite scary how out of his depth he is and how he is managing this. I watch the daily updates with a mix of intruige and fear.

The USA is following a normal trajectory with covid-19. Better than some countries, worse than others.

Have a look here:

http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/

and look at the "covid-19 cases by country, normalised by country population" and select "deaths" as the data because that's more accurately comparable between countries with different degrees of testing.

You'll find that the USA's curve is roughly in the middle. It's doing better than the UK, for example. Or Italy. Or Spain. etc.

Either the president of the USA has little effect on the USA's handling of the pandemic (which might be true, given how much is done at state level and how much the office of president is deliberately restricted in power) or he's doing a fairly good job of it.

Hedge · 15 Apr 2020 at 14:30

Imagine growing up in a working class background in a family who worked in mines or factories and then looking at Donald J Trump, a guy who inherited millions and lost more money in failed business ventures than your entire family ever earned / will ever earn in ten generations and thinking he's relatable.

In the UK a lot of the working class struggle to relate to "toffs" who had privaledged upbringings but at least we usually see how they have worked their way through the political sphere to end up where they are. When scandals arise people are usually held responsible.

Trump has a son who hunts lions and rhino's for fun yet people seem to love this family more than their own.

Crazy mentality.

Roar87 · 15 Apr 2020 at 14:35

VincentHanna said:
Yeah...because the WHO struggling to officially recognise Taiwan as a country is awful....let see who else does that:

The guy was scared to even acknowledge the existence of a place called Taiwan, it wasn't about recognising it as a country. Trust the people on here to defend PRC apologists.

Roar87 · 15 Apr 2020 at 14:42

Hedge said:
Imagine growing up in a working class background in a family who worked in mines or factories and then looking at Donald J Trump, a guy who inherited millions and lost more money in failed business ventures than your entire family ever earned / will ever earn in ten generations and thinking he's relatable.

In the UK a lot of the working class struggle to relate to "toffs" who had privaledged upbringings but at least we usually see how they have worked their way through the political sphere to end up where they are. When scandals arise people are usually held responsible.

Trump has a son who hunts lions and rhino's for fun yet people seem to love this family more than their own.

Crazy mentality.

Imagine spending your life being angry at people born into a better position than you rather than just getting on with it and creating the best life for yourself possible

VincentHanna · 15 Apr 2020 at 14:47

Roar87 said:
The guy was scared to even acknowledge the existence of a place called Taiwan, it wasn't about recognising it as a country. Trust the people on here to defend PRC apologists.

Was he? The specific question was whether the who would consider Taiwan as a member.

Do the USA accept them as an independent country?

It's not right, but you can't argue the WHO are puppet masters of China when only 15 countries in the World accept the ROC as an independent country.

The USA and UK don't.

kinetic747 · 15 Apr 2020 at 14:49

Angilion said:
He didn't create that atmosphere. He's a result of it, not a cause of it. "Progressive" ideology created it. Or, more accurately, greatly increased it. It's always been around, but an ideology that exists for the purpose of promoting belief in group identity (i.e. the belief that "they're all the same") and the irrational prejudice and discrimination that comes with that belief and using that as a method of increasing authoritarianism will obviously increase it. "a toxic black and white atmosphere where you're either team A, or team B and to hell with things like facts and consequences" is a succinct description of "progressive" ideology. What Trump did is provide an alternative to that ideology. Not a good alternative. But the only alternative on offer.

The USA is following a normal trajectory with covid-19. Better than some countries, worse than others.

Have a look here:

http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/

and look at the "covid-19 cases by country, normalised by country population" and select "deaths" as the data because that's more accurately comparable between countries with different degrees of testing.

You'll find that the USA's curve is roughly in the middle. It's doing better than the UK, for example. Or Italy. Or Spain. etc. If Trump is as responsible for the USA's handling of the pandemic as you claim, you should be regarding him as doing a pretty good job.

But to hell with things like facts and consequences. It's much easier to blame <insert your chosen target here>.

Here's a summary of the timeline, please read it and tell me you still think it's been handled well. BTW I don't think the UK has excelled either.

https://www.justsecurity.org/69650/timeline-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic-and-u-s-response/

Angilion · 15 Apr 2020 at 15:15

kinetic747 said:
Here's a summary of the timeline, please read it and tell me you still think it's been handled well. BTW I don't think the UK has excelled either.

https://www.justsecurity.org/69650/timeline-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic-and-u-s-response/

I've already given you a link to a comparison of the outcomes in every country in the world, which shows that the USA is middling. Please look at it and tell me you still think that (a) the USA has done particularly badly and that (b) Trump is responsible for that. Also, why you think that despite the known outcome.

I didn't say and I don't think that the USA had handled it well, so I couldn't still think that.

Murphy · 15 Apr 2020 at 15:18

plasmahal said:
Source

PDF Warning...

kinetic747 · 15 Apr 2020 at 15:31

Angilion said:
I've already given you a link to a comparison of the outcomes in every country in the world, which shows that the USA is middling. Please look at it and tell me you still think that (a) the USA has done particularly badly and that (b) Trump is responsible for that. Also, why you think that despite the known outcome.

I didn't say and I don't think that the USA had handled it well, so I couldn't still think that.

I'm basing my opinion on the fact that Trump said early on that everything was under control and that deaths would soon be down to zero. Obviously I thought him deranged for even thinking that let alone announcing it to the nation. As the current death rate is in the tens of thousands and much more than zero, I'd say that's definitely a failure on his part.

Murphy · 15 Apr 2020 at 15:38

Angilion said:
He didn't create that atmosphere. He's a result of it, not a cause of it. "Progressive" ideology created it. Or, more accurately, greatly increased it. It's always been around, but an ideology that exists for the purpose of promoting belief in group identity (i.e. the belief that "they're all the same") and the irrational prejudice and discrimination that comes with that belief and using that as a method of increasing authoritarianism will obviously increase it. "a toxic black and white atmosphere where you're either team A, or team B and to hell with things like facts and consequences" is a succinct description of "progressive" ideology. What Trump did is provide an alternative to that ideology. Not a good alternative. But the only alternative on offer.

You mean like smoking 40 a day didn't create someone's cancer or how the gun didn't kill someone the person did?

This sort of retort for anything is simplistic to the extreme, it treats the audience with contempt because you're implying that people don't have any control over their actions, it's the equivalent of saying that because someone was being nasty you had no choice but to punch them in the face, it's as ridiculous as saying Nazism and everything they did was the result of the great depression when that's obviously not true.

Colonel_Klinck · 15 Apr 2020 at 16:10

Trusty said:
Ironic that those low IQ anti vax sheep end up owning and running most companies in America and employ all those highly enlightened intelligent people.

Really? Name these anti-vaxxers that are running most of the companies employing all these Americans. Because some of the ridiculous comments in that Bill Gates tweets seemed like they came from people who'd struggle running a bath let alone a company.

Trusty · 15 Apr 2020 at 16:31

Colonel_Klinck said:
Really? Name these anti-vaxxers that are running most of the companies employing all these Americans. Because some of the ridiculous comments in that Bill Gates tweets seemed like they came from people who'd struggle running a bath let alone a company.

Your post wasn't aimed at "anti vaxxers"
It was a generalised dig at republican/conservative voters

Colonel_Klinck · 15 Apr 2020 at 16:31

Roar87 said:
If they can't be apolitical and objective then how can we trust them to give accurate health information? They're clearly scared of offending the PRC, what else might they not do to upset the PRC?

Everyone is afraid of offending the PRC. Trump does on occasion and then proceeds to kiss their arse again. You expect an organisation to do what the likes of the US and UK Govs don't have the balls to do? Yeah that will really help them gain access to a country that doesn't give access to what they don't want people to see :rolleyes:

Maybe the UK and US should step up and recognise Taiwan as a sovereign state. You say they should be apolitical and then expect than to get involved in politics which the Taiwan question is, to China its about as political as it gets!

plasmahal · 15 Apr 2020 at 16:33

VincentHanna said:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52291654

Thanks. Fair enough, did not know that they got so much private funding.

Colonel_Klinck · 15 Apr 2020 at 16:34

Trusty said:
Your post wasn't aimed at "anti vaxxers"
It was a generalised dig at republican/conservative voters

You did read the part where I said "if you read the comments" right? It was full of anti-vaxxers running to defend Trump and blame it on WHO, Fauci and Bill Gates ffs.

Trusty · 15 Apr 2020 at 16:39

Colonel_Klinck said:
You did read the part where I said "if you read the comments" right? It was full of anti-vaxxers running to defend Trump and blame it on WHO, Fauci and Bill Gates ffs.

I read your whole post. And it was obvious that it was a generalised dig, which is also consistent with your past comments about republican voters across both this thread and the trump thread.

Also, twitter is full of sock accounts and fake profiles, anyone with any high high profile is targeted, look at the Clinton twitter, Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn twitters.

I wouldn't take twitter comments as a sounding board personally.

Colonel_Klinck · 15 Apr 2020 at 16:46

Angilion said:
The USA is following a normal trajectory with covid-19. Better than some countries, worse than others.

Have a look here:

http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/

and look at the "covid-19 cases by country, normalised by country population" and select "deaths" as the data because that's more accurately comparable between countries with different degrees of testing.

You'll find that the USA's curve is roughly in the middle. It's doing better than the UK, for example. Or Italy. Or Spain. etc.

Either the president of the USA has little effect on the USA's handling of the pandemic (which might be true, given how much is done at state level and how much the office of president is deliberately restricted in power) or he's doing a fairly good job of it.

Yeah but that is going on the assumption that Spain, Italy and the UK have handled this well which they clearly haven't. Given that the US and UK saw what was happening in Italy and were still slow to react just makes it worse. They had the whole of Feb to prepare and didn't. Where are all the masks and PPE?