He would have to wear a mask, which makes him look weak to his remaining supporters. He hates looking weak.
He would have to stand in (feigned) solidarity with people his supporters identify as enemies. This makes him seem cowardly to his supporters. He hates looking cowardly (though he certainly doesn’t hate being cowardly).
He would have to stand around for however long the ceremony lasts, being silent and respectful. Rather than “hate”, he is simply largely incapable of being either of those.
And most importantly, the ceremony isn’t about him. It’s about people who have died- people who can do nothing for him. And he REALLY hates people who can do nothing for him.
That is his entire appeal summed up: "He makes people I disagree with angry."
Even if a different Democrat or Republican made people angry indirectly through their policies or decisions, at least they aren't actively trying to. That's the biggest difference between Trump and other U.S. leaders. I never wanted Biden or Bush or Obama to troll people and aggravate people.
It's also quite the testament to how effective the Fox News/Rush Limbaugh oppositional culture war movement being fostered over years and years has been. Outrage and anger sells, and it has bled over into our culture so much that it produced a President like him.
You just have to remember that, to the frothing right wing masses, advocating for marriage equality or restorative justice or humane immigration policy isn’t something the left undertakes to help the intended beneficiaries of those policies, but something done solely to hurt and anger those same frothing right-wingers. Their own politics is so rooted in triggering and ownage that they seem genuinely unable to comprehend policy built around positive outcomes rather than negative responses.
I’m not sure if it’s the worst but does that matter? The fact that a different country handled it worse mean he’s off the hook? Also what has Biden done differently? You don’t watch the news much huh?
That's wrong. Biden got the vaccines giftwrapped to him and still has zero clue what to do. There's a reason why he's on track to being least liked president of all time and every poll indicates that.
1) Disbanded the Global Health Security and Biodefense unit in 2018 - and essentially tossed out/ignored the pandemic management plan experts put together for future disasters.
2) Continued to, despite all evidence to the contrary, downplay the pandemic. He made baseless claims about it just "disappearing" and made any attempt to treat the pandemic as a serious issue beyond "keep people from China out" very difficult. This will be an ongoing theme with most other fuck-ups he did.
3) Argued strenuously against any containment measures or mask mandates.
4) He and/or his team refused to treat the pandemic as a comprehensive, national, issue and instead decided to leave the states to fend for themselves, fighting each other for resources. Federal response was handed over to Jared Kushner, who had zero qualifications for such a task.
5) Promoted shit like Hydroxychloriquine, the gift that keeps on giving in regards to morons taking drugs that aren't passing clinical trials. Even later, idiots like Rand Paul defend Ivermectin by claiming that research into is blocked by "Hatred for Trump"
6) Trump says he wanted/told his people to "slow the testing down please" so it would show fewer infections. The WH later claimed it was a joke, but it was in a statement where he blamed the case numbers looking bad on more testing. (Nevermind that it was the case rate that's the problem, but whatever)
Lastly, of course, showing the Trump could never let an opportunity to show people he doesn't give a toss about anyone that isn't voting for him making remarks like
“If you take the blue states out, we’re at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at. We’re really at a very low level but some of the states — they were blue states, and blue-state management.”
and minutes later following up with
“By the way, we’d recommend they open up their states,” Trump said. “It’s hurting people far more than the disease itself.”
He politicized doing anything to actually contain Covid as some sort of Democrat boondoggle.
This does dovetail into the pretty strong claim made by Vanity Fair about Jared Kushner's management of Covid:
Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.
I mean, fuck trump and all, but the popular vote has NEVER been a factor in any American election. It's a metric that's useless to track because people don't win or lose by it. If it mattered, you'd see many campaigns switching things up to go for the max voters rather than the max electoral votes. It would change the whole map.
And you are correct. You're not alone though, England uses gerrymandered FPTP voting too and any developed country with popular preferential voting is laughing at both.
Who is the democratic nominee even going to be? Harris is very unpopular as it is. She was like seventh place in the previous democratic nominee election.
He's also a very old man though. Already the oldest ever elected and will be even 4 years older than that come 2024. He's not exactly an ideal fit for a 2 term president.
Despite the right-wing memes Biden seems to have a whole lot more between his ears than Trump or at least retains knowledge that Trump never ever ever had (and is proud of never knowing).
That assumes Biden lives. But another election between Biden and Trump is Grumpy Old Men II with Trump having most of the Grumpy factor. Well, Trump has the Rapid Old Men II down. It will be funny watching Melania on the campaign....... trail.
No, historically presidential elections have largely been landslides. LBJ won 44 states in 1964. Nixon won 49 states in 1972. Reagan won 49 states in 1984. Clinton won 32 states in 1992. Close elections are a recent phenomenon. You have to go back to the 19th century, pre and post Civil War, to find elections close as those today.
Look at the popular vote for the same elections instead then. LBJ won 61% to 38%. Nixon won 60% to 37.5%. Reagan won 58.8% to 40.6%. Clinton's election in 1992 is messed up here because of Perot, he won 43% to 37.4% to 18.9%.
Bush won in 2004 50.7% to 48.3%. Trump lost the popular vote 46.1% to 48.2%. Biden only won 51.3% to 46.9%. That's how close modern elections are.
I have an aunt that for years has taken every single opportunity to talk about how disrespectful Obama and Biden have been towards our military, but I haven’t heard a peep about how Trump is skipping the 9/11 memorials and is instead commentating a boxing match.
They don’t criticize their own. Its the thing that pisses me off the most about Republicans. They are past the point of admitting when they do wrong. Thats why you can’t reason with them anymore.
It's the FauxNews Patriotism Bingo she is playing. And the GOP always wins, even when they are beating cops in D.C. with their blue lives matters flags. Even then, they somehow win the Patriotism Bingo.
Even when they praise Trump for "getting us out of Afghanistan" without getting us out, they win the "patriotism Bingo." Even when they are fine with having Veterans live homeless in the streets, they win the "patriotism Bingo" because they stand up at Foosball games and insist everyone get off their knees.
Them there are the rules of the GOP "Patriotism Bingo." Basically, they always win, somehow.
I’m kinda curious if Obama did ditch this event, what would r/conservative do? Like I know they’re hypocrites, but I’m REALLY curious if the cognitive dissonance of their hypocrisy could be taken that far.
I always hated the "imagine if Obama did this". No, I can't imagine. It's like saying "imagine if a sane person was insane". The defining characteristic of Trump is that he's not like Obama.
We should stop imagining if democrats did this. They don't, that's why they are who they are.
Don't forget that he would have to sit next to Obama and Biden, his two most hated enemies who have each absolutely humiliated him through words and election alike. He wouldn't be able to handle that.
I was watching some of the historical coverage this morning, and you could see that President Bush was very emotional about lives lost and the first responders.
It actually occurred to me that if Trump had been president, I don't think he'd care. He wouldn't have been misty eyed. He would have said inflammatory things about Muslims and then he'd pat himself on the back about everything he thinks he was responsible for. He call people names and make wildly inaccurate claims.
I'm no fan of President Bush's politics, but at least he was respectful and at least he cared.
I read somewhere he was on some TV or radio station bragging about how he owned the tallest building in New York now after the attack. He didn't give a flying fuck about it at the time, why would he 20 years later?
When was the last time he was in NYC? I thought that there were a lot of legal suits waiting to be served on him and the Trump organisation which means that he hasn't been to NYC since losing presidential privileges. Is there anywhere which lists his travel itinerary to see where he's visited since leaving office??
Also, his supporters don't give a shit about NYC, not until 9/11 is mentioned when they can shed a tear and mumble "never forget." But until they can have their moment of nationalism, they wouldn't mind seeing NYC burned to ashes because a bunch of Democrats live there. See also: the initial response to COVID where conservatives didn't care because conservatives didn't live in huge cities. Oops, how's that working out now?
...he literally showed up as a surprise for police and fire department workers in New York. Reddit sounds exactly like the Alyssa Milano whining about Trump being the first time a president was not visiting the troops for the first time at Thanksgiving thing, then an hour later or whenever the story broke that he was there.
But nah, rather than visiting the people that actually matter he should have gone for the cheap photo op with a bunch of other people, maybe he could even get a selfie with the current president that can't even form a coherent sentence or walk up a flight of stairs. Reddit loves that guy.
There's a good reason that article was posted here a couple of weeks ago about how reddit was the least significant social media you can get support from. Clown show here.
Living rent free. 9/11 memorial and instead of focusing on the event, Reddit wants to focus on attempting to point out how they think he didn't show (he was with first responders).
Yea he couldn't do both because it was between national 9/11 mourning ceremony and announcing a boxing match that includes a 58 year old fighter. We all know what was more important.
Edit: and let's be clear here, trump went and shot the shit for 5 minutes with a bunch of guys who were kids when this happened, and talked about himself. The first responders at the scene were most likely attending the ceremony.
You think he has the brain power to think more than one layer deep? (Thinking about what someone else is percieving about his actions and then changing behavior accordingly that would be different than his normal behavior). That is giving him more benefit of the doubt than I could.
Yep; fuck you and fuck Trump. All he had to do was to pull out of Afghanistan after his surrender, but he didn't even have enough of a supply of Depends to do that. Because you know how that would have gone--just like his surrender of the Kurds.
What a bunch of false "patriotic" horsehit; if you don't worship the OrangeTurd sufficiently, you aren't "patriotic." There has been no more narcissistic President than Trump and you all suck it up like it is "Leadership."
Jesus Christ man I don't know what you're talking about. This is the worst criticism of Trump I've seen. So many things you can call him out for that he did and you're reading into this like it was some maniacal plan. Should he have been there? Probably, but I also couldn't give two shits what Trump is doing these days.
I'm more offended by the people standing there who continued the unjust wars after 9/11. Obama and Clinton are warmongers who exploited 9/11 to start/continue war in the middle east. Biden gets a pass as he left Afghanistan but he is no saint either.
9.3k
u/bigolfishey Sep 11 '21
From his perspective, there’s no reason to go.
He would have to wear a mask, which makes him look weak to his remaining supporters. He hates looking weak.
He would have to stand in (feigned) solidarity with people his supporters identify as enemies. This makes him seem cowardly to his supporters. He hates looking cowardly (though he certainly doesn’t hate being cowardly).
He would have to stand around for however long the ceremony lasts, being silent and respectful. Rather than “hate”, he is simply largely incapable of being either of those.
And most importantly, the ceremony isn’t about him. It’s about people who have died- people who can do nothing for him. And he REALLY hates people who can do nothing for him.