I recently received a comment on another post. The commenter informed me that I was remiss for not understanding that Donald Trump was “a man’s man who said whatever he was thinking and didn’t care what anyone thought about that”. I think he also believed that Jesus sent him to save America, but that’s another story. Rather than immediately firing off a snarky reply, I looked up some definitions of the term. First, it doesn’t mean “gentleman’s gentleman”. That is just another way to say “valet”. Somehow, I don’t see Donald Trump running a bath or picking out which XXL red tie to wear for another man.
So, back to “man’s man”. There are any number of definitions, some espousing physical toughness, courage, and aggression, some concentrating on shouldering responsibility, integrity, loyalty, and dependability. As a bit of a side note, FOX News personality Tucker Carlson touts Trump as that strong guy that America needs. Carlson also seems very concerned with the sagging testosterone levels of American men, going so far as to promote testicle tanning as a way to jack up “manliness” in the male population. But since this was the look he preferred until Jon Stewart called him out on it some years ago, I think we can safely exclude Tucker from any discussion about easily recognizable masculinity.
Being a man’s man is supposed to mean that you are the epitome. You are the one that other men acknowledge as a prime example, the one that they aspire to be like. If that is the case for Donald J. Trump, why stop there? There are many other categories where he sets the standard, right? He is the:
Liar’s liar – 30,000 plus documented instances.
Tax-dodger’s tax-dodger – He doesn’t pay them because – as he said in a 2016 debate – “I am smart.”
Braggart’s braggart – He is the expert on any and every subject. Just ask him.
Draft-dodger’s draft dodger – 5 deferments, including one for “bone spurs”. Not a record, but still…
There are many more in his public life, but what about the more “intimate” stuff?
Man’s Man?
Voyeur’s voyeur – Walked unannounced into dressing rooms of any pageant he owned.
Adulterer’s adulterer – Has had 3 wives and cheated on each of them.
P***y grabber’s p***y grabber – OK, he claimed, because he was famous.
Finally: Pisser’s pisser, Moaner’s moaner, and Snowflake’s snowflake – Trump sets the gold standard for pissing and moaning and whining and crying about everything from “fake news”, to losing a free and fair election, to being endlessly “persecuted”, to having stolen documents forcibly retrieved from his sweaty clutches and put back where they belong. I think he fails the smell test for being a man’s man by the length of a walk from the White House to the Capitol building.
Quora is a social question-and-answer website. Users can collaborate by editing questions and commenting on answers that have been submitted by other users. As of 2020, the website was visited by 300 million users a month.
Writer Randy Weir, who describes himself as a devout Christian and conservative, used the social question-and-answer website Quora to challenge the notion that the Trump presidency was anything other than a complete dumpster fire. Quora’s question was “How was Donald Trump bad as a president? Can’t we just forget about his flaws and acknowledge the good things he did?”
His response:
“He literally did no good things. At least not anything significant.
He immediately started a trade war that actually increased our trade deficit. By the end of 2018, almost 2,000 US manufacturing plants had closed because of his tariffs, resulting in 300,000 job losses, and American farmers went bankrupt as Russia supplanted the US as the chief importer of soy into China.
It took him eleven months to get his own party to pass his tax bill. And in the two years that followed, stock market growth and the decline in unemployment both slowed by about two thirds.
At the end of 2018, he shut down the government for the longest period of time in history because his own party wouldn’t fund the border wall he promised Mexico would pay for.
In 2019, the Fed lowered interest rates for the first time since Bush was President to combat the slowing economy, and Trump himself complained that they didn’t commit to do more to prevent a recession.
He spent 23 of the first 69 days of 2020 on vacation, during which time the Trump recession began, all the while repeatedly insisting that Covid was nothing to worry about—before declaring it a national crisis on day 70. Two weeks after he tweeted, “Stock Market starting to look very good to me!“, we saw the largest single day point drop in the history of the Dow followed by the most new jobless claims in history.
During the height of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, he literally was most concerned that gas prices were too low and that oil companies weren’t making enough money, so he forced OPEC into a two-year deal to slash production by 25% to create a global oil shortage and drive up high prices which are still rising today.
He also increased the annual budget deficit every year he was in office, something not even GW Bush accomplished, adding more to the national debt in one term than GW Bush and GHW Bush in twelve years combined, adding more in one year than Reagan added in two full terms, and becoming the first President in history to maintain a debt to GDP ratio over 100% for his entire term.
And that’s just the financial mess he created. He also set a record for indictments, guilty pleas and criminal convictions of members of an administration, eclipsing Nixon’s six-year record in less than three. He became the first President in history to be impeached twice, and the first to have Senators from his own party vote for his conviction—which happened both times. A special counsel testified that Trump encouraged Russian interference in the 2016 election and committed obstruction of justice by ordering his staff to falsify records relevant to an ongoing investigation to cover his actions. He repeatedly and publicly violated the emoluments clause and the Hatch Act. And he illegally withdrew troops from Afghanistan five days before leaving office in knowing violation of the National Defense Authorization Act.
Moving on from his crimes, he was and is an absolute idiot. He asked about nuking Hurricanes. He suggested destroying Notre Dame with tons of water to put out a fire. He suggested combating California wildfires by raking the forests. He forgot what country he bombed. He tweeted a classified photo. He misspelled a three-letter word on a device with spellcheck. He gave a speech about George Washington taking British airports at 19th century forts during the Revolutionary War under a flag that didn’t exist yet. He gave a speech on space where he had great lines like, “At some point in the future, we’re going to look back and say how did we do it without space?” And, “This is infinity here. It could be infinity. We don’t really don’t know. But it could be. It has to be something — but it could be infinity, right?” And he suggested people treat a virus by taking an anti-parasitic and by taking horse dewormer, and wondered aloud if we could just clean out the lungs of Covid patients with surface disinfectant and sunlight. He also painted himself orange and called himself a stable genius for passing a test he insisted on taking to see if he had a brain injury.
Moving on from his stupidity, he’s an objectively horrible person. He boasted that he was a repeat sex offender and a pedophile. He encouraged violence at his rallies, even stating, “You know, part of the problem…is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore, right? …And honestly, protesters, they realize it. They realize that there are no consequences to protesting anymore.” He repeatedly refused to denounce white supremacist groups, and attacked our own leaders on social media with childish name-calling. His entire candidacy was launched by him making racist personal attacks against President Obama, and his entire “build the wall” nonsense was birthed out of his handlers wanting to find a way to remind him to attack immigrants at every rally. He created a humanitarian crisis at the border by misusing existing laws designed to protect children in order to torture children in hopes of deterring refugees from legally seeking asylum in the US. And as soon as he left office, his own party voted almost unanimously to pass legislation to address the rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans caused by his racist “China virus” rhetoric.
Now, should we talk about his legitimization of the North Korean dictatorship, his secret meetings with Putin, and how he sided with hostile dictators against our own intelligence agencies? Or what about how he deliberately sabotaged our operations in Afghanistan by inviting the Taliban to Camp David on the anniversary of 9/11, undermining the legitimate Afghan government by meeting with the Taliban in private, by freeing 5,000 Taliban terrorists, by promising to abandon the country to the Taliban about 100 days after he knew he’d be out of office, and by his aforementioned illegal removal of American troops on his way out the door?
And now almost 18 months after he left office, we’re still dealing with his mistakes. His four year war on imports, his bungling of the pandemic, and his OPEC deal are the primary reasons behind high inflation and high gas prices. Another major factor, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, was set up by his weakening of NATO, his illegal withholding of Congressionally authorized aid to Ukraine, and his strengthening of Russia.
And sadly I know I’m leaving out some major things under each and every one of those topics.
If you didn’t notice he was a terrible President, what were you doing for four years?”
Quora is a social question-and-answer website. Users can collaborate by editing questions and commenting on answers that have been submitted by other users. As of 2020, the website was visited by 300 million users a month.
Quora is a social question-and-answer website. Users can collaborate by editing questions and commenting on answers that have been submitted by other users. As of 2020, the website was visited by 300 million users a month.
Why is the US Army so disloyal towards Donald Trump? Is some sort of purge necessary to bring it back to the standard?
Judy replies:
“Hardly disloyal, tolerant more like it since trump has used the military as a stanchion and deliberately undermined Pentagon efforts to remain apolitical.
He, who has never served in the military, had to try to find a safe haven after his 2018 visit to France when he referred to American soldiers killed during World War One as “losers” and “suckers.”
Looking back at trump’s speeches and tweets throughout his presidency including interviews with aides and military officials, his history shows a contradictory and steadily deteriorating relationship with the military. While he could gush with praise for his generals, there’d be other times when he portrayed them as incompetent.
And since the rabid exchange he’d had with John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general when he complained: “You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?” Is it any wonder they have any respect for him at all?
No, if there is any purge necessary, the ousting of trump will bring the military back to its rightful standard.”
Piere replied:
“This question was asked by someone called “Peoe”in August 2022.
Other questions he “pretends to ask” make it obvious he is a Russian troll.
What I find so amusing about this question are two things:
That Quora’s algorithms conclude in September 2022 that this may be a question I would like to answer.
That a Russian troll would really think some Americans can be that stupid about ex-president in August 2022″
Robert replies:
“How was the army disloyal to Trump? I can see the accusation that the army leadership right now is milquetoast, and gutless re Biden, but I don’t see the army as a whole being disloyal to either him or DT. Too bad for them, in a way, as they got slaughtered in Afghanistan under the current morons’ “incompetent “command”.
GASLIT NATION WITH ANDREA CHALUPA AND SARAH KENDZIOR
Missouri has long been the bellwether of American politics, predicting presidents and anticipating trends – and lately, it’s been the bellwether of American decline. This week Gaslit Nation welcomes Jason Kander, a former Missouri Secretary of State, Missouri Democratic Senate candidate, voting and veterans’ rights advocate, and bestselling author. Kander’s new book, Invisible Storm: A Soldier’s Memoir of Politics and Ptsd, is a raw and moving account of his battle with PTSD as well as a thoughtful overview of US politics and media. This is an unusual book for a politician to write, but Kander is not your average politician, which is one reason we were excited to welcome him to the show. (Also you should buy his book, all royalties go to the Veterans Community Project, a nonprofit organization serving homeless and at-risk veterans.)
This afternoon, President Joe Biden explained to the nation why he ended the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan, the longest war in American history. He reminded Americans that the purpose of the attack on Afghanistan in 2001 was to destroy the ability of the Taliban to protect al-Qaeda and to capture or kill the terrorists who had attacked America on September 11, 2001. American bombing immediately weakened the Taliban, and when U.S. troops killed Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011, we met those goals.
And yet we stayed on in Afghanistan while the terrorist threat spread across the world. Biden wants the country to face that modern threat, rather than the threat of twenty years ago. “I simply do not believe that the safety and security of America is enhanced by continuing to deploy thousands of American troops and spending billions of dollars a year in Afghanistan,” he said.
Researchers estimate that the war in Afghanistan has cost more than 171,000 lives. It has wounded more than 20,700 U.S. service members and taken the lives of 2461 more. It has cost more than $2 trillion, which adds up to about $300 million a day for twenty years.
“After 20 years of war in Afghanistan,” Biden said, “I refused to send another generation of America’s sons and daughters to fight a war that should have ended long ago.”
The president made it clear he envisions a different kind of foreign policy than the U.S. has embraced since 2002, when the Bush Doctrine, developed by the neoconservatives under Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, committed the United States to launching preemptive military actions in order to change regimes in countries we perceived as potential sponsors of terrorism—the doctrine that led us into invading Iraq in 2003, which diverted our attention and resources from Afghanistan.
“[W]e must set missions with clear, achievable goals,” Biden said. “This decision… is not just about Afghanistan. It’s about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries…. Moving on from that mindset and those kind of large-scale troop deployments will make us stronger and more effective and safer at home.”
Biden has been very clear that he envisions a foreign policy based less in military personnel on the ground than in technology, the “over-the-horizon” weapons that the administration used to strike ISIS-K leaders the day after that group claimed responsibility for an attack at the gates of the Kabul airport that killed more than 160 Afghans and 13 Americans. “We will continue to support the Afghan people through diplomacy, international influence, and humanitarian aid,” Biden said. “We’ll continue to speak out for basic rights of the Afghan people, especially women and girls…. [H]uman rights will be the center of our foreign policy.”
Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have explained that they expect to use modern tools to combat terrorism. Today, Biden said that the way to protect human rights “is not through endless military deployments, but through diplomacy, economic tools, and rallying the rest of the world for support.”
Biden’s new approach to foreign affairs includes finances. As soon as the Afghan government fell, the U.S. and other allies withheld aid to Afghanistan and froze the country’s assets held in western banks. The World Bank stopped funding the country, the International Monetary Fund froze $460 million in emergency reserves, and the U.S. froze about $7 billion of the $9.5 billion of Afghan central bank reserves held in U.S. banks. The European Union, which had promised $1 billion to the country over the next five years, has now said that money will depend on Afghanistan’s human rights record under its new government.
Russian lawmakers and state media have been gloating that the U.S. left Afghanistan. Now, though, they suddenly find their country with the U.S. gone and an unstable Afghanistan on their doorstep. Yesterday, they called on the U.S. and its allies to unfreeze money and to work to rebuild the country, even as they warned that it would never meet U.S. standards for human rights or democracy.
Biden’s emphasis includes working with allies to combat the crises facing the globe in the twenty-first century. Today, John Kerry, the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, left for a four-day trip to Japan and China to advance discussions about the climate crisis, a crisis increasingly obvious in the U.S. as California wildfires have forced the evacuation of the resort town of South Lake Tahoe and the U.S. Forest Service closed all national forests in California until September 17.
More than 15,000 firefighters are combating dozens of fires in California, but the emergency personnel from Louisiana had to return to their home state to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, which has knocked out electric power for hundreds of thousands.
Today, President Biden met with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and the heads of two of the largest utilities in the Gulf Coast to discuss restoring and maintaining the power grid in the face of the era’s new extreme weather events. The president also launched a 75-day comment period on how climate change is changing financial markets, focusing initially on insurers, who have $4.7 trillion worth of assets, much of which is invested. The administration is trying to understand how climate change could destabilize the economy.
Biden and Blinken have also made it clear they think nothing will strengthen America’s standing in the world more than strengthening democracy at home.
Today, the Texas legislature passed SB1, the sweeping voter suppression bill Democrats had tried to stop by walking out of the legislature to deny the Republicans a quorum. The new measure is a microcosm of voter suppression bills across the nation in Republican-dominated states.
It bans mail ballot drop boxes and gets rid of drive-through voting and extended hours. It criminalizes the distribution of applications for mail-in ballots and permits partisan poll watchers to have “free movement” in polling places, enabling them to intimidate voters. Texas is just 40% white and has 3 million unregistered voters, the vast majority of whom are Black or Latino. The new measure is designed to cut young people of color, whose numbers are growing in Texas and who are overwhelmingly Democrats, out of elections. In debates on the measure, Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan asked members not to use the word “racism.”
Meanwhile, today, House Republicans have been on a media blitz to insist that the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol has no right to examine the phone records of fellow congresspeople. On Tucker Carlson’s show on the Fox News Channel, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said, “These telecommunication companies, if they go along with this, they will be shut down. That’s a promise.”
There is no longer any daylight between the radical fringe like Greene and Republican leadership. Today House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who had at least one phone call with former president Trump on January 6, put out a statement warning that attempts to investigate the phone data of congresspeople from the January 6 insurrection would “put every American with a phone or a computer in the crosshairs of a surveillance state run by Democrat politicians.” If the companies comply with the committee’s request—which McCarthy mischaracterized as a “Democrat order”—he said, “a Republican majority will not forget.”
In response, representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) tweeted the legal code: 18 U.S. Code § 1505: “Whoever…by any threatening letter or communication…endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede…the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any…investigation is being had by either House…Shall be fined under this title, imprisoned…”
“I don’t think enough people understand how much we have asked of the 1 percent of this country who put that uniform on, who are willing to put their lives on the line in defense of our nation,” Biden said today. He called his listeners back to President Abraham Lincoln’s defense of democracy at Gettysburg when he said: “As we close 20 years of war and strife and pain and sacrifice, it’s time to look to the future, not the past—to a future that’s safer, to a future that’s more secure, to a future that honors those who served and all those who gave what President Lincoln called their ‘last full measure of devotion.’”
