@freemo
Five: Endorsements of violence and extremism

The most relevant example is still fresh -- the "I LOVE TEXAS!" tweet with the video of trucks surrounding a Biden campaign bus.
There were many earlier examples too, the "fine people on both sides" comment, "stand back and stand by" directed towards a militant group, the main reaction to the Michigan kidnapping attempt being criticizing the attempted victim (and afaik no actual condemnation of the attempt?).

I am not completely sure that I have all the facts right in these cases, in particular as to how dangerous the various endorsed groups are, but at least the first one is very clear-cut. I looked at the context of the statements and it ranges from somewhat lessening the impact, but still bad (with the both sides comment) to actually worse (with the "stand by" comment). I would have this point higher, since political violence is a very serious thing, but it is known that Trump says whatever his saliva brings to his tongue (to borrow an expression from my native language), so hopefully the impact of his words is lessened by fewer people taking him seriously. This is, however, quite a terrible excuse.

@freemo
Final note

I restricted myself to only instances where I believe Trump damages the democratic and rule of law systems in the US, specifically omitting other policy. That is due to the fact that I believe the continued
adherence to these systems of checks and balances is crucial for the continued wellbeing of a nation, without them it risks sliding rapidly into authoritarianism. There are still rational reasons to vote for the man (the closest to my heart being the fact that he did not start any new wars), but I struggle to imagine a reasonable person choosing them over democratic standards. Again, I am not a US citizen, so the impact
on me is limited and unclear whether bad or good (legitimizing dismantling democracy vs an actually more isolationist US foreign policy), so I would mostly like to learn whether the above beliefs arose due to propaganda or they are actually correct.

Thanks for any answers, but please don't feel pressured if you have better things to do or are sick of the topic.

@timorl Trump lacks even the smallest sense of charisma and I think one of the most damning things about him, and what gets him in so much trouble, is how he talks and how he tries to deflect criticism.

In that regard I agree, he didn't really handle these questions too well. What we wanted was him to decry people who acted out violently that appeared to be aligned with him politically. He didn't do that out of fear that it would cause him to loose supporters... That was a mistake on his part IMO.

To an extent I understand why he responded as he did, though I dont agree with it. I think he viewed the very question as a way for democrats to get one over on him.. if he dencounces the violence then he is 1) legitimizing that it is real and a concern and 2) loosing support from the people who do not view the violence as real and instead view the violence of the left as the legitimate violence (antifa). So he took the approach of dodging the bullet.

While I do agree trump should have very vocally denounced the violence, and there is no excuse for that, I also dont see Biden denouncing the extreme violence of Antifa, which is many orders of mangitude worse right now. When I am int he USA I live in philadelphia. We have been rioting like crazy the past few months and a large part of the violence i see right outside my door is largely antifa. They have been rioting, burning homes and businesses tot he ground, and assaulting people on the street in open violence like I've never seen before. There have been days the sky was black with fires here as self-proclaimed antifa run around like gangs assaulting anyone who has a MAGA hat on or supports trump.

The violence I've personally seen out my very window from antifa is horrific and yet I have yet to witness even a single pro-trumper act with this sort of violence.

So on this point I have to ask, have I seen Biden decrying antifa... the answer is, nope.. In fact I dont even see the media cornering him demanding he does like they did with trump.

So while I may give Trump a black mark for not detesting the violence outright, I would give biden and the democrats 10 black marks for doing the same in the face of much greater and widespread violence.

@freemo The antifa claims are strange to me – I was under the impression that most people ramming the protests and doing similarly scary stuff were mostly right-wing. Trump supporters and opponents have regular shouting matches (I saw clips in which either side could be considered the agressor) and there are the looters, opportunistic and not strongly politically affilated as far as I can tell. But in this I can well be wrong, since you say you saw that – how exactly did the antifa members self-identify if I might ask?

@timorl This, in my eyes is mostly a non point.. We are talking about positions that dont have any actual power.. they cant vote for anything, they cant pass any laws or do anything politicially.. We are talking basically about people that trump wants as advisors. So I really dont see any problem with him assigning those positions to anyone he wants, or how long those positions retain an "acting" title. If the position holds no actual power I simply dont see this as an issue in the first place.

@freemo I wasn't aware all these positions don't have any power. Why do they require confirmations then, do you know?

@timorl My understanding is that the confirmation is largely due to the fact that they are exposed to ifnormation that is secret. For example someone advising the president on say war would need to know about troop deployments that are otherwise kept secret. It largely a trust issue than a power issue as I understand it.

@freemo Aand that is back to concerning again. Although just normally concerning, not rapid-slide-towards-authoritarianism concerning, so meh.

@freemo That is very surprizing to me, I thought it was explicitly forbidden by the emoluments law. DId Biden also do this while he was the VP?

Anyway it seems to me that renting to people who by law have to stay close to you is much different to sending planes to your resorts or organizing international meetings in your business, both in scale and in substance.

By the way, since you implied you might know – is there any other place the Secret Service agents could live while staying close enough to Biden?

@timorl Yes he did it while he was VP and its actively done by most politicians. It is the norm.

But im not sure there is much difference between working out of your home and demanding government agents pay to be there, and working out of your corporate business which you effectively use as a home and do the same.

For me at least the difference between these two are semantic at best.

@freemo I am extremely surprized you don't see the difference, especially at scale, but I'm not sure what I could say to convince you.

@timorl Oh no, I do at scale. I am not justifying it at scale at all. I am not condoning the action, I dont like when other politicians do it either honestly.. But what I'm saying is it is the norm and we are talking about one event he happened to host and made him very little money. You have to keep in mind the amount of money made hosting a shindig and catering it is completely insignificant to someone like trump. Like yea I get that it isnt a violation and shouldnt be allowed, but its not really a good example of trump trying to syphon money off of the government either.

To put things into perspective the salary trump denied as president is likely significantly larger than the amount of money he made hosting a single event at his resotort. I dont condone it, but i find it insignificant in the grand scheme of things is all.

@freemo Wait, which event are we talking about? The G7 thing did not end up happening, so was there another? o.0

@timorl yea there was one he actually hosted. I dont recall the event though I just remember reading about how allt he people thought the food sucked :)

@freemo Lol, that's why I started trusting everything I read about Trump being bad. Every time I see a report of something so blantantly evil he did, that I feel the need to investigate further it turns out it's actually _worse_ than the media presented. >.< I thought he only toyed with the idea, not that he actually did it.

@timorl While I wouldnt go that far, I find almsot all media about him to generally be either extreme exagerations or blatent lies.. BUT with that said, the man is certainly evil and I dont like him in the least.

Remember my argument isnt that trump is not bad.. my argument is simply that 1) biden is worse 2) most of the facts against trump are distorted and exagerated to make him loose worse than he is, even if he is plenty bad on his own.

@freemo That's what I thought, but every time I look into especially terrible quotes they end up even worse in context. The only *exception* I remember was the "drinking bleach" debacle, where it was actually "injecting disinfectant as a medical trial", which makes him an absolute idiot (not evil) in this instance.

@timorl Also no, I really dont know if there is anywhere else for the secrete service agents to live, though its not exactly limited to SS. Politicians when not on the hill often work out of their private residences and properties and this often means charging aids and others as well not just the SS.