I'm reading "8 Awful Things Trump Said in Iowa, Ranked" (NY Magazine).
Is it not a good thing to believe wars can be avoided? Is it an article of faith that American slavery could only have been ended through warfare? Why is it "awful" to say that, as President, Trump would have tried to end it peacefully?
“So many mistakes were made. See, there was something I think could have been negotiated, to be honest with you,” Trump said. “I think you could have negotiated that. All the people died. So many people died.”Trump stopped short of directly blaming Abraham Lincoln, with whom he has a one-sided posthumous rivalry. But he did suggest concerns about his legacy may have played a factor in his decision not to cut a deal....
Trump claims Civil War didn't have to happen: "You could've negotiated that ... this is something that could've been negotiated ... that was a tough one for our country ... if you negotiated it, you probably wouldn't even know who Abraham Lincoln was ... that would've been okay" pic.twitter.com/pmPSSTDhqv
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 6, 2024
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84 comments:
& he said ketchup was a vegetable. holy cow democracy is over!
Meanwhile - Husk-Puppet mobster Crook liar Joe still raked-in millions in secret from China and Ukraine while VP- with his son Hunter as bag-man - and no one seems to care.
Don’t get too close to a poorly wired electromagnet under water or you’ll be surprised how correct Trump is in certain circumstances. Since I distrust ALL media framing of “what Trump said” I wouldn’t fall for this one.
Pants? LOL. I hear he also bragged about being able to find his way off stage unaided. Maybe in the same context as the pants.
Trump is clearly confusing magnets with witches. Magnets work underwater and are not affected by water. Magnetic fields are not the same as electrical circuits..
MAGA: Biden doesn’t even know where he is.
Also MAGA: Trump is still sharp as a tack.
Wasn't it Churchill that said, "Jaw, jaw is always better than war war."?
Nobody dying is a worthy goal. Unfortunately our global elite can't get rich unless they can monetize conflict. And by global elite I mean Democrats and establishment Republicans.
The implication here is that any deal negotiated by Trump would have left slavery in place in exchange for minor concessions. Because he is a racist.
As far as the magnets I don't think he was talking about those giant Looney Tunes Acme horseshoe magnets but electromagnets which I'm assuming with enough water in the right place one can short that circuit.
Trump's understanding of the horrors of war is something to be appreciative of. And his willingness to take out Sulemani, who had been training and providing materiel to people killing our troops contrasted with his unwillingness to launch a retaliatory strike against Iran that would have killed dozens of their troops after they shot down one of our unmanned drones shows he can implement that understanding appropriately.
Rupar is dumber then dirt
Economics was already doing in slavery. It woulda toppled on its own if the South had wanted to remain competitive. Why then the North's aggression? To keep the South in line.
Slavery in the U.S. would have ended by the end of the 19th century or early 20th century even without the war- the abolition movement would have eventually persuaded even the Deep South states' population eventually. Unfortunately, the expansion into the west brought the issue to a head before this was allowed to evolve naturally. A better question is this- was the damage to society worse or better by deciding the matter with the Civil War rather than allowing slavery to continue for another 4 decades before being abolished?
I'm no fan of Trump, but we seem to be slouching randomly into armed conflict in many places all over the world. Thinking politically, Trump could plausibly run as a peace candidate. He started no wars in his first term. He calmed our relations with North Korea. He negotiated a ceasefire with the Taliban etc. It could work.
I love how Trump uses repetition. When i listen to him, I don't mind it, its almost hypnotic, but when you read it, the constant refrains are funny.
But I'm 100 percent with Trump. The war was "vicious". It was horrible. Its been covered over with this gloss of romantic heroism. And everyone praising the soldiers for being so brave and noble.
But it was still horrible. Its not just that men were killed on the battlefield, you had men dying for days trapped between the lines. Or dying of disease in a POW camp. Or dying of gangrene. Or losing arms and legs. IRC, General Hood not only lost a leg, he lost an arm.
And many of these wounds never healed properly, and left the wounded soldiers after the war in constant pain, and its one reason for all the morsphine addiction in the 1870s and 1880s.
But there should have been a negotiated peace. The only real bone of contention was the existance of slavery in the territories. Otherwise, everything was negotiable. And if in the end, the Deep South wanted to leave, we should have let them. The Upper South, however, only left the Union because Lincoln tried to force the Deep South back into the Union by calling up troops.
Anyway, the reason you had a fight to the death and NO COMPROMISE, is because the leaders and elites on both sides, instituted drafts and made sure they were exempt. Do you have 20 slaves? exempt. Willing to hire a substitute? exempt. A government official? Exempt. The North was even more straightforward: Pay 300 dollars and you didn't have to fight. Later that was gotten rid of, and you had hire a substitute.
Let those other people die, while you breathe fire and brimstone from the safety of your comfy chair. We see the same thing today with the Keyboard Kommados.
Both FDR and TR's fathers hired substitutes. One odd fact is that Kentucky slave owners got out of the draft by freeing a male slave and letting them join the Union army.
I would take it he isn’t so much discussing the pass as suggesting what can be done now in the present. After all, in the vein of “The Day After” and “The Day After Tomorrow”, Hollywood is planning to release this year “Civil War” which is suggesting what a modern Civil War in the US might look like. Of course, no one will suggest Hollywood is promoting violence at a sensitive time by making and releasing this film, in the same manner Trump is being accused of inciting an insurrection.
Isn't there a Trump Derangement Syndrome tag? That NY Mag article would qualify, I think.
Putting aside the fact that NY Magazine would whine about whatever Trump said, they are assuming that negotiation was impossible by 1860, which it probably was, and its better for 600,000 white guys to die than one black person to be left in slavery.
What a maroon.
The Constitution was an exercise in negotiation to avoid Civil War.
Is Donald “Wormwood” Trump ignorant of the Missouri Compromise.
Once again the question is asked: How can any sentient human being view this ignorant buffoon and think - “yes, this guy is the best person to lead this nation in such times of trouble”?
The tRump Swabs have no place in calling Biden’s medical competency into question. Biden might be further down Tapioca Road but Old Wormwood is catching up.
The civil war was going to occur one way or another. It was baked into the cake when the country was founded.
I am looking forward to a New Yorker with the eight (or more) good things that Trump has said.
I know TDS affects the writing here, but I'm not seeing much controversy regarding the US Civil War. Wasn't it legally fought over federal control of military bases, not slavery or succession per se? The rationale was an in-the-weeds legal concept even then.
There was a negotiated outcome after the Civil War -- the south was allowed to enact 100 years of sharecropping and building statutes to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The former slaves were allowed to relocate to the northern cities, and they did so in large numbers. The northern political carpetbaggers and militant KKK each had periods of pushing changes one way or another, but neither did much to affect southern politics before the 1960s.
Lincoln's ambition was to preserve the union and likely economic independence in North America (as a scant 50 years after the invasion and War of 1812, and with a plausible threat of European imperialists coming back).
They tried negotiating for 70 years.
If the Federal government purchased every slave and gave them their freedom, would it have been worth it?
Absolutely.
He claimed magnets don’t work underwater.... He bragged about his ability to put on pants.... He said the Civil War could have been 'negotiated.
"He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark."
Is it an article of faith that American slavery could only have been ended through warfare?
No, plenty of other countries did legalistically. To admit so would be to admit the culpability of the Abolitionist who's intransigence (along with that of the Souther Planter class) was largely the reason it took a war to end slavery in the first place.
"He claimed magnets don’t work underwater"
We're not hiring a Physicist-in-Chief.
Trump says stuff like this. Meanwhile, the Biden campaign worries how long their candidate will be able to speak whole words. Shat a glorious wealth of political choices we have in 2024, to keep us well governed and safe. Is SMOD still a possibility?
"Why is it "awful" to say that, as President, Trump would have tried to end it peacefully?"
Because how do you expect Politicians to get rich..besides Insider Trading??
You can tell how confident the left/media are about their prospects by the amount of time they spend blackguarding Trump as opposed to touting their own achievements (or maybe they can't think of any).
"Awful things"
What is wrong with these people? Most of the items on this list are a whole lot of nothing--people ask him how he puts on his pants and he tells them he doesn't think about it. So? God made Trump (any religious person would think that an obvious truth).
Yes, it's bizarre that they think a negotiated avoidance of a devastating war is awful.
And then there's this: he made fun of Biden's stutter. Biden doesn't have a stutter and nobody thinks he does.
The only actual bad thing in the whole list is that he made fun of McCain's POW status. But does anybody think they care about that, rather than are just using it as a weapon against Trump?
He's just doing his usual great negotiator routine, but in the context of putting down Lincoln over the toughest problem for an incoming Potus in history, stopping secession when 7 states have seceded before your taking office. (And sounding like a tired old man at the same time.)
My, it would be very interesting if Trump and Lincoln had a mutual posthumous rivalry.
The "article" is quite a piece of work. I encourage RTWT - it's not very long. The worst thing Trump did was to mock Biden's stutter and, possibly, to mock McCain's war injury, both of which I deplore but are kind of baked into the cake with Trump; the rest are either presented without context or presented with deliberately misunderstood context.
As usual, literally but not seriously.
How Saltwater Affects Magnets
Saltwater conducts electricity more efficiently than freshwater, and its conductive properties create a moving magnetic field when an electromagnet is placed nearby. Then, the saltwater creates an opposing magnetic field, causing turbulence (erratic changes in pressure and flow velocity) in the water.
We don't know if compensated emancipation would have prevented the war, but it was certainly worth a try, particularly since it had been done in Washington, D.C.
Manuel dexterity cannot be underestimated. Especially as our bodies progress with time.
There were confounding factors that assured progress to a civil war, beyond the sustainable issues of slavery and diversity. Unfortunately, an American Spring may have been unavoidable.
“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.”
- Donald Trump, I think
Slavery has been almost universal for more than 5,000 years. It was eliminated from the British empire in the 1800s with no wars. millions of slaves (serfs) were freed in Russia with no war.
It certainly would have been better to free the slaves via negotiation. That was tried without success. Would Trump have been able to succeed? He was well on the way to settling 5000 years of war in the MidEast, North and South seems like it might have been child's play.
The US, not being a country but a collection of sovereign contries (states) had no authority to free the slaves in the individual states absent a Constitutional Amendment. That would have happened eventually as more states were added.
Another possibility would have been to purchaswe and free all the slaves in the various states. A lot of people found that morally repugnant. Some commenters here over the years have found it morally repugnant. I find it morally repugnant.
But I consider 600,000 deaths, untold casualities and 150 years of rancor morally repugnant too. Might it have been better to pay all slave owners to free their slaves and avoid the war between the states?
Back to the main question, could Trump have negotiated a deal to avoid the war between the states while freeing the slaves? I suspect so but there is no way we will ever know.
John Henry
Somebody has made themselves busy again, talking about all the really super horrible, absurd, unhinged and crazy things that Trump has said. Dare I guess that there is 'artistic license' involved, perhaps even exaggeration, context-stripping, and hyperbole? Should I trust the unknown person using cheap journalism tricks, and believe that Trump is Hitler, for using cheap political tricks?
Or should I simply watch what Trump does?
Verification of why he loves the uneducated , person woman, man , camera , TV. Wow what's dementia brilliance!
.
While he's at it he might as well claim he could have negotiated with Hitler or the Japanese to avoid WW II.
The south wasn't going to give up slavery without a fight.
And Kim Jong Un played Trump, just as he has with other Presidents.
Democracy is over!
I think Trump is a dick-stepping promise breaking boob. But he is better for actual freedom and democracy than any corruptocrat.
At this point, I'd bet there's a significant difference between Trump and Biden as far as their ability to put on their own pants.
Trump always displays a regard for American and human life unlike oh, the last 10
Presidents or so.
Trump's thing is making a deal. Of course, his first thought about the Civil War is that a deal could have been struck to avoid all the bloodshed. He probably thinks he could have made a deal to avoid the Revolutionary War (not impossible), the Mexican War (also not impossible), and the Spanish-American War (likely to succeed). He's not necessarily wrong as slavery was abolished in other places without a civil war. That said, at the point that Lincoln was elected that probably was impossible as the South war far too entrenched in its positions. There had been compromises made to keep the country together going back to the Constitution, and all the deals had failed eventually. Lincoln would have been trying to avoid a fire after it already started.
If Trump gets any more incoherent MAGA evangelicals will claim he’s speaking in tongues…..
Trump said magnets don't work under water.
Biden said global warming is worse than nuclear war.
Both men said scientifically stupid things. Only the Democrat party makes policy based on the idiotic crap said by their presidential candidate.
The Battle Hymn of the Republic has the answers. That war had to be won.
Until September 2, 1864 the Democrat candidate McClellan was the sure winner on a platform of negotiating peace with a slavery retaining CSA. That had an unintended consequence of probable invasion by the British whose huge army in Canada was ready to reclaim the King’s property.
But That day Sherman’s Army won the 2 day battle of Jonesboro ( the only battle he won at Atlanta)cutting the railroad to Macon and causing immediate surrender of Atlanta and the re-election of Lincoln 2 months later.
Trump's musings about whether Lincoln could have 'cut a deal' are of no moment one way or the other, and is usual with Trump, the point of his musings is that he could have done a better job than anyone else. Not a news flash that he a narcissist and an ego-maniac. Still, it's certainly true that it's better to try to negotiate a crisis than fight a war to resolve it. But (i) Lincoln tried the 'cut a deal' approach, in his inaugural address and even before, during the 1860 campaign; and (ii) it takes two to 'cut a deal' and the other side wasn't even slightly interested.
It's pretty clear from the historical record that Lincoln understood from the get-go that war was likely and that, once it started, it was going to be about ending slavery. But in his public pronouncements he initially chose to frame it as a battle to preserve the Union. That had a lot to do with pro-slavery sentiment in Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri -- states that Lincoln had to keep on the federal side, which he was determined to do by (inter alia) focusing attention on patriotism for the Union rather than on an issue (slavery) that was likely to drive those states out of the Union ranks.
He does not seem to have claimed that magnets do not work underwater. Here's the actual quote:
“Think of it, magnets,” Trump said. “Now all I know about magnets is this, give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets, that’s the end of the magnets.”
He was perfectly correct though could have been more complete perhaps. He was talking about the electromagnetic catapult and trap systems on the new aircraft carrier. They have been debugging it for years and one of the issues as I understand it is that it does not stand up to a seagoing environment. The salt air and salt spray causes them a lot of problems.
Traditional hydraulic, steam and pneumatic systems are much more reliable. Because they are less sensitive to corrosion and because we have 150 years experience using them in a shipboiard environment.
The electromagnetic systems are really cool and have a lot of advantages. The only disadvantage is that they only work about 98% of the time.
John Henry
This is fake news.
John Henry
I put my pants on both legs at a time like everyone else.
What? You don't?
I think he does this kind of thing on purpose.
If he had said, there are corrosion problems with the electromagnetic catapults, everyone would just yawn.
If he talks about it like this, everybody talks aboout the problem in the context of what a boob he is.
BUT
Everyone talks about it and perhaps enough attention gets paid to adtually do something about it.
John Henry
BallpeenX,
I had thought of that idea of him running as the peace candidate. I even thought he could recycle Wilson's and Roosevelt's slogans "He kept us out of war"
Then i remembered that both lied about it. Both, in 1916 and 1940, while campaigning on keeping us out of the European nonsense, were actively scheming to drag us into it.
Ditto LBJ who campaigned in 64 on keeping us out of Vietnam. a few month later we had hundreds of thousands of troops there.
No, the fascists (A/K/A Demmies, progressives) have pretty much ruined the peace candidate concept.
John Henry
This is how Great Britain ended slavery, all without the tremendous loss of life and limb we had here:
"In 1832, Parliament abolished slavery in the Empire with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. The government purchased the slaves for £20,000,000 (the money went to rich plantation owners who mostly lived in England), and freed the slaves, especially those in the Caribbean sugar islands."
Kim Jong Un played nice during Trump's term, unlike what he did before and has after with other Presidents.
See, Amexpat, I FIFY.
Slavery ended in nearly every country in the Western Hemisphere without war. The US and Haiti were the exceptions. It certainly was possible to end it without war as other countries showed, but it would have taken longer.
Slavery ended in nearly every country in the Western Hemisphere without war. The US and Haiti were the exceptions. It certainly was possible to end it without war as other countries showed, but it would have taken longer.
"Is Donald “Wormwood” Trump ignorant of the Missouri Compromise."
Dunno. But I know newcomer AMDG is ignorant of the Missouri Compromise. Worse than ignorant, mistaken.
Any one who knows of the antebellum vitriol expressed by Northern and Southern politicians knows that Trump would never have been able to control his pamphleteering (the tweeting of the time) in order to build a negotiated solution. The current political climate is downright tame compared to what was said (and done) then.
Lincoln had his issues, but he was a really level-headed lawyer and negotiator. Had he not been assassinated we likely would have seen his brilliance in post-civil war Reconstruction so much more. There was so many different sides and he was able to hold them somewhat together, then when he was killed, the US lost its best chance.
"While he's at it he might as well claim he could have negotiated with Hitler or the Japanese to avoid WW II."
Yeah, because our fellow Americans from the South were evil - just like Hitler, Stalin or the Imperial Japanese Government. Funny, even Lincoln didn't agree on that. Of course, maybe you're not american. That would explain it.
Or maybe its Keyboard Kommando strikes again.
Trump said magnets don't work under water.
Biden said global warming is worse than nuclear war.
Both men said scientifically stupid things. Only the Democrat party makes policy based on the idiotic crap said by their presidential candidate.
I cannot recall another Althouse blog post where her supposed "cruel neutrality" was more badly exposed as silliness, as we see in this post.
First, had President Biden said anything like any of the eight dicsussed awful Trumpisms, Althouse and her Trumpian commenters would have had a field day with it.
The one that Althouse did pick out for a detailed defense was actually the most inexcusable of all of them. Neither Althouse nor NY Magazine linked, as they should have, to the wonderfully brutal column examining what it is that Nikki Haley and Donald Trump have been doing, with their Civil War idiocies. By Noah Berlatsky, it was just published at Aaron Rupar's terrific "Public Notice" Substack.
Berlatsky points out that Trump never specified what could have been "negotiated," or how it could have been negotiated. Trump was appealing, in a dumbed-down way, to the hundred-year old myth of the great Lost Cause ideology that permeated white supremacist thinking in the post-Civil War days of Jim Crow. It had nothing to do with any sort of peaceful diplomacy. And yet there was Althouse, asking "What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding?" As we know, Donald Trump has long been a student of Ghandi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
But let's not lose sight of the other Trump stupidities and the laughable defenses thereof. "Magnets"? I love the comment from above that a charged electromagnet would be exquisitely sensitive to being doused with water. Can anyone imagine Trump articulating something like that? Can anyone imagine Trump bothering to understand something like that? It isn't so much that Trump had a crazy idea in his head. Although he does have a truckload of crazy ideas in that head. The real thing is that Trump, who routinely speaks as though he is the smartest guy in the room, is generally the least articulate person in any room within which he finds himself. It's certainly possible that someone could pull and stretch and twist Trump's magnet notions into something sensible. But the work involved in doing that for Trump's benefit is just hilarious.
And I want to call attention to two other of the many Trump idiocies in that Iowa speech. One was Trump's manic glorifying the January 6 insurrectionists. It's hard to find any American crazy who is deeper into J6 conspiracy theory than Trump. The claim that it was an inside job orchestrated by the feds. "There was Antifa, and there was FBI..." Trump seems to have either coined, or popularized the term "January 6 Hostages" that Congressional Republicans are now jumping on. Profoundly crazy; even crazier that it seems to be an election loser. It would be one thing if it were craziness that was cleverly calculated to win. But it is craziness that so often seems to lose elections. Craziness whose only purpose is to soothe Trump's damaged psyche.
The final idiocy was Trump's bizarre false history that he could have repealed and replaced "Obamacare," but for Senator John McCain voting it down. Forget for a moment about Trump's deeply offensive and cruel mocking of McCain's war injuries. We all know that being offensive and cruel is a Trump feature, not a bug. Offense, and cruelty, is the point.
But more substantively important is the fact that Trump NEVER had a plan, or indeed any idea, about how to "replace" the Affordable Care Act. McCain didn't cast a deciding vote on any "replacement" plan. None was ever crafted by Trump or the Republicans. The legislation was purely an act to vandalize and de-fund the ACA. Nothing was offered in substitution to provide the "great care, at lower cost" that Trump had promised repeatedly in his campaign. It's one of the biggest and worst lies ever uttered by Trump, a world-class liar.
Amexpat writes, "The [South] wasn't going to give up slavery without a fight."
The South seceded while wearing very dark rose-colored glasses. King Cotton was the foundation of their ambitions. King Cotton energized European manufacturing; cut the supply and British mills would grind to a halt, creating famine conditions in the English Midlands. To preserve their social hierarchy, the mill-owning gentry would demand formal recognition of the Confederacy, and that would be that. Lincoln and the North would face an abominable choice -- let the South go peaceably or face the British Empire. That was the King Cotton theory, at any rate.
However, King Cotton's crown was quite tarnished by 1860. The session of South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi, the leading cotton-producing states, produced hardly a ripple in the British textile industry. Next, the Slavocrats tried burning their produce to create an international shortage, yet Egyptian and Indian cotton seamlessly filled the gap. Cotton, the Secessia's political weapon of choice could have been Lincoln's decisive weapon to restore the Union.
Slavery could have been ended without 600,000 dead young Americans had Lincoln resisted South Carolina's provocation over Fort Sumter. It was his call for 75,000 volunteers that in turn provoked the secession of Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. After that blood on both sides would inevitably have been shed, and both sides would inevitably march through the gates of hell.
Lincoln could have attacked slavery through taxation by making slave labor more costly than free labor. For example, the Republican-dominated Congress could have imposed a 200 percent export duty on all slave-produced goods. However, Winfield Scott proposed to strangle the South through a blockade, a dangerous act of war that could have easily rebounded against the Union. In the light of international law, as it existed in the mid-19th century, blockading fleets had no legal authority over neutral shipping. If, for example, a Russian-flagged merchant ship tried to make port at Charleston, the Union blockaders could board her, turn her back, basically have their way with that vessel because the Imperial Russian Navy could do little about it, however, such was not the case if that merchantman flew the Red Ensign. Consequently, Scott's "Anaconda Plan" was a constricting serpent with a lot of holes in it that British-flagged ships routinely penetrated. As noted above, a blockade is an act of war in international waters, and a very dangerous act. By taking Scott's advice Lincoln almost bogged the whole Civil War. Look up the Trent Affair if you doubt it.
A blockade is an act of war, but taxation is not. Warships have no legal authority over neutral ships, but revenue cutters have such authority by international law. Whereas the Union navy could not blockade the Confederacy without running the risk of war with the British Empire, revenue cutters could lawfully collect export duties from any ship carrying slave-produced goods from any United States port and risk nothing from the great powers. Instead, they would have found substitute goods elsewhere rather than pay the duties. With nearly all the Secessionist legislators absent from Congress, Lincoln could have waged economic war on the South virtually without limit. Cut off their money and the Slavocrats could be brought to heel as long as Lincoln's volunteers stayed on the defensive. However, once Southern blood was shed on Southern fields, there was no going back. As things turned out, it was lack of hard currency that drowned the Confederacy, and not that rising tide of blood. An economic civil war would have lasted longer than five years but would have been just as decisive.
"He claimed magnets don’t work underwater....”
Except he didn’t.
He said if you put a magnet in water, it would stop workin, which - as others have pointed out - can be true in many cases.
Blogger Amexpat said...
While he's at it he might as well claim he could have negotiated with Hitler or the Japanese to avoid WW II.
Well, he certainly could have avoided the US getting involved in either war. My youngest grandson could have done that and he won't be 6 until March. All it would have taken, on our part, is not to go to war with them starting in 1939 or so and pushing, goading and pushing until they declared war in December 41.
We had no dog in that fight. We should have just let the Europeans fight. Ditto the Japanese.
The south wasn't going to give up slavery without a fight.
Bullshit. Offer them something more attractive in return and they would have given up slavery in a heartbeat. There is always a deal that can be done.
What would have been attractive enough to make them give up slavery? Money, perhaps. A deal on tariffs, maybe. Something else?
A lot of people tried negotiating without success as several have mentioned. The deep thinkers and great minds of the time.
Ditto the middle east. How many billions have been spent on peace negotiations since Camp David accords? How much on weaponry? How much in blood of our troops. The deep thinkers and great intellects of our day have been negotiating for 50 years with no success. Donald Trump was in office less than 3 years and made more progress than all the rest of the world had done in 100.
As I said in an earlier comment, the disagreements between north and south were childs play compared to those between Jew and Arab.
Maybe we need fewer deep thinking great intellects and more deal makers. Or perhaps just someone who wants peace instead of war. There's lots of money in war, but lots of death and horror too.
John Henry
In regards to "magnets don't work in water", did he say under oath that despite being a man that he couldn't define a man because he wasn't a biologist?
Do Democrats realize no one will remember these quotes later, but they'll obviously here over and over that we have to accept men can have babies and play in women's sports? That's the case before we even dig into what exactly Trump said, was there any context as Ivy League Presidents would say, and how will Trump act on such information. We know how Democrats are acting on the notion that a man can be a woman by just saying so.
"He claimed magnets don’t work underwater...”
If you're free from the obligation to cite direct quotes and remain within context, you can make a liar, a criminal, or an idiot of anyone... including Saint Obama the Chronic.
Look, they've been LYING about Trump for 7 years. Taking quotes out of context, paraphrasing him in a dishonest fashion, putting the worst interpetation on what he said, and relying on hearsay from anonymous sources "familiar with the situation" who said "Trump said X"
And of course using the good ol' fashion "ransom note" quote. Y'know: Trump said "I...like...Nazis.."
I dont remember the "magnets". I do remember the "bleaching your lungs can cure Covid" because I was listening to the Covid press conference when Trump said it. He was speculating that since bleach was being forward by Fucci and the doctors as a Covid Killer, whether there was someway we could develop something similar that would kill Covid in our lungs. He was also aware that light is actually used by doctors to kill organisms in your body and asked if that was also possible in fighting Covid.
IOW, he was spitballing and "asking questions" which is what any leader should be doing to experts. This was "pounced on" by the MSM to make it look like Trump was proposing people drink Bleach!
There are just too many of these lies and distortions put out by the MSM to shoot down. And it doesn't really matter. The lies don't come out of good faith. Its all part of their game plan: "Destroy Trump - at any cost". Knock down one lie, and they'll come up with another.
Yeah, because our fellow Americans from the South were evil - just like Hitler, Stalin or the Imperial Japanese Government. Funny, even Lincoln didn't agree on that. Of course, maybe you're not american. That would explain it.
The point I was making is that Trump is such a narcissist that he thinks he could have solved any historical problem. I could have also said the US War of Independence
It wasn't my intention to equate southern slavery with Nazi Germany or Stalin's Soviet Union, but yeah, I do think southern slavery was an evil system along those lines and it needed to be defeated.
And I'm American. But what the fuck difference does that make, unless you want to resort to a cheap ad hominem attack.
Quick! Somebody ask Joe Biden about Lewis and Clark!
Magnets? So many Juggalos for Trump in these comments, I can smell the Faygo burps.
John henry said...
He does not seem to have claimed that magnets do not work underwater. Here's the actual quote:
“Think of it, magnets,” Trump said. “Now all I know about magnets is this, give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets, that’s the end of the magnets.”
He was perfectly correct though could have been more complete perhaps. He was talking about the electromagnetic catapult and trap systems on the new aircraft carrier. They have been debugging it for years and one of the issues as I understand it is that it does not stand up to a seagoing environment. The salt air and salt spray causes them a lot of problems.
Traditional hydraulic, steam and pneumatic systems are much more reliable. Because they are less sensitive to corrosion and because we have 150 years experience using them in a shipboiard environment.
The electromagnetic systems are really cool and have a lot of advantages. The only disadvantage is that they only work about 98% of the time.
John Henry
That's a cool story. And interesting. Althouse is interested in interesting.
And the kerfuffle would never have arisen this way, if Donald Trump employed quality speechwriters to craft valid, interesting, fact-checked articulate speeches and then Trump delivered them.
But he doesn't do that. He riffs, and bloviates, and brags, and exaggerates, and lies in his own self-absorbed style. If we wanted to make sense out of it, we would have to really work at it, giving Trump the benefit of every conceivable interpretation.
To which I say, oh fuck that. I'm not lifting a finger, much less a brain cell, to try to interpret Trump favorably. I'm not making any effort for the benefit of Trump. Matter of fact, I'll do the opposite. I don't like him; I have no reason to like him, and I am going to attack him at every opportunity. I'll treat his every utterance like a cross-examination opportunity.
Attack, attack, attack. Never give an inch, conversationally, like most normal human beings.
Precisely. As. Trump. Does.
I think somebody should thank all the posters here who have sacrificed so much due to the impatient arrogance of leaders like Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR.
Warmongering buffoons, one and all.
"This was "pounced on" by the MSM to make it look like Trump was proposing people drink Bleach!"
Not just the MSM. There is a poster here who repeats this "factoid" fairly regularly.
Once the farmers from the Midwest; Wisconsin, Michigan Ohio... in the Western Army saw the culture of the South and conditions of all not of the plantation class, negotiated settlement was not possible.
Victor Davis Hanson on Sherman and his Western Army. And the farmers meeting the poor Southern Whites and black slaves.
https://youtu.be/hGVCYkuTvII?t=2056
"...I distrust ALL media framing of “what Trump said”.
Mr. Wolf needs very few words to cover my thoughts.
John henry said...
"Ditto the middle east. How many billions have been spent on peace negotiations since Camp David accords? How much on weaponry? How much in blood of our troops. The deep thinkers and great intellects of our day have been negotiating for 50 years with no success. Donald Trump was in office less than 3 years and made more progress than all the rest of the world had done in 100."
Yup. There's a lot of money to be made in managing a problem instead of solving it. Can't have the new guy come in and actually make progress. Then people might actually start to expect results.
Before Lincoln was even sworn into office seven (of 34) states had seceded. Perhaps a great negotiator could have kept some of the tranche of four states that followed — and North Carolina seceded reluctantly, mostly because it was surrounded to the north, west, and south by states that seceded — things could have been different. Once Ft. Sumter was fired upon, there was no room for negotiation at all.
However the problem for Dumbocrats is twofold. First, we won’t be hiring Trump because he is perfect; we are hiring him to clean up after four years of Democrat corruption and misrule. Second, it’s not as though their own candidate doesn’t believe in some very strange things himself.
"There's a lot of money to be made in managing a problem instead of solving it."
Well said, Rocco. I'm glad we had presidents like Lincoln and FDR, who decided to solve their problems rather than manage them.
Rich said...
"If Trump gets any more incoherent MAGA evangelicals will claim he’s speaking in tongues….."
So. You and Chuck are in favor of war?
Maybe the Republicans could have offered to compensate the slaveowners. That's what the British did in 1833, when they abolished slavery. War is always very expensive, never mind the bloodshed, the dead and wounded, and I doubt if the cost of paying compensation for freeing each slave at market value would have been more than the cost of the Civil War.
Surely, the British example must have been considered. I’m sure the slaveowners in the South would have taken the money.
tolkein, your speculation about what the slaveholders in the South would have accepted has no basis in the historical record.
Other than that, it's an excellent point.
But why wasn’t buying out the slaveowners considered?
Why wasn’t the British example discussed by abolitionists? Some slaveowners would surely have also thought about it. A chance to free up capital tied up in slaves
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