Trump defends his sanity

NewCreation435

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"President Donald Trump, coming off a week of heightened scrutiny over his mental health, sought to put the topic to rest on Saturday by declaring himself extraordinarily intelligent and undeniably right in the head.

By personally inserting himself into the debate, however, Trump did little to quiet what has become a consuming question in Washington: Is Trump's mind sound enough to govern?"

the rest of the article is here
http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/06/politics/president-donald-trump-stable-genius-smart/index.html
 

Lamb

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Trump is very outspoken and says things that embarrass us but does mean he's insane? I see people write horrible and embarrassing things on the internet all the time...does that make everyone insane too?
 

tango

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My concern with much of this sort of thing is that although there do appear to be at least some signs that Trump isn't as sound as he might be, so much of the reporting comes from the left-wing press (CNN here, the Guardian in the UK) that it becomes difficult to tell how much of it is a genuine sign of a mental instability and how much of it is a sign of an increased level of psychopathology that is frequently seen in many political leaders.

The meek may inherit the earth but they are unlikely to be elected to high office. It does take a certain personality type to fight through the process and still be standing at the end of it all. How much of the concern about Trump is due to the things he does, and how much is due to his (foolish, IMO) tendency to take to Twitter so regularly seems difficult to unpick.

The way it seems so many people out to discredit The Other Guy at any cost these days does little to help the process, particularly in the light of how so much journalistic ink covering this sort of thing is from the left wing press. If Fox News were publishing articles questioning his stability that would be a reason to be worried.
 

NewCreation435

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My concern with much of this sort of thing is that although there do appear to be at least some signs that Trump isn't as sound as he might be, so much of the reporting comes from the left-wing press (CNN here, the Guardian in the UK) that it becomes difficult to tell how much of it is a genuine sign of a mental instability and how much of it is a sign of an increased level of psychopathology that is frequently seen in many political leaders.

The meek may inherit the earth but they are unlikely to be elected to high office. It does take a certain personality type to fight through the process and still be standing at the end of it all. How much of the concern about Trump is due to the things he does, and how much is due to his (foolish, IMO) tendency to take to Twitter so regularly seems difficult to unpick.

The way it seems so many people out to discredit The Other Guy at any cost these days does little to help the process, particularly in the light of how so much journalistic ink covering this sort of thing is from the left wing press. If Fox News were publishing articles questioning his stability that would be a reason to be worried.

It does seem like the media is more polarized than ever and often contributes to the sense that the political parties are at war with each other instead of suppose to be working together. With such extreme views of the other side there is no motivation or political will to work together it seems
 

psalms 91

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If je isnt a little off then he is a very stupid person with some of the things he has said and done. Personally I do think he is unhinged and dangerous for this country
 

NewCreation435

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If je isnt a little off then he is a very stupid person with some of the things he has said and done. Personally I do think he is unhinged and dangerous for this country

His lack of experience is a big concern. Things such as how to get laws passed in Congress. His temper tantrums that often come across as childish is a big concern also. Not everything needs to be said on Twitter.
 

Josiah

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"President Donald Trump, coming off a week of heightened scrutiny over his mental health, sought to put the topic to rest on Saturday by declaring himself extraordinarily intelligent and undeniably right in the head.

By personally inserting himself into the debate, however, Trump did little to quiet what has become a consuming question in Washington: Is Trump's mind sound enough to govern?"

the rest of the article is here
http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/06/politics/president-donald-trump-stable-genius-smart/index.html


Frankly, I think this is 90% politics.....

To the liberal puppet media, EVERY Republican since Ike has been an ignorant, unintelligent, stupid person. They cast Nixon, Reagan, Ford, both Bushes and now Trump as profoundly stupid. It wouldn't have mattered which of the 17 candidates who campaigned to get the Republican nomination, the liberal press would have chanted constantly "Idiot! Stupid! Ignorant!" just as they have every Republican for the past 60 years. On the other hand, with the POSSIBLE exception of Carter, the liberal media has cast every Democrat as a genius, supremely well educated, one of the smartest people on the planet - so much so that even their spouse was brilliant merely by being in the presence of their husband.

It's just how the media rolls. It's perfectly predictable. And it's disgusting.



- Josiah
 

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Some on the right regard those on the left as a bunch of simpering idiots. On the other hand, some on the left regard those of the right as a collection of uneducated bumpkins. Both sides are partly correct in that there are a few on each side that fit the description. But mostly they are wrong because the vast majority on both sides are actually intelligent, patriotic citizens who just happen to have different but perfectly valid political philosophies. Politics is in danger, real danger, of becoming the new racism.
 

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This particular ploy is so transparent, though. The Democrats vowed to overthrow the results of the presidential election from "Day One." There was no secret about it. They tried to undermine the Electoral College's work and put their party's money and personnel behind the Green Party's petition for recounts of the popular vote totals in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. When these didn't succeed, they turned to direct protest and violence along with the "Trump Collusion with Russia" crusade that they hoped would result in an impeachment. That hasn't produced much so far, so the next approach was to ride the sexual predator theme, although most of the bad actors have been influential Democrats. That didn't catch fire, so now "he's crazy." The reason, of course, isn't because he IS crazy but because this course of action has been urged by several Democrat strategists who think the 25th amendment providing for replacing a president who is incapacitated is about their last hope.
 

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Some on the right regard those on the left as a bunch of simpering idiots. On the other hand, some on the left regard those of the right as a collection of uneducated bumpkins. Both sides are partly correct in that there are a few on each side that fit the description. But mostly they are wrong because the vast majority on both sides are actually intelligent, patriotic citizens who just happen to have different but perfectly valid political philosophies. Politics is in danger, real danger, of becoming the new racism.

Not sure that that is correct to say. Many individual Democrats remain standard-issue liberals, but the party itself has been totally captured by militant Socialists who can hardly be considered to be "patriotic."

Incidentally, that is one reason why the usual thinking about the upcoming elections could be wrong. While the pattern usually is for the out-of-power party to win the off-year elections, and there is a wonderful opportunity for the Democrats to capitalize on that "time for a change" appeal, it is unlikely that the party can pull back from the extremism it has embraced. Some of that drift came naturally as part of the party's campaign to overturn the previous presidential election, but Socialism a la Bernie Sanders was once out of fashion among Democrats but obviously isn't so anymore, Trump or no Trump..
 

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Insane that he has to defend his sanity.
 

tango

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His lack of experience is a big concern. Things such as how to get laws passed in Congress. His temper tantrums that often come across as childish is a big concern also. Not everything needs to be said on Twitter.

I often wonder what previous presidents would have said on Twitter, had they used it as frequently as Trump. It's easy to look at the things he tweets and think he's unhinged when we have no idea what a stream of tweets from Obama, Bush, Clinton etc would have looked like. The fact he does tweet so frequently appears to be particularly unhelpful in a sense but it may be little more than an outlet where previous presidents thought equally daft things but had the sense (or suffered the lack of technology, depending) to not dump an unfiltered stream of consciousness on the global public.
 

tango

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Some on the right regard those on the left as a bunch of simpering idiots. On the other hand, some on the left regard those of the right as a collection of uneducated bumpkins. Both sides are partly correct in that there are a few on each side that fit the description. But mostly they are wrong because the vast majority on both sides are actually intelligent, patriotic citizens who just happen to have different but perfectly valid political philosophies. Politics is in danger, real danger, of becoming the new racism.

The increasing polarisation is definitely cause for concern but I often wonder whether either side is inherently better or worse than the other as far as that is concerned.

To some on the left, if you see any merit at all in Donald Trump as a president then you're obviously lacking in intelligence and there's a good chance you're looking at your sister and thinking she's kinda cute. And there probably are a few folks out there just like that who do vote Republican, and a few of them would vote for a turnip if it had the red rosette on it. Likewise to some on the right if you see any merit at all in Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate then you're probably just waiting for good old fashioned communism to take over the country, and already have your own hammer and sickle flag to raise in celebration. And there probably are a few folks out there just like that who do vote Democrat, and a few of them would vote for a turnip if it had a blue rosette on it.

One major problem is simply the use of the letters R and D after just about everything in politics. I forget which pieces of legislation were used, but I remember reading a study a while back about people who were asked whether they agreed with the provisions of pieces of legislation - some with a description of what the law was aiming to do and others with the name of the act or the affiliation of the politicians pushing it. I remember being surprised at just how much difference there was in support for an act when people didn't know which side was pushing it, but apparently people were far more likely to support an act if their side supported it and far more likely to reject an act if the other side supported it, than if they were just told the general basis for the law and what it was trying to achieve. It's hard to find common ground in a two-party system, particularly when that system becomes tribal, and it's pretty much assumed that anything the other side does is bad while anything our side does is good.

The most obvious example of this seems to be the whole issue of the so-called Affordable Care Act. The loudest voices on the right called for repeal and replacement even though there seems to be precious little idea of just what would replace it, or how to provide meaningful health care to those that such repeal and replace would leave behind. The loudest voices on the left insist it should not only stay exactly as is but potentially be enhanced, even though it leaves swathes of people without affordable health care and produces truly punitive effective marginal tax rates on people (particularly unhealthy people) at the lower end of the income scale.

I'd just love to see what might happen if the two sides were to actually work together for the good of the country rather than their own political advantage. I'd also really like to see what might happen if Congress were required to obey every law that they imposed on everyone else. Imagine how good the provisions of the ACA might be if Congress had to buy their own healthcare plans on an exchange.
 

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I often wonder what previous presidents would have said on Twitter, had they used it as frequently as Trump. It's easy to look at the things he tweets and think he's unhinged when we have no idea what a stream of tweets from Obama, Bush, Clinton etc would have looked like. The fact he does tweet so frequently appears to be particularly unhelpful in a sense but it may be little more than an outlet where previous presidents thought equally daft things but had the sense (or suffered the lack of technology, depending) to not dump an unfiltered stream of consciousness on the global public.
The president has said that he needs such a direct line to the American people since the media are, for the most part, determined to ignore anything he does that's positive, invent negative things, and exaggerate anything that can be made to seem indicative of a presidency that is confused.

Given that this is obviously a correct view of the media's actions, I don't think we can fault him for tweeting.
 

NewCreation435

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The president has said that he needs such a direct line to the American people since the media are, for the most part, determined to ignore anything he does that's positive, invent negative things, and exaggerate anything that can be made to seem indicative of a presidency that is confused.

Given that this is obviously a correct view of the media's actions, I don't think we can fault him for tweeting.

And if all he did was use it to communicate I could get behind that. But, he uses it to attack people in a very childish way. As President, you have to know that people are going to be critical of what you do. You have to be prepared for that as part of the job. But, this President takes it personally whenever anyone disagrees with him.
 

Albion

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And if all he did was use it to communicate I could get behind that. But, he uses it to attack people in a very childish way. As President, you have to know that people are going to be critical of what you do. You have to be prepared for that as part of the job. But, this President takes it personally whenever anyone disagrees with him.

Well, I was responding mainly to what Tango had said, which was basically about whether or not Trump tweeting is a good idea--and whether prior presidents would have done it differently if Twitter were available to them.

If you or anyone takes exception to what he says in some of them, I am not disputing that.

Your other point--is he behaving in an unpresidential way--I can appreciate. However, there is another side to that. Some other political leaders have chosen to keep their dignity and their tongues in the face of relentless ridicule and defamation that came from their partisan adversaries and, what happened to them? They wound up being thought by the low-information voter to be exactly what the critics said of them. And they looked weak for taking it. A decent case can be made that Trump has successfully countered many of the lies directed at and about him by fighting back.
 
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psalms 91

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Well, I was responding mainly to what Tango had said, which was basically about whether or not Trump tweeting is a good idea--and whether prior presidents would have done it differently if Twitter were available to them.

If you or anyone takes exception to what he says in some of them, I am not disputing that.

Your other point--is he behaving in an unpresidential way--I can appreciate. However, there is another side to that. Some other political leaders have chosen to keep their dignity and their tongues in the face of relentless ridicule and defamation that came from their partisan adversaries and, what happened to them? They wound up being thought by the low-information voter to be exactly what the critics said of them. And they looked weak for taking it. A decent case can be made that Trump has successfully countered many of the lies directed at and about him by fighting back.
There are ways to fight back and then there is childishness
 

Albion

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There are ways to fight back and then there is childishness
As I said, the content of his tweets is open to question. I was mainly dealing with the fact that he DOES rely to a large degree upon them, which is something we haven't seen in earlier presidents.

But since you made your point above, I do believe that it should be said that many, probably most, of the president's tweets are not "childish." The ones that are questionable, such as the 'big button' one, are rehashed and rehashed while five others posted by him the same morning are all but ignored--by the media, that is, which is why people like you and I talk about the one and not the many.
 

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If je isnt a little off then he is a very stupid person with some of the things he has said and done. Personally I do think he is unhinged and dangerous for this country
Time will tell just how dangerous he is. I, too, think he is not right in the head.
 

Albion

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Because he talks like half the people we know rather than in the stilted manner that Obama, for example, did?
 
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