re: To the Anti-trumps on this board

quote:

---

I think we can all admit that the federal government is absolutely cancerous with party loyalists, and the judicial is an absolute shite show. Giving power back to the establishment would be suicide

---

In what world is Trump actually doing this sort of political and structural realignment though?

Peel away the superficial rhetoric and what do we have from Trump’s presidency a year in? An almost entirely boilerplate Republican legislative agenda that you could of gotten from any Romney, Bush, or McCain. Deficit busting tax cuts anchored around their donor class, and the same questionable industry favoring/consumer harming legislation we’ve seen before, like the bill earlier this year that let ISP’s sell your data without consent. A justice department that looks like all the failed and corrupt ideas of the last quarter century wrapped up into the perfect vessel for them in Jeff Sessions . Including stumbling into another potentially hazardous escalation of the private/public shadow security state, governed through unchecked executive power.

If the true backbone of Trump’s claim of legitimacy is draining the swamp and ridding the country of cancerous loyalists, his administration certainly hasn’t reflected that. An administration that has come to be dominated with either sycophants or industry cronies. Going from a guy that once said he would get tough on drug companies and prices, to appointing their cronies to run his health department . Abandoning his pledges in the process. Going from a guy that once stumped and ran campaign ads about Goldman Sachs’ corrosive governmental capture, to now appointing a half dozen of them to key positions. Including handing off much of his economic agenda to them. Appointees and cabinet members writ large, looking to enrich the same set of people, including themselves, as we have seen time and again from administration’s that have aged poorly. From no-bid contracts for friends and allies, to profiting off the agenda you seek to pass.

Including being beholden to and chasing the same set of donors the rest of the GOPe is chasing, and as we saw this week, willing to do their bidding to secure it.


I’m struggling to find why anyone should consider Trump, by his actions not his words, any different than the predecessors most of his fans have come to detest? Normally citing the very sort of things Trump is currently engaging in as the evidence for that derision.


If the media has one overarching flaw in this country, it would have to be the preferential treatment given to the theatre and pageantry of politics at the expense of substance. Not everyone, plenty are doing good work, but certainly enough that over a year in, there is very little discussion or accountability toward how Trump’s campaign rhetoric and promises are so starkly divergent from his actual governance.

If you are someone that was skeptical of the coat of paint his supporters would point to for why they support Trump on the campaign trail and into his early administration, you would be hard pressed to make a convincing case a year in that such skepticism wasn’t warranted and ultimately correct.