Sorry, but I don’t think it important that he backed Strange first nor that he said if Moore was guilty of hitting on underage girls (16 is the age of consent, unless they have a Romeo law) he should drop out. He should never have endorsed him for any reason because of Moore’s past judicial history. That alone should have been enough to for him to remain silent.

I do understand the need for maintaining numbers in the two Houses, but sometimes a savvy man will just let it go. One of the things I see about Trump is that he’s savvy in business politics, but not in national or international politics. Pandering to the base is neither after election. Thus the brouhaha over shithole nations. People from those shithole nations may really respect this nation they come to while Norwegians may not.

Finally, I was a bit hard on you about being ‘coy’. I apologize.

By the way, Trump did not back Moore originally. He backed establishment candidate Strange:

President Donald Trump supported Moore’s opponent Strange during the primary runoff, and almost the whole national Republican establishment wanted Strange to win. Trump’s efforts on behalf of Strange included a rally in Alabama, plus tweeting…

Strange maintained his endorsement from Trump, who campaigned for him in Huntsville during the closing days of the campaign.Trump’s endorsement of Strange sparked criticism among his own base, many of whom preferred Moore and detested Strange for his seemingly establishment feel. Several notable people close to Trump broke from the President to endorse Moore, including HUD Secretary Ben Carson and Breitbart Executive Chairman Steve Bannon. Despite the endorsement of Trump, Strange was handily defeated by Roy Moore in the runoff.

Trump backed Strange even though he was criticized for it by his “base.” After the revelations about Moore, Trump said he should drop out if guilty. It seemed to me that Trump was angry at the way things had gone in Alabama; he had sensed Moore was trouble for many reasons and wanted Strange to win. Finally, when it was clear that Moore would not drop out, Trump endorsed him about a week before the election, and never went to the state to campaign for him.

I don’t see any problem with any of that. I can’t stand Moore; couldn’t stand him even before the allegations. I found the allegations to be weak factually—perhaps 50/50 that they’re true (I’m speaking of the more serious allegations, not the ones that he dated young women of legal age when he was a man in his early thirties, which I don’t dispute nor do I especially care about that aspect). But of course Trump—or any other Republican, or any Democrat if placed in the same position—ended up endorsing Moore, in an attempt to keep the same narrow majority in the Senate rather than narrow it down further.

I’m that same Ariel, period, no matter your identifiers. I may have changed in voice, but 10 years can do that. Funny thing, you had the same problem back then with whether I was male or female because ‘Ariel’. It’s the name of the only British motorcycle marque that produced a four-cylinder for decades, the Gentleman’s Ride, the Ariel Square-Four. That should jog your memory.

Now, thank you for filling in the past history of your take on Trump. Pretty much my exact take on him going back to “The Art of the Deal”. Pretty much what I thought all the way to the election. After the election, I realized the Republican Party had left me so I went Independent. It’s because…

You gave all the reasons why. The Party just because of the Charlie Sheen “winning” embraced a guy that makes Clinton an altar boy of impeccable character and unfaltering integrity. How can a party claiming the better of ideals embrace an habitual liar? That’s the problem with his ‘fake news’, he’s a liar and whatever he claims true is too often a lie. The corollary is that what he often claims as false is likely true. That’s not a good choice for president. Habitual liars lie to everyone about anything.

He has not been a pleasant surprise for me. He has simply been ‘he can’t get everything wrong’. He’s wrong-headed about illegal immigration and its solution; his approach to foreign affairs is a guy with a hammer and every ally a nail; his moves on deregulation invokes Chesterton’s fence.

Appointments to either SCOTUS or lower federal courts just make me chuckle because both Republicans and Democrats think they got the power cuz they got their boys in, then those boys vote just the opposite. Remember, the Judiciary is independent.

What I do put stock in is backing Roy Moore, a miscreant that was kicked out of the Judiciary, was it twice?, because he just can’t follow the law, and the pardon of Arpaio (I live in Maricopa County), done too early and done for another miscreant that just couldn’t follow the law. Don’t misunderstand, I know and embrace that the President has absolute power to grant a pardon and that protocol does not constrain that power. But a lot of us in this county are pissed that he did it before sentencing because it gives Arpaio the claim that he was never guilty. So he’s now running for the Senate.

I’m sorry, but you doing the coy shtick about who you voted for leaves me cold. So I’ll call, I’m sure you voted for Trump. Prove me wrong. Oh, wait, you can’t reveal that…

I without hesitation voted as a Republican for Hillary by weighing everything you wrote about Trump in your reply, and everything about Hillary, and she came out the lesser of two evils, and that sucked. Big time because the Republican party nominated the greater of the two evils.

Exactly. Your take is no better than mine or manju’s because it is all about how we perceive his words. And there’s the problem with his words, which goes back to mercurial, petty, vindictive, thin-skinned, and so on. As well as, in his tweets, words poorly formed. Just thank g*d that Bush didn’t tweet. That poor man is so inarticulate.

I knew that there was a commenter here long ago with the moniker “Ariel,” but you have different identifiers than he (or she, I suppose) did.

All you have to do to find out what I’ve thought of Trump over time is to read the blog and old posts. I’ve certainly written plenty of them. It’s not a mystery. But the summary version is that I have long thought him to be an enormous narcissist, a nasty and vulgar guy, a dirty fighter, untrustworthy, angry, not a conservative, and a habitual liar who was also smart and strategically clever. During the campaign I did not want him to be nominated, and after he was nominated I thought he would lose although I wasn’t 100% certain. After he won I hoped for the best; I had always said that if somehow he got elected I hoped I was wrong about his untrustworthiness and lack of conservatism (I was pretty sure I wasn’t wrong about his narcissism!). As president, he has been a pleasant surprise to me in those ways, but he’s still narcissistic and can be a very nasty guy when he decides to be.

And what makes you so sure I voted for Trump, even with his running as a Republican? It’s something I announced ahead of time that I would not reveal (even when I was undecided either way), and I never have revealed whether I did or didn’t.

He isn’t you, either, nor do you have a clue how he’s using the phrase. No one has a clue except Trump, and maybe even he doesn’t know.

My opinion of his tone is based on a lot of study and observation of the man and of his tweets, and of his talk—both scripted and unscripted—over a period of decades.

Of course I could be wrong, as could you.

I think highly of Jeff Flake. I hope he never once used RINO, because that was the beginning of the end for the Republican party, not in power but in substance. Funny thing, then they elected a RINO, confusing a pandering populist with a Republican because he said the right things.

What Manju and I am saying is that he isn’t you. He is Trump, and he isn’t using it like you do.

What Neo is failing to give is that what she sees as ‘dripping in sarcasm’ is subjective. Further, even after acknowledging he’s a narcissist (big time, something she downplays) she interprets a ‘joke about himself’ as an honest act. Does a narcissist honestly joke about himself or does he just pander?

And notice wither she goes ” He’s smart in a way that’s not bookish, however, and which most academics or people worshipful of that type of intellectual smartness can’t credit or understand.” Except many people can understand that way of smart and still realize it’s severe shortcomings, like, you know, really. a real, profound ignorance of history with all that means, without being worshipful of bookish. Books expand our knowledge beyond what we can directly experience, and what we create as knowledge through only our experience, the Trump problem…I’m damn happy that George W. actually did read books and drew from them, however inarticulate he was in expressing what he knew.

I believe you’re reading into Trump what you want to believe across all his tweets. You know anyone, including you, is capable of doing that. Yes he is smart, so was Jimmy Carter (who had one of or the highest IQ of any president), but he is mercurial, thin-skinned, petty, vindictive, embraces a dichotomy of winners and losers (the driving force behind ‘I’m a billionaire when most estimates say he isn’t), lies like Hillary, and a braggart and a raging narcissist (I added an adjective). View the tweets from that vantage and they aren’t that smart.

I’m not entering into my view of Trump from 2015 or 2005. I’ve known who this guy was from the 90s or earlier. I read “The Art of the Deal” and tossed it because the personality flaws were rampant. Yes, of course, if people don’t help you going up, then do everything to destroy them once you have the power to do so. That’s so adult.

What amuses me to no end is that he is the Republican Clinton over sex. And like the feminists, you all just excuse him cuz he’s your guy. I’m not directing that at you, I’m directing that at the hypocrisy of partisanship. It just makes me chuckle that Republicans that clucked over Clinton now embrace a guy that believes he can ‘grab pussy’ because he’s rich. Yes, they did give lip-service to how bad that it is.

As for deft and daft, “Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence…” You ignored that it wasn’t after, as Trump claims, it has always been there. Likely because of that string I gave in my second paragraph. The statement was a lie or willfully ignorant. And, really, like, do you really like the overheated rhetoric based on either? Mira, I try not to make excuses for over-the-top-rhetoric. Lapdogs? Is he fighting the Cold War from the Communist side? (Read me like you do Trump.)

““Fake news” is a very meaningful phrase, but it refers to one thing traditionally and another thing as Trump uses it. Traditionally, it meant a story made up totally out of the whole cloth. Trump uses it to mean a story with major errors that are not in his favor.” I left out the rest which sounded too much like confirmation bias (that “consistently against the Right”, when it’s more consistent in going where the story to sell, “I’ve been writing about errors”, none of which addresses how he uses the phrase other than as a erroneous apologetic). How Trump uses it is not “major errors” but whenever it criticizes him (that’s his coinage). Right on, minor error, major error, no difference. Again, you parsed it to favor what you need it do be. He declares ‘fake news’ more often than I change underwear, and 1/3 of men my age have an enlarged prostate. Yes, newspapers make errors, they run with stories not well vetted, but that is not how he is using it. It’s a rhetorical device to dismiss any and everything that is a criticism. Traditionally, ‘fake news’ wasn’t a phrase any of us used except once in a great, great while. it just wasn’t a common phrase. Now, in one campaign cycle, it is overused. Right now I’m hearing Midnight Oil’s song “Short Memories” (the lead singer became a Member of Parliament, then a Minister, but then ‘Blue Sky Mine” is about one of the most egregious violations of worker safety combined with ecological disaster in the Pilbara, so I guess it fits.)

Does “Trump had run on any party” mean that you considered Trump an outstanding candidate prior to the election? Not just the lesser of two evils, but an outstanding candidate? The SCOTUS, federal judges, foreign policy (which I have to raise an eyebrow to because his foreign policy is catering to autocrats like, really, Putin while infuriating our allies, not to mention embracing a neo-fascist video that put even the British on edge), is all after the fact. My point was would you have voted for him if he were a Democrat? Sorry to say, I don’t think so because of your apologetics. Me. he’s Clinton, Carter, with Nixon. Wrong-headed to the extreme, without any of the knowledge of history that Nixon had.

Finally, business acumen and it’s ‘smarts’ isn’t directly transferable to statesmanship. It’s a different category. I think we’re watching that unfold.