Current Events > I refuse to believe people were dumb enough to believe Trump would be good in 16

(+) Yeah! (+)

Even believing he would be better than Hilary was a stupid opinion.

This is a guy who is notorious for being narcissistic con artist. He's been fed with a silver spoon his whole life. He conned his way through college. He literally was known for bullying the little guy. Theres plenty of stories where people did work for trump and he paid em less than the agreed amount and just tied em up in courts so he never had to pay. He was known to be a rich guy who was pretty much the laughing stock of rich guys.

This is all stuff we knew before the '16 election.

Clinton has an amazing track record of service. There were 2 minor incidents in her tenure as secretary of state. The bengazi attack, which honestly minor. And in retrospect is nothing compared to Trump being aware of Bounties on american soldiers and not doing anything about it. The second was the emails...which was essentially just careless. Has nothing to do with being a bad leader or president or anything. Her last name was clinton and the republicans ran an amazing smear campaign based on those 3 things: Her last name, bengazi, and some insecure emails. Oh and Ivanka just happened to use her private email for classified information as well.

I mean there was absolutely no question Hilary was a far and away better candidate than Trump. And there was no question Trump was a terrible candidate. And there was no question he would be a terrible president who would just abuse the power he had.

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He has the same kind of stupid that his base does. He sounds like them, so they like him. Real simple.

Well, that and single issue voters being a thing.

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Of course she was always miles better, but thats what misogyny and years and years of Republican smear campaigns against her will result in

Idiots idea of a rich guy

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It honestly still blows my mind that a failed businessman and a reality tv star that was KNOWN to be a lying, aggressive, immoral buffoon somehow won the presidency. Not only that but so many people denied that he was ever going to be a bad president, everyone acted like it was "based" that he won, so many inflated egos, and the man has done the most to threaten the democratic union of the U.S. since the Civil War. Fucking unreal.

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https://youtu.be/oZf7IASx2mE


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If I never herd him speak or say anything racist, I still would still think it's stupid to elect a celebrity with no political experience to lead your country.

I think I was proven right.

hillary spent her entire career building up a resume to make her the ideal presidential candidate
she was the most qualified person running in 2016
but yes a 2 decade long smear campaign by republicans did convince the general public she was worse than she actually was


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I mean to put into perspective. More people died in Trumps coup attempt than in Benghazi. I'm not downplaying that. I'm just raising awareness to the chaos he's caused at home.

Oh and btw, Trump directly said no to bringing in the national guard early on when it was still brewing...even after they had broken in. Only later he okay'd it after his people were pressuring the shit out of him.


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I was told Hillery would go to war with Russia and start WW3 over Syria. I was stupid enough to believe it.
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I always assumed many swing voters thought "how bad could it be? we have check and balances, and other reasonable people would keep him in check." I voted for Hillary and even I thought something along those lines.

What we didn't account for is most of the Republican Party immediately selling out to try to get a piece of Trump's popularity and voterbase, letting him get away with stuff I never in my life would have imagined a President to even try. My esteem of politicians has fallen astronomically in the last four years for clearly lacking even an ounce of integrity when dealing with conspiracy theories, blatant lies, and obvious corruption.

People were already fed up with the current political situation and greatly underestimated the risk of putting an "outside guy" in to the seat of power, and the country has paid for it.

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Collat posted...

If I never herd him speak or say anything racist

Oh yeah, that's another thing. He was also BLATANTLY racist, homophobic, misogynist, transphobic, ableist, etc. It was surreal seeing people either outright ignore it or silently support it. Like since when was it okay to be so upfront with your hatred like that? I thought we'd at least bullied those morons into only being hateful in private.

Duncanwii posted...

I was told Hillery would go to war with Russia and start WW3 over Syria. I was stupid enough to believe it.

That's another thing. I could very well see Trump's actions spiral into US Civil War 2 and WW3 eventually. It was always pretty obvious that he was far, far more dangerous than Hillary ever was.

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A good number of people will always vote Republican for tax purposes or pro life purposes. Those people would vote for whoever way nominated on the right.

As for getting the rest of his voters on board... throughout history, people want to have a scapegoat for their problems. Trump gave them a scapegoat in the Mexicans, and hinged his election on promising hed build a wall to keep them out.

That was his entire campaign, and it was enough to get him in.

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bump

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People believed he would give the power "back" to the white man.

And they weren't wrong about his priorities.

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Well at the time he had a lot of populist view points and made a good argument. But he followed up on nothing and was way worse then hillary. But I'm glad he won though, as fucked up as all this shit is, it woke up a lot of people and got them into politics. People will be paying more attention to our government now. Biden won the democratic nomination because people.thought he could beat trump. Hopefully now that we dont have a villain that others will vote in a president who will actually do stuff. But this also showed how ignorant a lot of people are as well. So it's a mixed bag. Also my cousin tried to warn me about trump but I didnt listen.

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yutterh posted...

Well at the time he had a lot of populist view points and made a good argument. But he followed up on nothing and was way worse then hillary. But I'm glad he won though, as fucked up as all this shit is, it woke up a lot of people and got them into politics. People will be paying more attention to our government now. Biden won the democratic nomination because people.thought he could beat trump. Hopefully now that we dont have a villain that others will vote in a president who will actually do stuff. But this also showed how ignorant a lot of people are as well. So it's a mixed bag. Also my cousin tried to warn me about trump but I didnt listen.

I dont recall a single good view point or argument he made. His whole campaign was designed to smear and mudsling every other candidate and it was based on petty things, having nothing to do with political stances.

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They didn't. They thought he would be bad, but bad for the right people

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Hillary Clinton was just that unlikable. Now while Biden is pretty damn unlikable too four years of Trump.l allowed people to ignore that.

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MaddenDude-- posted...

I dont recall a single good view point or argument he made. His whole campaign was designed to smear and mudsling every other candidate and it was based on petty things, having nothing to do with political stances.

Well I dont remember much anymore, but I do remember hearing a few people lately talk about his populast views. I'll have to search soem stuff up and get back to you. Oh and something about being good for trade, sinc ehe was a business man and all. But turned out he was a conman, which wmis what my cousin was warning me about.

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Unfortunately I too was convinced that America was better than Trump, that he'd get completely blown out in the election because most people would recognize that he clearly wasn't a serious candidate.

Obviously I was wrong and it took dems coming out in record numbers to beat him. It's very disheartening knowing our democracy is only hanging on because we had record turnout. Dems historically have pretty bad turnout so I fear it won't be sustainable.
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imo there were 2 main groups of trump supporters

1 are largely apolitical people that fell for his rhetoric about fixing the country and draining the swamp and all that. like he's this outsider and not one of the political elites, so he needs to win so we can fuck up the politicians that we all hate and fix our government to better serve the people. many of the people in this category have jumped ship after seeing trump not hold any of his promises, others have been radicalized

2 are the worst people in the country. these people heard trump talk about immigrants and minorities and felt empowered to finally come out and openly say what they've been thinking the whole time. trump gave them permission to be open about what they really think, and now they're more powerful than ever. this, along with his handling of the pandemic, are the worst things he's done to the country. we're going to see these people for years to come imo

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creativerealms posted...

Hillary Clinton was just that unlikable. Now while Biden is pretty damn unlikable too four years of Trump.l allowed people to ignore that.

Why was she unlikable? Again she has an amazing service record with the most minor stains.

ThyCorndog posted...

1 are largely apolitical people that fell for his rhetoric about fixing the country and draining the swamp and all that. like he's this outsider and not one of the political elites, so he needs to win so we can fuck up the politicians that we all hate and fix our government to better serve the people. many of the people in this category have jumped ship after seeing trump not hold any of his promises, others have been radicalized

Again, this is what my topic title is referring to. He was already a known conman. His most well known feature was that he would fail businesses, file bankruptcy, and somehow con his way back to wealth. He was known for squishing the little guy.

I just refuse to believe people were dumb enough to not see through all that.

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MaddenDude-- posted...

Why was she unlikable? Again she has an amazing service record with the most minor stains.

I think there were 2 reasons that turned people off from her...

1) The eight years of Bush just eight years after his father had been president had turned people off of family legacy presidencies. It hurt Jeb in the primaries and it hurt Hilary in the presidential election.

2) Trump was really effective with getting the name Crooked Hilary out there and having it stick... much better than he was with Sleepy Joe, which was a dorky nickname to begin with. The Crooked Hilary name, along with the email thing going on with her (which most people didnt even understand all too well IMO, other than she did something wrong), was able to vilify her in the public eye.

MaddenDude-- posted...

Again, this is what my topic title is referring to. He was already a known conman. His most well known feature was that he would fail businesses, file bankruptcy, and somehow con his way back to wealth. He was known for squishing the little guy.

I just refuse to believe people were dumb enough to not see through all that.

Everything you said is correct, but I honestly dont believe that the average American follows that sorta news all that closely. The average American knew him as that guy who seemed important and got things done by saying Youre fired on a TV show. He came off as likable on that show, his name was synonymous with success (despite his numerous failures), and his con-work was never major news. He was the wolf in sheeps clothing, and a lot of people didnt realize this until he was in office.

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The Popo posted...

2) Trump was really effective with getting the name Crooked Hilary out there and having it stick... much better than he was with Sleepy Joe, which was a dorky nickname to begin with. The Crooked Hilary name, along with the email thing going on with her (which most people didnt even understand all too well IMO, other than she did something wrong), was able to vilify her in the public eye.

For that to stick speaks more to the IQ of the voter. One candidate calls another one crooked, so voters think, hmmm maybe I shouldn't vote for her because Trump said she's crooked. See how stupid that sounds.

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MaddenDude-- posted...

For that to stick speaks more to the IQ of the voter. One candidate calls another one crooked, so voters think, hmmm maybe I shouldn't vote for her because Trump said she's crooked. See how stupid that sounds.

The average person isnt heavily involved in politics, though, and quite frankly, a lot are not very intelligent. A condescending nickname during a time when it was merely in the news that Hilary did something bad went a long way.

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people wanted to throw a brick through the establishment window and i don't blame them

yutterh posted...

and made a good argument

Lol no he fucking didn't.

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iPhone_7 posted...

https://youtu.be/oZf7IASx2mE

The fact that people laughed at his joke...

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I voted for neither at the time and wasn't going to make any judgements of Trump(as a potential president, not as a person. He was clearly a shitty person) until he was actually in office. The whole being a conman thing made it hard to know what he actually intended to do once elected. How much did he say just to play a crowd, how much was real, I had no idea.


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Thats what politicians do. They cater to the masses and give them what they want to hear.

People forget Trump won 2016 on a platform of cleaning up the capital. He is an outsider and deal maker. Remember? Hilary clinton jailtime and draining the swamp of corruption in politics. Somewhere in his term he got lost being president and many folks pointed out his own flaws. His term was plagued with doubts, election results, and transparency unlike presidents before him.

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Him being a 'dealmaker' is his marketing gimmick. he was never a good deal maker. And how are you gonna drain the swamp of corruption when you are corrupt af yourself. Again all these things were transparent at THAT time

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Collat posted...

If I never herd him speak or say anything racist, I still would still think it's stupid to elect a celebrity with no political experience to lead your country.

I think I was proven right.

And yet, Ronald Reagan was elected.

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HBOSS posted...

Somewhere in his term he got lost

when, on January 21st, 2017?

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rideshort posted...

And yet, Ronald Reagan was elected.

Ronald Reagan was a piece of shit, but he was hardly politically inexperienced.

He was the head of one of the largest unions in the country, and the governor of California for nearly a decade

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MaddenDude-- posted...

Again all these things were transparent at THAT time

I really think you overestimate both the amount of time/research a person is willing to look into the facts during an election, or the background of the candidates. The person who yells the loudest sometimes makes the best argument to the masses.


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Uhh, I have trouble keeping up with these things, but isn't TC the "doctor" people were always making fun of for voting for Donald Trump? Or is that some other guy?

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Simp posted...

Uhh, I have trouble keeping up with these things, but isn't TC the "doctor" people were always making fun of for voting for Donald Trump? Or is that some other guy?

I never supported Trump.

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yutterh posted...

But I'm glad he won though, as f***ed up as all this s*** is, it woke up a lot of people and got them into politics. People will be paying more attention to our government now.

I'm not totally sure this is true, one of the big ideas I heard about Biden winning was basically "now we can go back to not paying attention" which just isn't true, but is probably what's going to happen.

AlphaCuck posted...

people wanted to throw a brick through the establishment window and i don't blame them

This. The biggest mistake was Hilary trying to run as basically an "Establishment" politician when everyone at least kind of knew there were problems with the status quo (I mean, the sides of what needs to change are wildly different, but everyone kind of knows the current system needs improvement) when Trump was pushing for actual change, I don't really doubt people for believing him.

In 2016 at least, I have no sympathy for people who voted for him in 2020.