President Trump: A MennoNet Poll

[MaxPC]

Our 3rd reading from Scripture at today's Mass resonated with me in these times. What is striking is that Paul preached this at a time that saw the Roman Empire at the height of its political and military power.

[bible]1 Corinthians 7, 29-31[/bible]

[temporal1]

Hi friends,

Mennonet is fairly a-political these days. However, I'm curious how the current MennoNet community is reacting to the Trump presidency...so I thought I'd create a poll.

Please pick the perspective closest to where you are (even if you are only a casual observer) .

You can elaborate on your decision below...however it would be nice if we could have this discussion not primarily to convince anyone for or against the president, but rather to respectfully help others understand our reasons for our response to Trump's presidency as you see it.

Would you do a similar poll on PM Trudeau?

[Bootstrap]

I don't see a crisis either. He is the president of the United States, and will be until the next election.

Just curious what all of you think...

Is there something Trump is capable of doing (either intentionally or inadvertently) that would create a situation where there would be enough Republicans motivated to get him ousted?

I've wondered already why the Republicans wouldn't want Pence instead.

But they can't just have Pence unless (1) Donald Trump is impeached or (2) Donald Trump steps down. I think McConnell and Ryan are both feeling a bit bullied and played with by now, and most of the Republicans with significant experience and knowledge have lost a lot of power. Like it or not, a president is always seen as the leader of his party, and each president changes his party.

But unless Trump's popularity goes up significantly, I expect he will have competition in the next Republican primary. And maybe he will decide not to run again.

Of course, if Donald Trump were to to act in a way that showed he was clearly mentally incompetent - e.g. smear himself with peanut butter, douse himself with gas, and go running naked down Pennsylvania Avenue singing Led Zeppelin songs - the 25th Amendment would get him ousted, but that's not likely to happen.

If there's anything he can do to get ousted, it's probably something he has already done, because the only thing that could get him out of office before the next election is impeachment or the threat of impeachment. And that could only happen if the Bob Mueller investigation has evidence of an impeachable offense (e.g. conspiracy), and probably only if the Democrats take the house. The Republicans would likely only vote to impeach if they felt that their own individual elections were threatened by being too close to Donald Trump. So far, I think we've seen them doing their best to undermine the Mueller investigation - after initially saying that he was clearly a good man to do this in an impartial way. Unlike Watergate or the Ken Starr investigation, Bob Mueller has been playing his cards close to the chest, we don't know what he's found, though we have some good clues about what he is investigating. If anyone is interested in following that, look at lawfareblog.com, which has some of the most in-depth coverage - I won't go into it here. But I think this will be very interesting to watch over the next year or two. Remember that the Watergate investigation and the Ken Starr investigations took years. We can speculate about what he knows and what leads he is following, but we won't know until we know.

What I would really like to see is congressional leaders deciding to work together and retake the role the Constitution gave to Congress, working across party lines, becoming more transparent, putting bills out so they can be discussed long before they have to be passed, working out a budget together, etc. Could that happen if there is no other way to move forward? I'd love to see it ...

[Josh]

The fact the “conservative” establishment was so dead set against Trump (and still is) should give you some idea of why he won, and why he appealed to so many voters.

I’m not sure who reads National Review anymore - it seems like the kind of magazine you see a 3 year old copy of in a dentist’s office waiting room.

[Bootstrap]

The fact the “conservative” establishment was so dead set against Trump (and still is) should give you some idea of why he won, and why he appealed to so many voters.

Donald Trump didn't "appeal to so many voters", he received a smaller percentage of the vote than any other elected president, less than Hillary Clinton, who was an exceptionally weak candidate. And if his popularity is really that important, remember this ...

Screen Shot 2018-01-20 at 5.00.11 PM.png (96.33 KiB) Viewed 305 times

[Bootstrap]

The fact the “conservative” establishment was so dead set against Trump (and still is) should give you some idea of why he won, and why he appealed to so many voters.

My last post in a political thread for the day, and perhaps my last for the day ...

I really do appreciate you as a brother, Josh, and political opinions aren't really what the Kingdom is made of. But you probably won't be surprised that I see this very differently than you do.

I don't think Donald Trump was wildly popular, and I think he appealed to his base largely because he mirrored their anger and frustration and made promises he could not keep:

• He promised jobs for people like West Virginia coal miners. I don't see a lot of new coal mining jobs on the horizon. If you look at the tax bill, it's not really focused on increasing jobs, especially not for lower income workers and it would be structured quite differently if it were. It also adds a trillion dollars to the budget deficit, money that will now be harder to find for anything targeting those who are not winning in today's economy. It does have tax benefits aimed toward normal people, but those tax benefits expire, the ones targeting the rich do not.
• He promised that by slashing regulations, he could reinvigorate business. Maybe, but of the 8.1 billion dollars he says they saved in 2017, almost 6 billion - by his own tally - comes by eliminating the regulation that says federal contractors need to pay at least $10.10 an hour. So 3/4 of the savings comes from cutting the wages of lower income workers.
• He promised to drain the swamp. But Donald Trump and his family have so many conflicts of interest it makes you head spin, and so do many people in his cabinet. And instead of limiting the power of lobbyists, he appointed a handful of them to head the departments they used to lobby.
• He promised to "run the government like a business", saying that the government would never shut down under a good leader, and saying he could make deals with both sides. But we've limped from one continuing resolution to another, the government is shut down, and he has mostly tried to push things through by keeping bills secret until the moment they needed to pass, excluding Democrats from the process. Government is paralyzed even though his party controls both the House and the Senate. And he himself is plagued with the kind of scandals that would get the CEO of most businesses fired. He hasn't run government like a business, he has run it like a reality show, full of personal drama, always looking for headlines, but without a clear plot or theme.
• He promised to get out of many of Americas agreements with other countries and negotiate better deals. Those better deals aren't happening. Countries don't like getting bullied. Other politicians don't like getting bullied. You don't get the deal done that way.

And if you look at unemployment, jobs, and wages, they have basically improved at the same rate they had under the Obama Administration. If you look at these graphs without labels, you cannot tell when Trump came into office, they kept going at the same rate. Of course, before he was elected Donald Trump said these numbers couldn't be trusted at all, and as soon as he was in office he trumped them as reliable statistics.

I do think that the changes in the corporate tax rate will affect the longer term economy in a good way. And I think it's really important that we carve out protections for Christians who cannot go along with mainstream society on abortion or gay marriage - I suspect we would have gotten that under any Republican president, and I think there were better candidates.

At any rate, I am going to take at least a week off of posting in this thread. I don't want to make this a major focus for me or for this forum. I will continue to pray for the president and his administration. I will continue to try to focus more on other things than on politics. And dropping out of this thread for at least a week will help me do that.

[Sudsy]

Our 3rd reading from Scripture at today's Mass resonated with me in these times. What is striking is that Paul preached this at a time that saw the Roman Empire at the height of its political and military power.

[bible]1 Corinthians 7, 29-31[/bible]

Could this not be referring to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70 ?

[ken_sylvania]

[*] He promised that by slashing regulations, he could reinvigorate business. Maybe, but of the 8.1 billion dollars he says they saved in 2017, almost 6 billion - by his own tally - comes by eliminating the regulation that says federal contractors need to pay at least $10.10 an hour. So 3/4 of the savings comes from cutting the wages of lower income workers.

Curious what your source is on this one. I would have thought if the federal contractor minimum wage had been adjusted I would have found out about it, but I haven't heard a word and can't find anything about it either.

[temporal1]

.. I suspect we would have gotten that under any Republican president, and I think there were better candidates ..

There were lots of other candidates in the Primary. none came close to Trump in winning the Primary. (i believe) it’s important not to overlook how that unfolded. Several of these represent the Republican “deep bench” to draw on, that the DNC lacks (or, so, i read.)

However, to repeat, that bench (of 16-17) did not have a sure winner for the 2016 election.
After Romney’s defeat in 2012, the handwriting was on the wall. (many thought.)
Even obama quipped, post-election 2012, that Romney “should have won,” and he stated several reasons-why.

Nice guys are not going to win in present politics. This may be true in history.

This is part of why i think of Trump as a sort of snow-plow, clearing a path for others to follow (i hope.)
But, corrections were needed, too much was going off into the lib ditch.

Other countries are having similar problems, Canada, France, England, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Australia, who is escaping it? .. the U.S. is not actually leading the lib agenda, but, for whatever reason, there is a mentality in the U.S. that we “must be” leading. .. Developing countries are under pressure to change in ways they are not ready to, or, in ways they find abhorrent.

There is always a temptation to play “Monday morning quarterback,” but, what use is it?
Things unfolded as they did, for reasons that cannot be changed. Life goes on.

i do not want to sabotage your effort to avoid politics.
others may reply, or not. whatever will be, will be.

[Robert]

My one post for the day. I heard a Presidential Historical Scholar share this. Made me really think and chuckle a little too.

"A lot of good presidents have done some really bad things and a lot of bad presidents have done some really good things."