Edited for formatting
First, his personal background. Trump was born into relative wealth, and spent much of his professional career and personal life mingling with, and making connections within, the group of people that we would consider the "Ruling Class". Establishment politicians, lobbyists, billionaires, celebrities, so on and so forth. His longtime former friendship with the Clintons (and possibly with Epstein) is well known so I won't go into that here.
Next, his actions- despite being a member of the "ruling class" by most metrics, he apparently chose to throw it all away- the connections, the social credibility, so he could claim to be a champion of the Working Class Americans. People tend to interpret this as evidence of Trump's genuineness, that he genuinely cared and believed in what he was saying. However, in light of his behavior while in office, I doubt this.
His administration- he was elected in 2016, and until 2018 he and the GOP had control of Congress and the White House. Despite this, he pushed almost no real congressional domestic policy during this time. Most of his legislation was passed thru executive orders that can be easily reversed (many were struck down by judges, others are being reversed by Biden). Border wall, natch. Mass deportation, natch (Obama deported more, ffs). Limited tax cuts that expire in a few years. Banned bump stocks, a longtime gun-control goal as well.
His only real accomplishments were in the Foreign policy arena, with not starting wars, and the trade talks with China and Korea, and it remains to be seen how effective those will be long-term, with Biden working against both.
Perhaps most telling- he claimed that the GOP lost the 2016 popular vote because of voter fraud- then did nothing to rectify this, again despite having control of Congress.
So to summarize, he had a handful of minor accomplishments that were mostly enacted thru easily reversed means, and did not meaningfully solve any of the issues that his party campaigned on despite having two years to do so. And despite pointing out flaws in the voting system that were hurting his party, he did nothing.
Second half of his term- he changes strategy, ditching the nationalist "send em all back" rhetoric in favor of "Democrats are the real racists". We saw how this played out in 2020 election with Trump gaining in every demographic except his core base of white men and women, that he more or less put on the back burner.
So after failing to meaningfully enact any of his 2016 campaign promises, deliberately pushing his original base to the back of the bus, and leaving the door wide open to potential fraud- he loses under suspicious circumstances that almost certainly relate to voter fraud. He hires terrible lawyers that focus on irrelevant aspects of cases while ignoring the important parts, that can't properly file cases or present them in court, and so on. Then the spectacle at the Capitol which the media spun as terrorism.
Then there is Qanon. Trump's refusal to condemn or disavow Qanon despite it being at best false and at worst deliberately misleading, seems in hindsight to have been deliberate. And what was the end result of Qanon? Wait two more weeks, "trust the plan" and don't do anything to fight back.
To Conclude Trump ran on a genuinely right wing nationalist platform, failed to enact almost all of it despite having the ability to do so, switched his marketing after the midterms to minimize his original base in favor of minorities that by and large would never support him anyway, which, divided the nationalist movement against itself by not fully commiting to nationalism. He redirected much of supporter's energy into supporting neoliberalism and/or Qanon bullshit, and to top it off, he has decades-old connections to the same globalist elites that he claims to fight. Lost his re-election in a way that he could have easily prevented. And now after 4 years of this, he announces his intent to do it again.
And based on how he acted when he had control of Congress, it is very unlikely that a second Trump term would have a different result from the first.
I can't be the only one who thinks that something stinks here.
The fact remains that Trump is the best President that we have had in decades.
If he runs again, I will take him any day over the clown world being pushed by Democrats.
It is that simple for me.
I see his flaws which include bad personnel choices and I will acknowledge them but compared to the other option that is presented, this is not a hard decision to make.
I don't think Trump is controlled opposition, I think he truly wanted to drain the swamp but after seeing the extent of the Globalist swamp, he realized how difficult a task that is when almost all of the elected "Republicans" sabotaged him at every turn to keep the uniparty alive.
The people that I have generally seen pushing this controlled opposition angle are accelerationists who are angry that Trump is a civic nationalist who will not give them what they really want.
These accelerationists have not seen the state of white women these days.
White nationalism will never work in the U.S when at least sixty percent of whites completely despise it.
If White Nationalism came to power white women would be fine with it, but only after it came to power and established itself as the strength that ruled over society. That power is currently wielded by the Progressive movement, which is why you see women behaving as they are.
Whether or not White Nationalism can actually take hold in America is another matter entirely.
It's possible to close it, but it requires an Emperor-tier leader to rewrite the laws of society.
We basically need the ghost of Romulus to descend in a lightning storm riding a dire wolf and start murdering people left and right.
So what would you recommend? Rolling over and admitting defeat?
Get the fuck out of here you demoralization merchant.
You come here doom-saying without solutions in hand and have the audacity to speak of maturity and masculinity. You're just here to crush people's spirits, you don't fool me.
"oh noes, we gave women the vote and now all is lost. Lament and despair for the inevitable collapse of our civilization".
Ok, sure. What now though? Coming in here to wail and gnash your teeth about how we're inevitably and irreversibly screwed is not productive without the follow up discussion of how to remedy the situation.
The most obvious solution is to revoke women's rights. How do we do that? Well we'd need access to all the levers of power and a shift in cultural thinking. How do we do that? We need mass scale propaganda and enough like minded people in whatever political ecosystem we inhabit. With this as the base goal we can start brainstorming to find all the low level pieces of the system we need to attain and the skillsets necessary to get there. Do we have enough time to achieve the goal of reversing things? Maybe, maybe not, but even certain defeat does not absolve us of the obligation to strive for a better outcome.
Whatever Trump is, he definitely isn't that. At least, not in the sense that he's in on it.
Remember: Trump made good on his word to stop endless war in the middle east. That's NOT what the symbiotic neocons and neoliberal hawks want.
Remember: Trump was the most cooperative person interviewed by the lawyers going after Epstein, and no matter what the media are happy to tell you, everyone, and I mean everyone knows, Epstein DID NOT KILL HIMSELF.
It's silly to believe a billionaire who lives in a gold plated skyscraper penthouse was ever gonna be the working man's true hero, but it's equally silly to believe that the level absolute hysteria we saw over the last 4 years was drummed up by an elite that were getting what they wanted. The elite got blindsided by Trump's victory and they were PISSED, simple as that.
He bombed the Middle East left and right... He continued the war
If the Republicans completely stonewalled him, what does that say about the Republicans' true motives? And about Trump's ability to lead? If the Republicans are compromised to the point of sabotaging their own candidate, why vote for them? If Trump cannot control his own party enough to get his agenda enacted, why vote for him?
Eisenhower? Jackson?
Yes, he did more than any recent president, but that's not a high bar.
By what? Writing executive orders that were struck down by judges and/or reversed by Biden? And what was the result? No real change. He and the (purportedly) anti illegal-migrant GOP held Congress for two years and did not pass any legislation that ramped up deportation or built a wall. Only executive orders that can(and are) being easily reversed.
Stating a verifiably true fact is not a "psyop" just because you don't like it.
What an amazingly detailed and thought-provoking rebuttal.
You disproved everything I said.
Well done.
Trump was only controlled opposition in as much as the DC swamp republicans could do it. While he was wealthy, without genuine help and support from people who really understood what was going on in Washington it was easy to render Trump ineffective.
I still think he came in naive as to how deep the rot is/was, believed it was mostly from the D side, and took too much advice from people who hated him. Trump has plenty of fault as well, but he was in a nearly impossible situation.
Trump needs to pass the mantle and not run again, not that I think it matters who runs on the R side, they will lose.
He turned on the light for us to see all the rats in Washington. Too bad more than half the population closed their eyes instead of looking.
The only way the problems Trump faced can be solved is by doing things Trump was unwilling to do (ie. playing dirty himself or solving the problem the way Myanmar did). If elected again Trump will again be unwilling to do those things, so the next guy needs to be someone who will do them.
If we're very lucky Trump turned the lights on in such a way that the next guy was able to see it.
He exposed the media's alternative view of non-democrats. That's good enough for me.
While I have had those thoughts, I can't convince myself he's controlled opposition, in on some grand scheme to give power to the left, etc.
What I really think is he was a businessman who jumped into politics head first and the water was a bit too deep. It's not inconsistent with his past business ventures either. Trump has always had very high ambition with his projects. Sometimes they work out, sometimes they don't. He's done very well for himself because he was a fairly shrewd businessman in most respects so even if he was going for grandeur in a project, he was getting it at a good cost.
I liked a lot of this in how he did business as President. It's part of the reason foreign policy worked so well under Trump. He presented a business attitude. North Korea was supposed to unleash nuclear war on us, right? Just taking the time to reach out without looking down on Kim Jong Un and having a simple discussion and it quieted down. I suspect it was just a simple business negotiation, you know here's what I want, here's what you want, let's work something out. It's no different in the middle east, just get them to realize it's better for them to quit wasting resources on stupidity.
The thing is, that only goes so far in the political world. When you start talking about Congress, the establishment, the globalists, etc. money and business talk are not their goods of trade. It's power. You can't trade power like you can money and they will be more deceitful and sleazy than even the most scummy of businessmen to get more power. You're walking into a room where your friend is only pretending until they can stab you in the back in exchange for more power.
I can't take anyone who thinks that Trump is controlled opposition seriously...
Not an argument
I never said it was an argument.
Are you retarded?
Then anyone you could ever vote into power is controlled opposition. I don't think you or a sizable portion of KiA2 will like what that implies is a necessity
And how does he plan on winning when the election he just won was rigged and taken from him? It's obvious that he was landsliding and then they stopped counting and millions of votes 99% for Biden started coming in.
The courts are poisoned, the schools are poisoned, every level of government is poisoned, etc. Our entire society from the bottom to the top is controlled by people who hate us. You're not going to simply vote Trump into office in 2024.
I don't see Trump himself as controlled opposition, I see him as a patriotic old man who doesn't realize that everyone around him are trying to subvert his intentions.
The man kept Jared Kushner on staff through his entire presidency.
He fired and let the DOJ go after Flynn.
He did nothing to hold the DOJ to account in pretty much anything.
He attempted to reorganize and fix the bloated bureaucracy but was rebuffed at every turn by his own team.
Every day he had people whispering in his ear to do or not do something. For example, the reason he never directly went to a non-twitter site, the reason he never directly created a channel through TD, the reason he wanted back on Facebook after leaving office, is all because of his advisors.
Trump used to be pretty decently close with Alex Jones. Even went on his show a couple of times. But over time he stopped. Why? Because people told him it wasn't good for his image.
Gradually, Trump was shifted into abandoning his base and catering to the normal neocon agenda that nobody wanted.
However, he was still a stubborn old man and held firm on certain things like immigration and foreign wars. So firm in fact that his entire advisory both civilian and military LIED TO HIM about troop numbers in the mideast.
I see Trump's presidency more as a litmus test of just how corruptive the uniparty/deep state is.
Just look at CPAC. It was split down the middle. You had some speakers go up and say, "No immigration. Kick China out. Ramp up domestic production. No more masks, no more lockdowns" etc. Then other speakers saying the exact opposite. It's absurd. The party is split in half and it's by design. The hardcore establishment wants to go back to the status quo of grifting.
The saddest thing is that a ton of Trump supporters just still don't get it. Instead of following the ideology they've followed Trump and allowed themselves to be led away from their original desires, while thinking the whole process was natural.
This is gonna get bad. Really bad. Categorically bad. The populist right will NEVER win another election again the way things are going now. Trump as a one-term president in 2024 with the same cucks and grifters in power is pointless. And it's impossible to vote them out.
Expire for us but not businesses.
You're not, but this is a Trump cheerleading platform, which lends to some user base overlap, so it's rare to see any meaningful talk. Anything that can even be considered as slightly critical of him gets downvotes from some folks, but usually not with factual counterarguments. Basically, it'll get approvals from those who agree and some disapprovals, but no meaningful dialogue that might be enlightening...which makes it an overall waste of effort.
Trump's the best president in my lifetime, but standards have been set low. I think Ron Paul would have been better, but that's an alternative reality. Trump's hands are tied by Congress since he's only part of the executive branch, but there are a lot of excuses that conveniently absolve him of all fault. He has to take some responsibility but fans only assign softball ones.
Election fraud is a weird one. He deserves blame for his regime failing to address the system, but I don't think anyone could have expected the Supreme Court from pussying out. I didn't, and thought it'd set a landmark decision to fix things once and for all. Unlike Big Tech and other matters this should've had him with some form of agency, even if late, but it didn't. It's a complete miscarriage of justice.
I don't think this is accurate. People need somebody to stand behind, or else the sinking feeling of demoralization becomes unbearable. In a world where every conservative is controlled opposition or a grifter or simply unelectable, what are you supposed to do? Admit that your people have no say and you have no power and that you're screwed?
People can support Trump without being completely blind or intellectually dishonest. That's my fundamental issue and I've seen plenty of it across multiple communities because, of course, it's all on the WIN network. It's far better to face things head on than being deluded into thinking everything's fine.
I don't dislike Trump and I don't advocate anything against him since his platform is the best current offering, whatever its flaws. But I don't like the complete lack of intellectual discourse that's possible without skewing all of reality; it's the other, opposite, lesser extreme of having to put up with liberal politics, and neither's good.
Is that not the truth? Perhaps it's a tad oversimplified, but it's not wrong.
Burying the harsh truth to believe in a comfortable lie will solve nothing. You want real change, you need people to "wake up". You want them to "wake up", they need to acknowledge and comprehend the truth.
I'm not saying it solves anything, I'm just explaining what I believe is the psychology behind this phenomenon. Even those that sometimes declared Trump is controlled opposition or tended to criticize him, cheered for him when push came to shove.
Honestly I love Trump, but I too am a little wary... I think it mainly stems from all the shit we've seen before him. I'd love to have seen Ron in office. Hell, just from the Grievances jokes, I'd get a kick outta seeing Rand in there too.
Same here. I was a huge Ron Paul fan.
I don't support a Trump run for office anymore. He is too old. Get someone who is younger, someone who recognizes that we are on a terminal course and wants to course correct into sanity.
Very good post. I believe that Trump was first elected on actual populism and the establishment did not want to accept any change. It's very telling that Trump went from "Drain the swamp" by bringing in many outsiders like Bannon, to suddenly getting rid of them and bringing back many swamp creatures. It feels like during his first 2 years he ended up making some kind of backroom deal to stop pushing things in the way he was. In exchange for what I have no idea.
Trump can come out and stand up for white people, or else he is supporting the current regime. Unless he properly addresses the election fraud and the legal failure to have anything at all happen, there is no reason for anybody to support him in any way.
I hope he comes out with a very sanitized campaign and people reject him. Which will leave a political and social vacuum for figures better aligned with the will of the majority of people.
He cut a deal and surrendered the country to the NWO. The latest impeachment crap was all kabuki theater.
And what a fucking joke to talk about who runs in 2024. It doesn't matter, fools.
I've been saying for months (and roundly downvoted for it) that Trump defeated Trump.
The thing that defeated him was the promise of Obamacare "repeal and replace" which never happened.
The US has a broken public health care policy, broken health care delivery systems, a broken medical training system run by the corrupt AMA. Don't blame it on John McCain after the defeated repeal vote; after that the Trump administration pretty much moved on leaving all of those broken systems in place.
Then came a health crisis which became the very thing that took him down.
I like Trump, but he was a huge failure on healthcare policy which he did almost nothing about.
Mail in ballot election fraud is the sole reason for the "loss".
I do agree that the Republicans should still create a good health care policy but even without having one, Trump still won 2020.
And mass election fraud was an issue that Trump was aware of, because he argued that the 2016 popular vote was lost because of illegal aliens voting, and repeatedly brought up the issue during the 2016 and 2020 debates. Why did he do nothing about it for 2 years when he controlled Congress? Never even tried to introduce a bill.
His non action on election fraud despite being very vocal about it, suggests that he is either incompetent or wanted to lose.
You seem to not understand that the Republicans in Congress and of course the Democrats did everything they could to sabotage his agenda.
You really think the uniparty would have allowed election security bills to be passed?
There are valid things to criticize Trump for such as his hires and his inability to stop using Twitter.
However all signs point to the fact that he is not controlled opposition based on how the whole establishment was openly sabotaging him and his agenda.
So the establishment Republicans are responsible for sabotaging his administration? And yet Trump still pledged to run as a Republican after what they did to him?
I agree, the mainstream Republicans were a major impediment to Trump's publicly stated agenda in several ways. And yet Trump still came crawling back, after all the backstabbing shit they pulled on him. This suggests one of four possibilities:
that he is legitimately retarded (unlikely given his business and celebrity success)
That he is a pushover with no balls (VERY uncharacteristic of Trump),
that his real agenda doesn't actually conflict with the mainstream uniparty, and he's controlled opposition
They have some kind of extremely damaging blackmail on him that they are using to control him
1 and 2 are highly unlikely, if not improbable
4 is unlikely given how much shit they already threw at him that he didn't care about/didn't have an effect. And if the blackmail was that damaging, they could just force him to resign and save themselves a lot of trouble.
By process of elimination, that leaves 3 as the most likely. Feel free to disagree but that's my logic.
Trump essentially left it to the Republican Congress and the Senate for his elected promise of health care reform, and they wasted 2 years bickering, seemingly with little interest for reform. I don't know what the legalities would be if Trump tried to force it, but that also doesn't seem to be in his nature (at least as an elected official, and a business owner also needs to delegate).
Much of solving the issue seems to be in changing who is elected in general. The president's important, but so is everyone else, even though there is less attention placed on them. Trump's cabinet secretary appointments also need to go through the Senate for approval, as does his Supreme Court picks. Not fully removing blame, he did select some real swamp monsters, but I don't know to what options he had.
My biggest problem with the idea of him being controlled opposition is that they didn't need controlled opposition. They were going to have Hillary. They were convinced they had won... until the votes came in. Similarly, if he were controlled opposition, they wouldn't have had to blatantly cheat to get Biden in.