I really think the desire to normalize Trump and characterize him as the next logical step in presidential history is counterproductive. He is dangerous specifically because he’s a freakish aberration, a break from normality. Even if you liked Bush or Reagan or whatever, you should hate him
Yeah the idea we can’t criticize Trump because the real problem is “the system” is shit-tier thinking. Trump sucks. And yes, he does suck in a way that’s different in type and magnitude from other American Presidents.
No American has ever experienced a presidency like this one - a president who doesn’t know, care about, or follow our laws and founding documents. A president fully for sale, with no policy interests whatsoever, who appoints the worst people in the country to every single position.
May 10, 2025 12:44He can’t even speak in sentences or write a letter on his own! He’s bizarre and dangerous, unfit from top to bottom, a husk of a human, an endless black hole of resentment and ego you wouldn’t trust to run a Burger King.
Say what you will about Republicans past but their leaders were basically competent humans. The kind of person who could successfully fill out a college application or manage a regional branch. Trump isn’t that. He’s fully deranged, a true psycho, whose only talent is shakedown and self-promotion.
1/ that doesn't make Trump an aberration, because the empowerment of Trump was produced by the system TWICE.
And, in fact, if Trump was an aberration, rather than a predictable result of the system, the progressive web would not have spent the last nine years warning (each other) about the danger
2/ Trump and Trumpism represented. "The left" understood, better than anyone, what Trump was about, and has consistently tried to raise that awareness in the rest of the country -- while "mainsream" Dems like Pelosi ("impeach himself") and Biden ("focus on the future") downplayed it.
I do believe he has genuine policy interests in (evilly) white supremacy and (bizarrely, stupidly) tariffs. All else — and to be sure, even parts of those — is grift.
