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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   30677 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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Trump did an interview with "Time," to mark the end of the first 100 days of his second term. The first topic they discussed was Presidential power:

Q: You know better than anyone that the President of the United States is the most powerful person in the world. At the same time, it seems like you are expanding the power of the presidency. Why do you think you need more power?

A: Well, I don't feel I'm expanding it. I think I'm using it as it was meant to be used. I feel that we've had a very successful presidency in 100 days. We've had people writing it was the best first month and best second month, and really the best third month. But that you won't know about for a little while, because it takes a little time in transition. You know, we're resetting a table. We were losing $2 trillion a year on trade, and you can't do that. I mean, at some point somebody has to come along and stop it, because it's not sustainable. We were carrying other countries on our back with, you know, with trade numbers, with horrible numbers, and we've changed it. You see the market fluctuates quite a bit. Today, it's up 1,000 or 1,200 points. It goes up and down, but that will steady out, and we're taking in tremendous amounts of money. We have, as you know, already, 25% on cars, 25% on steel and aluminum—

Q: Mr. President, I think what we’re driving at is that you've taken congressional authority on trade and appropriations. You fired the heads of independent agencies. You're challenging the courts right now, as you know. You're using the levers of government to weaken private institutions like law firms and universities. Isn't this seizing power away from institutions and concentrating them inside the presidency?

A: No, I think that what I'm doing is exactly what I've campaigned on. If you look at what I campaigned on, for instance, you can talk about removing people from the country. We have to do it because Biden allowed people to come in through his open border crazy, insanity. He allowed people to come into our country that we can't have in our country. Many criminals—they emptied their prisons, many countries, almost every country, but not a complete emptying, but some countries a complete emptying of their prison system. But you look all over the world, and I'm not just talking about South America, we're talking about all over the world. People have been led into our country that are very dangerous. If you were walking down the street, and if you happen to be near one of these people, they could, they would kill you, and they wouldn't even think about it. And we can't have that in our country.

Q: So you're not concentrating more power in the presidency?

A: I don't think so. I think I'm using it properly, and I'm also using it as per my election. You know, everything that I'm doing—this is what I talked about doing. I said that I'm going to move the criminals out. I saw what was happening early on when I heard that he had open borders, when I, because it was a hard thing to believe. I built hundreds of miles of wall, and then he didn't want to, and we had another, an extra hundred miles that I could have put up because I ordered it as extra. I completed the wall, what I was doing, but we have, I wanted to build additional because it was working so well. An extension. And he didn't want to do that. And when he said he wasn't going to do that, I said, “Well, he must want open borders.” There were sections that were being built. And he stopped to work on it, and I said, this guy actually wants to have open borders. That's going to be a tragedy for our country. That's going to mean that other countries will release into our country some very rough people.

Anyone know of a mainstream interpretation of the Constitution that claims Trump has not done anything to expand Presidential power and is "using it as it was meant to be used?"

He also claimed to have made more trade deals than there are countries... The way he answers questions is peculiar and worth reading. Near the end of the interview:

Q: You were harshly critical of what you called the weaponization of the Justice System under Biden. You recently signed memos—

A:Well, sure, but you wouldn’t be—if this were Biden, well, first of all, he wouldn't do an interview because he was grossly incompetent.

Q: We spoke to him last year, Mr. President.

A: Huh?

Q: We spoke to him a year ago.

A: How did he do?

Q: You can read the interview yourself.

A: Not too good. I did read the interview. He didn't do well. He didn't do well at all. He didn't do well at anything. And he cut that interview off to being a matter of minutes, and you weren't asking him questions like you're asking me.

Q: Well, we appreciate that you are able and willing to answer these questions. It says something about you, Mr. President.

A: I am indeed. I've been answering them for years and I’ve been getting elected by bigger and bigger numbers all the time, but you didn't ask questions like this to Biden, because if you did, he would have crawled under this beautiful desk.

Should we be considering the possibility that Trump has dementia?

  • -17

This is dumb bait. But I think the Bill Maher discussion of his dinner with Trump soundly puts to bed any arguments here. Bill Maher, is about a raving of a TDS as almost anyone, coming away and praising his sharpness and conversability is not something that can be shrugged off with gestures toward nothing like this.

Trump's quoted point at the end is completely coherent, just ideosyncratic and favoring his point over debating the minutia. I'm not defending either the content or point of view, but it's entirely coherent, and the demential complaint is dumb as hell. Here's a summary of the not even subtext of that clip:

Interviewer starts to try a tu quoue about some Biden tactic analogy to Trump. Trump doesn't want to take the bait, so pre-empts with an reverse objection about a double-standard of critique. He uses that to launch that into an attack on Biden's competence. This single sentence has tons of intent:

  • The media's critiques of Trump are invalid double standards
  • As evidence by the media's protection of Biden
  • Biden was not just bad, but incompetent, and the media / deep state covered for him/ controlled him.

All this could be disagreed with, but rather than being incoherent, its a very tight conveying of meaning.

The interviewer then tries to dodge the question of Biden's competence by arguing whether Biden actually did an interview with them or not in some given timeframe.

Trump first starts to engage, but then decides he's not going to lead the interviewer to any Socratic point, so just throws out the idea that he didn't do an interview into being a well informed that he 'barely' did an interview and it was terrible.

Is Trump lying that he's familiar with that particular interview? Yeah probably. (or else he was lying that Biden didn't do an interview and lying or mixed up about the length). But that's not really evidence of mental acuity. The lie makes complete sense in context of the picture he's trying to paint.

The interviewer then gives a sarcastic praise. Trump takes it straight-faced, and uses it to restate his thesis: Biden was incompetent, and any appearance of power-grabbing from him is just hostile coverage from the media

Again, without any bias here (tbh I deeply dislike Trump), Trump's entire bit in that last exchange is tightly governed by a specific frame and defense against a percieved hostile frame. He just favors rhetorical point over detail consistency.

Trump doesn't even remember that Biden had dementia. Biden wasn't just incompetent, he was clearly senile. It was the only reason why Trump got elected.

Now Trump comparing himself with Biden (saying that he is better, of course) is funny because that way he acknowledges that he is in the same boat, i.e., both with dementia.

I can almost hear him boasting – I have the best dementia, it is great, you wouldn't know how great it is... But he didn't because he couldn't remember that word.

  • -28

Considering how often Trump refers to "sleepy Joe Biden" I'm pretty sure he remembers.

If you want to criticize Trump there is no shortage of true things you can say.

Sleepy doesn't mean senile.

At the end even Scott Alexander admitted that Biden was senile and had to write a post apologising why he didn't see it sooner.

Now Trump is boasting that he is better than a senile man. If I was a Trump's fan, I would find it disgraceful.

Yeah but you're not a Trump fan and the people who are Trump fans have different standards for disgrace. Else they wouldn't be Trump fans.

Good point!

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