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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   31936 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025

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I do find it interesting that Trump, for all of his self-vanity, does seem to genuinely care about leaving a legacy behind him and grooming successors.

Huh? I'm totally lost: one of Trump's defining political characteristics over his decade in politics is his lack of successors. That's why Butler, PA was so crazy: everyone knew that if Trump died the policy direction of the United States would change. And it would have! The entire world economy would be in a different place today if Trump hadn't turned left at the last second.

Where Biden died on the job, and no one even noticed, and on the ballot he was replaced by Harris with no real change in policy plans, and if Harris hadn't taken the nomination we have a list of generic "qualified" Democrats pages long who would all implement more or less the same policies. Romney, McCain, Dubya, Dole all had pretty similar policy platforms, as did many of their primary competitors. Trump? No one has his policy platform, except inasmuch as they copy it from him.

In a decade in office, Trump has done nothing to groom a successor publicly as the "next one up."

Hmm you do have a point here. I suppose I see the Democratic party more as one undifferentiated blob, although that's likely my personal bias peeking in.

I think Trump does plenty to allow others to take the spotlight though - J.D. Vance has been doing the rounds quite publicly for a while, which Trump could easily put a stop to if he wanted.

I think that was definitely true for the first Trump admin, one of the many personnel problems it had. But my reading of the tea leaves is that Vance is absolutely being groomed as Trump's successor- he is being sent out to do the sort of foundational policy making that you wouldn't fob off on the average do-nothing VP. Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference is one of biggest moments in international relations of the decade, fundamentally changing the relationship between the US and EU, and full of lines that I would imagine Trump himself would have loved to drop, and yet JD is the one doing it.

Also, Vance is low key probably the smartest (in terms of IQ) major figure in American politics today, which is always a plus for his future prospects.

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