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NeverTrumpers like the Bulwark guys were vehemently opposed to him long before Jan 6th. Their hostility feels much more in line with the old adage that the worst thing that can happen to a socialist is for socialists to come to power who are not his friends.
This is an incoherent stand to take for anyone who voted for Biden and Harris. It would be like MAGA insisting they despise '28 cadidate AOC because she lacks gravitas and decorum.
What are you talking about? If every single corruption allegation against Biden and Harris were true, they still would have been collecting multiple orders of magnitude fewer dollars off of their political power and been involved in orders of magnitude fewer corruption scandals. Or, well, not sure "scandal" is the appropriate word for Trump's corruption as the media has pretty much given up on highlighting it as "Trump pardoned yet another person in exchange for $X million dollars." or "Trump openly took $X00 million from some country for a trade deal." is just not front-page news anymore.
Trump seems to believe the point of being president is personal corruption and doesn't get why he would even try to hide it.
There were three clauses in that quote. I'll accept your admission for the first and last.
For the second... yes, you can make a strong argument for Trump's personal corruption, as porkpiehat said, though in Biden's case it wasn't for lack of trying. Also as PPH said, the institutional corruption Biden/Harris facilitated is unprecedented, on the level of "civilizational ruin".
Sorry, I figured the "dishonesty" and "incompetence" parts had been beaten to death in this thread and elsewhere but had not previously seen an attempt to claim Biden was corrupt on remotely the same scale as Trump.
"10% for the big guy", Hunter calling his dad in front of Ukrainians as proof of their influence peddling operation, Biden's all inclusive pardon of Hunter exactly windowed to the month Hunter started his Ukrainian influence operation.
I'm not saying Biden is more corrupt than Trump. But he's damned corrupt to the point that he's a real contender.
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Fair enough. The corruption argument has also been exhaustively covered, from a few different angles. I do think the "public corruption vs private corruption" angle is the strongest one for Trump supporters to lean on there, but I don't think The Motte has discussed Hunter Biden's memecoin rugpull yet.
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Trump is more corrupt than Biden in petty ways. And in those petty ways, like his crypto scheme, he's possibly the most corrupt President ever. It's all a bit puzzling since Trump is already rich and he'll be dead before long.
Nevertheless, the scale of the corruption is quite small.
Biden's corruption was categorically different. He didn't benefit financially. But the scale of his corruption was much larger - trillions not billions. Build Back Better was one big grift. It's just that the beneficiaries of that corruption were Democratic party clients, not the President personally.
Trump doesn't want to loot the state like Biden (or more accurately his handlers) wanted to.
This is not a defense of Trump's corruption which is indefensible. Only to say that Biden's was even worse, but perceived as acceptable by many because the gibs were spread around to all the important members of the coalition.
He has kids. One of the things I'll give him (insofar as it's a compliment: a pseudo-aristocratic clannish mindset is perhaps not ideal for a POTUS? not that Biden was better on that front) is that the guy seems to genuinely care about the wealth and welfare of his family, not just about his own.
In a 2016 Presidential debate:
When asked to praise Hillary, Trump said she's a fighter and he respects that.
When asked to praise Trump, Hillary said she respects how capable his children are and how that reflects on him as a father.
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