r/politics • u/Quirkie The Netherlands • 16h ago

Soft Paywall Obama Breaks Silence on Trump’s ‘Unimaginable’ Presidency - “Imagine if I had done any of this,” the former two-term president said.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/obama-breaks-silence-on-trumps-unimaginable-presidency/
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u/jtsa5 16h ago

If anyone else other than Trump did anything wrong it was like the world was ending. When it's Trump everyone has kid gloves on.

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u/SadFeed63 16h ago

That's what I found very infuriating last year when you saw some very direct Trump impressions not get treated like Trump by mainstream media. DeSantis was doing a Trump impression at the start of 2024, and he even got a little bit or overly credulous, Trump-like coverage that talks about his insane bullshit in a totally normal tone, but this was when Trump was comparatively quiet from a news front. Then he called him Meatball Ron or whatever fucking thing and that was that, DeSantis was done and has more often been (accurately) covered like he's radioactive. When Vance got announced as the VP pick, he basically went on a tear doing a Trump impression and he didn't even get the grace period DeSantis did. He got covered pretty immediately like he was a radioactive shitstain, which he is.

Both these guys didn't seem to realize that just being a loud moron is not enough to do a Trump, you need the other half of the equation, which is Trump style coverage. And yeah, Trump gets bad coverage sometimes, of course, all he does is awful shit, but he generally benefits from intense both sides-ing, sanewashing, unearned credulity from the media, covering a lot of his insane shit just as uncritical "Trump says..." direct quotes, etc. They didn't get that cause they're not Trump, he's always treated special. It's absolutely infuriating

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u/that_boyaintright 15h ago

It’s the feeling that he’s “real” and even if you don’t agree with what he’s saying, you identify with the emotion behind it.

The emotion behind it is that the world is persecuting you and you’re the righteous, misunderstood hero, and it’s okay to be angry and messy about it.

It’s such an intoxicating feeling that nothing else matters, and he’s the only one who can pull it off because he’s a true believer. You get the feeling he genuinely does not care about politics and is not interested in learning, and that also validates his supporters’ feelings that everything is weird and confusing and not worth knowing.

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u/Count_Backwards 14h ago

That's the Narcissist's High. It's disturbing how susceptible so many people are to it.

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u/that_boyaintright 14h ago

It’s not a narcissist’s anything. 30% of our country does not have narcissistic personality disorder. In my work as a therapist, I’ve seen maybe a handful of people, ever, who are actual narcissists.

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u/Count_Backwards 13h ago

30% of the country is highly susceptible to the allure of someone narcissistic, and that's on the record. I didn't say his cult members were narcissists themselves (though they're clearly bad at recognizing the condition). They think they want to be him (they don't).

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u/hyperhurricanrana 15h ago

Ron DeSanctimonious. Honestly that one’s pretty good.

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u/_BannedAcctSpeedrun_ 12h ago

That one always felt so forced to me. Trump had to say it dozens of times before it stuck and MAGA started going along with it.

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u/KelsierIV 12h ago

To be fair, Trump probably had to say it dozens of times just so he could pronounce a word with that many syllables.

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u/Count_Backwards 14h ago

Trump keeps reminding me of the Mule from Asimov's Foundation series. He's this ugly stupid crass hateful demented clown with orange face paint and badly tailored suits, a long record of failure, and a nonstop stream of verbal abuse and blatant lies and terrible ideas coming out of his mouth and yet somehow the media, the judiciary, other politicians, literally anyone with any power to put him in his place somehow can't help compulsively fawning over him as if he's the second coming of Christ. It's literally making me, an atheist, wonder if maybe there really is an antichrist. Some of that supplication can be blamed on the Heritage Foundation, but a lot of the people bending over to kiss his ass have nothing to do with the fascist movement. It's like they see him and they have a stroke and forget what it was they were supposed to do about him. And I agree, it's infuriating to watch because he's not brilliant or scary, he's a toxic narcissist, a toddler in an 80-year-old meat suit. As soon as anyone actually stands up to him he folds: Harris utterly humiliated him in the debate. That should've been the end of his political career, but it was yet another in a long line of things that should've ended his political career. 

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u/masterexit 6h ago

Historians are gonna have a field day looking back on the Trump years.

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u/Available_Tank_8950 2h ago

It's making me, an agnostic, start wondering about the antichrist too because I feel like people are under mass psychosis and so much internationally linked and years long premeditated Evil is afoot these days that it can't be scientifically explained.

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u/bridwats 14h ago

It's the complete lack of shame that Trump has. He ALWAYS doubles down and never backs off. The other guys will push through the shame, but they aren't as deluded as Trump is. Ironically, this is his greatest strength. It's also why I think it will be near impossible for the GOP to keep all of the sheep in the same pen after he's gone. They just don't have anyone else who can harness the ability to make the masses feel connected in the same way. They are bad people, but they know what they are doing is wrong. Trump doesn't know and actually believes all of his own bullshit. That's why he throws a tantrum when it doesn't work.

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u/hebejebez 12h ago

Well I mean the stormy Daniel’s case bought to light the fact he was paying the shitrag newspaper (post? Something akin to news of the world in the uk before it got canned) to put random good stories out or cover things the way he wanted. Who’s to say he doesn’t do that will all these fuckers like fox etc or now just has blackmail information on them instead cheaper after all.

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u/Guilty_Internet1943 15h ago

Jealous, huh?

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u/Count_Backwards 14h ago

Trump hates himself. He loves no one and is loved by no one. The adoration of his cult is not love it's worship. Every relationship in his life is transactional: he's surrounded by people who want something from him and is only nice to people he thinks he can get something from. He's literally incapable of understanding empathy or affection or consideration for other people. He's living in a narcissistic black hole. That's not something anyone should envy.