r/politics • u/Quirkie The Netherlands • 1d 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/prtproductions 1d ago

Let’s be real here, if I wasn’t an old, white, Republican man.

Edit to add: Rich and Famous

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u/Perpetually_isolated 1d ago

What?

There have been plenty of old white Republican presidents. This shit would never fly.

This is a trump/cult problem. Not a race thing.

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u/VanceKelley Washington 1d ago

Bush 43 launched an illegal war against Iraq in 2003, joked about how he made up the WMD thing, got thousands of US soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, and America re-elected him to the White House in 2004.

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u/cigarettesandwhiskey 1d ago

He also left office in disgrace and his party was roundly defeated. He won election in 2004 because the long-term consequences of the invasion, which was only about a year old at the time, were not yet apparent. The invasion part had gone incredibly well too, so he was still in the afterglow of the "mission accomplished" phase, which was not yet a joke, and to an extend 9/11, which continued to loom over everything for like the entire decade and was used as a justification for the Iraq war even though Iraq had nothing to do with it.

Tldr I don't think Bush's old-white-manness is why he got reelected in '04, and he did eventually become incredibly unpopular. I'm doubtful he would have gotten away with what Trump is getting away with. That is, unless Trump doesn't get away with it, in the end.