Why didn't you link to the tweet? Here it is: https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/...81395078000643

And here's the entire quote:The tweet contains no reference to any specific person, but as the U.S. President has been particularly critical of the four very left-leaning Democratic congressmembers that constitute the so-called "Squad", one of the people he's thinking of is probably Ihlan Omar who, while now an American citizen, comes from Somalia, which is very much a Failed State.

So he's making the point that it could be seen as hypocritical when someone who left their own mismanaged country to make a political career in the U.S., is overly critical of the way the U.S. is run. Was that a particularly polite tweet? Perhaps not. Was it a good point? Not necessarily.

But racist? Because Ihlan Omar is non-white, I assume? Would it have been less racist to say the exact same if she came from, say, Russia? Or North Korea?
How is he wrong? And if he's right, how is that racist?

Every analysis and statistic shows that an influx of unskilled workers will depress wages for entry-level jobs, and increase unemployment in that segment of the labour market. It did that in Germany, it does so now in Sweden and the U.K., and honestly, as long as there is unemployment at all, how in the world could it not?

And then there's the issue of illegal immigration. It seems U.S. businesses don't mind exploiting illegal immigrants for cheap labour, as an ICE raid on a Mississippi Chicken plant back in December 2019 showed. And with the undocumented workers gone, there were no shortage of American citizens (of all races) queuing up for the now-vacant positions. The articles said nothing about legal repercussions for the managers or the business owners. Very strange.

Since this is an IT-related site, have you been paying attention to the H-1B nonsense that's been going on for decades? Companies claim to have job openings that require a very peculiar skillset that no-one actually has, but then they claim to find a whole bunch of these unicorn workers at some foreign consulting firm, which is then promptly issued a whole bunch of H-1B work visas.

In reality, these people are low-skilled workers, of which there are plenty in the U.S., but a bunch of immigrants working under the constant risk of being deported if they are fired will accept lower wages and poorer working conditions. It's an open secret in the industry that this is happening, but for some reason you have to read foreign media like India Times to learn about it.

So yes, immigration in general can and does displace american workers, because businesses in general want the cheapest labour possible ("Open Borders? That's a Koch brothers proposal!" -Bernie Sanders, 2015). Also, some businesses are all too willing to break the law, and people with no documents are not in a position to negotiate with the employer.

I don't think these facts are racist.
I still haven't seen any racism.

By him saying "immigrants are taking your jobs", he purposely energized the borderline racists in the country, and empowered the outright racists (KKK, etc). Undocumented immigrants are a part of our society, like it or not. Are you going to go in the field and pick strawberries or prunes for $5 an hour? Are you going to work as a dishwasher in a restaurant? Likely not. I understand this pulls $ from the economy, but US citizens are flat out not doing this kind of work, especially farm labor.

His points about closing our borders are pointless because they are not constructive, they are meant to cause anger and ultimately chaos. I do get that immigration reform has a place and maybe we should lessen the restrictions so farm or other manual laborers can work here, we tax them and then they go back to their own countries, or even stay here and feed the economy by making local purchases.

The problem is his speeches are just like a toned down hitler. He gets the wrong people riled up about issues without providing solutions. I am not saying he is just like hitler, but he speaks the same: loudly and about issues that are very touchy and with which there are a lot of people in the US that silently agree with him but are afraid to come right out and say it because they will be viewed as racist.

I agree we disagree and we each have that right. No one is in his head and we only hear what we are fed by the media.

That may be true, but do you really think he did that on purpose? To win the support of a tiny group of racists? Or is it just that he doesn't care about political correctness and blurts out anything he believes to be important?
So are thieves and rapists and war and famine, but that doesn't mean it should be that way.

For instance, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said terror attacks were "part and parcel of living in a big city", but it turned out most people did not embrace such a defeatist attitude.
It would be a toll on my back, because I did too much labour like that in my youth, so probably not. But I know many who would.

And speaking of prunes, why do they have to be as ridiculously cheap as they are? I could easily afford to pay twice or more than what they're asking. Do our prunes have to be the result of the cheap labour of the poor?
I have been! And I rather enjoyed it, to be honest, although it was hard work.
Not true. When the chicken plant had vacancies after the ICE raids, the positions were filled within a day. Same in other countries; tens of thousands of Brits were interested in picking fruit and berries, but the jobs went to Poles, I believe (I'd have to look that one up).
It has indeed caused quite a ruckus, but are you certain that was his intention?

Most other countries have vastly better border control than the U.S., and with porous borders comes smuggling of all kinds, and human trafficking. Did you see the numbers from the ICE detention facilities regarding children traveling with adults that claimed to be their parents or relatives? Turned out that at in at least a third of the cases, these adults were not related to them at all. Where do you think those children were going?

A Romanian YouTuber made an interesting point a few months back, when Romanians were being shipped to Germany as seasonal workers on farms. Turns out this has totally ruined the agricultural sector in Romania, particularly small farmers, as poor Romanian farmers just can't compete with German companies when it comes to wages. Something to consider, perhaps.

No. Just no. He absolutely does not.

I have a certain fascination with WWII, the rise of the National Socialists, and the rhetoric and ideology of Adolf Hitler and the members of his inner circle. I've been more or less studying it for the last two and a half decades. And to make any sort of comparison with Donald Trump or indeed any political figure in the U.S. is so patently absurd that it cannot and should not be taken seriously.

Mr. Trump is a pretty poor public speaker in formal settings. He uses vague terms, goes off on tangents, and constantly uses vacuous terms like "the best <whatever> in the world", "very soon", "amazing". He does better at his rallies, probably because he gets to speak about whatever's on his mind with no interruptions, but it's still not stellar. If he sticks to a script written by a competent writer, he can deliver a good performance; his latest State of the Union was not bad at all. But at his very worst he comes across almost as a bumbling fool.

He can be pretty funny, though, and self-deprecating; I believe he could have made a decent stand-up comedian. And he can be pretty quick on his feet in debates, especially when he gets to interject one-liners to torpedo his opponent.

Hitler was absolutely nothing like the above. When he spoke, everything was carefully calculated; every word, every gesture carefully rehearsed. His goal was to elicit an emotional response from the crowd, and he succeeded like no-one before him. But he was in total control at all times. You know those clips of him on a podium, ranting and raving against whomever or whatever, seemingly consumed with anger and righteous indignation? It was all an act.

Also, Hitler was an obsessed ideologue and a master manipulator. Trump is pretty much the opposite of that.
That is so true. And that's why I've chosen to participate in this thread.

I'm not an American. I don't live in the U.S. I'm politically neutral, and as such do not take part in the political process in any way. I don't care about Republican or Democrat positions. But do I care deeply about what's true and what's not, and I'm appalled by the outright lies being fed to us by the media.

And I do mean lies. Not inaccuracies, not mistakes, not embellishments, not someone giving an opinion or presenting a partisan perspective, but outright lies, where someone speaks or writes what they absolutely must know not to be true.

It just so happens that right now, Donald Trump seems to be the singular focus of the media, and boy do they not like him. That has resulted in an unprecedented number of outright lies about him being presented as fact, over and over again. In fact, I recently saw Joe Biden reference one such lie in a speech, but he did it in a very cunning manner so as to not outright repeat the lie, but instead counting on his audience having heard it and making the connection. Disgusting.

It's Donald Trump or Nicholas Sandmann or Kyle Rittenhouse today, and someone else tomorrow. And one day it could very well be you or me, so we'd better be vigilant.

You make some good points about Mr. Trump's personality and speeches. I think my bias comes from the fact I have never liked him, even long before his presidency, because to me he is not only not charismatic, but anti-charismatic. That's my opinion: I cannot stand to see his face or to hear his voice - it enrages me for whatever reason. My wife and I were utterly appalled when we heard the election results in 2016. It was as if PeeWee Herman got elected.

We as people, really of any nation, will never know truth about any political candidate. We only know what we read or hear or see, via the media, mainly because we have no other means of knowing. Some media outlets are clearly propaganda machines, Fox News for example, is the propaganda arm of the Republican party. That really bothers me actually because how are we supposed to know what is real and what isn't? Now that we have "deep fakes", all digital media is called into question.

I hate the US's 2 party system, personally. We really need to have multiple parties for people like me, who are very neutral and have views that span both parties. Instead, we have to pick the lesser of 2 evils, which is not ideal obviously.

Thank you for continuing this conversation in a sane and civilized way. I am rather enjoying it and it gives me another perspective. Here in the US, this is a very polarized issue and there are violent acts committed by both sides. The COVID crisis does not help because people have had to fundamentally change how they live their lives.

Donald Trump is pretty much anti-presidential, or at least he was back in 2016. The president just isn't supposed to give people nicknames or insult their appearance ("horseface", anyone?). Stuff that would have been acceptable or at least expected on a reality TV show or, dare I say it, from a stand-up podium, doesn't translate well to the oval office.

But how about Hillary Clinton...? I don't know how her speeches would have been, but it's pretty much given that with her at the helm, the U.S. would now be at war with at least one Middle Eastern country, and young Americans would be returning home in coffins. Instead you have incessant tweeting, constant hysteria in the media, manufacturing jobs coming back to the U.S., childish name-calling, and three major peace deals. Perhaps not the worst deal?

To quote another YouTube commentator: "He's bad, but he's not that bad."

But the establishment really hates him, and has desperately tried to get something, ANYTHING, on him for years. That means he's not one of them. Is that bad?
Go to the source. There may be videos, or court documents, or uncut versions of interviews. Whenever you hear a media narrative, don't think "oh, so THAT'S what happened," because the media can't be trusted. Instead, think "who benefits from this?"

For instance, consider this recent event that was widely reported in the news:

"Wasn't it just terrible how that woman Breonna Taylor was killed in her own bed by the police in a so-called no-knock raid? How was her boyfriend to know that the unidentified intruders were police officers? No wonder he thought it was a home invasion and shot at them! This is the kind of policing black people have to put up with in crime-ridden neighborhoods. And only one of the cops were indicted!"

Two things about the above: 1) All of what I wrote has been reported in the media. 2) None of it is true.

- It was not a "no-knock warrant".
- How do we know? The warrant says so, it's a public document.

- It was not executed as a no-knock warrant.
- How do we know? The police made such a spectacle as they were banging on the door and shouting "Police!" that it attracted the attention of the neighbours. They have testified to what they witnessed.

- The police did not shoot first, Breonna Taylor's boyfriend did.
- How do we know? The boyfriend testified to that effect, claiming he shot at the police officer because he thought it was Breonnas other boyfriend coming to get him (they were all involved in some sort of drug deal). An unlikely story, unless he's practically deaf, but that was probably the best he could think of on such short notice.

- Breonna was not in her bed, but in the hall beside her boyfriend #1 as the police broke down the door.
- How do we know? Again, the boyfriend testified to that effect. Also, she was found in the hallway.

- None of the cops were actually indicted regarding Breonna's death.
- How do we know? The documents are public. One cop did however get indicted on the charge of "reckless endangerment", I believe it's called, because he fired blindly into the hallway after his colleague was shot and seriously wounded. A jury will get to decide whether his actions were reasonable under the circumstances or not.

So where did this "no-knock warrant" and "killed in her bed" nonsense originate? Not from the police, obviously, and not from the neighbours who witnessed the event. That leaves only the journalists.
And thank you for providing a much-needed perspective from the inside. I must say the violence looks horrific. I hope you're safe, and that the rioting either dies down or is put a stop to soon.

From this side of the puddle it seems that you have multiple parties and independants to choose from, but it's the simple first past the post voting you have that is maintaining the two party system's hold on power.

Ser Olmy is right about modern populist leaders. It's not just Trump; there's a pattern here and it's very different from the pattern of 1933.

Fascist leaders were self-styled "great men". Their official title in whatever language they spoke was "The Leader". They wore military uniform in public and offered themselves as the capstone of a rigid, hierarchical, militarised society in which the superior men would dominate the inferior men (and women) for their own good. The allies may have portrayed Hitler as a clown, but that certainly wasn't how the German people saw him. Anyone who did would quickly have found his way into Belsen or a similar camp.

Modern populist leaders appeal to a quite different audience, one that actively hates elites and are looking for an ordinary guy. So they play up to that. I think Trump's clowning is largely accidental, a result of his basic stupidity, but many others of his kind do it deliberately. Boris Johnson certainly does. Beppe Grillo, the leader of the Italian 5-star party, is a professional comedian and I have heard that the current populist leader in Slovakia is one too. Leading a modern populist movement is like herding cats: you can only do it by not looking like a leader.

I mean, can you imagine Trump wearing jackboots? I certainly can't! I don't like him or his policies but calling him a fascist is just lazy thinking.

This op-ed from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is, I wot, germane to this thread, as it has the word "bully" in the headline.

Yes, quite interesting. The entire premise of the article is, to put it politely, incorrect.

I find it very hard to believe that the author wrote this in good faith.

Trump may well be a bully but there is something very distasteful in the glee with which left-leaning papers accuse him of it while remaining pointedly silent about the horrendous bullying and trolling that their politically correct allies inflict on anyone who dares to disagree with them. Look what happened to J K Rowling. If that is not bullying, the word has no meaning.

Zing!

Thank you.
I agree about the 2-party-system.
It has many more implications - basically every political discussion can be reduced to "pitching two opponents against each other", journalists can easily be accused of "taking sides", etc. I really prefer my political landscape a little more colourful, more populated. The everyday art of having a discussion with more than 2 opinions - so invigorating!

Speaking of US journalism and the ever-present accusation of "taking sides" - here's the rest:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/p...rump-vs-biden/ (that's audio - here is video)

I think they should have chosen a different title - this piece is not about presenting an equal choice.
They make a good effort to show both sides (not living in the US of NA, I certainly learned a lot) in an unflattering light, but in the end it's clear which side they're on. And that is OK. Doesn't make it bad journalism.
More interesting facts as to why DT is not a good politician (or person), and how exactly he manages to be succesful doing what he's doing.