But he is honest about it. You know that he is who he is and he knows that too. He's not putting on some show or face to fool everyone, unlike Hillary.
Except this isn't true at all. Just this week he has gone from doing an interview with Bill O'Reily saying we needed to help the refugees flooding Europe to an interview with Hannity saying we can't. What changed? Obama announced that we would try to help the refugees. Is he for planned parenthood or against it? Depends on the interview. Literally from one interview to the next his "opinion" changes. Immigration was a perfect example. He went from saying we wouldn't deport everyone, just the "bad ones" to an interview with Chuck Todd where he said we would deport everyone but not families and then an interview with Bill O'Reily to where he said he would deport everyone including families. The idea that he is "honest" or a "straight shooter" is total hogwash. People just don't care. He touches on the angry, nativist vein for so many people that he could say 2+2=50 and they wouldn't care.
But he is. His positions change daily. He can't even keep them straight. He's as full of it as Hillary is. The only difference is that he doesn't seem to care who he offends. He stands for nothing. I can't vote for a candidate who stands for nothing, especially when that candidate is supposed to be the standard-bearer for the party that's supposed to champion conservative ideas. Until he jumped into the race his policy positions were almost uniformly leftist, and would have been perfectly at home in the Democrap party circa 2005. He's "evolved" on virtually every major policy issue that there is. Conservativism is entirely idea-driven, so how can someone who has no ideas and no core beliefs be its leader? He can't.
This seems to be exactly correct. People don't care if what he says makes them think; they like him because of how they feel after hearing him speak. I have to believe he'll fizzle out. The two-party system gets what the two-party system wants and its establishment does not want Donald Trump's name on a general ballot.
Oh please. Are you the only one that doesn't see through the guy's rhetoric or how much bull**** he spews? I mean, that was the basis of his popularity prior to the past few months. As far as anyone who knew who Trump was prior to the past few months of his presidential campaign, he is who we thought was.
It's human nature for people consumed with self-loathing to have to totally crash and burn before they can begin the hard work of rebuilding their self-respect. I assume this extends to groups of people like political parties too. Small government sentiments clash with government intruding on individual choice, that's a fundamental conflict. The vision of economic opportunity through private small business clashes with the power of oligarchic to control of business and government. Defending the Constitution when it allows for equality of all religion and no religion is a conflict. Supporting 'democracy' while gerrymandering districts and limiting voter participation is a conflict. Calling for balanced budgets and reduced taxes while spending wildly on the military and foreign conflicts is a conflict. Focusing on the white race with a dwindling voter percentage inspires desperation, they are fighting a losing war. You have to know who you are and what you believe and live true to that. If you try to live a lie you are going to stress out and crash. Trump is the GOP's black-out drunk binge.
The sad part is that while most of Trump's crazy is easily recoginzable bluster, the other guys are equally crazy and dumb just in a boring way. Jeb or Scott Walker or Marco Rubio or whoevers policy plans, to the extent they have even bothered to produce them yet, rely on ideas that are equally fantastical and stupid as mass deportation and border walls.
I'll say this: this is an interesting phenomenon. A lot of things have happened in the last 15 years I wouldn't have ever guessed would be real ... so add one more. .
if you flash back to 2002 it does seem improbable. i can't tell if the current GOP lineup really is a funny joke (did palin start as the snowball down a mountain) or am i just not able to see through the fog and realize how great that all are.
The only reason why he's so popular seems to be because he's so angry and demeaning to everyone. Not sure how else you explain his popularity among republican and especially tea folks when some of his ideas (e.g. single payer Canadian health care system and taxing the 1% to pay down the debt) are way left of the right. It's not the policy. It's who hate my enemy the most. Very strange behavior.
It also doesn't work mathematically. The 1% already pays 38% of the income taxes. If we taxed them at 100%, it likely wouldn't even cover the interest on $17 trillion. According to CNN Money, if you make $400,000 a year, you are in the top 1%. Sure, that's a lot of money...but it isn't the uber wealthy, rolling around in piles of gold like Scrooge McDuck that some would have you believe. If you live in the NE or on the West Coast, $400,000 is far from living a care free life and having a private jet.
As of 2011, the top 1% made approximate $1.55 trillion in income and were taxed at a net of 23% ($365B). The government pays about $420 billion in interest per year.
23%???? I pay more than that. Geez, how is it they have a lower tax rate than the middle class. That should be 35% min.
He is honest about being a dishonest, prejudice, misogynistic uninformed a-hole. Yes. He. Is. Now if you guys would just be honest about being dishonest about climate change you would be more like D.T.
I enjoy the downplaying of someone making $400k per year. It's only about ten times what the average American makes. Boohoo.
Nice straw man, but nobody is talking about taxing anyone at 100%. In addition, income taxes are not the only tax out there. If you look at all of the other taxes which affect Americans and those living in the United States (even illegal immigrants pay taxes), the ones which are regressive in their effects, you find the reason that the income tax was made progressive. Honestly, you could likely close the deficit with modest spending cuts (means test SS benefits, move the SS index to chained CPI, reduce DoD spending, eliminate the drug war) along with modest tax reform, (treating all income as income, eliminating loopholes and broadening the base, removing the preferential rates on dividends and capital gains, eliminating the cap on SS contributions), then you would likely only need very small rate hikes to eliminate the deficit and begin paying down the debt. Doing so would, over the course of time, reduce the interest expense line item, which would function as a year after year spending cut without any need to cut services. And, if you make $400,000 per year, taxing a bit higher is not going to hurt as much as it hurts lower income Americans. To be completely honest, I'd be all for increasing income taxes on all Americans so that we all feel the bite that Reagan and Bush took out of our a$$es over the last 40 years. When the Greatest Generation faced a debt/GDP ratio similar to what we have now, they did the responsible thing and raised taxes to pay down that debt to reasonable levels.
