Peter Thiel Pledges to Support Trump’s 2020 Campaign
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/14/many-republi...
One of them gave me this article: https://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/the-flight-93-electi...
Another penned this one recently: https://sovereignexceptions.wordpress.com/2018/10/22/team-tr...
None of my acquaintances in tech are public about supporting Trump. Finance is a bit different. And this is not at all true of my blue-collar friends (also note I live in New Hampshire, not SV). Unfortunately I find it is getting harder to talk politics, at all, with my very liberal friends. And it is very easy to discuss (and even disagree) with my conservative friends.
He has delivered on his promises, America is now great again, why would you want to go back?
Poe's law needs a grim reaper like avatar, ruining your karma when you thought you were making a joke.
If you try to measure Trump by some conventional, objective-reality based means, he is IMO, probably the worst president America's ever had.
But people didn't vote for him based on such reasons and his supporters don't judge him on such metrics. Trump is a subjective feeling and he makes his base feel pretty great, so...
I'm not a big fan of Trump, but I do have to admit he is delivering on what he said he'd do. Pass tax reform, curtail immigration, go up against China in terms of trade, get conservative judges on the Supreme Court, start the peace process with North Korea.
A lot of people may hate him, but he is getting a lot more stuff done than past presidents.
I know a lot of people assumed Trump’s policy stand was just rhetoric. Apparently it’s not!
Indeed.
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpomete...
Or rather is it a simple slogan one can confidently spew knowing it's impossible to prove?
(edit: I get that this is probably sarcasm, but it seems at least _SOME_ Americans believe it to be true)
Politicans like Sanders and Trump are rising because they focus more on issues like income inequality and declining quality of life for the lower and middle classes. Both address globalization and labor leverage, though they address it differently. While they are culturally diametrically opposed, they are still remaining popular because they are addressing these issues that other politicans don't address, seemingly because big money has caused them to ignore those issues.
I do not think money corrupts, if it did, then Republicans would be the first to suffer.
Trump is actually punishing China for the first time in decades. With Bolsonaro in office in Brazil we now control 80%+ of world soybean and corn production, meaning we can effectively starve China into compliance if necessary
Economy is doing well, wage growth is above inflation for the first time in decades, 3.1% as of today's jobs report.
Why not give credit for that to the previous administration?
https://medium.com/simone-brunozzi/donald-trump-has-won-b0b6...
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/...
The wealthy/elite classes are doing absolutely fantastic under Trump though, and are getting tax cuts and wage increases. Those don't represent America, though.
Edit: Simple Google search shows my thoughts to be true [1]. Wages aren't rising quicker than inflation/cost of living, so saying wages are increasing or are "up" is a bit inaccurate.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickwwatson/2018/09/25/real-...
A 3.1% jump in wages should beat inflation at least for this year.
Does this also take into account wage increases of the top 10%? If so, that article would be wildly misleading.
No, it isn't, if you use the common sense of “middle class” to mean “middle income”, rather than the classical “petit bourgeoisie”. The change is less than $6000 in the standard deduction, so even if “a few” means only 2, you'd need over a 33% federal marginal tax rate to get a few thousand from it, which requires an income after the standard deduction of $200,000+.
I love American politics where if your own party does something, you praise it, but if the other part does the same thing, you demonize it.
However, it's worth noting that his ratings have never been above 50%, whereas all three of those presidents had honeymoon periods above 50% right after being elected, and returned to above 50% approval before being re-elected. Saying his approval ratings are comparable is technically true, but a little misleading. It would be accurate to say "some presidents had similarly bad approval numbers, but recovered and were re-elected. If his approval numbers rise, like theirs did, that would suggest he'll win."
The Democrats have become "The F Trump Party," obstructionist in their own words... but support for Trump is basically at an all-time high, so this isn't a very effective strategy.
Theoretically the right candidate could come along, powerful, charismatic, and well-versed in Trump's style of politics, and "put him in his place" ...but somehow I have a hard time seeing that happen, looking around at the potential Democrat 2020 candidates today. In fact I think there's a nontrivial chance of a third party viral literal meme candidate becoming more popular than the Democrat candidate in 2020.
If anyone can name some potential candidates they see as viable I'd be interested in looking into them if I haven't already, but like I said, for the time being 2020 looks like a completely one-sided fight.
Inheriting the country when things are looking down right amazing economically.
I do strongly believe that the US would have been doing great irrespective of the person in power. (I strongly dislike Trump as a person, and do have strong bias here. I also do kind-of believe that he is not very bright)
But, should there be reason to believe that America's economic prosperity is due to the Trump admin, I would love to be enlightened on the matter.
Economies are all about skepticism and when the strongest economy in the world decides to make policy in strengthening its position - well, it certainly doesn't hurt. It's especially helpful that he had a decent starting point to begin with.
I can't help it myself. Even if I didn't know Donald Trump existed, he is the poster boy of the kind person I would utterly dislike. So, it is very difficult for me to evaluate his presidency through an objective lens. I am human after all.
It doesn't help that polarization in media means, he is portrayed either as a do-no-wrong messiah or Satan himself.
Do you know of any relatively objective report that talks about his policies and bills he has passed (that would have been opposed by a democratic president), and their effects ?
I know a few good (what I believe to be) objective and research driven sources, but all of them are very critical of Trump.
I would really appreciate being directed towards a piece that talks about his achievements as well (without putting him on a pedestal)
They are comparable to Reagan’s, if you look at bare approval, but, as a 2.5+ percentage point difference is pretty significant in approval, less so to Clinton or Obama.
But bare approval is not really a good guide (net approval and bare disapproval are better.) While 538 posts Trump approval/disapproval/net, the default comparators is bare approval. But if you click over to compare disapproval or net approval, Trump is clearly in a significantly worse position than any of the past Presidents listed (including Reagan, despite bare approval being nearly identical.) Majority disapproval at a comparable point is unprecedented, as is greater than 10 points net disapproval.
At this current point in time, I can't see any reason why this won't be the exact situation come 2020.
He is very clear in describing what he considers the issues, and it would appear that Trump's ideas in some way or other align with his own.
Generally, the more intellect, the less that sort of thing is likely, but racism traps some people that are not quite dumb. It's what's in their heart that matters.
> Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.
From the article linked below.
Honestly, reading that over, his political ideology is a hot mess of inconsistency. I'm not exactly sure what the hell Peter Thiel stands for, other than his own pocket book.
https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...
That's what happens when you treat "libertarianism" as the immutable word of God. Doesn't translate to the way human society works.
2) The cuts to social services don't affect people in his pay grade.
3) He lives in a gated community and wouldn't be targeted for harm by the sort of people that are now emboldened to say the quiet part out loud.
4) He founded Palantir and wants to secure more government contracts
5) His experience with being outed by Gawker (completely unethical IMO) probably also led to him viewing "the media" as a monolithic force out to get him.
And unlike Thiel, they don't have access to accountants that can shuttle their cash away into tax shelters or lobbyists who will buy off politicians for peanuts to get them to vote for even more cuts.
Peter Thiel is rich and has a Randian "fuck you, I got mine" attitude. The GOP's policies disproportionally favor the rich without regard for practically anything else. A Trump presidency means that control is largely in the hands of the GOP. Hence Thiel favors Trump.
It's probably that simple.
Other than that, historically he's been pretty conservative hasn't he?
The other reason is that he agrees with at least a decent chunk of Trump's policies. He probably supports lower taxes, reduced regulations, and probably greater isolationism.
Other than that, he's fairly libertarian, so he _should_ be for free trade and free immigration rather than protectionism.
He's not a libertarian by any stretch, though a right libertarian might tend to agree with his views on what government should not do. (Though if the “libertarian” part means anything, probably have strong disagreements with much of what he deployed government to do.)
He's a left-leaning independent who happens to espouse a few republican type ideals like low taxes to stimulate the economy, and a few democrat type ideals such as legalizing pot and lgbt rights. He could have credibly run for the democrat party's nomination and probably won it, in which case he'd be the darling of the left (and Hillary would still hate him). Remember, everybody on the left, including the last president, said all the same things he said about the immigration issue just a few years ago.
He's not "right" or "racist" in any way, and he got where he is through the democratic process...
I would agree with you he's not a libertarian. I am going to laugh my rear end off when he tells the DEA to take pot off the schedule though.
Trump is obviously a Republican (whatever he may have had as an affiliation before), and equally-obviously not “left-leaning”, a shown by his actions with control over actual policy (whatever he might have pretended to make favorable connections with various, especially New York, politicians when his only interest in policy was getting favorable treatment for his own personal business interests.)
> He could have credibly run for the democrat party's nomination and probably won it
That's an interesting fantasy, that is only plausible in that (given his ambiguous political positions before the campaign) one might imagine him adopting a completely different persona that didn't back bigoted and right-wing causes and yet was no less inconsistent with his pre-campaign persona. But his campaign persona, and even moreso his policies and appointments in office, have been consistently hard right, and often outright bigoted, from his demonizing immigrants (including currently-legal ones as part of his campaign to curtail currently-legal immigration, especially family-based immigration) to the Muslim ban to his his anti-LGBT policies, to his stance against investigations of police civil rights violations that were ongoing when he took office (which were echoed even louder and given concrete policy substance by his appointee as Attorney-General, who is in lockstep on this issue even if they have not seen eye to eye over Trump's personal legal exposure.)
He's not backed any "bigoted right wing causes." You know there was never a Muslim ban, right? You know that the immigration laws haven't changed, the previous administration simply ignored them. For anyone who believes in the rule of law, the laws are supposed to be enforced -- it's a foundational principle of operating a society. That's why he's continually called for Congress to change the laws if they want things changed.
Police civil rights violations? Are you confused into thinking that local policing in the US is somehow affected by DOJ policies? The DOJ does not often get directly involved in local policing issues -- they've historically only gotten involved in the most egregious of cases.
Yes, and I addressed that.
> You know there was never a Muslim ban, right?
There is an exclusion policy which Trump himself referred to as that. You can choose whether you think he did that because the polciy is actually bigoted or simply as a technique to appeal to bigots, I suppose.
> You know that the immigration laws haven't changed,
Trump has, in fact, campaigned for changes to them to reduce the scope of legal immigration, particularly to eliminate much currently legal family-based immigration (and even most recently asserted they he can universally abrogate a Constitutional guarantee in order to deny citizenship to children of immigrants.)
> For anyone who believes in the rule of law, the laws are supposed to be enforced
Well, yes, that is why a lot of people are upset about his suggestion that he would revoke birthright citizenship, guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, by executive order.
> Police civil rights violations? Are you confused into thinking that local policing in the US is somehow affected by DOJ policies?
Are you confused into thinking that the DoJ investigations into misconduct and federal civil rights charges (or, more often, consent decrees entered into to forestall such charges) don't effect local policing, both in the jurisdictions directly involved and others that don't want to end up under a DoJ microscope?
> they've historically only gotten involved in the most egregious of cases.
Yes, and there were some of those currently ongoing at the time of tj transition.
Have you not been watching the news the past 2 years?
1. Zero to one talks about the importance of optimism vs pessimism for the future. Compare Obama saying the US needs to get used to sub 2% GDP growth vs Trump saying we can hit 5%. Trump isn't afraid to think big at the very least when it comes to space force and similar big projects
2. Thiel is libertarian and sees Trump as a means to reduce government. Romney got in trouble a few years back for saying a hard truth, that 47% of people don't pay taxes and are never going to vote for less free stuff. At some point it becomes two wolves arguing with a sheep on what's for dinner
3. Personal gain, Thiel has Palantir as well as another company that would use AI to create a "virtual" boarder wall via image recognition
I wish people would stop asking about this crap and ask Trump supporters how they feel about detaining asylum seekers, kidnapping, drugging and abusing their children, or how they feel about Trump kowtowing to Putin, or MBS, or about the corruption and nepotism. About the fact that we don't have a fucking ambassador to Turkey or Saudi Arabia because JARED is supposed to be handling it.
Stop asking people about if they think the Tweets are too mean...
Lots of downvoting going on in this thread. Care to comment?