"Congress has been in a state of relative gridlock for many years, across multiple administrations whether republican or democrat. As a result, presidents have increasingly been leading by executive order rather than legislation. That is not Trump's fault, that is just the state of the country."

"People thinking that Trump is a king or dictator are delusional, because the US doesn't work that way. If Trump rounded up thousands of US citizens and simply burned them alive, he would be arrested by the military and impeached by congress, because there are red lines that basically everyone agrees on."

So presidents are acting more like kings, but Trump... isn't?

Does pardoning people who commit acts of violence in your name not sound like a king?

Or what about pardoning people who donate do your campaigns?

"Talk about taking over Canada or Greenland is just rhetoric to get better deals and improve ally strength, because this is what Donald Trump has been doing since the 1980s. Doing something with Venezuela is part of basic US national strategy, not simply a spontaneous whim of Donald Trump."

You think Donald Trump has been _strengthening_ our relationships with allies? In what manner has he done that in your mind? Is it the tariffs, the denigration, or the threats that are helping? And how does Canada talking about moving away from the US at Davos, then confirming it again later play into that? Is our allies cutting off signal intelligence actually a sign that our bonds with them is getting stronger?

Just trying to understand.

"Doing something with Venezuela is part of basic US national strategy, not simply a spontaneous whim of Donald Trump."

Which part of US national strategy is that exactly? Sure Maduro is pretty universally condemned by anyone paying attention, but so are plenty of other authoritarian regimes? Is part of the national strategy leaving the ruling class exactly the same as the one the apparently corrupt dictator we deposed had and then extorting it for millions of barrels of oil? Does the richest country in the world, which also is the largest oil producer and has plenty of access to a very stable world oil market need to resort to extorting barrels of oil from foreign dictators as part of national strategy?

If it's just part of our national strategy, why'd the rational change so frequently and why does no one seem to have heard that before Trump decided to start focusing on it and amassing weapons off their coast?

"This doesn't mean you have to like a current president personally or morally, or even agree with everything they are doing, but at least you can gain more perspective around what is real and what is not."

Primo ending though.