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Comment by philipallstar | Hacker News Reader

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> and took giant amounts of holiday

Trump took more than double the amount of vacation days in his first term, and if the golf tracker is accurate, he's on pace to increase it this term.

> Trump's talking basically every day in front of press

I'm not sure if talking === communicating_effectively. There are certainly noises coming out of his mouth, if that's the only metric we care about.

> Joe Biden was in far, far worse shape than Trump is

Given the choice between a president who recognizes his own weaknesses and delegates to competent team members and one who is unable to admit a single mistake and surrounds himself with grossly unqualified and incompetent sycophants, I'll take the former.

> There's absolutely no comparison

As with most comparisons made by Trump supporters - you're right, but not for the reasons you think.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_vac...

https://didtrumpgolftoday.com/

The truth is Obama whether you like him or not was the last traditional post War American President.

Biden copied Trumps extremist way of Government. Biden said (totally abnormal comments for a president) "we've been patient with the unvaccinated, but our patience is wearing thin" highly aggressive comments. Trump is basically using that same language with illegal immigrants and Americans critical of Israel and the Iran war.

Both are senile. Bidens was more pronounced but less erratic/manic as Trumps. That make Trumps senility more dangerous.

Both Biden and Trump wanted to use media organizations to censor their political opponents. Trump using FCC to remove broadcast licenses for critical media, Biden administration communicating with social media companies to get users that post critical content banned.

If you still view this as a partisan problem, where one side is the good guy. We won't get anywhere. The United States and the interests that control it, both D and R, are at war with the American people. Im my opinion.

> highly aggressive comments. Trump is basically using that same language with illegal immigrants and Americans critical of Israel and the Iran war.

You're equating a _statement_ made by Biden (with regards to a public health crisis actively killing Americans) with Trump arresting US citizens, illegally deporting asylum-seekers, and bombing Iran without congressional approval, a plan for the strait of Hormuz, nor buy-in from allies. This is not a good faith comparison.

> Both Biden and Trump wanted to use media organizations to censor their political opponents

Again, you're comparing the Biden admin _asking_ Twitter to censor content (primarily relating to revenge porn against his adult son) with Trump actively threatening the broadcast license of networks because comedians were mean to him - another bad faith comparison.

Ya this whole back and forth reminds me of why I despise social media. I disagree with a few things you mentioned but have no interest arguing.

True. Yet he still managed to do less damage.

...because he had competent people around him that he trusted enough to make decisions, and not former TV hosts.

This isn't to say "oh he was just a puppet" nor "all US presidents are puppets", but to say that the decision of who they choose to fill important positions is in and of itself the most important decision in every presidential term. They only really need to be not senile for the first month or so, for the rest of the term it's just a PR problem.

There’s just absolutely no comparison between one senile president who maintained our democracy and another senile president who loudly, proudly, and rapidly destroyed it.

No comparison, folks. What can you do?

Yes. That is why Biden dropped out. But the unprincipled are talking as if he was the candidate in 2024.

He was the Democrat nominee in 2024, and all the shills were saying[0] he was extremely competent and focused still. It's only when he actually finally appeared on television suddenly Kamala Harris - not even a 2024 nominee, I don't think, and got zero votes in 2020 - was pushed in to replace the democratically nominated representative with a party elite-anointed one.

[0] https://nypost.com/2025/05/20/media/msnbcs-joe-scarborough-f...

The 'unprincipled' simply remember how long it took the establishment and Biden to drop out of the race ( and even that was only after it became painfully clear he is barely there ).

Biden is looking pretty good right now.

I know it kinda goes against the tribal nature of political conversations, but, hear me out here, they both suck in their own unique ways and, more importantly, they both may be a little too old to manage this country ( though, to be fair, for different reasons ). We really need to start enforcing principles over tribe. It has gone a little too far.

Agreed, but if you have that choice Biden and/or Kamala over Trump shouldn't be a 'too close to call'. You might as well put Al Capone on the ballot (and I'm fairly sure he would have won).

Yet, only one of those two is an admitted pedophile, only one of those two has been convicted of fraud, only one of those two is in the Epstein files, only one of those two is convinced we need to deploy a nuclear weapon in Iran...

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