Quote:
Originally Posted by Rococo
I'm sure that Trump thinks every general should look like George C. Scott in Patton.
pretty much it, i've offered this before in other threads but i have both those books on audio book shared online and if anyone wants to listen to them i can post the link and they can download to their cpu/phone and listen - both books are incredibly good and as wild as this sounds - because they are both highly critical of him - i was left viewing trump in a much better light after listening to both
he's not this evil fascist trying to install the 4th reich in america, he's just a wildly insecure narcissist who is genuinely dumb to where he does indeed judge his national security advisors not on their prior work experience nor current input but instead by how they dress and carry themselves - if they don't look and act like he thinks a general should look or act then he hates the guy
this was a guy who watched cable news (not fox/oann etc but cnn/msnbc) for about 5+ hours every day just waiting for them to discuss him - if it were positive he'd double down on that, talk about it more, act it out more etc, if it were negative, he'd shy away from that - his primary concern was how he looked on tv and what the political commentators were saying about him - every time he did anything where he received universal praise just absolutely made his day
also, the books do an incredible job of highlighting just how entrenched so much of US policy is - one of his real positives is he's not afraid to look stupid (probably impossible in his mind) nor dissent from standard opinion
for example, he'll say "why are we letting china just absolutely destroy us in unfair trade practices" and he got a lot of "sir we have to accept that otherwise we'll face something worse than the great depression if we enter in a trade war" - literally everyone was against him doing that but it turned out that the pain wasn't nearly as bad as "washington consensus" would have believed it to be and was so successful that the subsequent administration kept those tariffs in place and renewed/strengthened them
likewise with the wall, that wall was already under construction under obama, trump just made it a talking point whereas the previously administration was quiet about it and then the subsequent one continues the wall program despite that trump's championship of it made it politically prudent to abandon
i remember when he was like "wait, wtf, why are we giving south korea so many billions each year in aid and why are we protecting them with our military without them paying for it" - literally everyone was telling him "sir if we pull out of south korea wwIII will start" - that's the genuine belief - whereas in reality it's probably more like moving it from a 0.001% monthly chance to a 0.0015% monthly chance
he tried to cancel all deals with korea multiple times, but each time he had the documents written up for him to sign, bannon or someone else would go intercept them from his desk and hide them in their desk - as trump was never at his desk, it was very easy to walk in and pull out various documents you didn't think he should sign - trump, being absent minded and a terrible executive, not seeing the documents to sign, would then forget about it - the only way he would remember was if it came up in the news or some advisor brought it up again, so people like bannon would just hope it didn't go in the news cycle again and then if it did and he made the request again, bannon would once again wait for the docs to be delivered to his desk and then intercept them again and he'd forget and cycle would repeat
trump was easily our worst executive ever, he took no real ownership of anything and was at the mercy of the people working around him agreeing whether or not something should happen because he literally never saw anything through and would often forget about it soon enough - remember there was one advisor trump really liked who would come to the oval office regularly to visit and push various things that bannon didn't like - so bannon just told the white house security to not allow that person inside anymore
this is easily something where in a normal situation the guy could have reached out to the president and said "hey i'm not allowed in anymore" and the president would fix that but he had no way to contact him, everything had always been through informally walking in and seeing if he was around at the time
likewise, trump actually noticed this guy stopped popping in, he liked the guy, he wanted him back, but again because he's a terrible exec he doesn't reach out to the guy and ask why he stopped showing up, nor try to even schedule a meeting, he just wonders out loud sometimes at meetings why that guy doesn't show up anymore and since the people around him don't like the guy they just shrug their shoulders and say "beats me" and then trump forgets about it and moves on
he was completely and utterly manipulated by his staff because he was too lazy to see anything through himself and was so poor at choosing staff members that he couldn't even get a team that was onboard with his vision and actively worked to sabotage him - i worry about saying that because it's more "deep state" fodder for pb200 and other conspiratards but alas he's just that incompetent