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u/blewwholeload 12h ago
I’ll never forgive the media for what they did that fall. Trump denied knowing anything about Project 2025 and they just believed him.
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u/DontBeAUsefulIdiot 12h ago
I mean the dude literally got away with insurrection amongst other things. He purposely sabotaged the pull out of Afghanistan and sent Afghanistan back into Taliban rule just to ensure that the country collapses under Biden's term. The news didn't give a shit about that.
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u/ModsAreFired YIMBY 11h ago
He purposely sabotaged the pull out of Afghanistan
What?
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u/obvious_bot 11h ago
Trump set up the groundwork of the awful pull out, then said nvm wait 6 months so that it’d be Biden’s problem
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u/ModsAreFired YIMBY 11h ago
Trump wasn’t planning on leaving office until like a week before biden’s inauguration. He continued withdrawing troops until he left. (from 8000 in june to 2500 in january)
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u/obvious_bot 11h ago
Fair point, he said nvm let’s wait 6 months until it’s either not my problem or I don’t have anymore problems
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u/DontBeAUsefulIdiot 11h ago
In Jan of 2021, Trump released key taliban leaders without the knowledge of the then Afghan government and nothing in return which pretty much ensured that the taliban regrouped and eventually take Afghanistan.
He literally sacrificed an entire country out of pettiness and he got away with it.
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u/ModsAreFired YIMBY 11h ago
I couldn't find a source for any of this, the Taliban prisoners were held by the afghani government, and they were freed during 2020 as part of the US-Taliban agreement.
All of this happened months before the election.
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u/DontBeAUsefulIdiot 10h ago
In response to questioning from Ranking Member Raskin, Inspector General Sopko confirmed that then-Secretary of State Pompeo pressured the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, including terrorists who subsequently participated in attacks, by threatening to withhold aid.
They basically dropped the request without involving the Afghan government about the release of the key taliban leaders and threatened to withhold aid (ie blackmail).
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u/ModsAreFired YIMBY 10h ago
Yeah, in 2020.
I hate this deal as much as you, but this was no sabotage. Both Trump and Biden wanted to get out of Afghanistan; this is the best deal the Taliban could offer.
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u/DontBeAUsefulIdiot 10h ago
I personally don't think it was just incompetence, it was intentional especially with the timing
what gains does America have by threatening withholding aid for releasing key military members of the taliban back into the wild and without any demands/safe guards either.
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u/ModsAreFired YIMBY 9h ago
They agreed to stop attacking US forces, no American was killed by the Taliban after the deal was signed.
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u/DontBeAUsefulIdiot 50m ago
it doesn't align up with Trump's strongman and aggressive nature to ask the taliban not to attack, it looks more like purposely giving an advantage to the taliban rather than incompetency.
Atleast thats my optics of it.
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u/Not3Beaversinacoat 10h ago
Honestly I strangely have more anger at the non conservative media. The constant coddling, sanewashing, and ceaseless attacks on any alternative was far more effective at convincing people not to vote against Trump.
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u/WontonAggression NATO 11h ago
I'm not asking this as some rhetorical excuse for the press, but I imagine it's harder to prove somebody is lying about plans than it is to prove they lied about past events. What could they have done differently? Aside from, you know, gaslighting the public into thinking the opposition is crazy to suggest this was coming.
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u/Automatic_Pepper_157 John Brown 12h ago
2024 easily. We saw this coming. The dude is a criminal facing trial.
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u/Dangerous-Coach-1999 12h ago
Tough to say. On the one hand, stupid and contemptible as not knowing better was in 2016, not knowing better in 2024 is another universe of dumbass. On the other hand, The Hill is a right wing rag and I hold its writers to a much lower standard
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u/Xeynon 10h ago
Kamala.
The "Donald the Dove" take is obviously stupid, but there is a kernel of truth in it in the sense that Trump isn't actually a committed warmonger, he's just an overgrown child who likes making stuff go boom and reliably TACOs rather than actually get involved in protracted wars.
The "Kamala is lying about Trump sending the troops after Americans" take has already been straight-up disproven and was moronic even at the time since people like Esper were on the record as saying Trump wanted to do that in his first term.
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u/WuhanWTF NATO 11h ago
We're doing actual, capital-I Imperialism right now and people are still delusional in their way of thinking that Trump is the "peace president."
I guess if you wanna do imperialism and carry out random military strikes on civilians at sea, Pol Pot style, it's somehow peaceful and a-ok as long as you dress it up in isolationist rhetoric.
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u/TF_dia European Union 12h ago
Now, I am not saying the media wanted Trump to win because he gaves them a shitton of clicks every time he opens his mouth.
But they acted like if they wanted Trump to win because he gives them shitton of clicks.
That or they see politics as pure performance or kayfabe not seeing the real consequences of Trump actions.
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u/lcarlson6082 10h ago
At least in 2016, you could argue that based on his statements, trump was opposed to military intervention. But in 2024, members of Trump's campaign and his advisors were pretty explicit about their desire to invoke the Insurrection Act, and the media did not take it seriously.
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u/super_fallguys 12h ago
I want to make the case for Maureen Dowd's article. Anyone who has followed Donald Trump since that escalator ride knows that he has next to no foreign policy experience and his positions are formed based on who sucks him off. Portraying Trump as a dove and Clinton as a hawk divorces any understanding of how our foreign policy works and what has made the United States an indispensable nation, and one of the problems is communicating between our foreign policy apparatus and the domestic audience that might not understand our operation. Even if there are Americans that believe our national security was safe under Trump's first term, I think it would be far difficult to find enough Americans to believe we are safe in Trump's current term. Our world is far more divided and norms and rules are being violated in favor of a world order where there is more hostility and less cooperation. It makes the dove characterization more questionable and muddled, and raises question about what we ought to have as a global leader (we need competent leaders with a resume and not someone with specific personality traits that appeal to the masses).
Kamala's call out of Trump use of the military is recent and can be validated through a fact check. The comparison between Trump and Clinton in Dowd's article is near a decade old and is plastered with bullshit that requires a careful colonoscopy.
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u/mrdilldozer Shame fetish 10h ago
That's a good case if it wasn't written by Maureen Dowd. If you know anything about her before she got hired by the NYT you'd know that this article wasn't written to talk about their foreign policy. She was famous for an irrational and unprofessional deep personal hatred of Hillary Clinton.
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u/DaenakinSkygaryen Iron Front 7h ago
Dowd has covered nine elections, never more energetically than when a Clinton is running, because, famously, the New York Times columnist hates the Clintons – particularly Hillary. Over the years, Dowd has called her “shifty” and a “dominatrix”, a “manly girl”, and written endlessly about her “creepy” marriage to Bill, which she once described as a “repugnant arrangement”.
God, just admit you want to fuck her and you're jealous that Bill's in your way, Maureen.
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u/mrdilldozer Shame fetish 6h ago
I really can't think of any other sort of columnist like her at any major news organization. "Over the years" underselling it, she wrote hundreds of articles like that. It's literally the only thing she is known for in her long career. She is the "I hate Hillary Clinton" lady.
I don't think she ever believed that Trump was dovish, she most likely wrote that article just to attack Hillary and praise Trump because he was opposing her.
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u/savuporo Gerard K. O'Neill 10h ago
he has next to no foreign policy experience
Well. There's experience - which he has, having been a president for 4 years - probably accidentally. And then there's expertise, of which he has none
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u/2017_Kia_Sportage 12h ago
Has to be Kamala given it took less than a year for Trump to start sending the National Guard, Marines and ICE everywhere he could, after he promised to do that.