(05-23-2019 09:59 AM)GrayBeard Wrote: I'm really interested to see how our few liberal friends on this board answer these questions, and please be specific.
How has President Trump's actions changed your life?
How has President Trump's actions changed this country?
I'm a libertarian
1) It hasn't. The USA gives its President less power than the chief executive of any country in the world. So one person can rarely change things enough to matter. Thank God.
However, my best friend did have to cancel a trip to an academic conference in Canada in 2016 due to Trump. My friend holds both Iranian and Canadian passports and a US work visa, and Trump's stupid travel ban would have prevented him from coming back into the USA to do his job.
2) Domestically, I think he's pulling independents to the right. He says something benign that's meant to get under the skin of Leftists, the Leftists respond with TDS, allowing the country to see how fascist the left is. Leftists call this divisive; I call it fighting back against the Left's attempt to make Conservatives stay in the closet.
His tax cuts are a risky plan to grow our way out of the national debt. Time will tell if it works.
He's talked a lot about deregulation, but it's been more glitz than action.
He has appointed good Supreme Court justices and lots of Appellate judges. But that's more thanks to the Senate than Trump.
But that's domestic policy, and Presidents have little domestic power. A President is most influential in foreign policy.
His pandering to dictators (especially Duterte and Erdogan) has led to a reversal of democracy worldwide. Democracies can not exist alone; they're easily influenced by outside powers. Just look at how the European monarchies ganged up on Revolutionary France in the 1790s, or how the USSR funded strong Communist parties in Italy and France to poison their democratic institutions, or how Cuba's military & Russian money are causing Venezuelans to lose their democracy in 2019.
Trump has initiated trade wars with nearly every ally. Like Democracy, free markets do not exist in a vaccuum either. Trump has been the most destructive President to free global markets since Hoover (and FDR, who continued Hoover's policies).
Trump's done a great job handling is China. That trade war needed to happen.
Trump's unpredictability has kept our enemies off guard, which is a good thing.
He has overused international sanctions. Dictators used to trust the USA with their money, allowing the USA to dominate international finance. This allows the US to export dollars rather than goods, lowers currency risk for US firms, and it lets us occasionally exercise control over dictators. But Trump has undermined that trust by imposing sanctions too many times, and I guarantee that Russia/China/3rd world dictators are going to start a parallel finance system.