[inv4zn]

Originally Posted by Traum

Absolutely -- Trump has done a tremendous amount of crazy stuff. He has done a lot of bad stuff. And he has also done a lot of good stuff. For the most part, outside of his fan base -- I do not view myself as part of his fan base, except on his China policies -- hardly anyone mentions the good that Trump has done, and that is the problem I do not agree with.

First and foremost, and plain and simple, Trump's harsh treatment towards China is a very important thing to the World. Simply put, Communist China is a threat to the world, and no other world leader in recent history, POTUS or not, has done anything close to what Trump has achieved in containing the cancer that Communist China is. I can't stress enough how important this is at the world level, but unfortunately, too many people in the Western World fail to see the importance of this threat, or they underestimate the importance of this threat.

But this has to be taken at face value - yes, Trump has 'stood up' to China by calling them out, but he's also said exactly the opposite about China numerous times. He praised their handling of Covid, he said they 'showed the power of strength' with Tiananamen Square. Yes, he signed the Uighur bill, but the constant flip flop kinda makes you wonder if it's him 'doing good', or just 'doing what's convenient at the time.'

Another international level issue that I see as quite significant is the containment of DPRK. Many view the antics between Fat Boy Kim and Trump as mere theatrics or something to make fun of during water cooler conversations, but it directly affects the national safety of Korea and Japan. When you look back at the Obama era, the Six Party Talks with DPRK went sideways when DPRK began testing ballistic missile technology. For all the effort that the Obama administration has done, they were largely ineffective in deterring DPRK's nuclear ambitions. It wasn't until Trump's crazy approach of near direct threat against DPRK (and sanctions) that brought the Fat Boy back inline, and Kim / DPRK has since been fairly tame -- probably a result of the crippling sanctions that the UN, US, and other countries have imposed.

This too is a tad misleading. NK has consistently performed missile testing in the last 4 years, and in 2017 'claimed' to have tested a thermo-nuclear bomb, which seismic data seemed to corroborate. Yes, his stance has been harsher than Obama. But this is a big point of contention in Korea (I'm Korean) - whether the 'sunshine' approach is better, or the sanction+iron hammer approach is better. Unsurprisingly progressives prefer the former, while conservatives favour the latter. NK's ideology is that they cannot show weakness internationally, and I don't think there was any drastic change despite your claims.

I am not super familiar with Middle East stability, but I seem to recall that with Pompeo as the front man, the Trump-led US has brokered a number of Middle East diplomatic / normalization agreements.

So if you are suggesting that I am not looking at Trump holistically, let's discuss how we should do that, shall we?

Just look up what Trump did/didn't do in Syria, and it again just fortifies the notion that he's generally a bumbling idiot.

Maybe it's not a good analogy but if I blindly throw 50 basketballs and 5 go in, it's a bit unfair to say "See? At least he got 5!! He's not so bad!"