2024 Election - Biden vs Trump - The rematch

[Muda69]

31 minutes ago, swordfish said:

Get ready (as if it weren't obvious before) for the "Convicted Felon" and the "twice impeached" mantras 

So neither of these statement are true?

 

[Muda69]

Interesting that Mr. Biden officially dropped out of the race on July 1st, 2024;  National Ice Cream Day:

 

 

[swordfish]

5 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

So neither of these statement are true?

Didn't say that.....I said that's all they got - "He's a bad guy" (Which is not true - IMHO)

On a lighter note - SF is reminded of the Bush/Gore election when I had a Japanese account and the CEO was a Japanese woman with heavy - HEAVY Japanese accent in her English.  She voted in that election for the first time as a US Citizen.  She (Linda) called me 2 days after that election and in her Japanese accent says - "Herro John?  Dis a Rinda!  Oh - How you rike erection?  Unbereavable Erection!  We no know who won!  What happen now?"  SF almost dropped the phone!  "How you rike erection!"  Classic!

[temptation]

1 hour ago, Muda69 said:

So neither of these statement are true?

 

They are true.  In all honesty (can’t believe I am about to type this) many of the democrat go-to talking points (especially during election season) actually have a shred of truth.

However, they are largely embellished, spoken about hyperbolically and twisted in order to inject fear into voters and attempt to paint a picture that the democrats are the good guys/security blanket that stands up for democracy.

This (DA vs felon) nonsense will be embellished and pushed as a big part of the ticket because it strikes emotions with voters.  
 

When, in fact I would bet that Mrs. Harris has some skeletons in her closet from her days as a DA that she doesn’t want folks to speak on (do your homework) and the “convicted felon” nonsense is a sham because the charges were politically motivated and should have resulted in a slap on the wrist.

 

we have reached a point in politics where emotions supersede facts and folks dislike for one particular candidate clouds their vision, causes them to think irrationally and blinds them to what is happening right in front of their faces.

”We the people?”

Nah, we will tell you who our nominee is  next month.

[Muda69]

17 minutes ago, temptation said:

They are true.  In all honesty (can’t believe I am about to type this) many of the democrat go-to talking points (especially during election season) actually have a shred of truth.

However, they are largely embellished, spoken about hyperbolically and twisted in order to inject fear into voters and attempt to paint a picture that the democrats are the good guys/security blanket that stands up for democracy.

This (DA vs felon) nonsense will be embellished and pushed as a big part of the ticket because it strikes emotions with voters.  
 

When, in fact I would bet that Mrs. Harris has some skeletons in her closet from her days as a DA that she doesn’t want folks to speak on (do your homework) and the “convicted felon” nonsense is a sham because the charges were politically motivated and should have resulted in a slap on the wrist.

 

we have reached a point in politics where emotions supersede facts and folks dislike for one particular candidate clouds their vision, causes them to think irrationally and blinds them to what is happening right in front of their faces.

”We the people?”

Nah, we will tell you who our nominee is  next month.

So I assume the GOP will do the exact same thing to Mrs. Harris that you claim the Democrats will do to Mr. Trump?

Uni-party.

 

[temptation]

33 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

So I assume the GOP will do the exact same thing to Mrs. Harris that you claim the Democrats will do to Mr. Trump?

Uni-party.

 

Yes, but they will have a limited amount of time to do so as the Dems drag their feet on this nomination process.  
 

All part of the plan.  Biden has been unfit for office for 3+ years now and the debate was the coup de gras as it became impossible to hide/ignore.

No one gonna feel sorry for the Trump campaign but he wasted millions of dollars on hit pieces against a dude who was never going to make it to November in the first place.

 

Edited July 22, 2024 by temptation

[Muda69]

[swordfish]

After listening to (a one hour portion at lunch) the Congressional hearing taking place today with the Secret Service boss and hearing her get filleted by both sides of the aisle, SF is pretty sure she is going to get canned pretty quick.  

[temptation]

33 minutes ago, swordfish said:

After listening to (a one hour portion at lunch) the Congressional hearing taking place today with the Secret Service boss and hearing her get filleted by both sides of the aisle, SF is pretty sure she is going to get canned pretty quick.  

Yet this is back page news on all MSM outlets right now…

[Bobref]

5 hours ago, temptation said:

we have reached a point in politics where emotions supersede facts and folks dislike for one particular candidate clouds their vision, causes them to think irrationally and blinds them to what is happening right in front of their faces.

Pot, meet Mr. kettle.

[temptation]

10 minutes ago, Bobref said:

Pot, meet Mr. kettle.

Have higher self-esteem Bob.  
 

You reached out to Comperatore’s family yet?

[Bobref]

14 minutes ago, temptation said:

You reached out to Comperatore’s family yet?

Sure. I sent sympathy cards to all of the approximately 8,000 Americans who died that day.

[temptation]

28 minutes ago, Bobref said:

Sure. I sent sympathy cards to all of the approximately 8,000 Americans who died that day.

Only one died Bob.  You know that.  Doesn’t make it any less significant.

Just send one…to his daughters.

I’ll even spell check it for you.

[BTF]

2 hours ago, Bobref said:

Sure. I sent sympathy cards to all of the approximately 8,000 Americans who died that day.

God help us. 

[Muda69]

15 hours ago, temptation said:

Only one died Bob.  You know that.  Doesn’t make it any less significant.

Just send one…to his daughters.

I’ll even spell check it for you.

Did you personally send a sympathy card?

[Muda69]

The Trump Campaign Won't Stop Lying About a Minnesota Man Acquitted of Shooting at Police: https://reason.com/2024/07/22/the-trump-campaign-wont-stop-lying-about-a-minnesota-man-acquitted-of-shooting-at-police/

Quote

It wasn't long after Joe Biden announced he wouldn't seek reelection that the Donald Trump campaign turned its attention to Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive new Democratic nominee.

The official account of the Trump "War Room" (the cool-sounding name for the campaign's opposition research nerds) immediately began posting its greatest hits on Harris on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. But one of those attacks was quite curious:

"Kamala Harris helped raise money for a far-left organization that bailed a rioter who shot at police out of jail," the Trump War Room wrote on X yesterday.

 

The Trump War Room appears to be referring to Jaleel Stallings, a Minnesota man who was indeed charged with rioting, attempted murder, and deadly force against police officers during the George Floyd protests of 2020.

It's not the first time the Trump campaign has tried to use Stallings' case as a political cudgel. Back in 2020, the Trump War Room posted multiple times about Stallings, calling him a "would-be cop killer who was in jail for firing at police during 'peaceful protests.'

 

"Now he's free thanks in part to Biden campaign officials who donated to pay bail fees," the account wrote. "Will Joe Biden apologize for helping put cops in danger?"

 

What the Trump War Room neglected to mention yesterday is that a jury acquitted Stallings of all charges, and he later won a $1.5 million lawsuit settlement as a result of his violent arrest. In fact, one of the police officers pleaded guilty last year to assaulting him.

Stallings, an Army veteran who had a concealed carry permit, was in a parking lot at night in May of 2020, five days after the death of George Floyd, when Minneapolis SWAT team officers in an unmarked van began firing rubber bullets at him. 

The officers had been cruising the streets firing less-than-lethal rounds from their 40 mm projectile launchers at groups of people who were out past curfew. "The first fuckers we see, we're just hammering 'em with 40s," the team's sergeant ordered, according to body camera footage shown at Stallings' trial. Before they reached Stallings they had also taken potshots at a family trying to protect their gas station from looters and pepper sprayed a Vice News reporter who was supposed to be exempt from the curfew.

Stallings claimed he saw the unmarked white cargo van pull up with its lights off and the door slide open. He heard a pop and then felt the sharp pain of a rubber bullet hitting him in the chest. He said he assumed it was a drive-by and thought he'd been grazed by a bullet. Stallings returned fire at the van, shooting three rounds that did not hit anyone. When he realized he was shooting at police, he tossed his gun and surrendered. Body camera footage shown at Stallings' trial showed officers kicking and punching Stallings as he tried to surrender, including after he was handcuffed.

 

The Trump campaign and conservative media latched onto the case after Stallings' $75,000 bail was paid by the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a bail fund that Harris had tweeted support for.

"Meet the Rioting Criminals Kamala Harris Helped Bail out of Jail," a Federalist headline declared in an article that mentioned Stallings' case.

It was a weak attack that completely fell apart once the facts of the case were known.

The ostensible function of bail is to act as a surety that the defendant, who is presumed innocent, will appear at trial. In practice, it has turned into a monetary lever to keep arrestees in jail, regardless of their danger to the public. Bail funds are a workaround to this problem. (Several red states have introduced or passed laws to ban them in response.) In Stallings' case, the bail fund and the mechanism of cash bail worked exactly as they were supposed to: They kept him out of jail pending his trial, where he successfully claimed self-defense, and preserved his presumption of innocence, despite the best efforts of conservative media and the Trump campaign to publicly smear him.

The Trump War Room's repeated invocation of the case of a man who ultimately was proven to be an innocent victim of police brutality is a reminder that the Republican Party's obsequious and omnipresent "blue lives" rhetoric doesn't reflect a sincere concern for officers' safety. Rather, it's just a bit of sloppy demagoguery to keep a favored class of public employees beyond criticism and above the law.

Bingo.

 

[Muda69]

It's Been Easy To Forget How Bad Kamala Harris Is: https://reason.com/2024/07/21/its-been-easy-to-forget-how-bad-kamala-harris-is/

Quote

President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race amid concern from fellow Democrats that he stood no chance of beating Donald Trump this go-round. "I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down," Biden posted to X, before shortly after throwing his "full support and endorsement" behind Vice President Kamala Harris becoming the party's new nominee.

"Democrats — it's time to come together and beat Trump," Biden added. "Let's do this."

But can Harris "do this"?

It's hard to conclude that Harris would fare worse than Biden, whose cognitive difficulties were so apparent his own party came to view him as a serious electoral liability.

Yet if one recalls Harris' own ill-fated run at the Democratic nomination in 2020, and her time in politics before then, the math in this equation becomes somewhat fuzzier—Harris was a truly bad candidate. And prior to that, she perpetuated some truly bad policies.

Kamala Harris the horrible campaigner and Kamala Harris the cop can be easy to forget if you're only considering what Harris has done lately. Her tenure as vice president has been almost entirely unremarkable. The most distinguishing feature has been a series of bizarre but benign word salads. And political memory is short.

So Harris isn't the best orator? Surely that's surmountable. Besides, the lack of distinguishing actions during her vice presidency could even be to her advantage. She's basically a blank slate, at least if you don't look back too far.

But what if you do look back?

The first thing you'll see is Harris' shambolic 2020 campaign for president. She wouldn't commit to policy positions. She couldn't defend her past actions. There were ongoing stories about her poor treatment of her staff. She entered the race as a top-tier candidate, with glowing press and some big-time backers, and dropped out two months before the Iowa caucuses, polling at just 3 percent nationally. She wasn't even polling as a top-tier candidate in her home state of California.

It was impossible in that campaign to ascertain what Harris stood for. This wasn't just a case of national campaigning jitters. One major thread in Harris' career—including during her days as district attorney of San Francisco and attorney general of California—has been flip-flopping on issues to suit the audience or the political moment.

This may have worked as a short-term strategy. But it left a long-term impression of her as rudderless and ruthless—a phony. It will be incredibly easy for Republicans to portray her as someone who stands for nothing, or as whatever it is they think you'll hate most, like a representative of "California socialism." (Never mind that the GOP's own candidate isn't exactly a stalwart of consistency.)

The image of Harris as slippery—all ambition, no ideology—may contribute to her unpopularity among American voters. It's almost certainly more of a liability than the once-common critique that Harris was an overzealous cop and drug warrior.

Harris' tough-on-crime past makes her unpopular among leftists and more radical wings of the Democratic Party, as well as among civil libertarians and criminal justice reformers. There's no doubt that this will come back to haunt her again should she become the Democratic nominee.

But this past may have been especially hurtful in 2020, when the protests inspired by George Floyd's death were still raging and criminal justice reform momentum was still vibrant. (Remember "defund the police"?) And it likely mattered more in a Democratic primary than it would in a general election, since the types to find fault with Harris' prosecutorial record are unlikely to find Trump and Republicans a more welcome alternative.

If anything, some of the lip-service Harris paid to progressive justice ideals—both in 2020 and in California—may be used by Republicans to help turn safety-minded independents against her.

That means Harris' turnabouts on justice issues—not her actual record—may wind up harming her most. It leaves her vulnerable to attacks from both the left and the right on this front—to allegations that she's been both too aggressive and too lenient on crime, even if only one of these (the aggressiveness) has been borne out beyond just words.

I won't pretend to know whether Harris would be a better or worse choice for Democrats than some other potential candidates. I don't know whether she could beat Trump, though I have my doubts.

What I do know is that if Harris becomes the party's nominee, the rush to anoint her a saint—in the press, on social media, among celebrities—is going to kick into overdrive quickly, both because of her identity and out of desperation to avoid Trump getting elected again.

But as much as I want to see a female president sooner rather than later, and as much as I do not want to see another Trump presidency, I can't pretend Harris doesn't have serious and worrying flaws. As much as she's been a pretty benign figure during her vice presidential days, there's nothing to stop her worst tendencies from flaring up again if she becomes president.

These tendencies include a penchant for saying one thing during campaigns and then doing the opposite; of using the state to crack down on problems—like truancy and drug use—that many would agree could be better solved through nonpunitive approaches; and of using moral panics around sex in self-serving ways (even while publicly ignoring sexual misconduct among California cops). They include acting cavalierly toward the Constitution, defending dirty prosecutors, and finding new ways for the government to poke into people's lives.

Remember: Not only did Harris help put the parents of truant kids in jail, but she wrote in her 2019 book The Truths We Hold that "instituting a statewide plan on truancy was part of the reason I'd run for the office in the first place." That is who Kamala Harris is (though she claims the jailing was unintended).

Those who critique Harris for being something of a politically ambitious cipher aren't wrong. But this image is incomplete. There are some things Harris has stood for consistently, and none of them are good.

I'll leave you with something I wrote about Harris back in 2019:

During her 28-year tenure as a county prosecutor, district attorney (D.A.), and state attorney general (A.G.),…in the public eye, she spoke of racial justice and liberal values, bolstering her cred as one of the Democratic Party's rising stars. But behind closed doors, she repeatedly fought for more aggressive prosecution not just of violent criminals but of people who committed misdemeanors and "quality of life" crimes.

Every attorney general fights for state power and police prerogatives. It's part of the job. But over and over again, Harris went beyond the call of duty, fighting for harsher sentences, larger bail requirements, longer prison terms, more prosecution of petty crimes, greater criminal justice involvement in low-income and minority communities, less due process for people in the system, less transparency, and less accountability for bad cops.

In the early days of her [2020] presidential campaign, Harris has sought to define herself as a liberal reformer who has kept up with the times. But a review of her career shows a distinct penchant for power seeking and an illiberal disposition in which no offense is small or harmless enough to warrant lenience from the state. Now she wants to bring that approach to the highest office in the land.

Whoever Harris pretends to be this time, she cannot be—to use one popular Harris phrase)—"unburdened by what has been."

Another uni-party turd.

 

[Bobref]

27 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

It's Been Easy To Forget How Bad Kamala Harris Is: https://reason.com/2024/07/21/its-been-easy-to-forget-how-bad-kamala-harris-is/

Another uni-party turd.

 

As I said in a different thread, Harris’ qualifications for VP had nothing to do with her “record.” She was black and had a Y chromosome. Those were her qualifications. That won’t cut it for a President. That people are falling in line behind her tells me 2 things:

1. The Dems are all but conceding the Presidential election, and Harris will be the “fall guy.” They don’t have anyone who can ramp up in the next 3 1/2 months to beat Trump. So, Harris will be the sacrificial lamb — and then we’ll never hear from her again ( What’s Sarah Palin doing these days?) 

2. The grassroots Dem leaders are lining up behind Harris simply to demonstrate they are toeing the Party line, positioning themselves to survive the housecleaning that will come after the ignominious defeat in November. It’s every Democrat for him/her/themselves from this point on.

1 minute ago, Bobref said:

Edited July 23, 2024 by Bobref

[Muda69]

https://apnews.com/article/secret-service-director-trump-rally-8b1b13cece2ff25590c81093032dceb4

Quote

The director of the Secret Service said Tuesday she is resigning following the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump that unleashed intensifying outcry about how the agency tasked with protecting current and former presidents could fail in its core mission.

Kimberly Cheatle, who had served as Secret Service director since August 2022, had been facing growing calls to resign and several investigations into how the shooter was able to get so close to the Republican presidential nominee at an outdoor campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

..

Somebody in the federal government had to take the fall.

 

[swordfish]

6 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

https://apnews.com/article/secret-service-director-trump-rally-8b1b13cece2ff25590c81093032dceb4

Somebody in the federal government had to take the fall.

If she didn't, the President was sure to need to fire her.

SF was stunned at her performance during yesterday's hearing.......Really expected a bit more professionalism from her, it appeared she was way in over her head....

[temptation]

23 minutes ago, swordfish said:

If she didn't, the President was sure to need to fire her.

SF was stunned at her performance during yesterday's hearing.......Really expected a bit more professionalism from her, it appeared she was way in over her head....

What in the hell DOES someone have to do to get fired by the Biden administration?

[Muda69]

1 hour ago, temptation said:

What in the hell DOES someone have to do to get fired by the Biden administration?

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/tracking-turnover-in-the-biden-administration/

[temptation]

4 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/tracking-turnover-in-the-biden-administration/

“Resigned” in order to maintain their dignity?

[Muda69]

9 minutes ago, temptation said:

“Resigned” in order to maintain their dignity?

Of course. It happens in the government, and in private industry.  

Does that surprise you?  If these government employees were actually fired they may have had trouble finding work in the public relations/lobbying industry, where the big money is.

 

[Muda69]

Biden's Race-Ending Debate Performance Was So Bad That It Eclipsed Trump's Flagrant Falsehoods: https://reason.com/2024/07/22/bidens-race-ending-debate-performance-was-so-bad-that-it-eclipsed-trumps-flagrant-dishonesty/

Quote

President Joe Biden's performance in his June 27 debate with Donald Trump was so bad that it ultimately resulted in his withdrawal from the election. It was also so bad that it distracted attention from his opponent's flagrant prevarications. But Trump's longstanding tendency to make stuff up, to the point that you have to discount almost anything he says by at least 90 percent, should not be dismissed as a personal quirk or standard political practice.

While politicians commonly bend the truth, Trump routinely bends it to the breaking point, saying things that are not accurate by any stretch of the imagination. Reason's Nick Gillespie, in a piece arguing that Trump's speech at the Republican National Convention was politically canny, notes in passing "his inability to say two true statements consecutively." Americans have become so inured to Trump's habitual hyperbole that it may not make a difference in this election. But it really should, because it reflects not just an utter disregard for the facts but an arrogant assumption that voters don't care whether the nation's highest elected official even aspires to tell the truth.

During the debate, Trump alluded to his never-substantiated claim that the 2020 election was rigged, saying "the fraud and everything else was ridiculous." But even apart from his stolen-election fantasy, he said a bunch of things that were demonstrably false.

"We had the greatest economy in the history of our country," Trump declared at the very beginning of the debate. "We had never done so well."

Gross domestic product growth during Trump's four years in office averaged 2.3 percent. Even during the three pre-pandemic years, the average was a modest 2.5 percent. That's a bit higher than annual GDP growth under Barack Obama and George W. Bush, and it's significantly higher than the average rate under George H.W. Bush. But it is lower than the growth seen during the Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, and Eisenhower administrations.

"I gave you the largest tax cut in history," Trump also claimed. That is also inconsistent with the historical record.

According to the Tax Foundation, "the five largest tax reductions since 1940 are the Revenue Acts of 1945, 1948, and 1964; the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981; and the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012." Those cuts "reduced revenue by between 1.6 percent and 2.89 percent of GDP, on average." By comparison, the reduction achieved by the Trump-backed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 amounted to 0.7 percent of GDP, placing it ninth on the Tax Foundation's list, a slot shared by two previous pieces of legislation.

"I also gave you the largest regulation cut in history," Trump averred. That claim likewise does not withstand scrutiny.

"Under my administration," Trump said at a July 2020 press conference, "we have removed nearly 25,000 pages of job-destroying regulations—more than any other president by far in the history of our country." According to a November 2020 report from the Penn Program on Regulation, that is "simply false."

At the end of 2019, the report notes, the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) ran to 185,984 pages—"actually a somewhat greater number of pages, not fewer, than when President Trump took office." While the number of CFR pages dipped by 0.5 percent from 2017 to 2018, "this tiny decrease was offset by comparably sized increases from 2016 to 2017 and then again from 2018 to 2019." And even that one-year drop was small compared to the 10 percent decreases seen in 1954, 1957, and 1964; the 5.3 percent reduction in 1985; and the 4.4 percent decline in 1996. In short, "President Trump's record does not even come close to previous years showing the largest drops."

Trump has variously claimed that his administration eliminated seven, "nearly eight", and 22 regulations for each one it issued. Taking the Trump administration's own classifications at face value, the Penn Program found, the ratio was more like 5 to 1. But even that calculation "overstates the Trump Administration's deregulatory accomplishments," the report says. "In terms of the significant actions that have substantial impacts on the lives of Americans, the number of deregulatory actions is at best very close to the number of regulatory actions and possibly significantly below that number."

When it comes to "the number of new rules issued," the report's authors concede, the Trump administration was less active than the Obama administration. During its first three years, the Trump administration issued "an annual average of 3,204 final rules," a 12 percent decrease from the first three years of the Obama administration, which "was itself a 12 percent decrease [from] the first three years of the George W. Bush Administration." Furthermore, Trump "issued 107 economically significant rules
during his first three years," while "the average for the first three years of the prior five
presidencies was 118 such rules." That difference, while a far cry from Trump's promise that he would eliminate 70 percent of federal regulations, is significant.

As usual, however, Trump cannot resist gilding the lily. He has claimed that he "launched the most dramatic regulatory relief campaign in American history by far" and asserted that his administration "eliminated more regulations in our first year than any administration has ever eliminated." As the Penn Program report notes, "little support exists" for such claims, since the Trump administration did not cut "the overall number of pages" in the CFR and "completed far more regulatory actions than deregulatory ones once the full data are examined." The report adds that "nothing the Trump Administration has done compares to the deregulation of the airlines, rail, and truck transportation that was executed by the Carter Administration in the late 1970s."

Trump is on firmer ground in claiming credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who clinched a majority in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade. But even here, he rewrites history by wishing away the controversy surrounding that accomplishment. After Roe, Trump claimed during the debate, "everybody, without exception," thought abortion policy should be turned "back to the states." According to Trump, that included "every legal scholar throughout the world." He thus pretended that half a century of debate about the merits of Roe, which included "legal scholar[s]" on both sides, never happened.

Trump's criticism of Biden was also absurdly hyperbolic. "We had the safest border in history," he said. "Now we have the worst border in history….Because of his ridiculous, insane, and very stupid policies, people are coming in and they're killing our citizens at a level that we've never seen."

As Reason's Fiona Harrigan notes, there is little evidence to support Trump's claim of an unprecedented migrant crime wave. "Crime is actually down in the cities that received the most migrants as a result of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's busing operations," she writes. "The partial crime data that exist for this year show consistent declines in major crimes in major cities," Cato Institute immigration expert David Bier told Harrigan. He added that "the most significant crime spike in recent years occurred in 2020—when illegal immigration was historically low until the end of the year."

So it went with other aspects of Biden's record. The sloppy withdrawal from Afghanistan was not just "a horrible embarrassment"; it was "the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country." Biden is not just a bad president; he is "the worst president…in the history of the country"—"the worst in history by far."

While these judgments are admittedly subjective, there is a lot of competition on both scores. Historians probably would place slavery, segregation, genocidal campaigns against Native Americans, the detention of Japanese Americans during World War II, the torching of the White House during the War of 1812, or the Vietnam War higher on the scale of national embarrassments than the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which at least put a stop to a disastrous intervention that (even according to Trump) should have ended much sooner. And leaving aside the question of where exactly Biden should rank on the list of worst presidents, we probably should leave some room for the likes of James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and (for libertarians especially) Woodrow Wilson.

According to several possibly premature and ideologically tinged assessments by historians and political scientists, Trump himself belongs at or near the bottom of presidential rankings. But according to unspecified "polling," Trump said, "they rate me one of the best."

As has always been the case with Trump, it is hard to say whether he actually believes the things he says. He is either reflexively dishonest, self-deceiving, or a little of both. None of these characterizations bodes well for a second Trump term.