Just watched the Boy Boy video on George Bush’s Masterclass, and they made me think about which U.S. President was actually worse.
Trump. He tried to overthrow our democracy.
Okay but Bush actually stole a presidential election.
If Trump was competent, he’d have been much worse.
He tried to start a war in Venezuela and failed.I think their administrations likely had equally bad intentions. The incompetence of Trump’s administration just means they acted more erratically. They were also much worse at getting press on their side and worse at covering up their actions.
People like to say this, and I get it, I get the controversy, and I get why, but Florida was a statistical tie. A thousand recounts would have ended at the same spot of more infighting. The supreme Court was conservative leaning and decided in favor of the conservative to no one’s surprise. If the supreme Court was 5-4 liberal, Gore would have won.
The whole issue is so much more two sided than people realize. For example, the person who invented the butterfly ballots was a Democrat politician.
I am not personally in favor of the court’s ruling, I wish Gore had won. The world would be a MUCH better place without GWB having won the presidency.
What?
Bush sued to stop a recount in Florida that would have likely led to Gore winning the 2000 presidential election. A conservative Supreme Court majority sided with Bush and stopped the recount. It makes Trump’s whole “STOP THE COUNT!” look amateurish in comparison. Bush actually was able to stop the count and got away with it.
Gore didn’t want Americans to start questioning the legitimacy of our democracy so he conceded. The rally around the flag effect after 9/11 helped quash any further criticisms of how Bush came to office.
deleted by creator
The Idiot yelled “stop counting!” every time it looked like he was ahead.
Get the fuck out of here with this grade-school fumbling for how you imagine contradictions work.
Don’t forget exposing national secrets. From satellite and submarine capabilities to nuclear capacity.
Trump is a traitor.
Trump. He tried to overthrow our democracy.
Well, your democracy is already at its end
I see you’re from feddit.de. Didn’t Germany have to prevent a planned coup by literal Nazis in the military, government, and police in 2022?
I am not aware of anything really serious in Germany like with Trump in the US. What I alluded to was that in the US you only have the choice between bad and very bad in terms of parties. There are certain terrible things that nobody seems to be able to influence anymore like the problems with three-letter-agencies or gun control.
Way to downplay warcrimes and actual wars 👏👏👏
Nobody who understands what Bush did thinks Trump is worse.
Edit: ITT- People justifying senseless wars
No one is downplaying what Bush did, we’re accentuating how excruciatingly bad Trump’s actions were. See you comprehend that Bush’s crimes were horrible, you’re simply incapable of understanding that Trump’s were much, much worse.
Many executives get their countries embroiled in foreign conflicts. Few actively attempt to subvert their own government upon their dismissal; they literally are the worst of the worst, and your inability to fathom this is either feigned or revealing.
How can what Trump did be worse than killing a million civillians, running torture camps, invading foreign nations, commitingto extrajudicial killings, and giving rise to the IS, who again killed hundreds of thousands of people, destroyed millenia of human history and culture and commited all imagineable atrocities?
Because Trump would normalize invading countries, running camps (he already kept kids in cages!), trying to get the government to commit extrajudicial killings, and idolizing tyrants like Putin, Orban, Kim, etc.,
This isn’t hyperbole, there’s examples plenty of each.
Bush did all of this 20 years ago. To be fair though invading other countries, putting fascist regimes into power there, extrajudicial killings and camps all have been part an integral part of american history. It became a new quality with Bush though as the world progressed to a more humane standard at the time and the veil put around these things by Bush was much thinner, than by his predecessors.
Still Trump is ultimately just continueing the work of Bush. It is just more noticeable as he is very loud and brazen about it, where Bush was only outspoken about it.
thanks for your stellar analysis, it’s factually incorrect and bereft of insight nuance or critical thought. keep trying to tie them together, it’s pointless but obviously keeps you very entertained.
The US deserves to fall, and I’m glad trump did so much damage on his way out.
lol someone just turned 13. that’s cute lil’ edge lord, your future is fucked regardless of politics.
Bush did a hell of a lot more harm with his war on terror and basically lying about why we wanted to go to war , but Trump single-handedly paved a very dangerous road for the US to become fascist and have crony capitalism (or at least, make it much more apparent and much worse).
Dubya was an asshole politician who wasted thousands upon thousands of lives for oil - and I would still say he’s less bad than Trump because Trump wanted to make the US into something more akin to China and Russia.
Trump wanted to make the US into something more akin to China and Russia
Don’t act like US didn’t want it. Almost half the population voted for it, dum dum. War crimes causing millions of deaths are a little important than your binge internal politics.
23% of the nation said true patriots will have to use violence to restore democracy last week. a non trivial chunk of this country has lost its mind
Blind unwavering nationalism is a cancer. The (North?) American Dream is one of individualism and corporate reliance. It’s slowly seeping north of our common border, too.
With a military as big and armed as the US, you can absolutely argue that our binge internal politics are actually worth taking into account for these sort of things. The fact that seemingly half of the US population voted for it (whether they were actually for it, or were just voting not Democrat to “own the libs” is another conversation) is fucking terrifying.
The reason I would say that Trump is worse than Dubya is because of the potential and horrific shitshow that could happen if the US became more like Russia or China. To help put it into perspective, imagine if Putin was in charge of the US army. It’s not too crazy of a stretch to say that he would probably invade all of his small surrounding neighbors and absorb them as Russian territories or make them become part of Russia itself. Take this example a step further - he has access to the US arsenal of nukes. How long would it be until he would fire nukes at other nations and invade them?
That’s not to say Dubya is better - like I said, starting a 20-year war for oil but masking it behind “removing WMDs” and “God told me to do it”, wasting lives pointlessly for greed is fucking disgusting. But it would legitimately pale in comparison to the damage somebody like Trump being in charge of a fascist US can and would do to the world for years to come.
Wait… you think Trump didn’t commit war crimes?
With a few thousand victims. Bush put at least a million on the already staggering US death toll.
But he also created a new quality, with running Guantanamo as a torture prison camp.
If it wouldn’t be for the military and economic power the US would be openly referred to as the shithole country it is on the international stage.
That is a good thing though. America is trash, and so are you.
Oh no. Lemmygrad is leaking.
I feel like while bush was a much worse president then most people realize, with some of his policies and things like the patriot act still in effect and gumming up the works, trump did more damage in erroding the facade of democracy and empowering fanatics
Which is a good thing. Liberals pretending Bush wasn’t so bad, is what is going to allow fascism to win.
Speaking as a Canadian, the Bush presidency was certainly wince-inducing. I was genuinely surprised he got re-elected after that clusterfuck of a first term. By the end of the 2nd, I was fairly convinced the best days of America were behind it.
But the difference between him and Trump is the wounds were more self-inflicted on the country with Bush. Still not great for Canada, whose fortunes rise and fall on what happens on the other side of the border.
But Trump had a genuine animosity for freedom-loving, democracy-respecting American allies and a love for oppressive dictatorships. He tore up trade agreements, levelled tariffs, etc. against Canada and Europe while advancing diplomacy in person in the likes of North Korea.
And on a more social level, he poisoned public discourse and stoked right-wing authoritarianism all over the world. I have family members I can’t talk to anymore. And the lunatic fringe came out of the woodwork under his term. We even had a mosque shooter here in Canada who was quite candid about Trump being his inspiration.
Within the US, Americans hate Americans with a passion. What a mess. Another civil war is not out of the question. As such, I am coming down on Trump being far, far worse.
Bush was like a bad bout of alcoholism, bad, but treatable. Trump was like doing two kilos of fentanyl at once.
I agree with lots of what you said, but lots not pretend like Quebec doesn’t already have an existing culture of Islamophobia and racism.
I think all those things are good. Trump didn’t cause any of those, he exposed them to naive liberals like you.
For the US, Trump tried to destoy democracy so that’s hard to top. And if he gets elected again, he will certainly succeed. For the rest of the world, both are clowns with nuclear weapons so equally dangerous. Trump just didnt had enough time to make as much damage, but what Trump did that Bush didnt, is inspiring right-wingers around thw world, with is deinfornation tactics.
Bush was worse internationally, Trump was worse domestically. If he got one more term, who’d know?
George literally succeeded at doing a coup through the Supreme court
deleted by creator
OMG my soul… If those were the choices for an election id either leave the country or leave the earth…with a bang… In their vicinity.
Bush 100% was worse though. Trump was too apathetic about doing actual governing in favor of stuffing his and his families pockets. Bush had a whole team dedicated to funneling tax dollars into the military industrial complex and got us into 2 wars to satiate the likes of Rumsfield and Cheney, the ramifications of said wars are still being felt today throughout the world. Fucking hanging chads…
I fear, though, that Trump v2 will have everything at his disposal that Bush had, and more. Heritage Foundation is already rigging the scaffolding for reintroducing Schedule F with the next GOP president, and have personnel lists.
Bush was bad. But Trump was dangerous.
Like, if Bush were somehow to be elected again I wouldn’t be alarmed, I’d be annoyed.
Dangerous to who though?
To the peaceful transfer of power, for one.
Bush was literally put in through a coup
Now the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken. Let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the court’s decision, I accept it. I accept the finality of this outcome, which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College. And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.
Al Gore, Dec. 13, 2000
“For the sake of democracy I concede to the judicial coup”
Trump couldn’t even manage that.
Yeah, much less competent fascist than Bush
Bush was the worse president, Trump is the worse person.
I can see a lot of potential presidents in 2001 act the same way as Bush did, especially any other Republican. Even Gore would have gone to war in Afghanistan. Unless of course we go down the rabbit hole of could he have prevented the 9/11 attacks. The Iraq war probably would have been avoided under Gore.
But I don’t see any other president doing the same damages that Trump did. While the current status of the Republican Party has many people just as bad as Trump, I don’t think they would have the same traction today without Trump.
And let’s not forget the worst of Trump was prevented. If his coup would have succeeded, he would even be the worse president.
Bush was worse for the world, Trump was worse for the US.
Trump started WW3 by initiating covid lockdowns and trying to use enormous money supply expansion to somehow offset the predictable economic ruin from the lockdowns.
Biden’s continuing what Trump started, but Trump started it. In fact, I’d say the covid lockdowns were a bipartisan effort to start WW3 (not on purpose of course just total negligence that they pretended not to understand how things work).
So while Bush’s actions ended the American Way, Trump’s actions may just end our civilization.
The interesting thing about how this question plays out in my mind is that it seems obvious Trump is worse, but I feel more annoyed and offended about Bush than Trump, and I think, given I’m not even American, part of why that is, is that a similar feeling lingers with respect to the Australian Prime Minister during Bush’s term. A man for whom I feel special kind of hatred, John Howard.
I really fucking hate John Howard despite some of the conservatives that came after him being arguably dumber and more embarrassing and making even crazier decisions. I don’t think we ever had our Trump moment despite some spectacularly shit tier leaders since, but nevertheless they were their own special kind of ridiculous. It’s a toss up who our closest equivalent is but I’d say probably Tony Abbott followed closely by one of his successors, Scott Morrison.
Where I’m going with this, and how it relates to Bush v. Trump, is that in their case and in the Australian context, it feels like they’re responsible if so much of the bad stuff that’s gone on since. It’s Prime Minister John Howard’s fault that we later got Tony Abbot and after him Scott Morrison, and it’s John Howard’s fault that we got mixed up in Iraq for no godamn reason, and John Howard’s fault that perverse cruelty came to be regarded as political courage and strength and also the only viable path towards electoral success.
The thing with Howard, as with Bush, is that they feel to me like they represent the people we got, right at the crossroads point in time when it was still possible to pull back from where we’ve ended up, and they both failed utterly, seemingly instead to hit the accelerator. At a certain stage when you hear about Donald Trump doing something stupid or asinine or brazenly corrupt, I almost can’t summon the will to be mad at him personally. It’s now just par for the course and it would feel like getting angry with a chimpanzee for throwing faeces at the wall instead of making sound policy decisions. Yes it’s galling that the decisions are so poor and irrational, but at the same time, it’s a chimpanzee that somehow got to hold political office so honestly, what did we expect?
I’m not sure exactly when the shift occurred but it feels like somewhere post-Bush and post Howard, we stopped having politicians who, while we won’t always agree with, we can assume are acting in what they at least think are everyone’s best interests (even if we believe them to be wrong). Instead we moved to no longer even having real candidates with actual goals, just personified contempt and rampant self interest. It’s like frail, fallable and flawed human beings, for all their faults, got replaced instead with joke cartoon characters, so it’s tough to keep holding them to the same standard because they’re not even real candidates just cruel jokes.
This feeling kind of makes me so much angrier with Bush and Howard that they were the last people that could have done something and instead they just let this happen because at least they got to win. The lasting effects both in terms of policy impact and just the overall cultural landscape that they have wrought upon the world are the seeds of every psychopathic lunatic that has since followed them. Tony Abbott, and Donald Trump were basically grown from seeds sown in the nursery of fucked up self interest that those assholes cultivated.
deleted by creator
We joked about W and Cheney cancelling the election. “Bush 2008 - why should the law stop us now?”
The Idiot was responsible for a failed coup.
The part where an angry mob invaded the capital, held back by precious few law enforcement officials, with the entire federal elected government hiding in one location? That was the lesser part. That was the visible mushroom emerging from the mycellum organism that permeated his turd of an administration. In the year leading up to that violent assault on the American government, he’d openly suggested “delaying” the election, on account of the plague he also insisted was fake. He had the Postal Service destroy the literal machinery of democracy with the explicit intent of vilifying and preventing mail-in voting. He extorted a foreign ally in hopes of committing fraud, and just about ruined the State Department with his narcissistic tantrums about getting caught doing those crimes.
George W. Bush was an intolerable authoritarian moron who openly betrayed the ideals of the nation and his duties to its people. We spent seven years constantly terrorized by our own government’s vague-but-menacing warnings and gleeful overreactions to attacks they failed to detect.We still have people trapped in an offshore torture prison because of that motherfucker. He was the worst domestic threat the United States had faced since the Business Plot. There was no excuse for ever electing anyone so brazenly corrupt and dishonest ever again. And then The Idiot was worse. The Idiot was orders of magnitude worse, on every possible front, without one god-damn iota of ambiguity or disguise. Republicans nominated and installed an incompetent criminal fascist.
They are trying to do it again.
The party is complicit and must be dismantled.
This is a tough question, because trump did lead an attempted coups to overturn democracy, but I’d say Bush W. The forever wars cost so many lives, far more than were killed as a direct result of trump’s actions. While trump’s failure to lead during Covid cost many lives as well, I think the net death toll is still considerably lower compared to Iraq/Afghanistan. And all for oil at that, also not known to be amenable to healthy living.
deleted by creator
lol, oops, forgot about that one. It was truly a clown show of epic proportions. But to be clear I’m referring to Jan 6.
deleted by creator
