That may be, but neither the size of one's nuclear arsenal nor "official public policy" turns pseudoscience into an effective treatment.

> His pronouncements have the force of official public policy.

Your periodic reminder that the US is not in fact a dictatorship, and that random ex-cathedra rambling by Trump does not have the force of law.

Just because some of his trial balloons are abandoned to drift away on the winds of public ridicule does make it OK. What of the fact that his tweets are often followed up with orders that do have the force of law?

> country

Is that the US or Russia?

(Light hearted comment for a non serious thread!)

Please don't add nationalistic flamebait to partisan flamebait on HN. Adding damage to damage doesn't lighten hearts.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sorry.

This was me throwing peanuts at a thread that I had hoped would get flagged into the abyss anyway, and already by my reading contained a lot of ironic Friday afternoon eye rolling. A certain sense of gallows humor here, I felt.

I can see my comment is pretty damaging if it gets any actual views (which I didn’t expect it to, but that’s no excuse!)

In another setting it might make a good womp womp dad joke — as intended — but not here.

After he lost the popular vote. Other elected representatives selected him.

That isn't how the Electoral College works these days. It varies by state, but generally each candidate chooses their own slate of Electors who are loyal to the candidate, and upon winning a plurality of votes, that candidate's entire slate of Electors are made, by state law, the Electors for that state.

It's important to note that in no possible way can Electors be considered elected representatives. This often isn't even public information available prior to the election, and your ballot contains none of the names of these Electors. Your vote for presidential candidate A, is really a vote for presidential candidate A's slate of chosen and loyal Electors.

This is in contrast to Federalist 68, which describes a system whereby non-politicians chosen by the people from among the people, at a state level, are to become the Electors for that state. The intent was to make the College both a deliberative body, and external to state politics.

In practice, Federalist 68's vision of how the Electoral College would work never happened. Early on in the country's history the president was indirectly chosen by state legislatures choosing the Electors.

In any case, what we have today are arguably the absolute worst people possible chosen to be Electors: party loyalists. In most states they are even required by law to be non-deliberative, i.e. not vote their conscience but strictly for the candidate who selected them. Since none of the details of how the Electors are chosen or the process they use to make decisions is constitutional law, the states can change how it works.

I’m confused, can you clarify you are referring to?

Edit: In what way was Trump “selected” and not elected by the rules laid out in the constitution?

Edit2: So not selected, and yes entirely by the rules we’ve always used.

In the US, the public doesn't vote for the president directly. They elect electors for their state who then vote for the president. This system is called the electoral college and the net result is that a candidate can win the popular vote (the majority of voters voted for them) without winning the presidency. This has happened many times in US history, and it happened most recently in 2016.

Well, only four times:

1867: Tilden (4,288,546) - Hayes (4,034,311) - Hayes wins. 1888: Harrison (5,443,892) - Cleveland (5,534,488) - Harrison wins. 2000: Bush (50,456,002) - Gore (50,999,897) - Bush wins 2016: Clinton (65,853,514) - Trump (62,984,828) - Trump wins.

To further confuse the issue, 2 Republican electors and 5 Democratic electors _voted for other candidates_ in 2016, though it wasn't significant in the end.

In the American electoral system, you don't technically vote for the president; you vote for the electors who elect the president. This almost never matters, except quite often.

That's not how it works. The ramblings of the president do not have any legal force.

As the head of the executive branch, that's exactly how it works.

Edit: Not sure why I'm being downvoted. Public statements in the official capacity as president are absolutely policy statements for the executive when they aren't affecting independent bodies like the Department of Justice. The Department of Health and Human Services isn't an independent body, and so the president's statements in a damn press briefing are policy positions.

This is like saying that a CEO's press statements somehow aren't policy positions of the company.

Many people have been trying to figure out if that's true or not.

Like all the times the President has announced a new policy on Twitter, but none of the people who would be responsible for implementing it knew about it or understood the specifics of what he actually wanted to happen.

You don't actually have to listen to this person if the things they say are reliably without merit. Our nuclear weapons have nothing to do with the situation, and I don't imagine there is any risk of that situation changing.

He also won, with fewer votes than his competition, while only half of eligible voters cast ballots.

You're allowed to view this person as illegitimate. Sometimes the situation necessitates that we do that.

> He also won, with fewer votes than his competition, while only half of eligible voters cast ballots.

I don’t think that’s right. The presidential vote count in the 2016 election was 304 Trump to 227 Clinton [0]. And all 50 states voted. What system are you going by?

> You're allowed to view this person as illegitimate

Yes, you are. The constitution grants all sorts of protections from the government for ideas right or wrong. However... If you are using said constitution’s rules for how STATES vote for president, not people vote for president...

[0] https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/2016

Edit: I’m confused by reaction, where is the incorrect part here?

Edit2: Oh, the reaction is emotional. I see

I think it's pretty clear "votes" meant what's known in the US as "the popular vote," not "electoral votes," particularly since it's impossible, under the US election system, to win the presidential elections with fewer electoral votes than the opponent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia...

But that’s not the voting system we use. So, no, Trump didn’t win with fewer “votes” if we’re at all being intellectually honest about what votes matter.

This site is all about intellectuals being honest and arguing in good faith using the steel man method right?

Edit: “Stop” what? Are the rules of this site not steel man arguments with intellectual honesty? I’m genuinely confused and not trolling at all - where I have posted something incorrect? Because Dang, if the content isn’t correct, why is the post now flagged? If it’s correct info and -10 or so... isn’t that a problem that creates an echo chamber?

Please stop.