The US wouldn’t have put Trump back in power if it cared about “overall looks”.

Trump cares a lot about overall looks. He didn't look like he was in control - that's what matters.

Not sure he noticed? I think in his mind he came off strong.

Watch the spin afterwards. The more he tries to spin it to look better, the less he feels like he came off strong.

he even took credit by saying I kept this going so long because its important for American people to see whats going on.

"It was a perfect melt down"

Trump looked like a fool that let his target bait him repeatedly on national television, outing him as an extortionist.

Unfortunately, it will now be used as an excuse for the US to alley with Russia to receive compensation for it's prior defense investment.

To MAGA, he spoke louder, and with more confidence, therefore he won.

Unfortunately this will not shake support of him in his base.

> Unfortunately this will not shake support of him in his base.

That will probably come when they lose Medicaid and food stamp benefits.

Perhaps they figured there are more important priorities for a US President than looking good?

I'm truly surprised anyone decides to disagree with that statement.

It frightens me a bit that people think looks are more important than results.

But I guess it's the world we live in.

exactly, giving Putin what he wants is more important than "looking good", whatever that means.

Ukraine's only hope is that the US stays out of it now, rather than joins Russia. Europe has a losing battle on our hands now.

Do you think anything that's not reported in mainstream media, or are you simply repeating what you consume? Because it looks the same to me.

And the media isn't really there to inform you, it's there to make sure you think what they want you to think for whatever reasons.

I would suggest at least taking a look at alternative explanations, otherwise this is just as bad as any other kind of blind faith.

In addition to looking like a terrible President, Trump is also very bad at governing, especially in a crisis. Last time he was President, he inherited a great economy that he was focused on looting (giving himself and other billionaires a massive tax cut and trying to kill the Affordable Care Act to steal even more). He left office with unemployment at 15%, the country $8T further in debt, crime skyrocketing to 30 year highs, cities were literally on fire, and everyone's quality of life was horribly harmed by his terrible management of pandemic.

What was Trump good at?

Then why did people elect him again?

Listening to people who did, it sounds a lot like their lives got better the last time.

Are you saying they're lying? Or just stupid?

Can you think of another explanation for the disconnect?

If the majority of voting Americans' lives got better in Trump's first term, then Trump would have won in 2020, but he got blown out losing by 7 million votes.

Cleaning up the mess Trump left was painful. The unavoidable consequences of global disruption of the economy (ie reduced supplies of goods) was a bit of inflation, and while Biden achieved the best recovery of any developed nation with the lowest inflation and very high wage growth among the bottom 40% of income earners, enough voters were turned off by inflation and by rightwing efforts to make voting harder that Donald Trump was able to just barely pull out a victory.

Trump is eliminating guardrails left and right and unsurprisingly is crashing things much faster this time around.

They wanted an excuse to drop support and they got it. They don't drop support because they are playing for team russia, they are peaceniks and it's Zelenskyy who rejected the shit deal. If they wanted to have those rare metals or whatever they would have just bought it and made a good faith effort to negotiate something instead of this.

> They wanted an excuse to drop support and they got it.

If they message that they are dropping support based on that personal insult, they will lose respect and credibility, and will get manipulated.

Not sure that's terribly different from any other message they've sent so far.

Nah, Trump was never going to offer Ukraine the security guarantee needed to end this conflict. Trump is just extending this "give us $500B in mineral rights in exchange for nothing" deal to manufacture an excuse to cease all aid to Ukraine and exonerate his administration from the holocaust that Putin will execute against Ukrainians after Trump gives Putin all of the intel the US military has accumulated aiding Ukraine to this point.