One of my biggest concerns as an American is the rest of the world hating us. Who exactly? On the plus, we stole a dictator, bombed a nuclear program in the Middle East, and regularly defend a European nation from Russia (self serving undoubtedly, war is great for the economy). On the flip side, we are stealing Greenland, imposing impossible to predict tariffs, and have a duplicitous and self serving President.
This was the best chart I could find from Spring of 2025, but you get the idea.
What this has done is turned alliances into confrontations. Canada the most obvious and closest. They stop choosing to come to the United States (hurts tourism / economy) and their citizens think our citizens align with our country’s leadership values. It doesn’t need to be this way.
Further evidence, a friend of mine recently flew to Paris and both ways the flight was empty. Many possible reasons for this, one being it’s too expensive which casts light on the economy. The return flight being that Europeans have no interest in coming to America. Both are bad.
I’m not a Maga Republican. It’s a major mistake in political discussions to stereotype the other side as an extremist.
I am a republican. My major party points are always money. Don’t grow the debt and limit the government. I am not a democrat. My overall view is the party has a naive viewpoint in humanity and will go out of its way to virtue signal.
I share this post so people understand how an actual Republican thinks.
Today I watched a video of Donald Trump and it gave me Joe Biden vibes. As a Biden opposer, I saw his mental slide under any pretense even predicting he would die during his Presidency (I still owe some blog reader $100). It occurred to me after watching this video that the other side hates to look like they are wrong, and would even argue the fact he’s ok even if it’s obvious he’s not. I don’t believe this is quite sleepy Joe, but this is Kamala Harris nonsense world salad.
Another annoying backlash of the Presidency is the economic impact. Where to begin? The private investment in public companies by the government is absurd. It’s slightly better than total corruption (see these States that will be audited upcoming), but totally unacceptable. Examples are the government’s involvement in Intel, MP Materials, and US Steel. Plus, Ken Griffin said he was also bothered by business deals that benefited family members of the president and administration officials, such as when lieutenants to an Abu Dhabi royal bought a 49% stake in the Trump family’s nascent cryptocurrency firm just before the inauguration.
Now turn your head to the main topics that are destroying Trump which are immigration and tariffs. Clearly federal agents killing citizens is bad optics. However, this isn’t Iraq killing thousand of dissenters in the streets. Minneapolis helped cause this friction, but Federal thugs carrying out “justice” when the State fails to do so needs a line which starts at don’t kill them.
Moving along, I heard Bessent talk on tariffs and it’s like watching a dog chase his tail. It “will” work. Just wait. These guys could do this all day. Who’s right? Who knows?
I hate the idea of a party bringing in illegals for voting purposes and then backing it up by not enforcing a legal ID to vote. It’s insane. Then flushing money to these people through unsupervised programs is wrong. These are HUGE holes in our country that I would never vote for. Yet, what I’m seeing from the current administration is putting the United States on an island with no friends. As an observer, this is not the way you grow a business, and certainly not a country. I’m seeing and feeling this in real time. There must be middle ground to these topics so both sides of this country can come closer together.
I just finished a podcast – Making Sense – with Jonathan Rauch who published an Atlantic article titled “Yes, It’s Fascism”. He says he’s always pushed back on that term, thinking the left has used it to their detriment more than their benefit (I agree), but that the last year is undeniable. It’s so in depth on the insanity of what Trump, Vance, Miller, etc. are doing that I recommend reading the article or listening to the episode. That said, it finally feels like the tide is turning against him a little bit, as evidence by this post!
All the countries that really dislike America in your listing above are far left countries and disintegrating (our poorest state has higher GDP per capita), with the exception of Turkey who is falling into a radical Islamist state bent on reclaiming their old empire. South America, after decades of failed left/socialist governments, are shifting right and coming closer to the US. I don’t like the trump narcissism such as naming everything after himself, tariffs, judicial warfare against his opponents (I didn’t like it when they did it to him), and his scorched earth tactics to go after legit goals (e.g. threatening war for Greenland while all we really need is a legit deal for needed minerals and a base to keep China out). All that said, I’d take this administration over Biden, Harris, Newsome, etc. any day of the week. In every area I care about, we are so much better off than if one of those people were in power. Bring on sane Republicans like DeSantis or Rubio in 2028 and we’d be set.
For as critical as I am of Trump, I agree with you that nominating Harris again, for example, in 2028 would be a disaster and show that the democrats don’t get it. I’d take a ‘sane republican’ over a far left democrat, so long as that sane republican acknowledges the obvious bad precedents Trump is setting and correct course. But someone like Vance, for example, seems committed to continuing what’s happening. Hopefully we get two sane candidates for 2028!!