So said Adam Smith a couple of centuries ago, and he will, I hope, be proved right, in the US, and elsewhere in the world. Trump and the Republican majority in Congress and (imminently) in the Supreme Court will, in all probability, repeal Obamacare, restore and expand the Bush tax cuts for the rich, stop action on climate change, overturn Roe v Wade, expand deportation and more.
On the other hand, there’s no sign that he will attempt to overturn marriage equality, and every likelihood of failure if he does try. Considering that, as of 2008, Obama and Clinton were still “evolving” on the issue, that’s an indication of progress that can’t be reversed.
On climate change, Trump can ignore the Paris agreement and appoint a climate denier to run the EPA, but he can’t stop the decline of coal-fired power or the disappearance of coal mining jobs. This is one of many areas where his promise to Make America Great Again is going to fall flat. As far as places like West Virginia are concerned, the big impact of Trump’s victory is to ensure that the Federal money that might have eased the transition away from coal won’t be coming. And, if the Chinese government is smart, they’ll be able to present themselves as the real leaders of the world on this issue (and not just this one).
Looking beyond Trump, what can be done, can, mostly, be undone. Tax cuts can be reversed, laws can be repealed, action on climate change can be accelerated. Of course, that requires big electoral victories and the Republicans will be doing their best to build up barriers to voting. But none of those barriers would be enough to offset a 5 per cent swing, and that could be achieved just by turning out more voters.
The political reality, however, is that the initiative is with the other side, not only in the US, but in the UK, Australia and much of Europe. The collapse of neoliberalism as a dominant ideology (though not yet as a policy reality), has so far favored the tribalist right rather than the still disorganised left. The tribalists now have the chance to prove that their policies can work, or be perceived to work. If Trump can create and sustain an illusion of restored national greatness, as Putin has done (so far) in Russia, it won’t matter much what the Democrats do. The same will be true in Britain if Brexit can be made to work, or at least be seen to work.
At least in the short term, there’s not much the left can do to influence this. But there’s lots to be done away from short-term politics, from organizing to protect the groups most vulnerable to Trumpism to working out long-term policy alternatives to neoliberalism.
John Quiggin 
Granted swings and round abouts do happen the question is how many more can we tolerate and do we have the time to sort out these messes? An existential event like Trump can take decades to recover from,if ever, – consider the impact of a few people’s puritanism and slave owning in the 16th century on today. Unfortunately we may not even have decades left to sort the mess if these following two works by soon to be unemployed climate scientists prove correct.
FRIEDRICH, T., TIMMERMANN, A., TIGCHELAAR, M., ELISON TIMM, O. & GANOPOLSKI, A. 2016. Nonlinear climate sensitivity and its implications for future greenhouse warming. Science Advances, 2. (just published – and outlined in the Independent yesterday)
HANSEN, J., SATO, M., HEARTY, P., RUEDY, R., KELLEY, M., MASSON-DELMOTTE, V., RUSSELL, G., TSELIOUDIS, G., CAO, J., RIGNOT, E., VELICOGNA, I., TORMEY, B., DONOVAN, B., KANDIANO, E., VON SCHUCKMANN, K., KHARECHA, P., LEGRANDE, A. N., BAUER, M. & LO, K. W. 2016. Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2 °C global warming could be dangerous. Atmos. Chem. Phys., 16, 3761-3812.
[I’ve posted the second before but its still useful here as a reminder of what may be at stake. The first paper says climate forcing seems based on analysis of Quaternary data to be likely to happen much more rapidly than expected. Basically it says that we will see a 2 C rise around 2025 (a nice testable hypothesis) when Donald Trump is just finishing his tenure (we hope) and well before the Paris fiddling while Rome Burns of carbon trading can have any impact. The second explains the impact of a 2 C rise. Hyperbolic perhaps but we do have a plausible mechanism emerging in the form of Arctic melting]
One unfortunate feature of neoliberalism is that it a secondary outcome of its past triumph/hegemony has been the near wiping out of alternative lines of thought notably in Economics.
Where are the alternative ways of thinking about the world that lead to ecological sanity equity/sharing and steady state – in detail? Your earlier book and forthcoming one John seem to be still about deconstructing the problem more than finding the solutions. No offense is intended here as this must come first but it does illustrate how early in new cycle we are.
[Another disappointment I recall along these lines was Tim Jackson’s ‘Prosperity without Growth’ – plenty of deconstruction but to a cynic in these matters like me the short solution list amounted to wishful thinking. Naomi Klein’s recent offering is another illustration of this laudable but still incomplete thinking/framework https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/09/rise-of-the-davos-class-sealed-americas-fate – it amounts to ‘get organised’ but doesnt really satisfy the question of ‘to do what?’]
My personal solution in the spirit of put up or shut up – just a start? Economists sort out this long standing rift and disrespect between the Ecological Economics backwater (who are really mostly a bunch of eco/system scientists interest in economics but who lack the economic thinking processes, and progressive mainstream economists who still frankly dont get Ecology 101 even if they chat over drinks with high flyers). Perhaps its too late for us older people but the young seem more appropriate to become these hybrids anyway as they will have to live with the mess our generation has made before we sit back in retirement exploiting them via rent extraction. We have plenty of existing analogues already e.g. engineering + architecture…..commerce+law. But as to the will/at sufficient scale AND with supervisors willing to be enthusiastic about such crossover and what they can learn themselves?
Sadly though I fear we will remain functionally in our silos while Trump the barbarian lays waste to all that is not tinsel and bling.
ps – that should have been the late 1600s in reference to slavery
For reference this was the Independent article linking to the Science Advances paper (new AAAS publication) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/climate-change-game-over-global-warming-climate-sensitivity-seven-degrees-a7407881.html
Late stage capitalism is intensifying. The system will have to begin failing before people realise it is unsustainable. This is the unfortunate fact. Climate change is pretty much a done deal and climate change is only one problem we face. Climate change will almost certainly happen (very likely, 90% to 100% probability). The degree is more debatable but chances of catastrophic (for humans) climate change of 4 to 6 degrees C are significant. The tipping point is thought to be about 3 degrees C which we are likely to reach. Matters would then run completely out of human control. This is not to suggest that it puts us on a Venus-like runaway trajectory. This is still not the case for earth. However, above 4C ends global civilization and may or may not send humans extinct.
The flip-flopping of voters between Capitalist Party A and Capitalist Party B indicates the desperation and ignorance of the electorate. This kind of political economy offers no alternatives and no control by the populace. The real future alternatives will be socialism or barbarism. Which will we choose? Failing to choose is also making a choice. We must choose the only path which offers some hope. That path is ending capitalism and adopting ecosocialism. Of course, people aren’t ready for it. But when the collapse is real and all around them, the mental models and possibilities for ecosocialism must by then be instilled in a majority of human brains. If not, then the choice (or rather the failure of choice) will be for lunacy and barbarism.
With a majority in both houses and a President the right now have no excuse to not make America great again. Failure to achieve any of the promises will ret entirely on their shoulders.
There is no reason to maintain a gridlock.
Roll on the mid terms.
If I were China, I would continue to implement its commitments on climate change and hold future US administrations accountable for “catching” on the US commitments. If the US fails to do so, they are hardly in a position to ever accuse China of not complying with international law.
Australia should be similarly held to account by the developing world on our climate change commitments.
Canada stands alone in the fight! Hope the good Canadians do not falter.
Kien
Sorry?I meant that future US administrations need to catch up on achieving committed cumulative incremental reductions in carbon emissions. Might that be feasible?
Is this the same Canada that has turned hundreds of thousands of hectares into a waste land and polluted once prisitne rivers into sewers??@Kien
Imagine the equivalent of a PM Abbott with an LNP majority in the Senate! Though I suppose Trump was more up front about his intentions than Abbott was or is.
I’ve said before that I had real doubts that Mr Turnbull’s government would ratify the Paris climate agreement. I’ve just been unsure what excuses would be trotted out for his caving in to the LNP’s climate science denying Right – with the consent of the don’t care and reluctant to act not-quite-as-right. Seems like the excuse was already in place; no climate agreements that don’t include the world’s major CO2 polluters.
I can’t see global pressure shifting a President who has the support of both Houses of Congress. Given that the commitment from elsewhere in the world tends to be reluctant and aimed at doing the least that can be gotten away with – even where it’s more than mere appeasement for appearance sake – real pressure probably won’t be brought to bear. Only extraordinary advances aka cost reductions in low emissions energy can do the job for effective climate action in the absence of real policy commitment; that’s not impossible but I think that without that commitment the pure research that significant technological advancement flows from, the flow through to commercially viable will be at risk.
More broadly I think the re-branding of Reaganomics under Trump will flow through as infrastructure stagnation and decay of essential infrastructure, rising public debt rather than falling and with any initial private sector boost in growth from tax cuts undermined over time by a paralysed public sector. Taxes too low, from my inexpert POV, seems likely to be as damaging to a complex economy as taxes too high. And I’ve suspected many of the biggest and most successful US corporations have gotten that way through the help of government contracts, policy support and rent seeking.
Mm, seems I shot off my mouth too early; Australia has just ratified the Paris agreement! I’m genuinely surprised. But I still have serious doubts that it will flow through to any kind of effective climate policy.
@Ken Fabian
Your #9
We had one of those quite recently, by the name of John Winston Howard. If memory serves me rightly, he became only the second Australian PM to lose both government and his seat at the very next election.
There is every chance of financial scandal on a YUUGE scale, dwarfing Teapot Dome and up with Yeltsin’s and Putin’s Russia. Trump has it seems no intention of putting his business assets in a blind trust, and conflicts of interest will be everywhere. We could see a populist and left-leaning reaction.
There is a lot of ruin in a country. Let’s hope we don’t find out exactly how much.
I just want to make it clear that my previous comment was in now way meant to reflect negatively on President elect Trump. I for one welcome our new orange overlord and I would never say anything negative about him such as, “This is what happens when you feed your Oompa Loompa after midnight.”
It remain to be seen how much resistance to Trump`s tribalism the neoliberals will put up.
If the Republicans do put up resistance, expect Trump to fight them in the mid-terms, which will split the Republican vote.
I hope he does less damage than Dubya.
But if I could just point out a teensy weensy reason why people might not be voting for “the establishment” (which of course includes the ALP), it might look something like this:
People are finding the rate of change in their lives too much. My dad lived comfortably for 30 years on a pension he got when he retired at 56. That is 3 years younger than I am now. And in his time, if you were unlucky enough not to have a pension or savings, the government would provide you a house at very little cost.
In those 30 years we (at least in Australia) have raised the retirement age, offer virtually no housing for the poor, and nobody except politicians even dreams of generous pensions.
And all this while we’ve grown phenomenally wealthier as a nation.
But public schools and public hospitals have not shared in that wealth. With the “Building Education Revolution” response to the GFC being the notable exception.
And of course the rise of casual, part-time and contract work with minimal security. And, don’t get me wrong, I’m for immigration, but in Australia it seems that the goal of immigration is to supply cheap labour so that there is no upward pressure on wages. And of course we add to this by having temporary work visas in “skill shortage” jobs. I can tell you why there is a skills shortage, its because they don’t pay enough.
And constant change. Much of it for the better, but even good change is tiring.
Much of this is sold as “inevitable”. But it is not. It is a choice by government. It probably is the choice that maximises total wealth, but I don’t think it is the choice that maximises total wellbeing. Far from it.
So if people are wondering why abominations like Trump get elected, they might look at how life is actually changing for most people.
If the change for working class people was better, rather than largely negative, there would be less discontent.
We’re still in denial.
Leaving aside for the moment, as one could, the prospect that this was a species-ending event from the climate change side, Trump’s election is a genuinely strong argument against democracy as a philosophical position. The one philosopher who should come out of this feeling vindicated is Joseph De Maistre;in Berlin’s abridgement,
We are told, he says, that man is born to freedom; at least M. Rousseau says that man is born to freedom – and then wonders why it is that man is nevertheless everywhere in chains. That is as if you were to ask why it is that sheep, who are born carnivorous, nevertheless everywhere nibble grass. When you say that man is born to freedom, what does this mean? When you study fishes, when you study animals, you simply study what these animals do, what these animals are. You do not ask yourself what these animals would like to be, because you do not know. In the case of man you do not study the actual history of man. If you study the actual history of man you will discover that what men desire is security, stability, authority, obedience. The last thing they desire is freedom: as soon as they are given freedom, everything crumbles and topples.
Consider, he says, what people like and what they dislike, historically speaking. Never mind about what human beings should be or could be, or what you would like to see them as. Peter the Great, one of the great reformers of history, when he sent thousands and hundreds of thousands of Russians into battles and constant defeats, never had the slightest difficulty in doing so. They marched to battle and they died like sheep, perfectly obediently and without raising any protest. There was not the slightest sign of mutiny – there are very few mutinies amongst marching armies – and yet these men had no idea why they were marching, why they were killing those whom they were going to kill. Certainly they had no personal hostility towards the enemy, who was as innocent, as noble and as honourable as they were. On the other hand, when Peter tried to shave the beards of the boyars there was a riot. When in the eighteenth century there was an attempt to reform the calendar there was practically a French mutiny. That is the kind of thing which people mind about: beards, calendars, yes; death, not in the least. And these are the people whom you wish to represent as rational, peace-loving, enlightened, illuminated, persons capable of governing themselves, persons capable of taking part in their own self-government, potential democrats, potential liberals, persons to whom M. Voltaire and M. Rousseau wish to entrust the government.
The other quotation that springs to mind is Menken’s “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
@ChrisB
Your #19
Two-and-a-half cheers for epistocracy !
@ChrisB
The counter to all that is, of course, Churchill’s observation that the alternatives are all worse.
@Tim Macknay
Yes, I know that quote too. I just think that, given current evidence points, it’s grounds, if grounds were needed, for new abysses of despair, rather than smug reassurance.
@ChrisB
You can think whatever you want. Personally I think that there are never grounds for either ‘abysses of despair’ or ‘smug reassurance’. Both are foolishness. If you were implying that my comment represented ‘smug reassurance’, you were mistaken, not to mention offensive. It’s not ‘smug’ to point out that attacking democracy is a bad idea.
“Looking beyond Trump, what can be done, can, mostly, be undone”. This is premised on the assumption that Trump doesn’t break the system or the world so badly that discussions like we are having become entirely impossible. We are about to find out how fragile it all is.
“If you study the actual history of man you will discover that what men desire is security, stability, authority, obedience. The last thing they desire is freedom: as soon as they are given freedom, everything crumbles and topples.”
The best argument ever in support of female PMs, Presidents, Heads of whatever.
@Ernestine Gross
In this context, regrettably, man embraces woman. And a majority of white women voted for him.
it’s called sophistry.
reminds me of the response given by some religion salespeople when the reality of the history of predatory sexual behaviour was pointed out.
“good” and “hard” indeed.
Bernie Sanders made the point that the appointment of super delegates were undemocratic and he has been proved right. The primaries exclude any viable alternatives leaving voters with only a binary choice.
Leaving that aside the 46% that didn’t vote constitute a No vote against their form of democracy. Neither Clinton nor Trump were able to muster more than ~28% of the eligible vote. In that respect Trump is spot on, the vote is rigged.
I think the left have assumed that the Tea Party brand silliness was on a one-way path to nowhere. That is not self evidently true. The Democrats in the Us have been decimated not the far-right Republicans. A change of emphasis called for.
@John Bentley
Yup, that’s us. New gov’t is introducing carbon pricing of some kind across the country. Not great but a lot better than our former PM, Tony Abbot’s friend, who either did not believe in global warming or who did believe the End Times were due next week so we did not have to worry about global warming. Or possibly both?
@Newtownian
An excellent paper, and it really could be the end of the road.
Remember in early 2015 John Quiggin said:
Well they took the benefit of “minimal economic cost” and delivered not one iota of CO2 emissions benefit – it was all a con.
We now have data for global CO2 emissions that show nothing but accelerating global CO2 atmospheric concentrations.
The increase from 2013 to 2014 was 1.84 ppm
The increase from 2014 to 2015 was 2.28 ppm
The increase from 2015 to 2016 was 3.40 ppm
There was no peak. And it will now get worse. An no “piecemeal measures” has had any noticeable or relevant effect at all.
@hc
Put it on your blog. It’s a sad and lonely space.
You might get some readers from your type of repugs who are changing emphasis. Lol. Tell us about it.
You are a liberty quote you know. Those repug supporters are not noticing any change in emphasis. The orgy of gloating is magnificent at that blog. Even more childish than when Abbott won. That outbust of triumphant tribalism didn’t last long.
@Ivor
You might find this link worth reading
https://www.carbonbrief.org/how-scientists-predicted-co2-would-breach-400pm-2016
If you choose to post on this point again, please take account of the info there.
I have, for a number of years now, thought that on the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, there may well be some sort of revolution in the USA. There’s lots of guns, and lots of nutters, and if those who feel they’ve been disenfranchised by the “system” don’t see any change in short order under Trump, ……
@may
What on Earth are you talking about?
Timely that Julie Thomas mentions Tony Abbott’s 2013 election win.
ALP supporters’ line leading into that election was “Abbott would be worse”.
The last time the ALP won an election convincingly was 2007 when Rudd ran on some key points opposite to the Howard years (particularly – ending the Pacific Solution, out of the US wars, doing something serious about climate change and addressing economic inequality).
After getting the job back in 2013 by famously “lurching to the right on refugees”, as well as ditching all the other vote winning policies from 2007 in order to appease the faceless men epitomised by Bill Shorten, Rudd lost and Abbott won.
That “lesser-evilism” gave us Abbott and now gives the US Trump.
Ironically, the “lesser” evil is actually the greater evil because it accepts a range of “evil” as the only alternatives. Even stranger is that “good” has a proven track record as an election winner.
In a way, democracy has worked fine. The US voted against neoliberalism. They may not get what they hoped for, but they’ve given a very strong message to those who think everything is going just fine.
“Lurching to the right” specifically included his announcement on July 19 2013 that no refugees arriving by sea would ever be allowed into Australia.
The refugees on Manus and Nauru were all put there by the ALP. There was never any plan for what would happen to them – apart from the vague idea that some imaginary “third country” would take them.
It is worth repeating: The “lesser evil” ALP put all of these innocent refugees in indefinite offshore detention with no concrete plan for their future – as a “deterrent”.
@John Quiggin
And what do the last two paragraphs of that article say? It’s worth quoting;
“So, although natural carbon sinks on land and ocean have buffered us from the full impact of our carbon emissions, we should not assume this will continue at the same level indefinitely. Crucially, the warmer the world becomes, the more difficult it could be to prevent further warming, as our CO2 emissions could have proportionally larger impacts, and natural carbon sinks could become less effective.
If the world’s nations are serious about halting global warming, the rise in CO2 concentrations also needs to cease. This means the annual change in CO2 concentration – generally 2ppm per year, and around 3ppm this year – needs to become zero. That is, the sinks need to balance the sources. Based on our current understanding of the carbon cycle, this task will be harder the longer we leave it.”
Merely flattening our emissions (or reducing them very slowly) at a point where
(a) they still exceed sink uptake by about 40%; and
(b) sink uptake itself is declining;
is a situation of serious jeopardy. This goes to the point that we are doing too little, too late. It goes to the point that our political-economic system, namely late-stage, corporate, plutocratic, oligarchic capitalism is systemically incapable of dealing with the problem. It has behaved as predicted. It has payed lip-service to the issue (when not actually denying and denigrating) and done far too little, far too late. Capitalism seeks near term goals. It’s not a system with adequate “look-ahead” heuristics and algorithms when it is “pitted” globally against natural systems.
@John Quiggin
Yes, everyone concerned for the fate of humanity should have a close look at this.
It is shown that the rate of increase of CO2 is increasing over time with some fluctuations due to volvanos and El Nino’s. These instances vary the trend in the short-term but the overall rise in growth rate is there for all to see.
Here it is: https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Betts_ENSO-1024×695.png
And it is forecast to increase even further into the future.
This is a one way track to a ecological catastrophe.
If Le Pen, Hanson, and Trump get their way, it really is “game over”.
@John Quiggin
Yes, everyone concerned for the fate of humanity should have a close look at this.
It is shown that the rate of increase of CO2 is increasing over time with some fluctuations due to volvanos and El Nino’s. These instances vary the trend in the short-term but the overall rise in growth rate is there for all to see.
Here it is: https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Betts_ENSO-1024×695.png
And it is forecast to increase even further into the future.
This is a one way track to a ecological catastrophe.
If Le Pen, Hanson, and Trump get their way, it really is “game over”.
@Ikonoclast
Exactly. So which political party or trendy middle class movement, or Climate Council paper recognises this???
But I would add one extra point – the sinks must not become saturated.
We are being led up the garden path into a furnace.
Sophie Shevardnadze interviews Stephen Cohen about the likely consequences of Donald Trump’s election victory – 29 minute video interview.
Sophie Shevardnadze is the granddaughter of the late Eduard Shevardnadze (1826-2014) who was foreign minister of the former Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991. She graduated with a cinema degree from Boston University in 2001 and studied in the masters program in TV journalism at New York University in 2005 and now lives in Russia and is the presenter of the bi-weekly RT.com program SophieCo.
Stephen Cohen is professor emeritus at the Princeton University and editor of The Nation magazine.
@James
It’s no good pretending Trump isn’t part of the elite. He IS part of the elite. Like the rest of the elite, he preys on, exploits and oppresses the poor and the weak. Of course the elite(s) are not monolithic and all-unified. They battle among themselves also The .01% prey on the 0.1% and the 0.1% prey on the 1%. The very top billionaires combine when it suits them and stab each other in the back when it suits them.
Any notion that Trump, a predatory billionaire, is against the overall elite capitalist game and for the ordinary people is the most stupid, naive idea of all time. What we see now (in simplified terms) is corporate oligarchic neoliberalism (with soft pretensions to democracy) being challenged by corporate oligarchic crypto or neo fascism, which latter movement Trump represents.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/donald-trump-president-mix-of-policies-mirrors-fascist-leaders-in-the-1930s-hitler-mussolini-economy-a7408081.html
I agree with this article except that is has an underlying assumption that capitalism is good. That’s where it goes wrong. The analysis of Trump is spot on though.
US journalist Salena Zito said about Trump a few weeks ago apparently: “The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.”
This is the most interesting thing I have read since the election. It makes sense because I did take him literally and could not believe that any other person would take him seriously and not literally.
But now I think about the way the rwnj’s reacted to him it is obvious that although many of them are elites they don’t think of themselves as the ‘real’ elites.
There must be a different set of criteria that they use to put people into the elite category.
This could be the comment that illustrates the dysfunctional psychology of Trump rwnj supporters.
“If I were a billionaire, I’d be an asshole too,”
My apologies, Professor Quiggin. I inadvertently left a second link in my previous copy of this post and it is now awaiting moderation.
@Ikonoclast,
Could I suggest that you read from sources other than the mainstream newsmedia about Donald Trump – the same msm that propagandises for war against Syria and propagandised for the invasion of Libya in 2011, gaves us Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” in 2003, Kuwaiti “incubator babies” in 1990, the Red Chinese invasion of Vietnam in 1965, the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, the magic bullet, etc., etc.?
Perhaps you could start by watching that video linked to above. Should that video not persuade you, then perhaps you could explain to the rest of us why you think Stephen Cohen and Sophie Shervardnadze are wrong.
Ikonoclast wrote:
Had you watched the different debates and other material from Donald Trump, you would know that he has explicitly repudiated the crowd of billionaires that he was previously amongst.
In any case, even if it were possible to believe all the worst smears against Donald Trump, he would still only be fractionally as terrible as a woman who has helped cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria, taken bribes from the misogynist rulers of Saudi Arabia and laughed when she heard news of the cruel murder of Muammar Gaddafi.
“I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization”. So wrote Tony Schwartz (writer of “Trump’s” Art of the Deal), who followed him for months, even listening in to his ‘phone calls.
Trump will use nuclear weapons the first time he feels slighted or humiliated in international affairs. Climate collapse suddenly seems like a side issue.
@James
” he has explicitly repudiated the crowd of billionaires that he was previously amongst.”
So among all the other lies he has told this is a clear truth statement? Do you have any explanation about why we should believe this particular claim when now we know that all the other things he as said as reported by the msn were not meant to be taken seriously?
How do you know this is the truth and so what anyway? What significance does this have? Perhaps it means he will concentrate on taking them down and how will that be good for anyone?
It is more likely that the billionaires that Trump has rejected are ones who have dissed him for not being very smart or made fun of his taste in gold interiors and ornate ceilings or the size of his hands, not because he has stopped believing the goodness of being a selfish and greedy aggressive alpha male.
It is time to cease with the so obvious sexist attacks on Hillary. So disappointing but predictable that you can’t understand the psychology of this ‘laughing’ at the ‘cruel’ – and why cruel? why add that word except that your emotional feelings about her are so high that you couldn’t repress your need to add an unnecesary negative descriptor – murder of Gaddafi.
So if she had cried about this murder, would the men around her have been understanding and respected that and her right to be part of their club?
Do you ever think that you may be a bit lacking in objectivity and understanding of human behaviour and psychology?