Donald Trump vs Kamala Harris: 2024 US Presidential Election - Discussion Thread

Finally, someone that knows how to have a respectful conversation. I really do approach your answer, especially the absence of name calling and hysterical hyperbole to make your point. Thank you. I’m at work right now, so I can’t give my answer to this the attention it deserves, but I look forward to answering later on.

Again, thank you.

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I’m a medically retired ex-police officer. I’m currently disabled and on Medicare. My brother is gay, my nephew is trans, and my future son-in-law and grandchildren are Hispanic. There is literally no benefit to me voting for Trump. Myself and everyone I love would be hurt by a second Trump presidency.

I feel his celebration of and desire to forgive those who assaulted police officers on January 6th is just unforgivable. On top of that I come from a family with a strong military background. I take the word of John Kelly over someone who dodged the draft anyday.

All that aside, as a son to a deceased mother, a brother to a sister, a husband to a wife, and most importantly a father to a daughter I just can’t fathom voting for someone who was found to have committed rape. Period.

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Sounds like you should vote for Harris then. I would ask you, what did President Trump do to gays, Hispanics, and other that negatively effected their lives? What did he do differently from the previous administration?

While I support President Trump, there are two things he is for that I do disagree with. First is the “no tax on tips” idea. If I have to pay tax on my income, then so can everyone else. The other is his unwavering support of the police. “Back the blue until it happens to you” are words that many realize after it’s too late.

It’s the rhetoric. They are spending a lot of time villainizing trans people and spreading fear and hate about them. In addition there’s a lot of anti-trans laws in red states, and more to come if Trump is elected. Strong chance that they will kick gay marriage back to the states like they did with abortion. There’s just no room for someone who holds LGBTQ positions as a priority in the current republican party.

As far as Hispanics go, again just look at the rhetoric. I live in a solid red county in Colorado, and all I hear is racism against Hispanics nearly every day. People out here are terrified of them. It’s ridiculous. I get shit on because I know Spanish. These people are mental. Trump’s MSG rally just further clarified their position.

My question to you, how can you profess to back the blue, when Trump said he’d pardon everyone who was convicted for their parts in January 6th, including those who assaulted police. Furthermore, Trump himself is a felon, and was found to have committed rape by a jury in a civil case. Kamal Harris is a former prosecutor, with zero criminal record. Help me to understand how you hold those positions and don’t see them as contradictory.

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You need to re read my post. I don’t back the blue. Far from it. I’m of the belief that there is no situation so bad that it can’t be made even worse with police involvement. For example, the parents of those children that were being slaughtered inside that grade school in Uvalde, Texas might have been able to save their kids lives if those coward policeman that weren’t interested in stopping that line gunman, hadn’t shown up and blocked them from trying. I find most police officers to be tyrannical bullies that act as sovereign citizens while accusing others of being the same. “Every job has bad apples. There’s a lot of good cops.” Really? If there were, the bad cops wouldn’t exist because the good cops turned them in. Instead, they turn a blind eye and say they didn’t see anything. Code of silence, just like any other criminal street gang.

If 4 “good cops” stand by and do nothing while 1 “bad cop” uses excessive force or violating a citizens rights, then you have 5 bad cops.

That’s fair, I just misread your post.

With that being said though, my priorities are healthcare, of which he has no plan, and had no plan when he was president, LGBTQ issues, Women’s rights, and how immigrants and those who are perceived to be immigrants are treated in our country. And again, in those areas he has provided me nothing.

I found his statement about “I’ll protect all women wether they like it or not” to sum up his attitude about women. He doesn’t respect them, he doesn’t see them on his level, and he believes he has to “protect” them. Coming from a man who was found to have raped a woman, has been accused by other women of sexual assault, and who admitted to commiting sexual assault it’s just insane.

It’s very telling that not only are the significant majority of his former cabinet refusing to campaign for him, or even endorse him, the women closest to him, his wife and his daughters are largely MIA.

I’ll sum it up with this. I judge others by the content of their character, and one big tell is how they treat their wives and their marriages. Trump cheated on his first wife with a second wife, he cheated on a second wife with his third wife, he cheated on his third wife with a Playboy playmate, and then cheated on both of them with a pornstar the week his son Baron was born. If he can’t be honest in his most intimate of relationships that he swore to before God three times, what on Earth makes his supporters think he’s being honest with them? Trump is out for one man, Trump. He’s made that clear.

I also don’t support taxes on tips. But I’m also not a fan of reducing minimum wage for tipped employees. I would love it if we got rid of the tipping culture altogether and paid everyone a livable wage. But that’s admittedly not a very realistic plan by either Republicans or Democrats right now on a national level while inflation is already high.

And in an example of where we don’t all follow party lines I do support the police and our emergency services. There are over 800,000 police officers in the united states and most I believe do strive to try to do the right thing. With such a large amount of course even 1% is almost 10,000 bad officers out there. But the can be better found, trained or fired by increased funding and oversight. Not “defunding the police” as the popular slogan says.

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Absolutely. Training is absolutely non-existent in far too many local law enforcement operations.

For example, my degree is in film theory. In order to get that degree I needed four years of college. That also includes entire semesters on things like silent film, film history and the like, but also entire semesters on specialty topics like Soviet silent film, horror movies, and directors like Hitchcock and Robert Altman. In addition I had to take film production classes. I wrote so many 50+ pages of paper on the impact of three seconds worth of film in theory classes. Like I had to go through A LOT to get that degree.

Compare that to my training as a police officer. I attended a three month police academy. A few weeks after leaving the academy I was hired by a local Sheriff’s office and I had about two weeks of field training.

Absolutely insane that I needed more training to write film theory than I needed to enforce the law. Mind you it’s been about twenty years, but as I understand it from friends who are still in law enforcement it hasn’t changed, and in some instances it’s worse.

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Trump hitting rallies in 3 States in one day. How does he do it?

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Well, he could barely get on the garbage truck yesterday so he’s not handling it great.

Like I said, I appreciate your response. I’m not for gun violence in schools. But adding more regulations and/or taking away my guns or offering to buy them back isn’t going to stop gun violence in schools. I own four different guns, including the dreaded AR-15. My 9mm Beretta sits next to me in the console of my car. My .22 stays in a holster inside my waistband. My magazine fed shotgun sits in a rack inside my closet. Guess how many school shootings they’ve been in or people they’ve killed. Zero. Guess how many victim statistics charts I plan on being on. Zero.

I’m not opposed to publicly funded schools. What I am opposed to is lazy teachers and government regulations that force them to teach to a state mandated test instead of teaching actual useful knowledge. I’m also opposed to dumbing down the curriculum to the dimmest of bulbs in the classroom so “every child has a fair chance”. You let the government teach your child and you let the government teach them what the government wants them to know.

I’m glad that you understood that I vote in my own self interests.

I didn’t vote for a Sunday School teacher or a church deacon. I voted for a man that I watched pull this country out of a financial rut, get the economy boosted, bolstered my 401k account and kept us out of wars. He gets a little side action, so what? It’s not like he’s Bill Clinton getting a blowjob from a girl 1/3 his age in the Oval Office, as President of the United States. I don’t condone it, but if it increases my paycheck and I pay less taxes, who am I to judge?

If you don’t think a president needs integrity, I don’t know what to tell you.

Maybe it’s a generational thing, but there used to be a time the Republican party demanded more from their candidate and president. Character is important, and Trump’s is awful. If you can’t see why that’s important, then that showcases the difference between you and I when it comes to values and what’s important. Not knocking you at all, but I can’t vote for a rapist and look any woman I care about on the face after. I don’t think you condone rape, or racism for that matter, but it’s clear that it’s not a deal breaker for you.

Also I should note unless you make $130k a year, you will not be paying more in taxes. And under Trump’s plan the middle class lose more than under Harris. Also Trump’s proposed tariffs will cost the average middle income family an average of $4k/year.

If I actually thought he was a rapist it would be. But Donald Trump has never been convicted of rape. You might not want to believe it, so here:

I’ve seen more evidence that Joe Biden is a pedophile than has been produced that Donald Trump is a rapist. You should really reserve that vile title for those that deserve it, not just people you don’t like.

Twice impeached, 34 count convicted felon, liable for sexual abuse….all titles hung on him by his political enemies aided by biased kangaroo courts. They should be worried about him taking revenge on them if he wins this election. He has some receipts to deliver.

Actually, Trump was found to have committed rape by the judge in the case.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/19/trump-carroll-judge-rape/

Again, Trump admitted to committing sexual assault, his own words. When someone tells you who they are believe them.

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The article is behind a paywall, so, I still hold that Donald Trump is not a rapist.

Here’s the relevant part:

“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’ ” Kaplan wrote.

He added: “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

Trump raped her. Even if you don’t accept that as a truth, is sexual assault much better?

Again, I have a wife, and a daughter I have to look in the eyes. And having had worked with sexual abuse survivors as a investigator, you learn to believe women. In this case, an entire jury believed her. If you don’t, then your issue is clearly with how the justice system operates, and perhaps women, and that’s a different discussion.

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That’s just another “depends on what the meaning of “is” is. He’s not a rapist, no matter how many left wing zealots want to claim he is.

But you agree that he committed sexual assault?

Or are you against the finding of this jury, and I’m guessing the jury who found him guilty of several felonies as well.