[fastball]

1. The baby in this analogy is not defined objectively. Both sides disagree about which is the baby and which is the bathwater. I can see both sides here. For example, I think USAID is doing a lot of good work all over the world, but I also don't think a country with such a huge deficit should be spending money like that. Put on your own oxygen mask before you help those around you.

2. What type of actions/behaviors would lead you to believe this is being done in good faith? That seems somewhat hard to demonstrate when the other side almost universally assumes you never do anything in good faith.

3. This is the fault of our government structure since always and specifically our Congress over the last many decades, which has ceded more and more of the actual running of government to unelected civil servants who technically fall under the umbrella of the Executive branch. If we wanted to prevent things like this from being done, we should've had an actual civil service ala the UK, which although it falls under their Executive branch, it is not unilaterally controlled by it (e.g. the Civil Service Commission prevents the PM from just doing whatever he wants).

As a secondary note, oversight in this case seems somewhat hard to achieve, given the usual problem of "who watches the watchers?" If you think some part of the government is performing poorly and that this is systemic, who do you trust to provide oversight that might not themselves have ulterior motives to preserve the status quo?

[a_puppy]

Everyone deserves a presumption of good faith by default. But Trump has a long history of dishonesty and lawbreaking, culminating in an attempted self-coup in 2020. At some point, he doesn't deserve a presumption of good faith anymore. And he passed that point a long, long time ago.

This is perhaps the single biggest disconnect I see between Democrats and Republicans right now. To Democrats, Trump is "the man who attempted a self-coup", and everything he does is viewed in that light. Whereas Republicans seem to think that it just wasn't a big deal that Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election.

[fastball]

How exactly did Trump attempt a self-coup? What words or actions (on his part) would you say qualify for that description?

There were all sorts of bad intentions on the part of the rioters/coupers/whatever on January 6th, but AFAIK there is very little evidence to indicate these people were directed by Trump in any meaningful way.

[a_puppy]

The fundamental definition of a democracy is that the candidate who wins the election, gets to be in power. Trump lost the 2020 election, yet tried to stay in power. If Trump had succeeded at staying in power despite losing the election, then America would no longer have met the definition of a democracy. Therefore, Trump tried to overturn American democracy.

Do you recognize that Trump tried to overturn American democracy? If not: which part of the above paragraph do you disagree with?

In your comment, you seem to be referring to the fact that Trump didn't specifically call for violence on Jan 6. Depending on how exactly you define "coup", you could argue that Trump didn't personally attempt a coup, but rather Trump's supporters attempted a coup on his behalf while he cheered them on (and subsequently pardoned them). I think this is an irrelevant technicality; if Trump's supporters' attempted coup had succeeded, then American democracy would be just as dead as if Trump personally committed the coup.

Returning to the original topic: If you consider Trump's entire conduct around the 2020 election (as well as his extensive history of other dishonesty and lawbreaking) do you genuinely believe that the Democrats still owe Trump a presumption of good faith?