[shwaj]

Many people disagree with the Covid response.

Many people look at the Bidens’ relationship with Ukraine and wonder whether the war could have been avoided, and we wouldn’t have to hear stories about “we sent $X billions, but Zelenskyy says he received only $0.5X billions” which could have been spent here, not to mention millions of lives spared (the latter doesn’t affect ordinary Americans directly, but there you go).

Edit: it’s abundantly clear that Trump is also highly corrupt. A big part of the problem is that many are only to see the other side’s corruption (not to mention the felt need to pick a side)

[hypeatei]

> Many people disagree with the Covid response.

Who was president in 2020? Who did the first round of stimulus?

[shwaj]

People who disagree with the Covid response may have been voting for RFK as much as Trump.

[Capricorn2481]

That's all well and good, but that money would never be spent here. That's not how our budget works. It's our defense budget, determined ahead of time, and America's defense budget is huge

The idea that Biden was taking food out of our mouths to send to Ukraine was pushed by the very people that approved that budget because it was easy to do. And Americans know this, they really do, they just forget it because they've had this narrative yelled at them so many times.

And even given that, we were very shrewd. We sent old weapons that were going to be decommissioned, so I would hardly say we sent a bunch of money to Ukraine. More like we goosed our weapon production.

[shwaj]

It’s true that the large majority of aid came in the form of weapons that the military industrial complex wanted to replace anyway. However, there has still been many billions of “cash” sent, totaling over $40 billion. That’s nothing to sneeze at. For example, from two years ago: https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-us-aid-ukraine-money-e...

[Capricorn2481]

No, that's military support. We sent $26 billion in 2022, which is less than 3% of our defense budget. That's peanuts in a conflict like this.

[disgruntledphd2]

> Many people disagree with the Covid response.

I think that's fair, Covid was completely insane. Personally the part of the US response I disliked the most was the closing of schools. Like, in Ireland the pubs were closed for basically 2 years, but we kept the schools open for most of it, which I think was the right call. Difficult situation though, and the vaccine mandates were crazy (particularly given how ineffective they were in preventing transmission).

> Many people look at the Bidens’ relationship with Ukraine and wonder whether the war could have been avoided,

I really don't see that. Like, Russia basically invaded as soon as (like that week) Nordstream 2 was finished (which unlike Nordstream 1 didn't pass through Ukraine). I think it's arguable that the US didn't need to be as involved (although if they hadn't been, then the EU-US break would have happened much, much sooner).

> which could have been spent here,

Like, for the avoidance of doubt, sending old weapons to Ukraine doesn't actually cost the US as much as they claimed. Ye'd have had to decommission them anyway. (This is a surprisingly large pattern in US aid to other countries).

> A big part of the problem is that many are only to see the other side’s corruption

Yeah, that's fair.

[kashunstva]

> the vaccine mandates were crazy (particularly given how ineffective they were in preventing transmission)

The data are known to show that the primary effect was in reducing the risk of hospitalization, severe disease, and mortality. Why, then should the lack of effect on transmission be the end-point that determines the appropriateness of mass immunization?

[disgruntledphd2]

Because ordering people to take medical treatment is a big deal. If it reduces the hospitalisation rate then it's rational to take for oneself, but requiring it for a bunch of things was overkill.

And I say this as someone who thinks Biden was a pretty good President.