I had similar concerns about Obama and would add his appeasement strategy with Iran as disastrous. I voted for him twice and think overall he was pretty decent.

You are exaggerating what ICE has done, they of course will make mistakes but overall they have done a good job.

You are very misinformed on the Russia hoax, it was fabricated by the DNC.

Last I checked, he conceded the presidency to Biden in 2020. Certainly the claims of massive fraud are unsubstantiated and those that stormed the Capitol should be prosecuted. Though, there does seem to be some amount of fraud going on and the democrats not wanting to pursue that is misguided.

Perhaps making less than ideal choices is necessary to stop an even worse war?

> You are exaggerating what ICE has done

You are downplaying what ICE has done. What people are mad about are not "mistakes" but things like executing multiple US citizens in the streets and then labelling them domestic terrorists. That wasn't a mistake. Sending people to foreign torture prisons contrary to a judge's orders was not a mistake. Creating "Alligator Alcatraz", a horrid disgusting concentration camp in a swamp which had to be shut down because it was so barbaric was not a mistake.

> they have done a good job

It may please you that immigrants and fellow citizens are being mistreated by ICE, as it did directors like disgraced Kristi Noem, but most people when they heard Trump's 2024 campaign and voted for that thought he was going to deport criminal gangbangers, not abuelas.

> You are very misinformed on the Russia hoax, it was fabricated by the DNC.

No, you are very misinformed, the DNC work and the dossier did not precipitate the Trump-Russia investigations. In fact the Trump-Russia investigation corroborates the central claim of the dossier (although not every part of it), which was that the Russian government had a covert operation to help Trump win, and the Trump campaign knew about it and welcomed it.

Republican Trump advisor George Papadopoulos triggered the investigation when he bragged at a bar to an Australian diplomat about Russia being able to release dirt on Hillary Clinton which would help their campaign. Republican Jim Comey opened the first investigation during the campaign.

Republican Robert Mueller was appointed SC by Republican DAG Rod Rosenstein after Republican AG Jeff Sessions had to recuse himself because he lied to Congress about meeting with Russians.

Mueller found over 100 contacts between Trump's campaign and Russian nationals, which the Trump campaign and those individuals all lied about taking place. Mueller also found that Russia did in fact want Trump to win, they did in fact hack the Clinton Campaign and release that information, they did hack the RNC and didn't release that information, and they did in fact responded to Trump's public call to hack Hillary Clinton. So it's a fact Russia tried to help Trump, and Trump eagerly accepted the help and in fact asked Russia for more help, which Russia gave him.

Republican Donald Trump Jr., Republican Jared Kushner, and Trump's campaign chairman Republican Paul Manafort, admitted to eagerly taking a meeting with a Russian spy Natalia Veselnitskaya and confirmed the meeting was about relaxing Russian relations in exchange for campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump Jr. said of the meeting "If it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer." Where he understood "it" to be dirt from "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump". So the meeting was arranged specifically on the understanding that damaging information about Clinton would be provided as part of Russian government support for Trump.

Republican Marco Rubio, then chair of the Republican-majority Senate Intelligence Committee, released several reports about the affair and himself said "We found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling." Their final report concluded that Trump's Republican campaign chairman shared internal information with someone identified as a Russian intelligence officer! The subsequent Biden Administration revealed that intelligence officer to be Konstantin Kilimnik, so this is the only part where Democrats are involved in the story, at the very end.

So just taking only the narrative produced by Republicans:

- Trump's campaign met repeatedly with Russians and lied about it.

- Trump's inner circle took meetings with a Russian spy in hopes of getting dirt and lied about it.

- Russia actually did release dirt to help Trump campaign and lied about it.

- Trump's campaign eagerly accepted that help and asked for more publicly.

- Trump's campaign shared internal campaign data with Russian intelligence officers.

- If they could have exonerated Trump they would have, but they couldn't.

That's collusion! The hoax is calling it a hoax.

Here are some actual sources to help you get more informed. You should read these before you say "Russian hoax" again or call anyone else misinformed.

https://www.justice.gov/storage/report_volume1.pdf

https://www.justice.gov/storage/report_volume2.pdf

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...

> Last I checked, he conceded the presidency to Biden in 2020.

He maintains to this day he won that election and it was stolen from him through massive fraud. He also requires others to believe this as well, as its become a litmus test for serving in his administration, to never assert that Biden won that election. All they can say is "Biden was certified as president in 2021".

> those that stormed the Capitol should be prosecuted.

Can't, Trump pardoned everyone and wants to give them restitution. Now there's a group of people who know if Trump calls them to exact violence on the Congress, they have pardons and payouts waiting for them afterwards.

> Certainly the claims of massive fraud are unsubstantiated ... Though, there does seem to be some amount of fraud going on and the democrats not wanting to pursue that is misguided.

These two ideas are contradictory. Here's a question, if Trump wasn't trying to steal the election, why does he continue to make unsubstantiated claims of massive fraud after it's been proven false?

Trump has had two attempts now to find massive fraud and hasn't found any, so how are the Democrats standing in the way of anyone finding and prosecuting fraud? Not wanting to go on a snipe hunt after imagined, unsubstantiated allegations doesn't mean Democrats don't want to pursue any amount of fraud.

You may not remember but Trump alleged fraud in the 2016 election too, which he won. He claimed he actually won New Hampshire, but people were bussed in from Mass. to vote there illegally. He even started a commission to find this fraud and put VP Republican Mike Pence and Republican Kris Kobach in charge of that and the commission ended up disbanded after releasing no findings. So given all opportunity and resources with no Democratic resistance possible, they found nothing.

I don't think I need to rehash the 2020 election claims, as those also all failed due to lack of evidence. So the New Hampshire claims were false, the New Mexico claims were false, the Georgia claims were false, the idea that China or Italy were interfering were false... if you're upset Democrats aren't as concerned about voter fraud, maybe make some claims that pan out? Maybe if you want to be taken seriously, when you start a commission to find voter fraud, don't disband it without finding voter fraud. At some point you have to put up or shut up.

Which brings us to the insurrection and Trump's attempt to overturn the election. Those people were there on J6 because Trump asked them to be. They stormed the capitol because Trump asked them to. And the only reason they left at the end of the day was because Trump ordered them to. Republican Mitch McConnel summarized it as "a disgraceful dereliction of duty" and "There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day."

No question!

Republican Liz Cheney said "The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack" and "Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President."

And why did he provoke those events? Because all his other attempts to overturn the election failed. He lost in court because he failed to present evidence of fraud. He lost his campaign to sway Republican friendly states to change the vote, where he threatened governors with prosecution if they didn't change their election results. He lost his campaign to influence Mike Pence to refuse to certify the vote.

So his only hope at that point was to delay the Certification to buy time to convince states to accept his "alternate slate of electors". And he used a violent mob to do it.

The whole point of the insurrection was that without it, by the end of the day on January 6, Joe Biden would officially and irreversibly be president-elect. So they had to prevent that from happening at any cost.

And they did for a time! By midnight on January 7 there was still no president elect. Unfortunately for Trump, McConnell managed to certify the vote by 2am and things proceeded normally from there.

But Trump almost succeeded. The whole purpose of J6 insurrection was to delay that certification long enough to give the Trump campaign an opportunity to convince states to adopt their "alternate slate" of electors, who themselves committed and were convicted of crimes in their election interference efforts. Had McConnell not reconvened the session, Trump would have continued threatening governors and other Republican officials to over turn their election results. Maybe that would have worked, maybe not, but he definitely wanted to overturn that election and used illegal and violent means to do so.