So the Pfizer vaccine was not funded by Operation Operation Warp Speed. Does that negate the support the program provided for other vaccine candidates such as Moderna and AstraZeneca? It just so happens that at this moment, Pfizer seems like the most promising company to deliver, but it could have been just as easily be Moderna, AstraZeneca, or someone else.

Of course, if it is anything good that Trump has done, the fashionable thing to do is to brush it aside or otherwise play down its significance. And while we're at it, if there is anything negative news about Biden, let's censor it outright, or only do a tiny little report on it a whole week after the news originally broke out. Isn't that what the whole US media and the tech giants have been doing in this election?

And btw, the US economy was doing really well too, up to the point when COVID hit. But of course that didn't matter. Because Trump.

Trump bad. Biden good. Yup, understood.

yep but just give it time, the US is just heating up.

I don't understand the desire to always rush to the defense of Trump. Is it just to be contrarian? Is it to show people how rational you are compared to them? There is literally no one in here that's trying to paint Biden as a cure all to how fucked America is. The fact is, trump is a liar, a sociopath, and has only made decisions based on his image. Oh he gave taxpayer money to big Pharma? What a saint! What about the downplaying of the virus to save the stock market. What about massive selloffs by politicians and his circle with inside information about the severity of the disease? What about censoring America's top doctors advice? What about refusing to send financial aid to democrat run states?
Anyone who thinks that measure of an economy is "good" doesn't understand how economies work. Home prices increased 20% and wages increased 4%. There was a multi trillion dollar deficit. Inequality has soared and the lower and middle classes buying power has tanked. But Bezos got more money and the stock market is up so time to celebrate!

1) Make incorrect statement
2) Someone posts correct information
3) Change argument multiple times in response to correct information
4) Create strawman
5) ...
6) Profit!

BuT StOnKs WeNt uP, TrUmP GoOd!

I'll be curious to see what percentage of the population is enthusiastic about taking a vaccine created in just a year.

I’m curious and feeling less optimistic wondering why the CEO of Pfizer dumped $5mill of stock right after the announcement... if it’s as great as it’s being made out to be wouldn’t it be better to play long on it until the release?

i'll never understand how anyone could actually believe that trump has been draining the swamp rather than filling it up.

OK, Trump bad. Always. Let's just keep it that way.

I'm sure the stock spike on the announcement was strong. We know this isn't going to be the end all here though. I have doubts on the ability to come close to the expectations many people have for this. This isn't fixing the issue, even a year from now if everything goes as planned, and we know it's not going to go as planned.
Yeah the Spanish flu only lasted a couple years. The earth also has 5x as many people now, far more travel, and the survival rate is higher. This has potential to last for a decade.

I think you need to look at trump holistically... Picking one 'good' thing and ignoring the litany of major issues over the last four years is disingenuous at best.

Absolutely -- Trump has done a tremendous amount of crazy stuff. He has done a lot of bad stuff. And he has also done a lot of good stuff. For the most part, outside of his fan base -- I do not view myself as part of his fan base, except on his China policies -- hardly anyone mentions the good that Trump has done, and that is the problem I do not agree with.

First and foremost, and plain and simple, Trump's harsh treatment towards China is a very important thing to the World. Simply put, Communist China is a threat to the world, and no other world leader in recent history, POTUS or not, has done anything close to what Trump has achieved in containing the cancer that Communist China is. I can't stress enough how important this is at the world level, but unfortunately, too many people in the Western World fail to see the importance of this threat, or they underestimate the importance of this threat.

Another international level issue that I see as quite significant is the containment of DPRK. Many view the antics between Fat Boy Kim and Trump as mere theatrics or something to make fun of during water cooler conversations, but it directly affects the national safety of Korea and Japan. When you look back at the Obama era, the Six Party Talks with DPRK went sideways when DPRK began testing ballistic missile technology. For all the effort that the Obama administration has done, they were largely ineffective in deterring DPRK's nuclear ambitions. It wasn't until Trump's crazy approach of near direct threat against DPRK (and sanctions) that brought the Fat Boy back inline, and Kim / DPRK has since been fairly tame -- probably a result of the crippling sanctions that the UN, US, and other countries have imposed.

I am not super familiar with Middle East stability, but I seem to recall that with Pompeo as the front man, the Trump-led US has brokered a number of Middle East diplomatic / normalization agreements.

So if you are suggesting that I am not looking at Trump holistically, let's discuss how we should do that, shall we?

But this has to be taken at face value - yes, Trump has 'stood up' to China by calling them out, but he's also said exactly the opposite about China numerous times. He praised their handling of Covid, he said they 'showed the power of strength' with Tiananamen Square. Yes, he signed the Uighur bill, but the constant flip flop kinda makes you wonder if it's him 'doing good', or just 'doing what's convenient at the time.'
This too is a tad misleading. NK has consistently performed missile testing in the last 4 years, and in 2017 'claimed' to have tested a thermo-nuclear bomb, which seismic data seemed to corroborate. Yes, his stance has been harsher than Obama. But this is a big point of contention in Korea (I'm Korean) - whether the 'sunshine' approach is better, or the sanction+iron hammer approach is better. Unsurprisingly progressives prefer the former, while conservatives favour the latter. NK's ideology is that they cannot show weakness internationally, and I don't think there was any drastic change despite your claims.
Just look up what Trump did/didn't do in Syria, and it again just fortifies the notion that he's generally a bumbling idiot.

Maybe it's not a good analogy but if I blindly throw 50 basketballs and 5 go in, it's a bit unfair to say "See? At least he got 5!! He's not so bad!"

Obama/Biden did a much better job in the middle east :ahwow:

When the chain of command is broken, there's a good chance the prez is going to look like a bumbling idiot.

:lol remember when someone wanted to argue with me why the BLM protesters were so hostile to this man after leaving Trump's little shindig at the White House? One of the many reasons.

Truth is, vaccines are not huge money makers. In the long run, it's not going to do much for the company's profit. It's why you don't really see many new vaccines these days compared to yesteryear. When someone does create a vaccine for something like Shingles, it costs an arm and a leg because it's not common and the company may not recoup their costs.

Don't think too much about $5MM of stock, it's probably a small percentage of his holdings in the company. Probably needed a new boat... lol

Tried to understand it myself, I think it's called "white privilege" :lol

Traum isn’t white.

trump about to hold a press conference.

Should be live here.

delete

Not saying he is, I just feel the bar is always set lower for Trump in terms of the weak platitudes he's awarded as a result of being so.

Gives a Press Conference on COVID, spends more time lambasting and attacking the governor of New York, than discussing anything else.

He's now officially lost Arizona, there is no path to winning. Where's the concession speech?

God, I'm so glad this guy is gone in January.

Trump's approach to China has definitely changed over the course of his presidency. At first, he started out doing exactly what you have described -- befriending Xi and praising him and Xi's way of governing China. His praise for China's handling of COVID also came late in his presidency -- the beginning of his 4 year in the first term. However, I would view that early China COVID comment as something that should be brushed aside because you have to look at what the Trump administration was also doing at the time when the comment came out. But we will get back to that later.

I would view Trump's initial friendliness with China as a means of his businessman nature to butter up a customer in the lead up to a business deal. One of Trump's presidential goals has always been to alter the trade imbalance between US and China, and I'd say that at first, he was working hard to lure China in signing a trade deal with the US. But as the talks dragged on, China was once again sticking to its long game strategy. A lot of time was spent drafting out the language and specifics of the trade agreement, only to have China changed course 180° and asking to have a majority of the language and the terms re-negotiated. (For reference, this is how Communist China always approach negotiations -- they are never sincere about it, only wishing to drag things out into a long game so that they can buy more time for themselves to improve the situation and their bargaining power on the end.) That's when the US tariffs started on China-made goods, and Trump's stance on China changed to something a lot more hawkish.

And it wasn't just the tariffs. The trade sanctions, esp on the technology front, is something that is absolutely crippling to China. Essentially, if the technology sanctions remain as they are now, the entire Chinese tech sector could collapse. In fact, any technology-related stuff in China could easily revert back 10 - 15 years as US bars all semiconductor-related sales to China. Can you imagine how China would function if China cannot obtain the necessary semiconductor technology that it needs to operate planes, (high speed) trains, cell phones and computer networks?

These scathing sanctions were coming into play while Trump praised China's COVID efforts. That is why I don't really take the praising all that seriously since the verbal praising doesn't really amount to anything substantial, while the actual sanctions are imposing a real material cost on China.

So as far as I'm concerned, Trump's goal with China has always remained the same -- that is, he wants to reap some significant material benefits out of it. The initial solution was to do it through trade deals, but when that proved to be no longer working, he changed the means to obtain that material benefit by pressuring them to sign that 1st phase trade agreement while crushing China's ability to unfairly compete with the US.

The Uighur and Hong Kong sanctions that Trump has imposed were not done because they were the right thing to do. They were done because they formed part of the comprehensive efforts to cripple and contain Communist China, to the benefit of the US. But I am not going complain about Trump's intentions when the net effect is something that would be good for the rest of the world.

If Trump is so "hard" on China, can you explain his complete collapse on ZTE? Seems to me his hard "stance" is mere grandstanding to his base. I'd say that's bolstered by the fact that Xi Ping hasn't sent any congratulations to Biden, I truly believe his hard stance is purely a manufactured one, and that China see less of an ally with the Biden administration.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trum...project-2018-5

The truth is China is stronger than ever:

https://thediplomat.com/2020/11/why-...fter-covid-19/
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54594877

Am I missing something here, what has Trump actually achieved in relation to China, outside of hallow grandstanding to appeal to his base?