Trump was a necessary and welcome disruption to the DC monolith. If you're still operating under the mistaken belief that Congress cares one iota about the ice caps, you've learned absolutely nothing over the course of the last decade. The problem of climate change (which isn't really a problem - the climate changes all the time, it's more a question of adaptation than it is about turning back the clock) needs a technological solution, not gradually stifling industry under a mountain of unnecessary and often conflicting regulations. You're not going to plug the ozone layer with tax money, and the recent pandemic has shown more than anything that restricting the freedoms of the general population has negligible effect on the environmental impact of fossil fuels.
www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/12/11/covid-record-drop-global-carbon-emissions-2020.html
You might think that this is great news - worldwide greenhouse gas emissions have decreased by 7%. Once you're done digesting that, read it again. Lockdowns and putting large swathes of the economy completely on hold for nearly a year straight has decreased emissions by a measly 7%. Demand for oil went down so low that for a brief moment its value was in the negative, to very little effect in the long-term. 93% of emissions were completely unaffected by the entire world metaphorically stopping in its tracks and effectively triggering a recession without actually calling it a recession. Maybe we're looking at the wrong kinds of restrictions when we're designing environmental regulations if keeping people in-doors as much as humanly possible and forcing them into working from home doesn't even make a dent.
You're correct, I wanted someone like Trump. I wanted him to weasel his way out of ridiculous and ineffective agreements like the Paris Accord, which in itself is non-binding and puts undue pressure on the industry. I did want him to renegotiate the NAFTA deal and prevent further off-shoring of key industries. I did want him to lower the tax burden on the average Joe and the rich Joe alike. I'm perfectly satisfied with his policies, regardless of how he went about enacting them. I'm interested in results, not how "presidential" the president is.
If you think that's somehow heartless, or that I don't feel compassion for the planet, or if you have some other criticism in mind, I'll take it in strides because I probably don't care about any of those things nearly as much as I cared about lowering unemployment, increasing the GDP and lowering the tax burden, and all three goals materialised before the pandemic shook the world economy unexpectedly. In fact, even thought COVID rocked the States making unemployment skyrocket, it's already normalising, and rapidly so, in no small part due to Trump's business-friendly policies.
Every single shortcoming of Trump's was on full display during his 2016 campaign, that's partially why he's Teflon. People knew who they voted for and they were fine with what they saw - nothing was a big surprise, that's why his base is like a monolith. Everything he did or said was priced into the package as early as 2016, let alone now.
