Donald Trump Is a Good President
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 2 votes and with 1 point ahead, the winner is...
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 4
- Time for argument
- Three days
- Max argument characters
- 10,000
- Voting period
- Two weeks
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
INTRO
We are debating over whether Donald Trump is a good president or not.
-- TOPIC --
Donald Trump Is A Good President
-- STRUCTURE --
1. Con Waives/Pro Opens
2. Rebuttals
3. Rebuttals
4. Rebuttals/Close/Pro Waives
Rules
1. No forfeits
2. Citations must be provided in the text of the debate
3. No new arguments in the final speeches
4. Observe good sportsmanship and maintain a civil and decorous atmosphere
5. No trolling
6. No "kritiks" of the topic (challenging assumptions in the resolution)
7. For all resolutional terms, individuals should use commonplace understandings that fit within the logical context of the resolution and this debate
8. The BOP is on Pro; Con's BOP lies in proving Pro wrong. Con may make original arguments if he wants to.
9. Violation of these rules merits either a loss or a certain point loss, at voters' discretion.
Definitions
Donald Trump’s tenure in the White House has been revolutionizing and unique in its own way. The shift in politics has changed a lot. Many opponents would argue here today, like Speed, that Trump’s tenure has been negative. I would like to disagree with the claim and prove to my viewers why Trump has not been a bad president, but a good one.
Good: having the qualities required for a particular role. [1]
Presidential Roles
So, to meet the definition, we must first outline some qualities that are required to be the President of the United States. Don't confuse these with qualifications or criteria.
- Honest
- Kind
- Intelligent
- Ability to effectively communicate
- Accepting of all demographics
- Tough
- Ability to lead well
- Humble
This means I only need to outline four that the President doesn’t meet to win the resolution.
Let's break them down.
Honest
Donald Trump has been accused of lying quite a lot. How many you ask? 10 times maybe? 100? In fact, it is over 10,000 times. [2] NRDC and PolitiFact document just a few [3] [4]. And that number was measured in April. What's even worse is that Trump hit 12,000 in August. [5] That's 5 months, multiplied by about 30 days per month gives you 150, which multiplied by 24 gives you about 3,600 hours in between the two months. 12,000/3,600 is 3.33, meaning Trump lies about once every twenty minutes! He by no means can be considered honest.
Kind
After the events of Hurricane Florence, Trump said “At least you got a nice boat out of the deal. Have a good time!” [6] This is clearly insensitive and extremely unkind towards the people affected by this tragedy.
Intelligent
There are many ways a lack of intelligence could be demonstrated. However, one is one of Trump’s most recent gaffs. He made a phone call to Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. [7] Following this, he allowed the transcript, which clearly outlined a quid pro quo, to be released. This indicates a lack of intelligence.
Accepting Of All Demographics
Trump held racist housing policies that discriminated against black people. [8]
Trump said “"I've got to use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her. You know I'm automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything ... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything." [9]
Trump has limited LGBTQ rights. [10]
Clearly, in light of being racist, a misogynist, and homophobic, Trump is not accepting of all demographics.
Ability To Lead Well
Trump is not a good leader. Why? He has lost 39 people from his administration. [11] 33 of them resigned. Besides that, he has two whistleblowers going behind his back to change the administration. [12] This is clearly a lack of leadership.
Conclusion
In light of these facts, it is quite reasonable to believe that Trump is not a good president.
Sources:
[1] http://english.oxforddictionaries.com/good
[2] https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/29/politics/donald-trump-lies-washington-post/index.html
[3] https://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/statements/byruling/false/
[4] https://www.nrdc.org/trump-lies
[5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/12/president-trump-has-made-false-or-misleading-claims-over-days/
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBE5V_kwW_M
[7] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/us/politics/white-house-review-ukraine.html
[8] https://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12270880/donald-trump-racist-racism-history
[9] https://theweek.com/articles/655770/61-things-donald-trump-said-about-women
[10] https://www.hrc.org/resources/trumps-administrative-abuse-and-the-lgbtq-community
[11] https://www.businessinsider.com/who-has-trump-fired-so-far-james-comey-sean-spicer-michael-flynn-2017-7
[12] https://time.com/5693833/second-whistleblower-trump-ukraine/
- Honest
- Kind
- Intelligent
- Ability to effectively communicate
- Accepting of all demographics
- Tough
- Ability to lead well
- Humble
If we were to go by value in a president, each one would be a varying value based on the job. You don't need to know World History when doing Chemistry, and you don't need to know Woodworking when doing an SAT test. Each situation and occupation has it's own character traits you need, and equating them as a whole equal is just a fallacy[2]
1) Turn: Trump is a genius of capitalizing on the demographic and giving confidence in his party supporters to elect him. He was elected for a reason. He appealed enough to his demographic enough to win[5]. He knew that his target demographic would not be the Latino and African American Communities, it would be blue collar, middle class working people. He appealed to enough of the Latino's to take Michigan and win the election[6]
Leftists equally do not understand the white hard working demographic the same way republicans do. It is best for Trump not even to focus about them in the first place. There is no point in trying to appeal to Liberals anymore[8]. America is so divided as a nation, a liberal will not listen to a conservative view on certain issues at all in 2019 America. Appealing to your party and swinging fence voters is key and swinging votes too. Trump won because he swung votes from Obama to his side for on the fence people[9]. There is another case where a men gave Trump a shot because he was on the fence, going for the non ideal candidate.
[AT R1 ARGS]
My opponent labelled R2 as rebuttal, therefore by default, he should have rebutted to the R1 point made by PRO in this case, therefore he can not bring up topic again, and this should be a conduct point to PRO if CON brings up case made in R1 PRO
Awaiting my opponents response!
My opponent may not have known...but the argument he makes is an Ethics K, which the ethics of someone should outweigh the policies he has presented. While my opponent probably did not know this was a K, I will not ask the judges to take off conduct point here.
I will take the time to thank the con for the debate ahead. This is my first real debate I have finished in a while, and it was a honor to do so.
My opponent also states the federal jobs lost. My argument is that federal jobs do not consider someone into middle class at all anymore, and could consider someone a lower class[3]. The Middle Class =/= the Lower Income Class. Low income class is usually based for government employed jobs, which is why the criticism is there in the first place, but to relate this argument to the Middle Class is misguided and skewed.
Judges should vote PRO due to CON's misunderstanding of arguments... and misinterpretation of evidence
Con and pro seemed to have different ideas of what "good" meant. Despite this, after R2, pro did not seem to object to con's new definition, so I must assume that pro agreed with con's new definition.
Arguments:
Con dropped many of pro's rebuttals including: Trump's Honesty, the lack of need for Trump to be kind, Trump's stance on demographics.
Con claimed Trump is not a good leader. His evidence is that many people have resigned under his leadership. People leaving does not automatically make someone a bad leader. Pro points this out. Pro failed to prove Trump is intelligent or that he does not need to be intelligent, but at this point, according to con's rule ("This means I only need to outline four that the President doesn’t meet to win the resolution."), pro failing to represent only one point is not enough for con to win the debate. Con rebuts pro's claims regarding NK well. Con disregards pro's graphic behind a paywall rather than addressing the points provided in the debate by pro. Con also claims that because Trump eventually gave up on something, he is not tough. This is an unsubstantiated opinion.
It was a close one, but due to con dropping several of pro's rebuttals, the rebuttals stand. Since it seems con only successfully rebutted one of pro's 3 claims in R1 (NK, but not Middle Class or Toughness), pro seems to win this debate.
Sources: Both used reputable sources.
S&G: No major errors
Conduct: Con forfeited.
-Args
Pro and Con both provide arguments for their points, sufficiently substantiating their claims within the confines of the definitions they were using. The problem here is that both debaters were operating on a different understanding of "good," which ought to have been laid out/defined in the framework. This resulted in both debaters operating on different definitions of "good" depending on what issue they were addressing, which is not only sloppy, but also plausibly causes confusion on the reader. Another issue: neither Pro nor Con sufficiently justified why their definition of good was preferable, nor did they sufficiently address the other's use of the word, rather choosing to co-opt both uses, only muddying the assumption off which to address each point because one could feasibly argue that, yes, Donald Trump's insistence regarding, say, the wall, despite his intermittent failure, is a signal of toughness and committedness to his ideals, which is desirable in a leader. Alternatively, it could also be argued that his insistence on building the wall -- and through so doing, alienating a large demographic of people/restricting them from entering the country -- is not good. Most argumentation in this debate reduces to this exact issue: any specific issue can be called good since the debaters were operating on both definitions. I, therefore, am reduced to a state where I ultimately cannot decide a victor based on arguments from the basis of substance alone, and have to resort to how well-sourced they are. So, then, regarding sources:
-Sources
Both debaters used relatively mainstream but also not-fundamentally-unreliable sources. Sources from both debaters were, overall, of the same quality and generally factual, with them serving to substantiate the claims of both; on this basis in addition to the one considered above, I will regard the arguments point as a tie. Besides this, the only issue here was one of Pro's sources being inaccessible, which, though substantiable through other just-as-reliable sources, was not here in this debate. It is on this grounds, I will reward the sources point to Con.
-S&G
Both sides committed their errors with regards to this; however, there were times when I was reading Pro's case when I had to reread a sentence or two, and this occurred several times, much more than when reading Con's. Though neither case was unreadable/unintelligible, I will have to reward S&G to Con as well.
-Conduct
Both debaters equally composed themselves.
Not necessarily equally, but I value them both a lot
Given the short description of "lol that's a funny joke" the no trolling rule might be best removed. Besides, someone on the pro side will likely call the denial of alternative facts trolling, so embracing the fun has clear benefits.
So you value mannerisms/personality and effectiveness equally?
Both
Out of curiosity, what is your definition of "good?" Or rather, which do you value more? Presidential in mannerisms, or effective in policy?
Lol for real XD
Damnit. I wanted to be con!