Talk:Donald Trump

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[[Talk:Donald Trump#Current consensus|current consensus]] item [n]
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01. Use the official White House portrait as the infobox image. (Dec 2016, Jan 2017, Oct 2017, March 2020) (temporarily suspended by #19 following copyright issues on the inauguration portrait, enforced when an official public-domain portrait was released on 31 October 2017)

02. Show birthplace as "Queens, New York City, U.S." in the infobox. (Nov 2016, Oct 2018, Feb 2021) "New York City" de-linked. (September 2020)

03. Omit reference to county-level election statistics. (Dec 2016)

04. Superseded by #15

Lead phrasing of Trump "gaining a majority of the U.S. Electoral College" and "receiving a smaller share of the popular vote nationwide", without quoting numbers. (Nov 2016, Dec 2016) (Superseded by #15 since 11 February 2017)

05. Use Trump's annual net worth evaluation and matching ranking, from the Forbes list of billionaires, not from monthly or "live" estimates. (Oct 2016) In the lead section, just write: Forbes estimates his net worth to be [$x.x] billion. (July 2018, July 2018) Removed from the lead per #47.

06. Do not include allegations of sexual misconduct in the lead section. (June 2016, Feb 2018)

07. Superseded by #35

Include "Many of his public statements were controversial or false." in the lead. (Sep 2016, February 2017, wording shortened per April 2017, upheld with July 2018) (superseded by #35 since 18 February 2019)

08. Mention that Trump is the first president elected "without prior military or government service". (Dec 2016)

09. Include a link to Trump's Twitter account in the "External links" section. (Jan 2017) Include a link to an archive of Trump's Twitter account in the "External links" section. (Jan 2021)

10. Canceled

Keep Barron Trump's name in the list of children and wikilink it, which redirects to his section in Family of Donald Trump per AfD consensus. (Jan 2017, Nov 2016) Canceled: Barron's BLP has existed since June 2019. (June 2024)

11. Superseded by #17

The lead sentence is "Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American businessman, television personality, politician, and the 45th President of the United States." (Jan 2017, Jan 2017, Jan 2017, Jan 2017, Jan 2017, Feb 2017) (superseded by #17 since 2 April 2017)

12. The article title is Donald Trump, not Donald J. Trump. (RM Jan 2017, RM June 2019)

13. Auto-archival is set for discussions with no comments for 14 days. Manual archival is allowed for (1) closed discussions, 24 hours after the closure, provided the closure has not been challenged, and (2) "answered" edit requests, 24 hours after the "answer", provided there has been no follow-on discussion after the "answer". (Jan 2017) (amended with respect to manual archiving, to better reflect common practice at this article) (Nov 2019)

14. Omit mention of Trump's alleged bathmophobia/fear of slopes. (Feb 2017)

15. Superseded by lead rewrite

Supersedes #4. There is no consensus to change the formulation of the paragraph which summarizes election results in the lead (starting with "Trump won the general election on November 8, 2016, …"). Accordingly the pre-RfC text (Diff 8 Jan 2017) has been restored, with minor adjustments to past tense (Diff 11 Feb 2018). No new changes should be applied without debate. (RfC Feb 2017, Jan 2017, Feb 2017, Feb 2017) In particular, there is no consensus to include any wording akin to "losing the popular vote". (RfC March 2017) (Superseded by local consensus on 26 May 2017 and lead section rewrite on 23 June 2017)

16. Superseded by lead rewrite

Do not mention Russian influence on the presidential election in the lead section. (RfC March 2017) (Superseded by lead section rewrite on 23 June 2017)

17. Superseded by #50

Supersedes #11. The lead paragraph is "Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is the 45th and current president of the United States. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and television personality." The hatnote is simply {{Other uses}}. (April 2017, RfC April 2017, April 2017, April 2017, April 2017, July 2017, Dec 2018) Amended by lead section rewrite on 23 June 2017 and removal of inauguration date on 4 July 2018. Lower-case "p" in "president" per Dec 2018 and MOS:JOBTITLES RfC Oct 2017. Wikilinks modified per April 2020. Wikilink modified again per July 2020. "45th" de-linked. (Jan 2021)

18. Superseded by #63

The "Alma mater" infobox entry shows "Wharton School (BS Econ.)", does not mention Fordham University. (April 2017, April 2017, Aug 2020, Dec 2020)

19. Obsolete

Following deletion of Trump's official White House portrait for copyright reasons on 2 June 2017, infobox image was replaced by File:Donald Trump Pentagon 2017.jpg. (June 2017 for replacement, June 2017, declined REFUND on 11 June 2017) (replaced by White House official public-domain portrait according to #1 since 31 Oct 2017)

20. Mention protests in the lead section with this exact wording: His election and policies have sparked numerous protests. (June 2017, May 2018) (Note: In February 2021, when he was no longer president, the verb tense was changed from "have sparked" to "sparked", without objection.)

21. Superseded by #39

Omit any opinions about Trump's psychology held by mental health academics or professionals who have not examined him. (July 2017, Aug 2017) (superseded by #36 on 18 June 2019, then by #39 since 20 Aug 2019)

22. Do not call Trump a "liar" in Wikipedia's voice. Falsehoods he uttered can be mentioned, while being mindful of calling them "lies", which implies malicious intent. (RfC Aug 2017, upheld by RfC July 2024)

23. Superseded by #52

The lead includes the following sentence: Trump ordered a travel ban on citizens from several Muslim-majority countries, citing security concerns; after legal challenges, the Supreme Court upheld the policy's third revision. (Aug 2017, Nov 2017, Dec 2017, Jan 2018, Jan 2018) Wording updated (July 2018) and again (Sep 2018).

24. Superseded by #30

Do not include allegations of racism in the lead. (Feb 2018) (superseded by #30 since 16 Aug 2018)

25. In citations, do not code the archive-related parameters for sources that are not dead. (Dec 2017, March 2018)

26. Do not include opinions by Michael Hayden and Michael Morell that Trump is a "useful fool […] manipulated by Moscow" or an "unwitting agent of the Russian Federation". (RfC April 2018)

27. State that Trump falsely claimed that Hillary Clinton started the Barack Obama birther rumors. (April 2018, June 2018)

28. Include, in the Wealth section, a sentence on Jonathan Greenberg's allegation that Trump deceived him in order to get on the Forbes 400 list. (June 2018, June 2018)

29. Include material about the Trump administration family separation policy in the article. (June 2018)

30. Supersedes #24. The lead includes: "Many of his comments and actions have been characterized as racially charged or racist." (RfC Sep 2018, Oct 2018, RfC May 2019)

31. Do not mention Trump's office space donation to Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/Push Coalition in 1999. (Nov 2018)

32. Omit from the lead the fact that Trump is the first sitting U.S. president to meet with a North Korean supreme leader. (RfC July 2018, Nov 2018)

33. Do not mention "birtherism" in the lead section. (RfC Nov 2018)

34. Refer to Ivana Zelníčková as a Czech model, with a link to Czechs (people), not Czechoslovakia (country). (Jan 2019)

35. Superseded by #49

Supersedes #7. Include in the lead: Trump has made many false or misleading statements during his campaign and presidency. The statements have been documented by fact-checkers, and the media have widely described the phenomenon as unprecedented in American politics. (RfC Feb 2019)

36. Superseded by #39

Include one paragraph merged from Health of Donald Trump describing views about Trump's psychology expressed by public figures, media sources, and mental health professionals who have not examined him. (June 2019) (paragraph removed per RfC Aug 2019 yielding consensus #39)

37. Resolved: Content related to Trump's presidency should be limited to summary-level about things that are likely to have a lasting impact on his life and/or long-term presidential legacy. If something is borderline or debatable, the resolution does not apply. (June 2019)

38. Do not state in the lead that Trump is the wealthiest U.S. president ever. (RfC June 2019)

39. Supersedes #21 and #36. Do not include any paragraph regarding Trump's mental health or mental fitness for office. Do not bring up for discussion again until an announced formal diagnosis or WP:MEDRS-level sources are provided. This does not prevent inclusion of content about temperamental fitness for office. (RfC Aug 2019, July 2021)

40. Include, when discussing Trump's exercise or the lack thereof: He has called golfing his "primary form of exercise", although he usually does not walk the course. He considers exercise a waste of energy, because he believes the body is "like a battery, with a finite amount of energy" which is depleted by exercise. (RfC Aug 2019)

41. Omit book authorship (or lack thereof) from the lead section. (RfC Nov 2019)

42. House and Senate outcomes of the impeachment process are separated by a full stop. For example: He was impeached by the House on December 18, 2019, for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. He was acquitted of both charges by the Senate on February 5, 2020. (Feb 2020)

43. The rules for edits to the lead are no different from those for edits below the lead. For edits that do not conflict with existing consensus: Prior consensus is NOT required. BOLD edits are allowed, subject to normal BRD process. The mere fact that an edit has not been discussed is not a valid reason to revert it. (March 2020)

44. The lead section should mention North Korea, focusing on Trump's meetings with Kim and some degree of clarification that they haven't produced clear results. (RfC May 2020)

45. Superseded by #48

There is no consensus to mention the COVID-19 pandemic in the lead section. (RfC May 2020, July 2020) (Superseded by RfC Aug 2020)

46. Use the caption "Official portrait, 2017" for the infobox image. (Aug 2020, Jan 2021)

47. Do not mention Trump's net worth or Forbes ranking (or equivalents from other publications) in the lead, nor in the infobox. (Sep 2020)

48. Supersedes #45. Trump's reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic should be mentioned in the lead section. There is no consensus on specific wording, but the status quo is Trump reacted slowly to the COVID-19 pandemic; he minimized the threat, ignored or contradicted many recommendations from health officials, and promoted false information about unproven treatments and the availability of testing. (Oct 2020, RfC Aug 2020)

49. Supersedes #35. Include in lead: Trump has made many false and misleading statements during his campaigns and presidency, to a degree unprecedented in American politics. (Dec 2020)

50. Supersedes #17. The lead sentence is: Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. (March 2021), amended (July 2021), inclusion of politician (RfC September 2021)

51. Include in the lead that many of Trump's comments and actions have been characterized as misogynistic. (Aug 2021 and Sep 2021)

52. Supersedes #23. The lead should contain a summary of Trump's actions on immigration, including the Muslim travel ban (cf. item 23), the wall, and the family separation policy. (September 2021)

53. The lead should mention that Trump promotes conspiracy theories. (RfC October 2021)

54. Include in the lead that, quote, Scholars and historians rank Trump as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. (RfC October 2021)

55. Regarding Trump's comments on the 2017 far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, do not wiki-link "Trump's comments" in this manner. (RfC December 2021)

56. Retain the content that Trump never confronted Putin over its alleged bounties against American soldiers in Afghanistan but add context. Current wording can be altered or contextualized; no consensus was achieved on alternate wordings. (RfC November 2021) Trump's expressions of doubt regarding the Russian Bounties Program should be included in some capacity, though there there is no consensus on a specific way to characterize these expressed doubts. (RfC March 2022)

57. Do not mention in the lead Gallup polling that states Trump's the only president to never reach 50% approval rating. (RfC January 2022)

58. Use inline citations in the lead for the more contentious and controversial statements. Editors should further discuss which sentences would benefit from having inline citations. (RfC May 2022, discussion on what to cite May 2022)

59. Do not label or categorize Trump as a far-right politician. (RfC August 2022)

60. Insert the links described in the RfC January 2023.

61. When a thread is started with a general assertion that the article is biased for or against Trump (i.e., without a specific, policy-based suggestion for a change to the article), it is to be handled as follows:

1. Reply briefly with a link to Talk:Donald Trump/Response to claims of bias.
2. Close the thread using {{archive top}} and {{archive bottom}}, referring to this consensus item.
3. Wait at least 24 hours per current consensus #13.
4. Manually archive the thread.

This does not apply to posts that are clearly in bad faith, which are to be removed on sight. (May 2023)

62. The article's description of the five people who died during and subsequent to the January 6 Capitol attack should avoid a) mentioning the causes of death and b) an explicit mention of the Capitol Police Officer who died. (RfC July 2023)

63. Supersedes #18. The alma mater field of the infobox reads: "University of Pennsylvania (BS)". (September 2023)

64. Omit the {{Very long}} tag. (January 2024)

65. Mention the Abraham Accords in the article; no consensus was achieved on specific wordings. (RfC February 2024)

66. Omit {{infobox criminal}}. (RfC June 2024)

67. The "Health habits" section includes: "Trump says he has never drunk alcohol, smoked cigarettes, or used drugs. He sleeps about four or five hours a night." (February 2021)

Links in the lead

About this revert:

User:Space4Time3Continuum2x, just so you know, a WP:SEAOFBLUE is when adjacent words link to different Wikipedia articles without any visual indication that they are separate links. It has nothing to do with someone subjectively feeling like there are a lot of links. That means that "populist, protectionist, isolationist, and nationalist" (four links separated by punctuation and a word) is not a SEAOFBLUE, but "Trump's political positions" (three links with no separation) would be.

On the substance of the question, this is a popular article, which means it will be read by people from all levels of education and a wide variety of interests. This is exactly the situation in which we should lean heavily on what our guidelines call "an important feature of Wikipedia" that "can increase readers' understanding of the topic at hand" and "help the reader find related information", specifically for making "Relevant connections to the subject of another article" and the "people, events, and topics" that are associated with the subject. Our guidelines also say that the lead should "provide links to the broader or more elementary topics that are important to the article's topic", which we are currently not doing.

In terms of common sense, rather than official guidelines encouraging more links (and different ones – does anyone seriously think readers need a link to a university degree that is awarded around the globe, but not to specific US-only laws?), if someone's looking for a specific event, the sooner they find the link to the details they want, the better. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:25, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Looking at your edit, it may not be technically WP:SEAOFBLUE, but it's definitely MOS:OVERLINK. Not every word that has an associated WP article needs to be linked; see that MOS policy for the criteria.

As a side note, you made a content removal in the same edit, with an edit summary that simply said "links," which is pretty poor form. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 17:42, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

I think that example is just to illustrate a point in this discussion. Overlinking can be a problem, but don't allow that issue to derail this discussion. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:03, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

I think you're assuming too much about this discussion. So far, all I see is @WhatamIdoing trying to defend their addition of 20+ assorted wikilinks, some of which included links to "media personality", "skyscraper", "real estate", and "golf courses." This user MAY have added relevant links in that edit, but it's hard to tell based on initial review of both their edit, and this new thread.

My advice would be to take the reversion under advisement, and add fewer, more relevant links in a new edit, to see if the pushback is the same. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 19:41, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

What is skyscraper? SPECIFICO talk 20:11, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

I tried to pick words that might not be familiar to English language learners. This is a popular article, including being popular with people who aren't native English speakers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:41, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Referring to the original discussion at #Leadrefs, we have three choices:

1. Restore the original wikilinks in the lead like at all other articles here. They would immediately take readers away from this article, which is not a desirable thing. We want them to stay here long enough to read the whole lead, at the very least.
2. Make sure all wikilinks in the lead point to the relevant sections in this article, IOW reinforce the primacy of the body as the source for the lead. That leads readers to the more developed content and refs related to the mention in the lead.
3. Use the discrete section links I had first proposed. That serves the purpose of #2 above while keeping the lead free from any blue links.

I obviously prefer #3. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:03, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

I support the lead staying as it is; the lack of blue links is a relief for the eyes (blue is harder to read for many), and frankly I wish more BLPs were like this. Links are far more important in the body; but when users are reading the lead, the search bar is still right there (and on mobile, it's always there). DFlhb (talk) 18:31, 15 November 2022 (UTC) ; edited 16:04, 18 November 2022 (UTC); changed my mind; the previous proposal was excessive, but the new one is good

I think it's more common to hear people say that they like having blue links as more subtle "highlighter" for key words. Do you happen to use a dark mode? Most people don't mind blue links, but I could imagine the default color not being well-suited for a dark background. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:48, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

The blue links look fine on Wikipedia's standard dark mode (I'm using it right now). Cessaune (talk) 02:56, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

The lead as it is is fine. A few more things could potentially be linked, but we don't need a link for every term. Cessaune (talk) 22:07, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Adding to Valjean's #3: see the recent discussion about replacing the sea of blue (spirit, not letter of WP:SEAOFBLUE) in the lead taking readers to other pages with section links to the body, indicated by silcrows. Copying from that discussion to show what the lead looked like before, during (1), during (2), and after the change. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 20:42, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Please OP, no more links. GoodDay (talk) 22:10, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

No., the linkgasm in the lede was ridiculous. A reader of the Donald Trump article does not need to be directed to generic crap like "protectionist", "skyscrapers", and "political endorsements". Zaathras (talk) 22:16, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Were you responding to me (section link proposal) or to Whatamidoing? Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 07:52, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

I think we need to strive toward limiting wikilinks in the lead, but no change of practice for them in the body. How about refining this into a guideline? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 22:44, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm confused what you mean. Is WP:LINK/MOS:LINK not a good enough existing guideline for this? PhotogenicScientist (talk) 22:51, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

I don't recall any difference being made between the lead and body. That's the issue here. Should we make a difference? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:00, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

You should review that guideline again, then. The MOS:LEADLINK section says "Too many links can make the lead hard to read." Seems appropriate to me. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 23:12, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

I missed that. Maybe we should strengthen that wording. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 00:28, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

What we have now is probably too few, not too many. (Also, why do we need a sentence about where he went to school in this unusually long lead? He's famous for what he did, not for where he went to school.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:45, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

• The lead should keep links to important, specific things like the Special Counsel Investigation, the Tax Cuts & Jobs act, and the two impeachments. It should not have links to more generic terms like "protectionist" or "bachelor's degree." Note: the given are all examples, I'm not making an exclusive list. —Ganesha811 (talk) 02:55, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Ganesha811, we've had the toc limit set to 4 since this edit in August 2021. There were a couple of brief discussions since then, in connection with lead refs if I remember correctly. I think four in this case is better, it makes it easier for readers to locate specific topics in Trump's messy life. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 08:53, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

No problem, I couldn't find the relevant talk page section amongst everything but figured there probably was one. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:37, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

• I submitted this edit, reverted by User:Space4Time3Continuum2x. Waiting for an explanation pertaining to MOS:EGG. The discussion hasn't gone anywhere, you're simply talking. I was bold and made a pretty reasonable edit, no overlinking as far as I understand it... You said of course those things were fundamental to his presidency, yet they aren't linked for people to gain a further understanding of what they are without scrolling down a multitude of pages worth of off-topic information. Makes no sense. -Teammm ^talk? 16:31, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

  I think that's a very reasonable edit and should not have been reverted. As I stated above, it makes perfect sense to link to specific, non-intuitive things like the Special Counsel investigation and similar. There's no need for generic links in the lead, but the anti-link efforts shouldn't be taken too far. —Ganesha811 (talk) 16:42, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

  I agree with S4T3C2 that there are at least a couple MOS:EGGs in that edit:

  • [Veracity of statements by Donald Trump|false and misleading statements]
  • [Communication of the Trump administration during the COVID-19 pandemic|promoted misinformation]
  • "[United States Capitol|Capitol], which many of them then [January 6 United States Capitol attack|attacked]" - Probably only need one here

  PhotogenicScientist (talk) 17:22, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

  I'm not convinced that we need [[United States Capitol|Capitol]].

  I don't think the other two are MOS:EGG violations. Someone clicking on "false and misleading statements" would hope and expect to go to an article that talked about Trump's "false and misleading statements", and Veracity of statements by Donald Trump seems like a likely candidate. Similarly, if you click on "promoted misinformation", you would hope to end up at Communication of the Trump administration during the COVID-19 pandemic.

  MOS:EGG isn't trying to have the link label and the linked article's title match. The point is that you shouldn't use links to hide specific information from readers who don't click the link. In the MOS:EGG example, the problem is that if readers don't click on the Parton (particle physics) link, they won't know that Feynman worked on that particular model. That information belongs in the article, and hiding that information only in the link hides it from readers. That's why we call them Easter egg links: they're hidden, and you can only find them if you look. That's not what's happening here. These links don't hide information that belongs in the article. They're just linking to the most relevant article related to those words. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:08, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

  I understand the point of MOS:EGG. I still don't think those 2 are good links. 1) "False and misleading statements" came from a sentence about his campaign; the first sentence in the linked article begins "During his term as President of the United States..." It was confusing, and the link isn't needed. 2) This is the worse of the two. The Communication of the Trump administration during the COVID-19 pandemic is not holistically and accurately represented by being linked to with "promoted misinformation." Whatever gets linked to that phrase should be a straightforward representation of "promoting misinformation." If you want to link the whole 'Communications' article, there needs to be a more detailed description of the communications in this article. Seems like cut-and-dry MOS:EGG to me. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 14:48, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

  MOS:EGG does not say that the link label must fully describe the contents of the linked article. MOS:EGG says that the link label must fully describe the information that you want readers of this article to have. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:02, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

  Nowhere in that guideline does it mention what information we "want" readers to have. It's about making sure links are "reasonable, make sense" and are "as intuitive as possible." I don't understand how you can look at the example there, see the improvement that was made to the link and the sample article text, and still think link 2 is OK under that guideline. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 15:09, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

• I agree with Teammm's proposal as-is (though without the link to bachelor's degree); I think many people, including non-Americans, will visit this article to try to understand Trump's legacy. Ultimately, people may not be familiar with the travel ban, or with Trump's history of false statements, and those should be linked in the lead so readers can read the relevant articles and inform themselves. The goal of links is twofold: so readers don't need to manually type things into the Search, and so readers become aware that a Wikipedia article exists on a subject, when they might not expect it to (e.g. our article on the veracity of Trump's statements). I liked the bare-minimum version for its minimalism, but this version better serves readers' interests. DFlhb (talk) 16:04, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

• Re MOS:EGGs laid in this edit.

1. I'd expect "false and misleading statements" to go to False statement, not to [[Veracity of statements by Donald Trump|false and misleading statements]], and "conspiracy theories" to Conspiracy theory, not to [[List of conspiracy theories promoted by Donald Trump|conspiracy theories]]. The non-egg version for the sentence would be Trump promoted conspiracy theories and made many false and misleading statements during his campaigns and presidency, to a degree unprecedented in American politics.
2. I'd expect "travel ban" to go to the page Travel ban, not to [[Trump travel ban|travel ban]], "family separations" to Family separations, not to family separations</nowiki>. (Also, do we need a link to "muslim"?) Non-egg version of sentence: Trump ordered a travel ban on citizens from several Muslim-majority countries, diverted military funding towards building a wall on the U.S.–Mexico border, and implemented a policy of family separations for apprehended migrants.
3. I'd expect "COVID-19 pandemic" to go to COVID-19 pandemic, not to [[COVID-19 pandemic in the United States|COVID-19 pandemic]].
4. I'd expect "attacked" to go to Attack, not to [[January 6 United States Capitol attack|attacked]]. Non-egg: which many of them then attacked.
5. I'd expect "impeached" to go to Impeachment or Impeachment in the United States, not to [[First impeachment of Donald Trump]]. Non-egg: After he pressured Ukraine to investigate Biden in 2019, he was impeached
6. I wasn't expecting a page for "second time" but, sure enough, there's a redirect page to Evering Road, not [[Second impeachment of Donald Trump|second time]]. Non-egg: The House of Representatives impeached Trump a second time in January 2021

To make each of them less of a surprise to the reader, you'd have to expand each one considerably — lots of blue to direct readers to other pages when we have more information right here in the body. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 12:37, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

"Promoted misinformation" less egg than unnecessary: Why Communication of the Trump administration during the COVID-19 pandemic and not COVID-19 misinformation by the United States? This shows the difficulties of linking to other pages when we have the information in the body. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 13:58, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

I think all of your concerns relate to a single theme, which is context. Taking your last item, in an article entirely about Trump, in a sentence that is 100% about Trump himself ("He reacted slowly to the COVID-19 pandemic, ignored or contradicted many recommendations from health officials in his messaging, and promoted misinformation about unproven treatments and the need for testing.") it's not obvious to me that we should link to an article about misinformation by Trump plus other people. But the chosen link could be criticized on the grounds that a "Communication" article could also contain information about things the Trump administration got right, i.e., anything that was not misinformation. In the end, I think either of these links is acceptable, and my main point is that there should be a link to an article that says something specifically about misinformation from Trump.

And that, generally, is the theme above. When you read an article about Trump, and you see a sentence about Trump's false statements, Trump's travel ban, Trump's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the attack that happened on Trump's watch, and Trump's two impeachments, you are better served by getting links to the specific, relevant, topical, contextually appropriate information – not the generic articles on the general subjects, which may not mention Trump at all.

I've no particular objection to re-phrasing things, but I want to be clear that MOS:EGG does not object to this. MOS:EGG objects to hiding information, such as the fact that Feynmann worked on the Parton (particle physics). MOS:EGG says that the word parton needs to appear in the sentence, for the sake of readers who don't/can't click on the link. There is no information hidden when you link to just the word "He was impeached" instead of the whole clause "He was impeached". MOS:EGG accepts either of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:44, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Your concept of not hiding information is not without merit, but it's not what EGG is about. The text of the guideline doesn't say or imply anything about that. Space4 is correct that readers encountering a link of "impeached" should expect it to target an article about impeachment in general, and they would have no way of knowing it was about impeachment of Trump without following it. That makes it inconsistent with EGG. Perhaps there should be a separate guideline about not hiding information, but it wouldn't bear on this discussion. (FKA 68.97.42.64, FKA Mandruss) 161.97.225.237 (talk) 21:12, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Frankly, I think the majority of readers would expect "He was impeached" to lead to our article on Trump's impeachment; if they want to know what impeachment is, they can click one of the first links in that article to get to the general topic. But most of this page's readers clearly want to know more about Trump, so they'd want to read information specific to him, not general stuff. Same for the other links; I agree with WhatamIdoing's reasoning here. I've been pretty annoyed myself (as a reader) when links go to general topics, when more specific pages exist; it made me assume the specific page didn't exist. DFlhb (talk) 21:18, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

I hate silly links as much as anyone, but I'm in agreement with WAID here. For example the Paris Agreement on climate change is mentioned and IMO most people would give up on trying to find the right link, which is this one United States withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. I know that I don't represent the average reader but I know that I'm far from alone. I like information background and if I don't read the entire article (though I often do) I want a good lead with links. Sectionworker (talk) 06:38, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm not arguing for longer, non-EGGy links in the lead, I'm arguing for keeping readers on the page and going to the body, where we have a ton of links, for information summarized in the lead. For example:

Covid-19 pandemic

Main articles: COVID-19 pandemic and COVID-19 pandemic in the United States

Further information: U.S. federal government response to the COVID-19 pandemic and Trump administration communication during the COVID-19 pandemic

See also: Economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States

In December 2019, COVID-19 erupted in Wuhan, China; the SARS-CoV-2 virus spread worldwide within weeks.

We should be linking to the body, not to other pages. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 12:59, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

So add some links in the lead to the body, and see whether anyone disagrees enough to revert you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:15, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

I added a few to the third and fourth paragraph. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 16:45, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Why are you linking to him winning the election? It just seems... unnecessary. Cessaune (talk) 17:23, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Space4Time. @Cessaune is asking about this:

"He won the 2016 United States presidential election^§ as the Republican nominee against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton despite losing the popular vote."

I'm curious why you use this "^§" markup instead of adding a normal link. I would normally link straight to the separate 2016 United States presidential election, but you could link to the section in this article like this: [[#2016 presidential campaign|2016 United States presidential election]]. This is the normal way to add a link. Why did you decide to try something different? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:00, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Less blue in the lead, and gets rid of the added surprise of clicking on a link expecting it to take you to a new article and instead being sent to a section in the same article (see Talk:Donald Trump/Archive 149 and 150). It's a proposal on this page that was narrowly shouted down recently and, as there is no consensus to include it, Space4Time should self-revert. Everything on this page works through consensus, and we haven't established consensus for this addition. Cessaune (talk) 21:35, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

I don't know if you are familiar with the Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle (the actual/original one, not Wikipedia:What editors mean when they say you have to follow BRD), but the idea is that when there's a dispute, especially a dispute that is not being resolved through discussion, and you have an idea about how to fix it, you should just do that, and then wait to see who will emerge as a "Very Interested Person (VIP)". You find that VIP by waiting to see who disagrees strongly enough to revert your change. Self-reverting defeats BRD by depriving your would-be VIP of the clearest opportunity to express disagreement. Consequently, I recommend that Space4Time follow BRD instead of taking you up on your suggestion.

I think the likely outcomes are that we'll discover a VIP through reversion, or that someone will respond with Wikipedia:Bold-refine (e.g., converting them to standard links). In the meantime, all we need to do here is wait for someone who is interested in enough to make a change. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:22, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Which ones of the numerous discussions on lead citations are you referring to? There is also no consensus to exclude section links. I didn't add all of them, per citegasm, one of editors may have called them, I believe. I replaced some of the recently reinserted wikilinks to other pages with section links. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 14:27, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Fair. Cessaune (talk) 23:51, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Is length becoming an urgent problem?

(I withdrew my support for the Abraham Accords proposal above)

With Trump starting his 2024 campaign (and no doubt, there'll be controversies, lawsuits trying to prevent him from running, primaries we must cover, more controversial statements, etc), and with Donald Trump at 107kB prose size, we should likely foucs on removing & summarizing stuff, not expanding, to prepare for that. Targeting ~75kB or less would be ideal.

Here's what I propose:

• move most of the immigration section to Immigration policy of Donald Trump and summary-style it in just a single subsection of "Domestic policy"
• do the same with the COVID-19 pandemic section; turn it into a single subection of "Domestic policy"; it's far too detailed for a biography
• same with some material from the longer subsections of "Foreign policy"
• the "Special counsel investigation" subsection is too long as well; it's the longest subsection in the whole article.
• Lafayette Square: I don't think we need a whole subsection on that; should be summarized in a few sentences in another subsection
• does "Concern about a possible coup attempt or military action" even belong here? It seems like speculation, no? I'm not as familiar with Trump as I'm sure most of you are, so I might be wrong on this.
• the "Racial views" section could probably stand to be ~3 paragraphs; there's already a split-off article on it; it's currently the longest subsection in "Public profile"; we should target ~5kB, not 14kB raw size.

These may not all be necessary to reach 75kB prose size; I'm just floating ideas. DFlhb (talk) 05:32, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Difficult to say, with the caucuses & primaries 14+ months away. GoodDay (talk) 05:38, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

lawsuits trying to prevent him from running What do you mean by this? SPECIFICO talk 10:16, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

What I was referring to were the (IMO very predictable) future lawsuits to keep him off the ballot, which I expect we'll see in many states. Funnily enough, I just discovered I was proven right in a few very recent articles, on that point and on related efforts (I hadn't seen any of them when I wrote my comment). [2][3][4][5]

Possible avenues are: inciting an insurrection (Jan 6), corruption, mishandling classified materials (the Florida raid), and obstruction of justice (which Mueller hinted was possible after he left office), though I want to make clean I'm not expressing an opinion on any of these; just a prediction that may directly affect how the page ends up looking. DFlhb (talk) 10:36, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

IMO, if he's sued, or if his candidacy is challenged in individual states, we won't be mentioning more than the fact, citing the RS, ditto when the lawsuits/challenges succeed or fail. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 10:57, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

I agree, as discussed before. Maybe we can rationalise the article this time.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:40, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

I don’t see the urgency. WP is not a newspaper, and any new controversies, lawsuits, etc. would have to receive lasting coverage in RS. The archives contain quite a few discussions about article length, and we’ve managed to keep the article at a size where the page doesn’t "break". Several of the sections you mention are written summary-style, linking to other main pages. How did you arrive at 75 KB? This article has 109 kB of readable prose, JFK’s has 113, Reagan 105, Eisenhower 103, Hillary Clinton 94, Nixon 89, Bill Clinton 87, George W. Bush 88, Obama 81. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 10:45, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

How did you arrive at 75 KB? Might be too ambitious; 85-90 wouldn't be bad. Re: your other reply, it's more than lawsuits; a full campaign might end up taking 2-3 paragraphs. Not unreasonable to expect this campaign to differ somewhat from the last one, with the lawsuits, key allies dropping him [6], and potential future violence. I concede that's all speculation, but 109kB is IMO unreasonable when further expansion is a given. DFlhb (talk) 11:16, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

1. I don't think we should prioritize compactness over content. This has come up many times and it leads to cuts that end up being reinstated after a lot of silly talk page discussion about size comparisons.
2. The way to make the article more readible and to implement summary style is for editors to be much much more familiar with the vast number of tertiary sources that have become available. Books, academic articles, thougthful essays by experts. Instead of giving long narratives of examples and incidents of Trump's thoughts and actions, we can present the weight of RS characterization of them and point to the detailed articles on each facet of his extensive history. This is not happening because most editors have not read those books or even read most journals and news accounts. The talk page discussions archive shows that most editors rely on TV news and immediate press coverage, with little perspective on the range and central narratives of RS. We need to build back better. SPECIFICO talk 14:22, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

One of the main issue is that not everything is of equal importance always. Everyone that shows up here is 100% certain that their little nugget of information is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER, and that IF IT ISN'T INCLUDED IN THE ARTICLE, WE ARE CENSORING THEM AND WHITEWASHING THE ARTICLE ZOMG BIAS ARGH!!1!11!. Not every true thing must be included in this article. Editorial decisions need to be made for the sake of narrative flow, tone, relative importance, and yes, length. Sometimes that means someone pet nugget of information gets moved to a different article. Or maybe not included at all. It has to be that way. Not everything that is true is equally worth writing about, and there's a priority threshold that means that sometimes, something is true and just not included in the article. And that isn't censorship, and that isn't whitewashing, it's making editorial decisions to create a quality piece of writing. --Jayron32 19:14, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Very much like any other bio, particularly BLPs. Nothing substantial gets added into or taken out of a bio, without a consensus. GoodDay (talk) 00:56, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

I think you mean "very much like any other high-traffic, heavily watched bio". Most bios are editing with zero discussion.

@DFlhb, there's one thing that just about any editor could do, that I think would have a significant effect on the page size (NB: not word count). That is: Replace the zillions of newspaper articles and other primary sources with citations to a page in a decent book that says the same thing. As a bonus, systematically working your way through a book (or a couple of them) should give editors a clearer idea of what gets more (and what gets less) attention in this article than it does in high-quality secondary sources.

I'm unfamiliar with the literature, but there seem to be multiple options from university presses, and that's usually a good place to start. Here are links to some options: [7][8][9][10][11] and I'm sure there are many more at places I didn't think to check. I suggest that editors with access to a good library system check with their library first. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:32, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

High-traffic & heavily watched? Yeah, that sums up this page quite well :) GoodDay (talk) 03:39, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

That's a solid idea. DFlhb (talk) 20:16, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

we’ve managed to keep the article at a size where the page doesn’t "break": what exactly is the size when the page breaks??? From previous discussions it seems there is no such size...? And the size is what it is because of major cuts to the content in time passed.--Jack Upland (talk) 09:31, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Pages break when the "post-expand include size" exceeds 2 MiB. This is not a size you can predict by looking at the numbers in the history page. It is a number that depends very heavily on how many complex templates are transcluded. At the moment, there are 1,003 templates on this page. 817 of them are citation templates, which definitely qualify as "complex" for this purpose. In practice, the way that you figure out whether you're going to break the page is: you add something else, and it breaks. Then you know that it was close to breaking before your addition.

One very reliable way to prevent this is: replace individual WP:PRIMARYNEWS sources with sources that can be cited for many claims. There are 749 instances of {{cite news}} in this article. That's 92% of the cited sources. Less than one percent(!) of the cited sources are books. We don't need to replace all of the news sources, but over time, we should move towards replacing many of them. For comparison, 40% of the sources in Ronald Reagan are news articles, and 16% are books. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:30, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

But WhatamIdoing, roughly how close are we to breaking the page?--Jack Upland (talk) 04:12, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

@Jack Upland, there's no precise way to do this. However, I did a little experimenting, and I think the page could handle maybe as many as another 100 citation templates (or other templates of similar complexity). You shouldn't worry about breaking the page if you add a couple, but this suggests that we're within about 10% of the limit, so we should be thinking about consolidating sources (e.g., replacing multiple news articles with one book that says the same thing). WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:04, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

The problems we've experienced with this page breaking weren't caused by the readable prose, they were caused by the close to 900 citations we had at one time (and the over-linking doesn't help). We have pared them down considerably - and if we could get rid of the occasional left-over from initial outrage over Trump tweets we might be able to get rid of a few more. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 12:06, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

I've changed the title of this section back from Length of the code for this page to what I put originally, Length is becoming a bit of an urgent problem.[12] The new section name changed the meaning of my comment and the intent of the discussion: concerns about excessive citations are reasonable, but my comment was solely focused on article contents and prose size, and excluded non-prose contents. Individual content removals require discussions, but I was hoping we could brainstorm where to look for cuts, since I believe there's quite a bit of undue things remaining, and I don't see a reason to delay doing this. I like Specifico and WAID's proposal to determine article contents based on reputable books. DFlhb (talk) 23:35, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, @DFlhb:, our guideline does require neutrally-worded headers. Please see WP:SECTIONHEADINGOWN. It would be best to self-revert or find some other neutrally-worded header for this discussion thread. SPECIFICO talk 01:02, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

I see a large difference between generally acceptable to change and "require neutrally-worded headers" (italics mine). It would also have been apropriate to notify me before completely changing its meaning from prose size to code size, which are separate issues altogether. As it is, the heading poses no issue, since the discussion is about whether it's an urgent issue or not, and what to do about it, if it is. There is zero requirement whatsoever that headings represent the consensus of a discussion, merely its topic. DFlhb (talk) 01:17, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

The change in heading was confusing.--Jack Upland (talk) 01:35, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

No, you're not getting it DF. You don't own the talk page header. Yes, they are required to be neutral. There's an infinite number of ways you could have satisfied the confused Mr. Upland and still had a neutral header. But since thi thread will not result in any change in our editing or page content, it's not likely anyone will press the point further. Do be sure to read the link I cited very carefully for the future. SPECIFICO talk 02:46, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

I never claimed that I owned it, and don't agree with your reading of a requirement. I've reworded it. Please ping me or discuss, next time you change one significantly, as WP:SECTIONHEADINGOWN suggests. Thanks. DFlhb (talk) 00:00, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

On the non-technical subject, the article currently stands at 17,000 words. WP:CANYOUREADTHIS suggests a maximum of 10,000 – not because of technical limitations, but because of the limitations in the human attention span. People don't read 17,000 words on wiki at a time. They don't want to sit down and read an article for two straight hours. If you want them to actually read this article, you need to make it possible for a human to start at the top of the page, read straight through, and reach the end of the page, and that means making this page a lot shorter. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:10, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Twitter page link?

So since his twitter page was just restored, should we include a link to it in the "External Links" section, like we had before his twitter page was suspended? I noticed that the link to the archive requires consensus to change. 08:26, 20 November 2022 (UTC) Mgasparin (talk) 08:26, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

I don't think it exists at the moment.--Jack Upland (talk) 09:25, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

It's a no-brainer. The link to his real Twitter should be added. But since he's also deleted some tweets, I wouldn't oppose the archive link being kept too. DFlhb (talk) 09:36, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

I think we should keep the link to the archive for now and not link to the restored account Trump "hasn't agreed to return" to. "I like Elon, but I’m staying on Truth," Mr. Trump said during a Fox News interview after Mr. Musk’s takeover. ... Mr. Trump is obligated to make his posts available exclusively on Truth Social for six hours before sharing them on other sites, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He can post to any site immediately if the messages pertain to political messaging, fund-raising, or get-out-the-vote initiatives. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 11:59, 20 November 2022 (UTC) Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 15:45, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

I wouldn't bother linking to it, if the former president isn't using Twitter anymore. GoodDay (talk) 18:09, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, but I strongly suspect that he will come back to Twitter at some point. Mgasparin (talk) 22:11, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Let it happen first before switching it over. If he ultimately doesn't return then I'd say the archive link probably makes more sense. If he does return then this becomes issue. But otherwise it'd be a link to something not in active use. 23.84.19.247 (talk) 22:54, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

On the one hand, Trump is indeed unlikely to return to Twitter, since he seems contractually "obligated to make any social media post on Truth Social".[13]

On the other hand, the archive is independently-run, doesn't seem to be backed by proper funding (questionable sustainability), and lacks any media Trump tweeted (videos, images). The website is clearly designed for academics and researchers more than the general public, with its austere interface and advanced search syntax; but the lack of media support mean that the archive cannot fully replace his actual Twitter.

The previous RFC[14] was premised on Trump being suspended, and the consensus was that a link to his tweets (whether an archive, or a direct link) belonged here. Given that the archive lacks media, and that Trump was reinstated, I think keeping both is option that best matches the spirit of that consensus. DFlhb (talk) 21:04, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Okay, I've added the twitter page link. I have also kept the link to the archive, since as DFlhb stated, many tweets were deleted over the course of his presidency. Mgasparin (talk) 22:13, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Trump May 2020 complaint about social media

FMSky removed a grammatical error from the direct quote of a Trump tweet that I then removed altogether, saying it was an opinion tweet. FMSky then reverted my edit, stating the tweet was relevant because it’s on Trump’s page. It’s a tweet from May 2020, Trump complaining on social media that social media had totally silenced conservative voices after Twitter had started to tag some of his falsehoods as falsehoods. It’s sort of funny but do we need this "Well, he would, wouldn’t he" in his top bio? Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 11:20, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

the tweet also said that he would "strongly regulate, or close them down" which is relevant as he was still president back then. the typo should also not be reinstatet, per MOS:TYPOFIX --FMSky (talk) 11:27, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

It's not a spelling or typographic error, so " [sic] (producing [sic]) to show that the error was not made by Wikipedia" applies. It has already been restored by another editor. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 12:10, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

FMSky, error aside, why is a direct quote of a Trump claim, followed by a threat that he couldn't legally follow up on, relevant just because this is Trump's page? The paragraph is about Twitter finally starting to tag some of his falsehoods in May 2020 and social media platforms banning him in January 2021. We wouldn't lose any information, just a bit of trivia. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 14:20, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

because it shows his opinion on social media, which is relevant in a section about social media. honestly, why is this even being discussed ffs --FMSky (talk) 15:36, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

If we want to write about Trump's views and potential regulatory proposals wrt to social media, why don't we find a high-quality secondary source, instead of a source talking about what happened that week? If that tweet is particularly important, then it shouldn't be difficult to find a source that mentions it and isn't WP:PRIMARYNEWS. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:38, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/robpegoraro/2020/07/28/heres-trumps-plan-to-regulate-social-media/ -- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/27/trump-twitter-social-media-threat-conservatives -- https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/27/21272675/trump-executive-order-social-media-twitter-facebook-youtube-tweet-fact-check-section-230 -- https://www.reuters.com/article/twitter-trump-idUSL1N2D90JY -- etc -- FMSky (talk) 08:45, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Were any of those sources written even three months after this event? Did anybody mention this May 2020 communication in, say, September 2020? Or even May 2021? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:00, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

WP is WP:NOTNEWS. Of course various news media reported on Trump tweeting that he would "strongly regulate" or close down social media platforms, along with their assessment that he would be unsuccessful if he tried, the news of the day being their business model. He didn't try, and that was the last anyone heard of it. The social media section is not about Trump's opinion about social media, it's about his use of it and the platforms' belated reaction to the misinformation and disinformation he spread. If anywhere, the tweet belongs on the main page Social media use by Donald Trump where they already have a number of Trump opinion tweets. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 10:38, 21 November 2022 (UTC) There

Agreed; he did nothing whatsoever beyond tweet about it, as far as I'm aware. I don't think it's even worth mentioning that he criticized Twitter for it. DFlhb (talk) 20:21, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

If independent, reliable sources didn't talk about something he did 2.5 years ago for longer than 2.5 months after the event, then it should probably not be mentioned in this article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:01, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

"The trade deficit reached its highest level in 12 years under his administration"?

I'm concerned about the relevance and arguably non-neutral presentation of the following information at Donald Trump#Trade: "Although he pledged during the campaign to significantly reduce the U.S.'s large trade deficits, the deficit reached its highest level in 12 years under his administration." The Associated Press source cited for this statement clarifies that the monthly trade deficit in July 2020 "was the largest monthly deficit since July 2008 during the 2007-2009 recession" and occurred in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which "has seriously disrupted global supply chains this year".

In fact, annual figures show that the COVID-19 pandemic coincided with a huge and sustained increase in the U.S. trade deficit, which reached an all-time high in 2021, during the presidency of Joe Biden (Trump's Democratic successor). As reported by CNBC on February 8, 2022: "The Commerce Department said on Tuesday that the trade deficit increased 27.0% last year [2021] to an all-time high of $859.1 billion. The deficit was at $676.7 billion in 2020. 'The US trade picture won't return to normal until the pandemic purchases start to slow and life returns to what it was,' said Christopher Rupkey, chief economist at FWDBONDS in New York."

In retrospect and considering this fuller context, it's hard not to see our text about the 12-year record high monthly trade deficit in July 2020 as a cherrypicked "gotcha" moment more reminiscent of a political campaign attack ad than an encyclopedia article. Moreover, what relevance does this data point have to Trump's overall biography? Would it be justifiable to note the record 2021 trade deficit in Biden's BLP (despite the obvious implication that there is very little any one man, even the president, can do in the face of a nearly unprecedented global pandemic/supply chain crisis)? Furthermore, please bear in mind that, contrary to rhetoric by Trump himself and by other politicians, economists do not generally believe that reducing the national trade deficit is an unalloyed good or the metric by which to evaluate the health of the economy.

To be clear, there may be comprehensive academic sources that could support a more objective (and clearly relevant) statement to the effect that (even before the pandemic) Trump's tariffs failed in their stated objective "to significantly reduce the U.S.'s large trade deficits," which I would fully support (provided the sourcing is there). However, the cheap one-liner we have now just doesn't cut it, in my view. In sum: I think that the sentence in question should be removed (and possibly replaced along the lines suggested above); failing that, it should at least be modified to better match the AP source (about this being the monthly trade deficit in July 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic). Thoughts?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:16, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

I agree. Remove it. It's misleading.--Jack Upland (talk) 05:25, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

The cherry-picked gotcha moment per the AP: "The U.S. trade deficit surged in July to $63.6 billion, the highest level in 12 years, as imports jumped by a record amount. ... When Donald Trump campaigned for president in 2016 he pledged to sharply lower the country’s large trade deficits, especially with China, which for years has been the country with the largest trade surplus with the United States." The cited source juxtaposes Trump's campaign pledge with the reality 3.5 years after he took office. The trade deficit during Biden's tenure is of no concern here, take it up with the editors on that page. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 16:07, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Right, and as explained in greater detail above, rather than selecting just a single month (with an unusually high trade deficit, during a global pandemic) to score this partisan talking point, you should (especially now that Trump has left office) use retrospective academic sources evaluating the economic data from all 48 months of Trump's presidency. If such sources show that (even before the pandemic) Trump's tariffs failed in their stated objective "to significantly reduce the U.S.'s large trade deficits," that would be noteworthy encyclopedic content—which an attack ad-style "gotcha" moment never is.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 17:52, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

CNBC and its finance industry "experts" are not the best sources for matters of economics, policy, and international relations. I suggest we find one or more notable economists' assessments of the issue. SPECIFICO talk 18:47, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

I checked Google Scholar and could not find a source discussing all four years of Trump's presidency (on the first page of the search results, at least), but I have modified Donald Trump#Trade to give a more representative overview of the topic, focusing on the failure of the Trump tariffs to reduce the trade deficit during 2018. See the difference between the old and new revisions in the respective links.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:25, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

You used a primary source (a paper published by Trump's "economic advisory team") for the campaign pledge part to make a point that the original RS made. I think that's WP:SYNTH? You cited one source (a financial markets research company guy quoted by CNBC) saying the trade deficit wasn't "normal" because of the pandemic. The point of our current sentence is that, while Trump said he could fix the deficit, he couldn't. Consumers went on an extended shopping spree for cars and consumer goods. Seems those are often manufactured abroad which apparently was news to Trump and his advisory team. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 12:24, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

• "You used a primary source (a paper published by Trump's 'economic advisory team') for the campaign pledge part to make a point that the original RS made. I think that's WP:SYNTH?" As explained in my edit summary, that content was merged with attribution from Presidency of Donald Trump#Economy (where it is evidently long-standing). You could have simply removed that sentence if you perceived a SYNTH or WP:OR issue, but I did not.
• "You cited one source (a financial markets research company guy quoted by CNBC) saying the trade deficit wasn't 'normal' because of the pandemic." That's largely incorrect in that I did not cite CNBC in article space or for any edit (although I quoted CNBC regarding the record 2021 trade deficit, above, here on the talk page). In fact, your own Associated Press source states that "[t]he pandemic has seriously disrupted global supply chains this year [2020] and economists said while it was good news to see trade rebounding now, the gains are coming from very low levels."
• Based on your comment, it seems unlikely that you carefully read both revisions (as suggested above) and simply reverted based on the prior conversation/my edit summary. The only original text that I authored in my edit is the following:

However, the overall U.S. trade deficit increased by 12.5% in 2018, with the goods trade deficit with China seeing a particularly large increase. The Economic Policy Institute stated in March 2019 that "[t]he rapid growth of U.S. trade deficits reflect the failure of Trump administration trade policies".

(Needless to say, even if it supports a less spectacular assertion than made in your preferred revision, this is hardly content favorable to Trump's trade policies, and my source is the Economic Policy Institute, not CNBC.)

Why is the monthly data point from July 2020, which your own AP source describes as an outlier and which Jack Upland called "misleading" above, the only one that you want to emphasize—as opposed to the above revision based on the annual figures from 2017 and 2018 showing the trade deficit grew by 12.5%? Aren't the annual figures from 2017 and 2018 more representative, more useful to the reader, and more likely to quiet Trump fans who will instinctively dismiss the July 2020 figure as an obvious cherrypicked outlier because—let's face it—it is exactly that? I even did the work for you and got the figures for 2017 and 2018, showing that the Trump tariffs (even before the pandemic) failed to achieve their primary stated objective, but you still reverted without engaging with that content at all in your reply. This does not seem like collaborative behavior.

If we can't reach agreement on a replacement text, then we may have to modify the existing text to accurately reflect the AP source (about this being the monthly trade deficit in July 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic), which the now-current version manifestly does not do—or (as Jack Upland suggested) simply remove it altogether as WP:UNDUE (without a replacement, since you rejected the proposed replacement at this time).

• "Consumers went on an extended shopping spree for cars and consumer goods. Seems those are often manufactured abroad which apparently was news to Trump and his advisory team." Correct, and this was also predicted by one of the sources that I found on Google Scholar, "The Economic Consequences of Mr Trump": "The consequences of Mr Trump's first economic policy initiative—the tax cuts and the larger budget deficit—are primarily macro-economic. ... The consequences of the second—increases or threats of increases in protection—are essentially micro-economic, affecting the allocation of resources across different economic activities." (p. 411); "One element of the low savings of the United States is the recent Trump-determined fiscal deficit. Thus macro-economic policy is in the way of what appears to be a target that he wants to achieve by protectionist—id est microeconomic—policy. But he is unlikely to achieve this target because of macroeconomic prospects." (p. 414).TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 22:05, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

BTW, Space4Time3Continuum2x, per your comment it seems that the only portion of my edit that you are contesting is the part that I did not even write, but rather was merged from Presidency of Donald Trump#Economy, citing Trump campaign material as background information. That same information (on Trump's pledge to reduce the trade deficit) can instead be sourced to "The Economic Consequences of Mr Trump" (or any number of other reliable sources) or simply omitted altogether, while retaining the rest of my edit (i.e., "the overall U.S. trade deficit increased by 12.5% in 2018 ... "). Can I reinstate my edit with those modifications, or do you have another (unstated) objection in addition to the one that you stated in your comment?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 22:44, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

It will take me a while to work through this wall of text, including the text you merged from another article where it is evidently long-standing & therefore not written by you, just copied into this article (?). Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 17:04, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Fully agree. Remove it. 159.180.250.103 (talk) 07:50, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Reviewing your proposed edit: the first sentence is cited to Trump's website, which isn't appropriate. The second and third sentences are sourced to the Economic Policy Institute, which appears to be a partisan think tank; they're not credible for these claims, though they might be perfectly credible in other articles. We should also strongly avoid quoting a single person describing a policy as a "failure". If there is consensus (among prominent reputable experts, not think tankers) that it was a failure, then it's preferrable to avoid directly labelling it a failure (too vague), and instead to mention what makes it a failure (e.g. the deficit reached its highest level in 12 years) for precision and conciseness. I don't see anything wrong with the passage as it is, though it should be replaced with proper scholarship once that's available. DFlhb (talk) 20:04, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

“Worst President”??

It states he was the worst presidents. I feel this is extremely controversial and should be removed, as it is one’s opinion — Preceding unsigned comment added by CrayolaTeam (talk • contribs) 18:37, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

The article states this is the belief of scholars and historians - this is notable enough for inclusion. — Czello 18:39, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

CrayloaTeam, did you read the rest of the sentence and the sources attached to it, or only the two words "worst president"? – Muboshgu (talk) 18:40, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

One could mention "some scholars" instead. The way that the statement is written implies that all objective historians and scholars have deemed him as one of the worst presidents. Nkienzle (talk) 05:27, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

They have, and it is not a mere implication. In 4 different rankings, Trump has been ranked between the 42nd and the 44th position. The Siena College specifically cites his overall lack of accomplishments as the reason they placed him at the bottom. Dimadick (talk) 20:20, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

I'd of preferred we wait 'ten years' after he left office, before adding any historians or scholars views. GoodDay (talk) 18:04, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Although you may have a point -- that's not what WP:10YT says. O3000, Ret. (talk) 18:17, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

• I agree with User:GoodDay.

• Pfiffner (2003) says: As a scholar I know that ranking and rating presidents is not very rigorous, and dedicates the rest of his papers to explaining how these surveys are problematical.
• In response, Nichols (2012) finds that ranking polls may tell us more than critics admit, though he [does not claim] that [these surveys] provide a true measure of presidential greatness. He also admits that these rankings received comparatively small attention [..] in scholarly journals compared to public interest.
• Nice 1984 highlights significant problems with comparisons across such great tracts of time, and that rankings are heavily affected by circumstances outside a presidents' control, like whether the presidency occurs during peacetime or war.
• Rottinghaus et al. (2020) call these surveys a cottage industry spawned by [a] breathless desire to rate and rank presidents. They find that political polarization affects expert rankings, that this is especially true for recent presidents, and that this possibly compromis[es] [these rankings] for presidents who have recently left office.
• I'll also just note that the C-SPAN poll exclusively interviewed [people] drawn from databases of C-SPAN programming,[15] i.e. people who appeared on TV!

I don't think rankings belong, and I frankly I doubt they ever will. Assessments of his actual legacy are far more appropriate and encyclopedically useful.

I really think it would make for a better article to imitate what's in Barack Obama#Legacy (but necessarily shorter, since less time has passed) and cover expert assessments of his legacy (appointment of conservative judges, any major legislation, polarization, standing with foreign allies, impact on minorities, impact on American competitiveness through his tariffs and immigration policies). It goes without saying that each of these points would need solid sourcing. DFlhb (talk) 19:23, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Scholars are the most important sources for Wikipedia. We strive to learn from scholarship and history. That's one of the purposes of an encyclopedia. O3000, Ret. (talk) 19:48, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

I have no idea how your comment relates to mine. I cite more scholarship here against inclusion than has ever been cited in favor of including rankings. DFlhb (talk) 21:35, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Your citations are irrelevant, it isn't difficult to cherry-pick a handful of opinions to support your personal preference on the matter. In particularly I like how you had to reach back 38 years for one. Zaathras (talk) 22:00, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Your comment is unconstructive. If you want to accuse me of cherry-picking, then prove it with citations that contradict these. They're not "opinions", they're peer-reviewed scholarship. I had a preference for inclusion before reading them. And finally, I didn't "[have] to reach back", I quoted Nice 1984 because it's a well-regarded paper which I came across in both Nichols 2012 and in Lamb & Neiheisel (2020) "On Studying the Trump Presidency", which I didn't cite above, but which would be a solid resource for a "Legacy" section. I'll note that Lamb & Neiheisel also endorses the comparative importance of scholarly assessments over rankings. DFlhb (talk) 22:47, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Your entire section here is unconstructive. We have scholarly sources to support the presentation that the Trump administration was regarded as one of the worst in American history. You dug up a few naysayers, cool. It doesn't change what we're going to include in the article. Zaathras (talk) 23:59, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

My comment has nothing to do with the "worst in history" sentence from the lead (which is backed by RFC consensus #54).

I proposed replacing the last paragraph of the "Approval ratings" section, which quotes C-SPAN and SCRI (neither are peer-reviewed scholarship). Scholarly sources, which I cite, support my claim that rankings are less relevant than in-depth scholarly assessments, which I proposed we add. Calling them "a few naysayers" is not a good faith description. DFlhb (talk) 00:46, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Seems to be a perennial complaint by New Editors, really nothing to discuss here. Zaathras (talk) 21:25, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

• Completely disagree with GoodDay. This has been hashed out in an RFC Talk:Donald_Trump/Archive_140#RFC:_Should_we_mention_historical_evaluations_of_Trump's_presidency? and consensus was to include, especially on the basis of precedents (presidents prior to Trump, and yes, Obama even had assessments inserted within his lead as early as 2018). More to the point: scholars have not waited 10 years to render a verdict on the subject — nor should we wait a decade to include them. As appropriate, this article reflects the high quality assessments (and the consensus established a year ago). —MelbourneStar☆^talk 05:47, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Reacted Slowly to Covid Pandemic

"reacted slowly to the COVID-19 Pandemic" is an opinionated statement and should be changed, especially with the development of the vaccine and democrats calling his border closing xenophobic. Nkienzle (talk) 05:23, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

@Nkienzle:  Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit extended-protected}} template. (please note that most paragraphs in the lead of this article are established by longstanding consensus.) Colonestarrice (talk) 06:27, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

no Nkienzle (talk) 05:17, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Then I guess we’re done here. Consider this request changed to  Not done. Dronebogus (talk) 16:04, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Outdated statement in social media section

(Revision permalink)

Trump's attempts to re-establish a social media presence were unsuccessful.

This is sourced to an outdated June 2021 article, which predates the Feb 2022 launch of Truth Social. The next two sentences imply that nothing happened between Trump's blog shutting down and his Twitter reinstatement. And the sentence after that mentions Truth Social out of nowhere, but isn't coherent with what comes before.

Taking a step back: it's clear that neither Rumble nor Trump's blog are due here, since neither received sustained coverage.

Proposal

Delete:

Later in June, Trump joined the video platform Rumble and began to post the messages of his website blog on the Twitter account of a spokesperson. Trump's attempts to re-establish a social media presence were unsuccessful. In May 2021 he launched a blog that had low readership and was closed after less than a month.

Keep:

On November 19, 2022, Twitter owner Elon Musk reinstated Trump's account. Trump had said that he would stay on his own media platform Truth Social.

That sentence comes right after my proposed deletion. DFlhb (talk) 20:51, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

• support removal, clearly WP:RECENTISM Anon0098 (talk) 21:11, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
• support.--Jack Upland (talk) 04:48, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
• Keep because it's still true. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:53, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
• Keep existing text. Donald's vitriolic complaining and maneuvering to find a new social media outlet post-Twitter suspension was notable and well-documented. Zaathras (talk) 22:07, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
• Keep but maybe edit it or add to it a bit, "In the XXX after being banned from Twitter and other platforms with similar reach..." may be a good preamble to the existing sentence, where XXX is some appropriate length of time that makes the statement true, something like "year" or "several years" or some such. --Jayron32 15:52, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
• Keep as there is no evidence he is back on Twitter, or in fact has a major social media presence anymore. Slatersteven (talk) 15:55, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
• Comment I've made an alternate proposal below that incorporates the feedback here. DFlhb (talk) 21:03, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Alternate proposal

How about this alternative proposal that keeps the "attempts were unsuccessful" sentence? I copied the current paragraph verbatim, used red for removals, and green for additions.

After years of criticism for allowing Trump to post misinformation and falsehoods, Twitter began to tag some of his tweets with fact-checking warnings in May 2020. In response, Trump tweeted that "Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices" and that he would "strongly regulate, or close them down". In the days after the storming of the United States Capitol, Trump was banned from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other platforms. Twitter blocked attempts by Trump and his staff to circumvent the ban through the use of others' accounts. The loss of Trump's social media megaphone, including his 88.7 million Twitter followers, diminished his ability to shape events, and prompted a dramatic decrease in the volume of misinformation shared on Twitter. In May 2021, an advisory group to Facebook evaluated that site's indefinite ban of Trump and concluded that it had been justified at the time but should be re-evaluated in six months. In June 2021, Facebook suspended the account for two years. The loss of Trump's social media megaphone, including his 88.7 million Twitter followers, diminished his ability to shape events, and prompted a dramatic decrease in the volume of misinformation shared on Twitter. Later in June, Trump joined the video platform Rumble and began to post the messages of his website blog on the Twitter account of a spokesperson. Trump's early attempts to re-establish a social media presence were unsuccessful. In May 2021 he launched a blog that had low readership and was closed after less than a month. In February 2022, he launched alt-tech social media platform Truth Social, where he only attracted a fraction of his earlier following. On November 19, 2022, Twitter owner Elon Musk reinstated Trump's account. Trump had said that he would stay on his own media platform Truth Social.

Keep in mind that the paragraph on his bans takes up most of Donald Trump#Social media, which is completely wack.

Please consider each endnote as separate proposals; feel free to weigh in on any or all. DFlhb (talk) 21:03, 30 November 2022 (UTC) ; edited 22:35, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

We might want to mention that he launched Truth Social before stating that he "had said that he would stay on" it. And yes, the launch was mentioned earlier in a different section of the article, but the article is so long and convoluted, and I expect people just read sections that interest them, so I think it's worth sticking a sentence in between "Trump's attempts to re-establish a social media presence were unsuccessful." and "On November 19, 2022..."

Perhaps something along the lines of, "Trump's attempts to re-establish a social media presence included joining the video platform Rumble, a shortlived blog entitled "From the desk of Donald J. Trump", and launching his own social media platform, Truth Social. These attempts were largely unsuccessful." ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 22:15, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

I've added two proposals (end notes F and H) that propose a way to address "it's worth sticking a sentence[...]". Thanks DFlhb (talk) 22:40, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

• I'm not comfortable with pejorative, metaphorical language where simply descriptors would work better. The "social media megaphone" feels rhetorical in a very non-encyclopedic way. "Use of social media" or "social media presence" or something like that seems much better. --Jayron32 14:17, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

  Agreed; that's rhetorical wording, and came from the headline of Deutsche Welle[16] (which I've since replaced with a better NYT cite). The term has been used by a few WP:RS: [17][18], but it's not the common term for his social media use, and also, they're writing news and we're writing an encyclopedia. DFlhb (talk) 14:46, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

  Information should match what reliable sources say. Phrasing and wording is determined not by sources, but by Wikipedia's own policies and guidelines. I don't really care what style of writing reliable sources use or don't use; whether or not they used the megaphone metaphor is irrelevant. We have our own WP:TONE standards that are not necessarily the same standards other source, even reliable ones use. We need to be careful in not relying too heavily justifying our phrasing on what source materials use; instead we should choose our phrasing based upon Wikipedia's own standards. --Jayron32 18:11, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

  For the record, I was agreeing; I made the change you suggested before posting my reply. DFlhb (talk) 18:36, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Proposed change to external links

Revision permalink.

I don't believe there is previous consensus on any of these. These proposals each stand on their own, and are not mutually exclusive, so please weigh in on each.

Proposal A: remove the following external link:

• Trump's news blog

It now a redirect to a donation page.

Proposal B: remove the following external link:

• Donald Trump collected news and commentary from The New York Times

I see no reason to elevate the NYT's coverage above others. This link merely shows recent articles about Trump; it's not a fancy visualization, or deep-dive, or a single page that seeks to seriously evaluate Trump's record. This link also violates WP:ELREG since these articles require a subscription to view.

Proposal C: remove the following external link:

• Talking About Donald Trump at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television

I don't see the dueness of this. This links to a nonprofit project that interviews prominent and non-prominent figures in the television industry. There seem to be only 17 interviews, each with an average length of only two minutes. I see no encyclopedic or historical value. If we have an article on celebrities' views of Donald Trump, this would belong there. DFlhb (talk) 21:46, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Remove all.--Jack Upland (talk) 04:51, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Remove all, latter two are random undue weight links and the first is just a guy being investigated for how many possible crimes begging for money. Dronebogus (talk) 16:19, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Remove all~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 16:25, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Removal all - GoodDay (talk) 18:00, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Done, these removals seem uncontroversial. DFlhb (talk) 19:47, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Is there a reason we've deviated so much from WP:SUMMARY?

The Presidency section is a poor WP:SUMMARY of Presidency of Donald Trump. User:Valjean made similar comments a year ago, so I'll try to tackle it here and be specific.

• §§COVID-19 pandemic^§ is double the length of Presidency of Donald Trump#COVID-19 pandemic (38KB vs 22KB). Summaries should be shorter, not longer. I fail to understand, for example, why the White House outbreak is due in his BLP.
• §§Conflicts of interest^§ should be replaced with a summary of the Ethics section in Presidency, which has far more breadth.
• §§First impeachment^§ is 12KB, the same length as the section in Presidency; it should obviously be shorter. Both impeachments (and the trial) should likely be combined into a single section.
• §§False statements^§ is 11KB, the same length as the section in Presidency.

• §§False statements^§, §§Promotion of conspiracy theories^§, §§Relationship with the press^§ and §§Incitement of violence^§ should be transformed into a summary of Presidency of Donald Trump#Leadership style as a single section under §Presidency (2017–2021). Almost their entire contents are about his presidency, not his prior life.

• §§Concern about a possible coup attempt or military action^§: this content has received no sustained coverage; and is completely absent from the Presidency article. Is it due? I support trimming this and moving it to the proposed summary in §§Leadership style.
• §§Lafayette Square protester removal and photo op^§ inexplicably focuses on a single part of his administration's response to the George Floyd protests. These protests (or his admin's response) are otherwise not mentioned in this article whatsoever. In Presidency, the photo-op section only takes up a third of the George Floyd section. Cut cruft, and change it to a proper George Floyd protests summary section. We can keep the picture.
• The entire §§Foreign policy^§ section here is amazingly the same length (41KB) as the foreign affairs section in Presidency. It should be trimmed; take away his contradictory statements (already covered in §§False statements), and focus on his actions and their consequences.

DFlhb (talk) 23:44, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

To address a likely counterargument: any split-off article related to his presidency should be summarized in the Presidency article, which itself should be summarized here. They shouldn't be summarized here directly, since that would give them undue weight, and wouldn't respect the spirit of WP:SUMMARY. DFlhb (talk) 23:48, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

All these ideas are good ideas. Iamreallygoodatcheckers^t@lk 23:49, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Sedition is a fashion statement? Negligent homicide is a leadership style? Sources for that? SPECIFICO talk 23:58, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Could we keep this page on the constructive, not snarky, side? (and avoid putting garbage in others' mouths while we're at it?) The terms "sedition" and "negligent homicide" are absent from both pages.

See Presidency of Donald Trump#Leadership style, which is what these sections are summarizing (some bits are missing from there, so they should be copied to the Presidency article so we stop breaking WP:SUMMARY). DFlhb (talk) 00:14, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Then conform the subsidiary articles to this one,which has gotten far more attention and discussion. SPECIFICO talk 00:43, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Correcting the "summary is the same length as the original" problem without changing this article would require me to further bloat the 148KB Presidency article, which is not happening.

Treating the status quo as inherently valid would prevent this article from ever reaching GA- or FA-class. No RFC I'm aware of contradicts any of these changes, which nullifies the far more attention and discussion bit. DFlhb (talk) 01:57, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Good ideas. The Lafayette Square section has always been oversized.--Jack Upland (talk) 02:36, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

DFlhb, please review the editing history and talk page archives for this article and compare them with the associated "subsidiary articles". Yes, the best and most thorough editorial collaboration has been on this page, among nearly all the Trump-related pages. SPECIFICO talk 15:37, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

The presidency section in this article is not a summary of Presidency of Donald Trump, it's a summary of his presidency. Editors of this article may not concur with what editors of other pages have done. Also, the main article on the Lafayette Square photo-op, for example, is Donald Trump photo op at St. John's Church, not the presidency article. For the military and for some members of the Trump administration it was a pivotal event that was reflected in the actions/non-action before the Jan6 insurrection. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 15:06, 4 December 2022 (UTC) Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 15:28, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

For better or worse, the history of Trump articles on WP is that the content invariably originated here among a large number of well-informed editors. The quality of the "main articles" varies from excellent to atrocious. SPECIFICO talk 15:30, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

is not a summary of Presidency of Donald Trump: it should be, per WP:SUMMARY. If you want to ignore that guideline, please present arguments in favor of doing so.

The presidency section should give a bird's eye view, or synthesis, of his presidency. It currently gives excessive weight to certain aspects that some editors feel are important. The Presidency article achieves a far more proportional synthesis, which better reflects what has been found significant by secondary sources.

I've pointed out that St John's is a child article of his presidency, not his BLP, since it is pertains to his presidency; you assert otherwise, but without providing arguments. Incidentally, a past RFC concluded that just a few sentences were due here about that photo op, not a whole subsection, and my proposal would be a great way to implement that. Your link between St John's and January 6 doesn't seem to be shared by experts or scholars. The Lafayette lawsuits were tossed or settled, and the IG report, which says Trump was not a factor in the protests being cleared, has to my knowledge not been contested in published scholarship. DFlhb (talk) 17:37, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

I previously asked you to review the article history and talk page discussions that led to the current article text. I'll again ask you to do so. Some actions and events, such as the St. Johns bit, the "good people on both sides" bit, the North Korea love letters, etc. reflect Trump the man rather than or in addition to his official administration. I think your concerns will be greatly answered if you will please read the history of this article and the editing decisions relating to its text. SPECIFICO talk 18:11, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

I indeed have reviewed the archives, so please don't ask again unless you want to link me to a specific discussion. My lack of reply to your comment was deliberate, since it's a flawed appeal to implicit consensus ("far more attention and discussion", "most thorough", "large number of well-informed editors"), which I've already pointed out constitutes WP:STONEWALLING unless you can point to an specific relevant RFC that my proposal contradicts (I am not alleging bad faith).

Thankfully your reply also brings us to the crux of the matter: the presidency section should cover his presidency. WP:PROPORTION is determined by WP:RS, not any editor's WP:OR beliefs about which events best "reflect" his true personality. DFlhb (talk) 18:56, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Since you've reviewed the archive, perhaps you can identify specific discussion threads for which you can offer rebuttals that will change the outcome? Also, I'm sure you are aware that there is no RS that tells us how to write an encyclopedia and that NPOV is a matter of editors' evaluation. SPECIFICO talk 19:09, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Also, I've never heard anyone, previous to your comment, refer to Trump's "true personality" as my understanding is that he's overwhelmingly viewed as a WYSIWYG figure. But this is a bio, so the presidency section focuses on the personal stamp he put on his administration. Just as Reagan's does on his and FDR's does on his. SPECIFICO talk 19:17, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

There is no "outcome" to change, since you continue to handwave about non-existent past consensus. The BLPs of Reagan and FDR do not suffer from this issue, and you know they are off-topic. Don't expect me to engage any further unless you provide precise and constructive objections. DFlhb (talk) 19:38, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

OK then, all's well. SPECIFICO talk 20:08, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Which auxiliary function of "should"? Donald Trump has so many child and related articles that our summaries are usually shorter than the leads of those articles. We may eventually (when he's not runningm for or holding public office) get to the point where we can synchronize all of them but I don't see any way to do that now. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 11:52, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

I suspect concerning the 45th US president, summarising may be a challenge. GoodDay (talk) 20:04, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Definitely. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 11:52, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Modern-day party boss

Is this what we meant to say: he has been compared to a modern-day party boss. Compared? Isn't he a modern-day party boss? Jack Upland (talk) 03:03, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Have other articles than that NYT one called him that? If so, keep wording as is ("has been called/labelled" would IMO require quite a few WP:NEWSORG assertions, and straight Wikivoice would require scholarly consensus). If it's just one or two articles, it's not due. DFlhb (talk) 03:16, 1 December 2022 (UTC) , updated since I'm now strongly leaning towards the latter; it's just a metaphor and is not a common description based on my research 14:54, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

@DFlhb Regarding "Have other articles than the NYT one called him that?"

• Stephanie Muravchik and Jon A. Shields, The Other Democratic Party, The Bulwark, October 4, 2020
• MSNBC in this 7 minute YouTube clip (discussing the NYT article)
• Max Greenwood, No ‘mass exodus,’ but GOP sees Trump grip loosening, The Hill, February 25, 2022
• Maggie Haberman, Three Conversations With Donald Trump, The Atlantic, September 25, 2022

I think the most pertinent are the ones in the Bulwark and the Atlantic. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 19:23, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for that list. I don't think The Atlantic claims he's a boss, just that he tried to emulate one. The Bulwark is the highest-quality, since it's an exerpt from a book by two professors trying to explain Trump's rise. I like their "social proximity" argument, which other experts have echoed and which I think would be due, as we should try to explain Trump's rise. But I still don't think the "party boss" comparison is due: this piece came out before the 2020 election, and more recent commentary emphasizes the ways in which Trump's influence is waning. DFlhb (talk) 20:41, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

He has supplanted the traditional role of the party boss, who normally serves all the party's candidates, thus using the party machinery and funding exclusively for his own benefit and to harm any potential rivals within the party. The internal power struggle is very real. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:20, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

My understanding is that party bosses rarely ran for elective office. They preferred controlling a political party from behind the scenes. GoodDay (talk) 14:46, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

I think this is UNDUE. SPECIFICO talk 15:34, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

GoodDay, you're right. In European democracies, the party leader is the party boss, and if the party wins, they become the Prime Minister. Not so in American politics. The two functions are separate. That's what makes Trump an exception. Whatever he's doing, he grabs all power and tolerates no competition, including dissent from voters. He quashes all opposition. That's an attitude add odds with a fundamental principle of democracy. Trump's attitude is that his single vote trumps all votes against him, even a majority, so he rejects it and grabs power. In 2020 he tried to illegally retain it. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:55, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

He needs Republican voters in the 2024 primaries/caucuses to gain the Republican presidential nomination. If he can accomplish that? then he'll need independent voters to win the 2024 prez election. GoodDay (talk) 17:22, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Regardless, I don't think it's worded logically at the moment.--Jack Upland (talk) 23:55, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps what is meant is "compared to an old-fashioned party boss".--Jack Upland (talk) 06:08, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Call for "termination" of the U.S. Constitution

An RFC is being held on this matter, below this discussion GoodDay (talk) 06:57, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

On 4 December 2022, Trump apears to have used his Truth Social social media platform to call for the "termination" of the Constitution of the United States to attempt to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election. This is one of the most remarkable statements ever uttered by a U.S. politician, let alone by a former president; as far as I can see, it appears to be to a call for the overthrow of not just the current U.S. government, but the Republic itself.

Accordingly, I've added it both to Trump's 2024 presidential election campaign section, and to the lede.

Please discuss here as appropriate. — The Anome (talk) 15:54, 4 December 2022 (UTC) — The Anome (talk) 15:54, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Did he actually say that, in his words? Slatersteven (talk) 15:57, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes. His exact words were reportedly:

“ "A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!". ”

"termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution" seems pretty clear to me. -- — The Anome (talk) 16:16, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

He said it. Or "Truthed" it. Now we get another batshit crazy thing that he has said to debate for inclusion vs. WP:NOTNEWS. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:19, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, this I think should be added. 16:18, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

This statement and others like it are just drivel and if we add all of them to the article we are just giving him what he most wants, attention. Let us be the grown-ups and ignore this tantrum. Carptrash (talk) 17:15, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

This is not ordinary Trump drivel. This is exceptionally dangerous and unusual drivel, even for Trump. I support including this. Cullen328 (talk) 17:23, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Exclude it. If we included every quote/statement (spoken or written) by Trump? This BLP would be ten times longer, then it currently is. GoodDay (talk) 17:25, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

A statement is irrelevant. This belongs in Donald Trump 2024 presidential campaign. along with the Fuentes stuff. Every controversy over the coming years will "feel" significant, but we should heed WP:NOTNEWS. This article should instead cover scholarly views on Trump's relationship with the rule of law while President. [19][20][21][22][23][24] DFlhb (talk) 20:15, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

This is easy to include with minimal text addition, and it may facilitate compression of his similar anti-American views that are currently reported at greater length. SPECIFICO talk 20:26, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

We shouldn't include this per WP:NOTNEWS. It's way too early to be including this statement. It may be significant, or maybe not. Let's wait a bit. Cessaune (talk) 23:56, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Exclude this is WP:NOTNEWS. Iamreallygoodatcheckers^t@lk 02:00, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Any examples of other times a former POTUS or current candidate for POTUS has explicitly renounced the US Government in writing? Some events, in context, are immediately and self-evidently noteworthy, per HINDENBURG SPECIFICO talk 02:08, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

If he goes up in flames, we’ll definitely mention that. Inflammatory social media posts — yawn. Dime a dozen, that piggy bank is about the size of the Hindenburg already. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 11:47, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

If it's included, it should be the actual quote from Trump, instead of the fraudulent media paraphrasing. Should read "Trump used his Truth Social social media platform to call for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution." Blue Eyes Cryin (talk) 02:13, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

• We seem to be heading down the "did you hear the latest outrageous thing Trump wrote/said/did" road again. Been there, done that - WP:NOTNEWS, TFG on his social media platform whose only users are the members of his "base" and the unfortunate journalists who have to monitor it so they can fill some space in their newspapers. Quoting/paraphrasing other editors: batshit crazy and attention-seeking drivel sound about right. Public patio dinners with lunatics and far-right extremists, troothing the first outrageous thing that comes to his mind, suing the United States — anything to get in and/or dominate the news. "There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 11:56, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

The back-pedaling by the usual suspects has begun. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 12:58, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

• I think this provides a chance to summarize a lot of the content that refers to or gives examples of anti-American sentiment and make the article more concise. We can't remove all of the other content, but this does provide his own summary of his creed. So I don't think NOTNEWS is quite as clear with this one. SPECIFICO talk 13:55, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Aside from WP:NOTNEWS, this isn't even new. When did he ever put the interests of the U.S. (or humanity, for that matter) above his own self-interest? Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 14:59, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Space4Time3Continuum2x, when you say here that "appears to imply a conclusion that isn’t in the two 2022 cites," do you mean "...so he could be reinstated as president"?

• CNN: "...called for the termination of the Constitution to overturn the 2020 election and reinstate him to power..."[25].

• Politico: "...argued that unprecedented measures were, therefore, called for to return him to office."[26]. (emphases mine)

or do you mean some other conclusion? soibangla (talk) 13:56, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

These is the paragraph you added to the 2016 campaign's Campaign rhetoric and political positions: During his 2016 campaign, legal experts across the political spectrum said Trump's rhetoric showed contempt for the First Amendment, the separation of powers and the rule of law. After his many failed attempts to overturn the 2020 election he had lost, in December 2022 Trump called for "the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution" so he could be reinstated as president. Seems to imply a straight line from the 2016 legal experts (that's almost a verbatim quote from the NYT) to CNN and Politico's 2022 articles but those two articles are basically about (mostly Republican) politician's reactions to Trump's latest "big lie" outburst. Quoting Hakeem Jeffries, as quoted in Politico and others: "It was a strange statement, but the Republicans are going to have to work out their issues with the former president." Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 14:42, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

The edit shows he has for years consistently demonstrated he has contempt for core American values, culminating now with a flat-out call to terminate the Constitution so he can be reinstated, and the provided sources show that. soibangla (talk) 14:55, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

"consistently demonstrated he has contempt for core American values" That is why he was elected in the first place. This contempt for democracy is shared by his voters. Dimadick (talk) 13:47, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't see this article even touches upon his consistent authoritarian rhetoric. It's time it does. soibangla (talk) 14:59, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

• Include Trump's statement in this article at least; I am ambivalent about the lead and will let others decide. I'd suggest using his exact wording for the article body: "A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Or a paraphrase, or some mix of paraphrase and quote: "In response to his electoral defeat that he described as fraudulent, Trump called for the 'termination' of articles within the constitution... [end with direct quote?]" -Darouet (talk) 13:44, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
• Include It’s one thing that a president spends years praising multiple, brutal, authoritarian leaders. It’s one thing that an ex-president says he loves members of a mob, 900 arrested, involved in an insurrection and states he’ll consider pardons. It’s one thing that he calls for a state election to be ignored and the loser installed as Governor of Arizona. But, it’s another when that ex-president calls for the “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution", and for his immediate reinstatement as president or a repeat of a two-year past election. I think this warrants a brief inclusion. O3000, Ret. (talk) 16:12, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Include and comment, but I think if this is to be included (and I believe it should, personally,) then it should be included as a direct quote. Given the nature of the statement, in order to avoid any kind of accusation of bias we should report the incident via his quote exactly. We should avoid any implication, and just say what he says. I know that's kind of obvious, but that's my thought. Chaheel Riens (talk) 16:40, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

• Does anyone have a link to the original statement in Truth Social, or a link to a copy of the original whole message that the excerpt came from? Neither of these appear to be in the sources. Bob K31416 (talk) 20:41, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
  • Here is his whole post: "So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!" --Fox News @Bob K31416: -- MelanieN (talk) 00:25, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

    Thanks. Coincidentally, I was just about to post the following message when I saw your post.

—Here's a copy of the original in situ post [27] that I obtained from [28]. Bob K31416 (talk) 00:50, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

I'll take a crack at trying to interpret it. It looks like he was trying to say that election rules and regulations, including those in the constitution, have proven to be a failure because they allowed a massive election fraud, and they should be corrected. When he said "terminated", I think he meant that they should be replaced with election rules that would correct what he claimed was a massive fraud. Bob K31416 (talk) 16:31, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

That isn’t close to what he said – which doesn’t matter as we don’t do interpretations here. And, his claim that there was a revelation of massive fraud is, yet again, another flat out lie. He said that there should be a new election or declare him president. Curious in what that means. Does he become president for four years changing all future election dates? The entire thing is crazy. O3000, Ret. (talk) 21:05, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

• Include per my comments at #Discussion in the thread Talk:Donald_Trump#RFC:_terminating_the_Constitution. (But unless you have great sources specifically addressing this distinction, don't fall into the trap of framing it as advocating for throwing out the whole constitution; Trump was advocating for throwing out the inconvenient parts. In other words, not quite as hypocritical, but still self-serving.) TheFeds 00:37, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

He wrote that "A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution", as quoted in the sources. "All" sounds pretty inclusive. (Not that I think it matters. He's been saying and doing or trying to this all along — WP:NOTNEWS.) Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 12:28, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

• Include as a truly unusual and very widely reported and discussed statement no other American politician has uttered as it violates their oath of allegiance to the Constitution. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 06:36, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
• See below - There's an RFC being held ↓ on this topic. GoodDay (talk) 06:55, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

May we please 'hat' this discussion? There's an RFC being held about this very topic. GoodDay (talk) 22:23, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

• Comment. The incident is mentioned on Truth_Social#Donald_Trump, with a full quote of Trump's post. I just checked for any mentions in RS later than six days ago — nothing. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 12:43, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

References

RFC: terminating the Constitution

Should this content be included?

During his 2016 campaign, legal scholars across the political spectrum said Trump's rhetoric showed contempt for the First Amendment, the separation of powers and the rule of law. After his many failed attempts to overturn the 2020 election he had lost, in December 2022 Trump called for "the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution" so he could be reinstated as president.

sources: [29][30][31][32] soibangla (talk) 17:36, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

No, simply because it's too soon. Right now it seems important, but I imagine it will be forgotten before Christmas. We don't need to document everything dangerous this guy says, and especially not so soon after he has said it. This page would literally explode under the pressure. Cessaune (talk) 22:11, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Leaning No It is significant that the candidate of the party that claims it is strictly Constitutionalist wants to shred the Constitution for personal gain, but I'm always hesitant to add much to this very large article. Would Donald Trump 2024 presidential campaign suffice? Zaathras (talk) 22:32, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, but with adjustments (see #Discussion). TheFeds 00:28, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Poor RfC, please amend - discussion in the section immediately above shows support for a few options, including directly quoting Trump. The text proposed in this RfC from soibangla - thanks for this first draft - doesn't include a direct quote. Instead we get a lot of editorial comment. Let's reformat this RfC by adding a few more options. And please note where this text is supposed to go, otherwise we're all wasting our time. -Darouet (talk) 00:58, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Obvious Include It should go without saying that a former president making calls to rescind the Constitution should be included. Really nothing more should need to be said here. This is clearly notable, relevant, reliably sourced, and of encylopedic interest. Add it to the lede. There-being (talk) 01:49, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

• Improper RfC. Soibangla, me, (two proponents?) surely you know better than to start an RfC a day after the discussion had begun, while editors were weighing in, e.g., (here and here). Please withdraw it. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 07:31, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
• Yes. We can fit this in.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:40, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
• Yes, as this very much is about him, and how he thinks. This is either utter BS and not meant, or is meant, either way it is a window into how he thinks. Slatersteven (talk) 13:37, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
• No he has made numerous absurd comments about his false stance that the election was stolen from him and there is no reason to include this specifically, especially considering how recent it is. Also, that is an extremely misleading quote considering he said that "a massive fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination..." he never stated that the Constitution should be terminated, but that he believed the Constitution was allowed to be terminated by what he considers the "massive fraud" which he believes stole the election from him. Bill Williams 13:42, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
  1. "If there was massive fraud, the constitution should be terminated."
  2. "There was massive fraud."
  3. Therefore? -- The constitution should be terminated.

  SPECIFICO talk 13:59, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

And, there was no "massive fraud". No fraud at all. (Well, calling it a fraud is a fraud.) He is always saying there is massive fraud, even in elections before they have taken place. The difference here is calling for "the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution". That gives this WP:WEIGHT. O3000, Ret. (talk) 15:03, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

"Termination of all rules, regulations, and articles" — does that include the traffic code? Mr. Law and Order calling for anarchy — every news outlet reported it, and two days later its gone from the news because it's completely bonkers, and it's just another one in a long line of idiocies he's uttered. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 15:14, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

• No - I am uncomfortable about directly linking people's opinions on his 2016 comments with his 2022 comments. It feels a bit like "you said we were crying wolf, but look at what he's said now!"--Eldomtom2 (talk) 14:31, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Poor RfC, please amend - I don't have an objection to having the quote in the article, but this RfC doesn't say where this quote would be included. It seems like this should have been worked out in the previous discussion before doing a RfC. Thanks! Nemov (talk) 15:02, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

• No There's a difference between stating what he did, and characterizing what he did. This goes too far into the latter. It's perfectly fine for Op/Ed columns and political opinion makers to do so; but we serve a different purpose at Wikipedia, and this seems to be a violation of WP:TONE for the type of writing we do. --Jayron32 15:34, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
• No While I heavily appreciate the reliance on scholars, my comment above was supportive of including scholarly views about his actions related to the rule of law while President; not about his campaign rhetoric. The latter would be due if he'd never been elected, but we're past that. Current and future scholarship about Trump's negative impacts on the rule of law (or anything else) are far more noteworthy than tweets, since they impact real people (and American history). As is, I support neither the first part (about legal scholars), nor the second part (about his termination call), nor the juxtaposition of the two, which is reasonable but seems like WP:OR.

I'd also strongly caution against supporting RFCs that propose long passages of content; if this passes, and anyone wants to modify it a year from now, they may need to start a new RFC, and for that, they'd need to show that circumstances changed since the current RFC. Let's avoid "locking in" large portions of content with RFCs when informal discussions are more than appropriate.

For similar reasons, I also suggest we avoid RFCs that aren't over verbatim long passages of text, but still propose including very recent news (like: Should this article mention Trump's call for terminating the constitution?). We should avoid "locking-in" things that may fail the WP:10YT, due to the inherent difficulty in overturning previous RFCs. RFCs are better reserved to what goes in the lead, or to agree on specific wording when there's already consensus to include. DFlhb (talk)

• No per tone and OR/ SYNTH issues as previously discussed. Also wanted to echo that this is a poor and improper RfC. I'd support inclusion but the wording is atrocious Anon0098 (talk) 05:25, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
• No - If we added every quote from Trump? the page would be ten times longer then it currently is. GoodDay (talk) 06:10, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
• No - This is a pretty straightforward example of WP:NOTNEWS. We can't mention every contentious, controversial quote that Trump says. This brings back of memories of when we decided to not include Trump saying Putin was smart back during the start Russia invasion of Ukraine on NOTNEWS grounds. Furthermore, the linking of Trump's comments from 2016 with his comments in 2022 is problematic with WP:NPOV and WP:SYNTH; it's not Wikipedia's place to make such connections. Iamreallygoodatcheckers^t@lk 16:09, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
• No. Each individual fact in this text may be appropriate somewhere in the article if they prove sufficiently relevant, but combining them in this fashion gets into OR territory. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:17, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
• No Certainly not in the form proposed here, which as noted above is combining different things in OR fashion. And no, even without the OR, because Trump tweets all kinds of outrageous stuff; even something this outrageous is routine for him. (Maybe they'll bring it up at his trial for obstruction or sedition.) Anyhow, 2 days later he denied that he ever said it: "The Fake News is actually trying to convince the American People that I said I wanted to ‘terminate’ the Constitution. This is simply more DISINFORMATION & LIES." [33] -- MelanieN (talk) 22:28, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
• No Trump says stupid things every day which often dominate the 24 hour news cycle, especially when he was president. Whether or not his latest comments will be remembered only time will tell. I notice that U.S. mainstream media reported this as Trump wanting to abolish the constitution, when in fact he merely asked to ignore it in a specific case. TFD (talk) 22:42, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

  Once it's ignored, what would be the benefit of going back through the portal? At least that was how sources and a significant minority of dissenting Republican Senators and Governors reacted to the remark. SPECIFICO talk 22:46, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

  A significant number of leading Republicans have distanced themselves from many comments Trump has made. TFD (talk) 23:28, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

  Source for that? RS reporting and broadcast interviews with senior R's show more criticism of this recent bit than, e.g. the tiki march in Charleston or the various 2016 post-nomination dust-ups. It appears to be on a par with "why wouldn't I believe Putin over US intelligence?" or the intitial but quickly reversed Republican condemnation of the 1/6 faux pas. It's certainly more than various of the Covid or race-related flaps that came and went. SPECIFICO talk 23:45, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

No. More information is needed to identify who the "legal scholars across the political spectrum" are. This topic needs to appear extremely factual, using very specific names and information to ensure credibility. Pickalittletalkalittle (talk) 21:02, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Obvious include but no in the current SYNTHy editorializing format. Nix the idea that "we hear" "from everyone" "GREAT PEOPLE" "on BOTH sides" were haranguing him in 2016. IF that were kept, it needs to address that the never-Trumpers were a media-hyped but utterly impotent group of pundits who were completely ignored by the electorate and eventually ignored by almost all elected Republican officials. There wasn't an actual broad consensus on this—howevermuch there should've been—and it's cherrypicking FRINGE to pretend otherwise. The actual quote, yes, of course. This is unquestionably going to be the go-to historians will use as shorthand for all the other insanity, pending an actual coup attempt. (呸呸呸) — LlywelynII 10:54, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

• No, not of singular importance to be noted on the page.--Ortizesp (talk) 04:01, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

• What section of the article would this be included? It's not clear from the RfC. Nemov (talk) 18:28, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

• Consider stating instead of After his many failed attempts to overturn the 2020 election he had lost, in December 2022 Trump called for "the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution" so he could be reinstated as president., Asserting that an election fraud of large magnitude had taken place, Trump opined that this circumstance "'allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution'", and advocated that the 2020 election be overturned. I would source it to at least [34], which implies the need for quotation in quotation. (It is a controversial statement that must be clearly seen as not a paraphrase, but per WP:SELFSOURCE we would presumably avoid citing the social media post itself.) Importantly, this characterizes his ongoing motivations, using his particularly pithy December statement as a definitive example. (In contrast to just reporting on what he said in December as an item of its own.) The distinction between bluntly calling for the removal of the constitution (not what he said: he is obviously using "all" to mean "any", instead of to advocate for an utterly lawless society) and advocating a supralegal rationale for deleting inconvenient parts of the constitution (even if the rationale is self-serving and based on false beliefs) is important; retaining "allows" assists in this. TheFeds 00:28, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

@Soibangla: in light of the comments, would you consider adding an alternate wording that avoids the uncomfortable juxtaposition? SPECIFICO talk 15:45, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

I wasn't aware that this was under discussion, so I added information, taken from the Truth Social page, about Trump's claims that alleged fraud allows for the termination of the Constitution. I think someone removed the since I don't see them now. I think we could include info, but we should (1) quote the full post and (2) word his claim as being that alleged fraud "allows" for rather than "calls" for the termination of the Constituion. Most likely, they mean the same thing, and many sources interpret his post as "calling" for the Constitution's claim. However, Trump subsequently denied he called for the termination of the Constitution and shared a link to an article claiming that by "allows for," Trump meant that those engaging in voter fraud were effectively terminating the Constitution, not that Trump was calling for the Constitution's termination. Again, I'm not saying this is right, but since Wikipedia articles are suppposed to be neutral, "allows" for is the most objective term to use since that's what he said. —The Sackinator (talk) 14:44, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

New sentence?

Proposed sentence in lead, after paragraph 3, sentence 2: At the time of his inauguration, Trump was the oldest person to assume the office of U.S. president. (or something similar). What do y'all think? Cessaune (talk) 04:57, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

We've discussed this before. I would oppose this for two reasons. Firstly, the introduction shouldn't be like a baseball card composed of this and that supposed record. Secondly, because of increased longevity, presidential age is not remarkable. Recording the relative ages of presidents is an exercise in trivia, which is increasingly uninteresting the more presidents are contending for the crown of "oldest".--Jack Upland (talk) 05:55, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Agree with Jack Upland that, given all else Trump is known for, this point isn't worth putting into the lead. But it's a great suggestion and worthwhile having it in the article body. -Darouet (talk) 15:53, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

False statements

Why is there a specific section devoted to false statements by Mr. Trump? There is nothing similar for President Biden or, indeed, any other Democrat politician. In contrast to the statements about Trump, Biden's statements are characterized not as lies, or false, but rather as "gaffes" or "embellishments" or statements meant to get a point across. This despite the fact that Biden has been lying for decades as a senator, VP, and now President, and his press secretary and other must constantly walk back his statements and try to explain why he didn't really lie. For purposes of nonpartisanship and a neutral point of view, a similar standard of downplaying the statements by Biden should apply to Trump. His statements should be referred to similarly as gaffes or embellishments. Not Illogical (talk) 18:49, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Our content is based on what is reported in reliable sources. If the reliable sources say that Trump's statements were lies, and others' were gaffes, then the content on Wikipedia will reflect that. Additionally, why is your only issue whether Democrat politicians have similar content? Why not other Republicans? Why not members of the Conservative Party? --OuroborosCobra (talk) 18:59, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

From the Wikipedia policy section Wikipedia:Verifiability#Verifiability_does_not_guarantee_inclusion,

"While information must be verifiable for inclusion in an article, not all verifiable information must be included. Consensus may determine that certain information does not improve an article. Such information should be omitted or presented instead in a different article. The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content."

The responsibility for what is presented in the article and how it is presented lies with the editors, not the reliable sources. From the above, "The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content." Bob K31416 (talk) 00:49, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Not Illogical, please read the many citations that support the article text. That will answer your question without requiring the time of other editors here. SPECIFICO talk 19:13, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia, Not Illogical. You need sources to prove Trump doesn't lie and you need sources to prove Biden does lie. With sources for neither? you're very much (figuratively) stuck in the mud. GoodDay (talk) 19:22, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

You're just playing semantics. Gaffes, embellishments, fabrications - these all mean the same thing - false statements. Same as Trump. There should not be a different standard for one politician vs another. Not Illogical (talk) 21:06, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

I too wish we could bring a balance to this page & Biden's page. If you can accomplish that? all the power to you. GoodDay (talk) 21:11, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

The same standards are used for all biographical articles. The articles differ because the people differ: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump O3000, Ret. (talk) 21:50, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Biden's false statements have gain widespread attention. He said he had three degrees, finished in the top half of his law class, his son died in Iraq, he was arrested for supporting Nelson Mandela, he marched in the Civil Rights movement, etc. Bush said Saddam Hussein had WMDs, Clinton said he never had sexual relations with that woman, George H.W. Bush wouldn't raise taxes. It's all part of the job description. — Preceding unsigned comment added by The Four Deuces (talk • contribs)

Disingenuous. There is a world of difference between gaffes (Beau Biden served in Iraq, and later died of cancer) and the deliberate delivery of a lie (Inauguration crowd, and ordered a gov't photographer to falsify images). Be better. Zaathras (talk) 06:11, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

This article is based on reliable sources. If you have reliable sources that contradict e.g. the sources for the "false statements" section, please present them. If you think that the Biden article fails to mention parts of his biography, you need to take that up on the Biden page. BTW, Biden has a speech impediment (stutter) that he’s learned to control but has to control every time he speaks. That makes it harder to concentrate on what he’s saying, so he misspeaks, notices, and corrects. If you want to take the false or misleading claims Biden made on the campaign trail in 1987 to the Biden page, here’s the info, and here’s the info on the arrest story which may have been Biden misremembering being detained during a visit to South Africa. Just as a reminder: Trump never stopped making false claims even after they had been pointed out to him over and over again, and there is a difference between keeping up the "Big Lie" (rigged voting machines, millions of illegal aliens and dead people voting) and saying you graduated in the top half of your class instead of the bottom half. Politicians (Cotton, Pompeo, DeSantis, to name a few more Republicans currently believed to be contemplating a 2024 run) and celebs polishing their resumes — not the same as spreading lies about treatments for COVID-19 or election fraud). Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 11:30, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Well the sources can be biased. What is reported and misreported can be just as biased as what is not reported or ignored by certain media outlets.--JOJ ^Hutton 11:39, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

That's why we use reliable sources. O3000, Ret. (talk) 12:30, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

So-called reliable sources in the news media are a problem. They are usually better than sources not considered reliable by Wikipedia but they are not trustworthy enough to be considered authoritative, especially when politics or other contentious subjects are concerned. Bob K31416 (talk) 14:43, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes they are if consensus says they are. Slatersteven (talk) 14:48, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Last time I was involved with the reliable sources board, concerning discussions on which news outlets were reliable & which weren't. The supposed pro-Republican ones were voted down as unreliable & the supposed pro-Democratic ones were mostly voted as reliable. So, I'll let ya figure it out from there. GoodDay (talk) 14:52, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

This article does not only use American sources. Besides (even if this were true), maybe the problem is that many "pro-republican" sources tell lies? But this is not the place to change policy or argue for source reliability. We go by policy and policy is all we go by. The consensus is these are RS, so wither change it at the right venue or stop using non policy-based arguments. Slatersteven (talk) 14:58, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Those arguments were already held & thus again, I say to the OP, if he can get over the hurdles placed in front of him? all the power to him. GoodDay (talk) 15:19, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

The problem the OP has is attempting to edit a very difficult article, with very little experience, no understanding of WP:RS, and the burden of a heavy bias. You are not helping them by suggesting their problem lies with WikiPedia. That gives them no reason to learn the ropes. O3000, Ret. (talk) 16:18, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

• The deal is, it isn't merely that Trump has said things that weren't true. It's that it is a defining characteristic of the story of his life. Let's take a little analogy. Joey Chestnut's article spends much more time highlighting the fact that he eats hot dogs. Really, much more than articles on other people. I'm pretty sure Joe Biden has eaten hotdogs before. If Joey Chestnut's article spends so much text space dedicated to eating hot dogs, but Joe Biden's does not, then that is wrong! They both eat hot dogs! Why are we being so unfair to Joey Chestnut! We need to remove any mention of him eating hot dogs unless we also catalogue every hot dog Joe Biden ate! That, in a nutshell, is the OP's only argument here, and it really makes no more sense in the context of untruthful things said by Trump... --Jayron32

So then nothing can be done here, and this is a waste of everyone's time and should be closed. Slatersteven (talk) 16:29, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Do not close the discussion. Bob K31416 (talk) 18:51, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

It's the"'defining characteristic of the story of his (Trump's) life? Seriously? That is an incredibly biased statement. But along a similar vein, why aren't decades of Biden's public gaffes, folklore, dates that don't add up, shaving factual edges, exaggeration, and other lies considered to be his defining characteristic? Not Illogical (talk) 19:00, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Because Trump is the Joey Chestnut of making false statements. Just because other people have eaten things, doesn't mean that the Joey Chestnut's article is biased because it heavily focuses on what he eats. Same deal here. --Jayron32 19:05, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

It appears that your argument comes down to simply expressing your opinion about Trump, by saying that he makes false statements like a competitive hot dog eater eats hot dogs. Bob K31416 (talk) 20:11, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

It's not my opinion. For many years, reliable sources have described Trump as a habitual speaker of untruthful statements. It isn't that he makes untruthful statements, it's that he is well noted as making them, so much so that it makes up a significant part of the narrative of his life. Not merely that he has made them, but rather that reliable sources have focused on the number, severity, frequency, etc. of the untruthful things he says. Since reliable sources have given it special attention, Wikipedia should as well. --Jayron32 15:38, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

A Google search will show you that there are a quite large number of sources which state that the defining characteristic of the Trump presidency has been lies. OTOH, your comment about Biden is a WP:BLP violation that you ought self-delete. This is particularly concerning as it appears you have had multiple edits on Biden's TP that were WP:REVDELed. O3000, Ret. (talk) 19:23, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

No doubt you can find such sources, but the authors aren't necessarily unbiased. Here is a BBC article written at the end of his presidential term, US historians on what Donald Trump's legacy will be. None of the sections in the article is focused on lying. Bob K31416 (talk) 20:11, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

You think finding one article that doesn't say something means something? We have an entire article on this with 417 cites: Veracity of statements by Donald Trump. O3000, Ret. (talk) 20:28, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

I was responding to your remark that "the defining characteristic of the Trump presidency has been lies." Note "the defining characteristic" was your point, not simply that he made many false statements. The article I gave consisted of historians' views at the end of Trump's presidency, not journalists' opinions during presidential election campaigns or during a presidency involving an ongoing conflict between the press and Trump. You'll need to find historians' views at the end or after Trump's presidency that make your point that "the defining characteristic of the Trump presidency has been lies." Bob K31416 (talk) 21:41, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Your cite is not relevant as it does not respond to my remark. I can find a billion cites that don't say something. Did you read our article on this? Veracity of statements by Donald Trump It includes scholars and historians. Over 30,000 documented incidents in his presidency alone. I didn't make up the term. And please don't blame this on an "ongoing conflict between the press and Trump". (As I sit here, I look at the Trump building across the street that he claimed has 18 more floors than it has. I find it humorous.) O3000, Ret. (talk) 21:57, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

That's not the BBC talking. They selected six historians and published what they said two years ago. Quoting one of them: As a historian who studies the intersection of media and the presidency, it is truly striking the ways in which he has convinced millions of people that his fabricated version of events is true. ... four years during which President Trump actively advanced misinformation. Brownell also mentions "alternative facts". Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 12:51, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

The BBC article [35] came out at the end of Trump's presidency, Jan 19, 2021. The article consists of responses by six historians to two questions posed by the BBC author, "What's Trump's key legacy?" and "What else stands out to you?". The responses were edited for length and clarity by the BBC author. The BBC author gave the following titles to each historian's section, 'His relationship with alt-right', 'A surrender of global leadership', 'Putting democracy to the test', 'Reshaping the judiciary', 'Contesting the 2020 election', and 'Standing up to China'. Bob K31416 (talk) 15:50, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

For all normal people (Trump is not one of them ), lying is a "bug", not a "feature", of life. It's part of being human, but an exceptional and regrettable part for which normal people apologize and self correct. Not so with Trump. For him, lying is his fundamental modus operandi, so it's a constant, second by second, ever present, part of everything he says and does. Always assume Trump is lying. He lies "all the time". David Zurawik says we should "just assume Trump's always lying and fact check him backwards" because that's "how to cover a habitual liar". -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:32, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Isn't calling Trump a habitual liar, not normal, the Joey Chestnut of making false statement, etc. a WP:BLP violation? Not Illogical (talk) 20:11, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

No, they are backed up by the myriad RS we use to document this topic in our articles, a few of which I used above. Habitual liars are not "normal". His penchant for lying is so well known and documented that calling him a liar is no more sensational or a BLP violation than saying "the sky is blue." Disputing that would be a sensational and false claim without any foundation in RS. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:26, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

There are also numerous sources that document Biden's habitual lying. So we can call Biden a habitual liar, not normal, and the Joey Chestnut of falsehoods. Good to know. Not Illogical (talk) 21:59, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

No, there are not numerous RS that document Biden habitual lying. First, I suggest never linking to a NYPost editorial again. The only good sources you provided say nothing about habitual lying. They are mostly about relating old stories incorrectly, often to comfort or praise people who have been through a disaster or war. On the Biden TP, you said this was all due to Biden's age and went on to talk about a supposed bathroom incident when meeting with the Pope, and what you called other “pooping issues". Now you are saying it’s lies. Please read WP:BLP carefully. O3000, Ret. (talk) 22:25, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

I think Biden knows that he wasn't arrested in South Africa.--Jack Upland (talk) 02:30, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Actually, I believe detained means arrested. Arrested does not mean charged. O3000, Ret. (talk) 02:43, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Detained does not mean arrested. Arrested does mean you have been charged. Not Illogical (talk) 12:19, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Glad we have an expert here on South African legal terminology under de Klerk. Even in the US, a warrantless arrest does not mean charged. After a period of time, there must be a charge or release. And, the first definition of arrest in the OED is "To stop". To compare this example of semantics with the subject of this article is just odd. As presidential historian Michael Beschloss said: "I have never seen a president in American history who has lied so continuously and so outrageously as Donald Trump, period,....” O3000, Ret. (talk) 14:06, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

References

Glad you are an expert on reliable sources. I guess in your mind (like many editors here), if it's left-leaning newspaper like NY Times, Washington Post, etc. it's just fine, but if it's a right-leaning news organization it is unreliable. Not Illogical (talk) 11:55, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

We allow plenty of right-wing sources, The Times The Telegraph for example. Slatersteven (talk) 12:09, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

You appear to be unacquainted with Wikipedia’s perennial list of reliable and unreliable sources. You may want to take a look at it. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 12:58, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Trump Organization found guilty

A jury has found Trump Organization guilty of tax fraud in a New York court.[36]. SPECIFICO talk 22:45, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

You should discuss it at The Trump Organization article. TFD (talk) 05:32, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Detailed coverage belongs there. A brief description definitely belongs here. This man built and operated a criminal enterprise for decades. Cullen328 (talk) 05:36, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Was Trump himself charged or convicted? or just the company. GoodDay (talk) 06:06, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Trump was not charged. However, his wealth is in the organization. It is likely to be affected not so much by the fine, more by the financial/reputational effect on the company's continued operations. Whether a mention belongs in this article depends on what RS say. O3000, Ret. (talk) 16:30, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Undecided whether and how to mention here. It's just two of the 500 or so entities of the Trump Organization, i.e., the Trump Corporation and ‌the ‌Trump Payroll Corporation who were convicted and are now felons, "maximum penalty the company could pay is $1.62 million". They'll pay out of petty cash, AKA Trump's personal PAC, shut the two entities down, and register new corporations. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 16:27, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

• It probably should be mentioned in the body of the article, but at this time, likely doesn't itself need a whole section or highlighting in the lead. It certainly is, in some way, relevant to the story of Trump's life, but given that the article is already so long, we can use other articles to contain the details. --Jayron32 16:30, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
• I'm leaning toward a brief mention in Donald_Trump#Real_estate but nothing more here. If this becomes something bigger (likely will) then we can dedicate more space to it. EvergreenFir (talk) 16:32, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

  Tend to agree, a line or two is all we need. Slatersteven (talk) 16:38, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Nothing is needed in this article. The tax fraud was about officers in the Trump Organization - not about Donald Trump. There is no reason to mention it here.Not Illogical (talk) 18:53, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

"The Trump Organization". Can you identity the 2nd word of that three-word name, and then identify the particular person who is the sole or principal owner of the roughly 500 business entities under that umbrella? A mention in Trump's bio is most quite relevant and necessary, and I am usually hesitant to add new material to this already large article. Zaathras (talk) 23:35, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Mention it in the The Trump Organization page, since the former US president himself hasn't been charged/convicted. GoodDay (talk) 23:44, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

counterexample SPECIFICO talk 00:07, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Not really. The Teapot Dome scandal was Watergate before Watergate and resulted in new balances of power in the federal government and directly involved the Harding administration. Incomparable to the Trump Organization getting convicted of tax fraud, unless RSs directly say this significantly damages him in some way (ie his reputation, wealth, etc) Anon0098 (talk) 01:08, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

All fine. I just meant to address the mere fact he was not charged does not outweigh whatever other factors may be assessed or develop. We do have lots about Trump Org in this article without knowing his particular role in much of it. SPECIFICO talk 01:45, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, Anon0098. I couldn't have pointed out the difference any better. GoodDay (talk) 02:06, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

• The separate fraud lawsuit against the Trump org is likely to have far more effect on Trump. Last month, the judge ruled that: "Trump and the Trump Organization 'demonstrated propensity to engage in persistent fraud' and that appointing an outside monitor 'is the most prudent and narrowly tailored mechanism to ensure there is no further fraud or illegality' pending the resolution of the lawsuit." The article continues with several major effects on the Trump org., and therefore Trump. Basically, Trump cannot make major financial moves without court approval. O3000, Ret. (talk) 16:25, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

  Also, prior to the verdict, Trump attempted to incorporate Trump Organization II, which was reported as an attempt to insulate future business from liability he expected in the matter of the recent and current matters. I didn't start this thread with any proposal that we should add text at this time. However, there's lots of content in this article that is less closely related to Trump than the just-announced convictions. SPECIFICO talk 17:03, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

  Well, then we should trim it out, right? The article is massive as it is. Cessaune (talk) 23:23, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Well Objective3000. We'll have to wait & see if it'll effect Trump or more importantly, his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. GoodDay (talk) 18:11, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

It has already affected Trump. It will not affect his campaign. O3000, Ret. (talk) 19:30, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

• We already mention In 2018, he and his family were reported to have committed tax fraud, and the New York tax department began investigating. Propose we remove; and support mentioning these two companies' convictions. I'm not comfortable with the current "reported to have"; either Trump and his family have been charged (in which case, mention it), or they haven't been (so don't). DFlhb (talk) 00:32, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

References

donald trump

You should add twice impeached. 47.7.246.107 (talk) 06:42, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

It is literally in the lede, and each impeachment has its own section. Chaheel Riens (talk) 07:41, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Bone spurs etc

Space4Time3Continuum2x, Re [37] — Here's the sentence with bone spurs.

While in college, Trump obtained student draft deferments during the Vietnam War era and after college he was deferred due to bone spurs on his feet.

Bob K31416 (talk) 20:29, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

This is the current text:

While in college, Trump obtained four student draft deferments during the Vietnam War era. In 1966, he was deemed fit for military service based upon a medical examination, and in July 1968, a local draft board classified him as eligible to serve. In October 1968, he was classified 1-Y, a conditional medical deferment, and in 1972, he was reclassified 4-F due to bone spurs, permanently disqualifying him from service.

Why remove four? Trump's story about why he was drafted in 1968 shifted, from high lottery number (i.e., unlikely to be drafted), to conditional medical deferment after journalists looked up his Selective Service record, and back to high lottery number. He couldn't remember which foot and eventually settled on both feet, didn't mention the 4-F permanent classification, and said his temporary deferment was for a "temporary minor malady", based on a letter from a doctor whose name he didn't remember. I don't see a reason to keep the part I struck in the above quote but I think the rest needs to stay. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 13:35, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

I made the change you suggested. Bob K31416 (talk) 17:34, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

After college, Trump's student deferment ended, so his classification automatically changed to 1-A for a couple of months until he had an Armed Forces physical exam and was classified 1-Y. So the rest of the second sentence isn't very useful. I would suggest the following rewrite.

While in college, Trump obtained four student draft deferments during the Vietnam War era. After college he got a 1-Y medical deferment in 1968, and in 1972 he was reclassified 4-F due to bone spurs, permanently disqualifying him from service.

Bob K31416 (talk) 19:12, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

That completely removes the significant content on this matter. If that were the whole story it would be trivia that does not belong in this or any article. Please see my proposed edit below, in which I attempt to state and source what is significant without excessive detail that asks the reader to draw the conclusion that has been stated explicitly in RS. SPECIFICO talk 20:10, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

This is another one of several similar cases in which we're leaving it to the readers to make a conclusion about his truthfulness, etc. If RS found the the evasive statements, spur jump, etc. noteworhty, the article could just state the conclusion. This would be more compact than a list of the details, leaving the sources' conclusion implied. I'm not sure. What do you think? SPECIFICO talk 14:50, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Do you have a suggestion on how to word this? There was a 2018 follow-up to the 2016 NYT story. The daughters of a podiatrist who rented office space from Fred Trump said that their father had told them about the diagnosis "as a courtesy to the elder Mr Trump" and that another podiatrist may have been involved who then became a tenant. There's also Michael D'Antonio's interview of Trump. He asked Trump how he avoided the draft during the 18 months between his graduation and the December 1969 lottery when he drew the high number. "I have spurs on the back of my feet, which at the time, prevented me from walking long distances. ... Very healthy, but in the back, in fact it is here. You can see it on both feet. I have spurs." As he explained his condition, the man who would become president took off his shoes and pointed at his right heel. He asked me to take a look for bumps, which I didn’t actually see, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Someone who's never had a heel spur might reasonably believe they're at the back of the heel like the kind riders put on their boots (shame on them) but they're actually on the underside of the heel. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 17:48, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

I have not read the sources recently, but I was thinking something roughly along the lines of,

After his graduation from college, Trump, who had already passed a Selective Service physical, was likely to be called to active duty. He then obtained a physical disqualification from service through actions that were considered dubious by journalists who investigated the matter. Trump himself gave flawed and inconsistent narratives as to his 4-F disability.

Per recent concerns about article length and summary style, we would include somewhere a link to the WP page that contains the blow-by-blow. SPECIFICO talk 18:42, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

References

Impeached presidents/individuals

SecretName, about this edit: It goes beyond just Presidents. The presidents are the only ones who matter in the context of Trump, a sitting president, having been impeached. Three of them were impeached, one of them twice. How many readers know or care that a senator was impreached in 1797, a cabinet secretary in 1876, and 15 federal judges between 1803 and 2010? In this article, "the only individual" is a meaningless statistic. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 12:51, 10 December 2022 (UTC)