So what's the angle there. Trump helped Russia invade unopposed by... giving Ukraine weapons his predecessor wasn't prepared to give...? — Isaac

Apart from Trump personally adoring Putin, the pro-Russian stance of the Trump team was actually very brief and basically when Trump was running for office and had Paul Manafort at the helm.

In the Republican convention in Cleveland 2016 the only thing the Trump team change about the policies was not to give arms to Ukraine. Nothing else.

(Washington Post, July 18th 2016) The Trump campaign worked behind the scenes last week to make sure the new Republican platform won’t call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces, contradicting the view of almost all Republican foreign policy leaders in Washington.

Throughout the campaign, Trump has been dismissive of calls for supporting the Ukraine government as it fights an ongoing Russian-led intervention. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, worked as a lobbyist for the Russian-backed former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych for more than a decade.

Manafort and all the pro-Russian in Trump team were quickly whisked out, and then when Trump was in office, Trump filled his administration with former generals, so then the honeymoon of the administration with the Russians was over. Of course, Trump himself continued adoring Putin with one of lowest events being the press conference in Helsinki, where Trump said he believed Vlad more than his intelligence services. A bit strange coming from the US president.

Then of course there was the case of not giving the aid decided by Congress to Ukraine, but that was a way for Trump to pressure the Ukrainians to give information about Hunter Biden, which lead to the first impeachment of Trump:

(ABC, Jan 16th, 2020)The Trump administration broke the law by withholding congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine last summer “for a policy reason,” a top government watchdog said Thursday in a scathing report.

The Government Accountability Office’s report came a day after the House of Representatives sent articles of its impeachment of President Donald Trump to the Senate for conduct related to holding back that aid.

Trump refused to release the funds to Ukraine at the same time he was pressuring that country’s new president to announce investigations of former Vice President Joe Biden and of Biden’s son Hunter, who had served on the board of a Ukraine gas company. Joe Biden is the current front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

It should be said that after February 24th 2022 Trump has changed his stance.

It's boring when sarcasm is the whole argument. — unenlightened

Oh. I thought it was winsome and endearing...

For me he is the demagogue I’ve been waiting for, the kind Murray Rothbard defended. His mere presence has lead the establishment, Washington, the 4th estate, the political dynasties, and their stooges on the world stage to overplay their hand, and I don’t think there is any going back. — NOS4A2

OK, so you don't like the establishment the establishment, Washington, the 4th estate, the political dynasties, and their stooges on the world stage. So Trump irrated them.

That still doesn't make him a good US president, because just irritation isn't good leadership.

That still doesn't make him a good US president, — ssu

I don't think NOS wanted him to be a good US president. He wanted Trump to break the system and create the conditions for a revolution. In another century NOS would have been a communist.

Reasons for voting Trump are like these. Yeah, he was a protest vote. And it doesn't count to vote for Donald Duck. (A fictional cartoon duck might be a great POTUS for some: won't do anything worse)

I remember one of best reason given by some guy to vote Trump: with Trump as president the press will do their job. With Hillary they will be her lap dog.

I guess that specific Trump-voter was satisfied:

I remember one of best reason given by some guy to vote Trump: with Trump as president the press will do their job. With Hillary they will be her lap dog. — ssu

There's probably some truth to that. The one I saw that sticks with me is a young woman living in West Virginia where the demise of coal mining left a lot of people in poverty. She saw a vote for Clinton as a vote for the status quo. Voting for Trump meant at least trying to improve things.

Voting for Trump meant at least trying to improve things. — frank

Unfortunately that's one of the saddest reasons incompetent populists do get elected. People will fall for the boisterous guy who declares the "He can fix everything" and are for them "against the evil elites" and in the end just make a mess.

And even if the guy doesn't leave behind him a disaster zone like Trump and is a mediocre to OK leader, people can simply put too much hope on an elected leader at a specific time. Just think of Obama. I remember when he was first elected, there was much eager hope that he could do something huge. Starting with the Nobel peace prize given as an option for future merits, I guess. Because his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" are a bit vague for me.

his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" are a bit vague for me. — ssu

Yeah. Notice anything about the number of wars between 2009 and 2017?

... No, me neither.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-in-state-based-conflicts-by-world-region?time=2000..latest