Talk:Donald Trump

Highlighted open discussions

• Talk:Donald Trump#Second interim proposal - To decide what the first paragraph should read after the inauguration, to be followed by discussions about further changes.

NOTE: It is recommended to link to this list in your edit summary when reverting, as:
[[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 Superseded by #15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 (Nov 2016, Dec 2016) (Superseded by #15 since 11 February 2017)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 Superseded by #35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 (Sep 2016, February 2017, wording shortened per April 2017, upheld with July 2018) (superseded by #35 since 18 February 2019)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 Superseded by #17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)

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) Amended after re-election: After his first term, scholars and historians ranked Trump one of the worst presidents in American history. (November 2024)

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)

Temporary suspension of WP:1RR rule

In order to give regular editors the leeway they need to deal with an increase in unhelpful "drive-by" edits, I am temporarily suspending the one-revert rule that has been on this article. The "24-hour BRD" rule listed in the Discretionary Sanctions template at the top of this page still applies. Here's what this means in practice:

• Every editor may now make up to 3 reverts per day per WP:3RR. BUT...
• You may not make the same edit or revert more than once per day (per the BRD rule) and after your first time making that edit or revert, you must discuss it on the talk page and wait 24 hours before attempting that edit again.

Put another way, reverts are linked to content. You can revert up to 3 different edits per day, but you can't add or remove the same content more than once per day.

Again, the purpose of this is to allow regular/experienced/content editors to deal with legitimately unhelpful or POV edits. It's not to give people more leeway in edit warring over content disputes that are under discussion or to engage in "tag-team edit warring" where editors take turns reverting the same content over and over. If I see that going on I will start blocking people's accounts, starting with the editors who are reverting against the status quo ante, those reverting against emerging consensus on the talk page, and those who are not using helpful WP:Edit summaries that clearly describe what they're doing and why they're doing it. ~Awilley (talk) 17:28, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Pretty much all of the reverts you're exempting are already exempt per WP:3RRNO anyway as either BLP issues or overt vandalism. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 19:19, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

First paragraph on Inauguration Day

It's highly unlikely anything will happen between now and January 20 that will affect the changes to the first paragraph on that day. Therefore, for the sake of an orderly "transition", I think it makes sense to go ahead and establish a new consensus for that paragraph. paragraph, to be implemented at noon Eastern Standard Time (5 p.m. UTC) on January 20. Otherwise there will be a lot of instability in the most visible part of the article, likely lasting for a number of days.

As a procedural note, any consensus here should modify, not supersede, Talk:Donald Trump/Current consensus#Current consensus #17 on the 20th. I think that's preferable to a new list item, as some of the discussions linked in #17 will still apply.

No discussion is needed for the infobox changes on the 20th:

• |term_end=January 20, 2021
• |successor=[[Joe Biden]]

Current first paragraph

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.

Proposed first paragraph

Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and television personality.

• Support as proposer. I am deliberately NOT looking to Barack Obama for guidance (much), per TINO (Trump Is Not Obama). ―Mandruss ☎ 09:05, 16 December 2020 (UTC) (Now supporting the proposal near the bottom of subsection #Devil's advocate alternative.) ―Mandruss ☎ 15:49, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
• I cannot support the proposed wording. Trump is not like previous presidents who were only/mainly known for being presidents, and who spent the remainder of their days as "retired presidents" (like Bush or Obama). There is no evidence that Trump plans to retire from a public role, and he is known for more than his four years as president. As we have discussed before, he is widely and increasingly seen as a conspiracy theorist (just look at his Twitter account which is almost exclusively devoted to peddling conspiracy theories from far-right Breitbart). A new first sentence would likely need to reflect that he is still active as a political figure and the world's most prominent conspiracy theorist; he is even speculated to possibly establish a far-right TV channel. A more realistic wording would probably read more like Trump is an American far-right politician and conspiracy theorist who served as president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, followed by a sentence about his possible current activities (e.g. if he runs a far-right, Breitbart-like TV channel). --Tataral (talk) 09:24, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

  Granted my proposal doesn't say anything about what he is "now" (after the 20th), and it probably should until he no longer is anything in the earthly realm. Open to suggestions there. But good luck getting a consensus for politically loaded labels in the first paragraph. ―Mandruss ☎ 09:33, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

  That Trump is a conspiracy theorist and that he is far-right is not loaded, but reflects the consensus of reliable sources. Especially if Trump becomes a major "media mogul" who runs a Breitbart-like TV channel or other media company, that peddles the kind of material that Breitbart peddles (which isn't much of a stretch considering how he constantly retweets material mostly from Breitbart and similar sources), we cannot leave out what he actually does and how the world perceives him just because he was president for four years in the past. --Tataral (talk) 09:39, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

  I'm not going to debate you about consensus of reliable sources, since it's irrelevant here. There are plenty of consensuses of reliable sources that are not reflected in the first paragraph because they don't belong in the first paragraph. Even the first paragraph of Adolf Hitler refrains from such characterizations, and a reader who knew nothing about Hitler would have to read further to discover what a stain on humanity he was. That's called "being encyclopedic". ―Mandruss ☎ 09:46, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

  Trump is not Hitler either. Hitler was only a politician, and did not have a media career before or after politics, like Trump. If Trump now becomes some kind of Alex Jones with his own TV channel, except a thousand times more prominent as a conspiracy theorist than Alex Jones, there is no reason not to describe him as a conspiracy theorist in the same way that we describe Alex Jones in the first sentence as "an American far-right radio show host and conspiracy theorist." --Tataral (talk) 09:50, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

  Now you're talking in pointlessly speculative "ifs", so I'll await comments from more reasonable editors. This is a discussion about what the first paragraph should say at noon on January 20, not if and when Trump does x, y, or z. ―Mandruss ☎ 09:57, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

  Isn't this just WP:CRYSTAL, what he does or doesn't do after being president shouldn't matter, on inauguration day, which is what the proposal is seemingly referring to, he'll mainly be regarded as an ex-president/ex-businessman. Even in that circumstance, him being a former U.S. president is more notable than him being a conspiracy theorist, so the placement in your proposed text is off the mark. MyPreferredUsernameWasTaken (talk) 12:39, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose - Just do it when Biden actually becomes president, I doubt it's going to much of a struggle. Trump is still the president, using past tense "served" is simply false. Trump could start a war between now and then, did Biden declare it cause Trump is seemingly not the president anymore? Just have some patience, it'll happen eventually. MyPreferredUsernameWasTaken (talk) 12:30, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

  Reading comprehension on my part needs improvement, yes this is fine for inauguration day but obviously shouldn't see implementation before that. MyPreferredUsernameWasTaken (talk) 12:33, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

  Thank god you beat my blowtorch response by a few seconds; it wasn't pretty. I have modified the initial comment to hopefully improve clarity on this point. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:46, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

  That's a relief, don't use Wikipedia when you just wake up folks. MyPreferredUsernameWasTaken (talk) 17:00, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

• Support- as that's roughly how we do it for the other former US presidents & former US vice presidents. GoodDay (talk) 14:42, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

A stricken !vote, a misplaced alternative proposal, and a discussion about moving it to a new section. ―Mandruss ☎ 03:53, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Support. Sums up his life until noon, January 20, 2021, very nicely. As for his future endeavors, he may be too busy with lawsuits he did not initiate to do much else (WP:SPECULATION). And he'll also be househunting; his Mar-a-Lago neighbors are suing for him to stick to the agreement that won't allow him to live there for more than 21 days per year and not more than 7 days at a stretch. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 15:16, 16 December 2020 (UTC) After further thought—or any thought, really—I'm submitting a proposal of my own. Donald Trump (born June 14, 1946) is a businessman, television personality, and politician who was the 45th president of the United States from 2017-2021. His presidency was marked by high turnover of cabinet members and senior White House personnel; a flood of insults of foreign leaders, countries, and perceived opponents; … - sooo many highlights to choose from. The second sentence stating that "Before entering politics, he was …" has rubbed me the wrong way for a while. He didn’t divest himself of his businesses and actively promoted them when he was president, and IMO someone doesn’t stop being a television personality just because he doesn’t have his own show or pageant at the moment. He became a politician the moment he entered the presidential race. He’s formed a personal Political Action Committee (PAC), a clear indication that he has no intention of allowing himself to be put out to pasture quietly. Also, he’s been hinting at running in 2024. I could even live with who served as in the transitive definition of "to perform the duties of (an office or post)" but I prefer "was" because people not familiar with US politics or conventions of speech might think "service" like Mother Theresa and not just another word for "job". With the new second sentence we'd have both a link to "President of the United States" and Presidency of Donald Trump. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 15:44, 18 December 2020 (UTC) @Space4Time3Continuum2x: Why not put that in a new subsection? ―Mandruss ☎ 15:54, 18 December 2020 (UTC) The proposed new second sentence? That would be OK with me. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 15:57, 18 December 2020 (UTC) @Space4Time3Continuum2x: Not just the second sentence but the entire proposed first paragraph, since it has to be evaluated as a unit. I'll leave the move to you since it's your proposal. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:26, 18 December 2020 (UTC) Having a dense moment—you mean adding the proposal as a subsection like "Wikilinks" below? Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 18:06, 18 December 2020 (UTC) A compromise, for the linkage issue? GoodDay (talk) 16:09, 18 December 2020 (UTC) Well, yes, I guess you could call it that. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 18:08, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

• Support Not sure what else we'd say at that point. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 17:06, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
• Support He may well do "important", "lead-worthy" things next, but I would argue those would not rise to the level of his presidency and should be summarized later in the lead (if at all, whatever those things may be, etc.). The suggested revised sentence will be fine to start off the lead (the lead of the lead). (Unless there is a coup after noon on the 20th, in which case all bets are off...) Bdushaw (talk) 20:38, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

  This aged like milk. Thanoscar21^talk_{contributions} 02:04, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

• Comment – @MyPreferredUsernameWasTaken, GoodDay, Space4Time3Continuum2x, ONUnicorn, and Bdushaw: – Please have a look at the two amendments below and comment there if you have an opinion. ―Mandruss ☎ 10:41, 17 December 2020 (UTC)
  • I've commented on both. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 16:28, 17 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Support the two suggested revisions: (1) wikilink to Presidency of Donald Trump, per the easier wikilink path to President of the United States than the other way, and (2) "was" rather than "served" per puffery, better NPOV, and shorter. Bdushaw (talk) 05:39, 18 December 2020 (UTC)
• Support the original proposal as clear and concise. Trump is mostly known for being president, so that should go first. The rest of his career is adequately summarized by the "Before entering politics" line which has enjoyed a very longstanding consensus. — JFG ^talk 15:38, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
• Meh - it's OK but "was" is better than "served as", and "real estate developer" would be better than "businessman" (more accurate and descriptive). Weak support I guess. Levivich ^harass/_hound 17:50, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Wikilinks

Per MOS:SPECIFICLINK, the first sentence ought to link to Presidency of Donald Trump, not President of the United States, as the former is more specific and much more likely to be useful to readers. To avoid a MOS:EGG issue, we could make the link over 45th president of the United States rather than just president of the United States. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:07, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Consenus already changed that back in July [1]. This way it meets MOS:LINKCLARITY. Regards  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 22:50, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

We didn't have the option of including "45th" in the link in July, which remedies the egg/clarity issue. The July discussion also had limited participation and suffered from a number of procedural problems (see my comment below it), so it's perfectly ready for revisiting. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:02, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Please don't. Just don't. GoodDay (talk) 12:50, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

I support that, I guess, per much more likely to be useful. Also notable is that a reader can easily navigate Donald Trump -> Presidency of Donald Trump -> President of the United States, but not Donald Trump -> President of the United States -> Presidency of Donald Trump (particularly after January 20). Procedurally, I have no problem with opening up the entire paragraph for CCC discussion, which is one of the reasons to start this a month in advance. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:13, 17 December 2020 (UTC) Switched to Oppose below, after further discussion. ―Mandruss ☎ 09:56, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Oppose - as we link to President of the United States in the intros of the other US president bio articles. STOP with trying to make this 'one' article different from the others, in that manner. GoodDay (talk) 12:48, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment, but please STOP with insisting that cross-article consistency is the only thing that matters and overrides all other considerations, absent any policy, guideline, or other community consensus that it should have any weight whatsoever. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:56, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Why can't you leave well enough alone. If this were a hard-cover encyclopedia? an editor-in-chief would reject such proposals like Sdkb's. Would you be content, if we had a mixture of showing & not showing successors-to-be in these bio article's infoboxes, too? GoodDay (talk) 13:05, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Why can't you leave well enough alone. Well, we disagree that it's "well enough". Obviously. So you are resting on a premise that is itself your opinion. That's not how reasoning should work. an editor-in-chief would reject such proposals. By design, Wikipedia does not have an editor-in-chief. We go by consensus instead. If you want to play editor-in-chief, go start your own encyclopedia with my best wishes for success. Would you be content, if we had a mixture of showing & not showing successors-to-be in these bio article's infoboxes, too? Probably not, but I'd say that consistency is more important than this minor linking difference, which would be noticed by few readers and cared about by virtually none (which is not to say it wouldn't be an improvement). That's why I pursued a community consensus on |successor=. Without a community consensus, I certainly wouldn't be seen insisting on cross-article consistency in that usage, and implying that everybody who disagrees with me was an incompetent idiot, as you incessantly and tiresomely do. ―Mandruss ☎ 13:18, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

We're going to have to disagree on the intro of this article & leave it at that. GoodDay (talk) 13:20, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Oppose We link to Presidency of Donald Trump in the Presidency section. We can also link it in the intro, perhaps linking it to 45th (although having two links next to each other can be confusing for readers) or in what is currently the third paragraph, beginning "During his presidency..." ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 16:28, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

• Didn't we already have this discussion in April? The decision there was to link to "Presidency of Donald Trump." Or was there a later discussion that changed that? Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 22:50, 17 December 2020 (UTC) Never mind - shoulda read to the end of #17. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 23:05, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

He held the office of president of the United States, not the office of presidency of Donald Trump. Thus another reason for me to 'oppose' linking to the latter. GoodDay (talk) 15:58, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose linking president of the United States to Presidency of Donald Trump as MOS:EGG. 45th president of the United States IMO is also a tad MOS:EGGy, looks more like a link to List of presidents of the United States. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 15:27, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

  That's a soft-boiled egg. How is it less eggy (more predictable) to target an article about 45 people from text about one? Unquestionably the status quo linking is the least eggy, but then is MOS:EGG the most important thing? I've come close to switching my !vote since I wrote it. This is an unusually sticky question and I'd say we're faced with several equally bad alternatives. Might as well roll a die (and I happen to have one handy). ―Mandruss ☎ 16:06, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

  I've asked the more general question before; see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking#MOS:EGG and linking to specific pages. The general view there was that we still ought to use more specific links even when it creates very minor eggs. In these situations, I go to first principles of what serves readers best. Is it worse to risk that some readers at Donald Trump looking for information on the U.S. presidency (somewhat rare) have to click an extra time to get there from the presidency page, or that readers at Donald Trump looking for detailed information on Trump's presidency (extremely common) don't realize we have a subpage for his presidency and miss out on the level of detail they are seeking? There is no question for me that we should prioritize solving the latter issue. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:20, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

All you have to do there, is mention Presidency of Donald Trump at the top of the article, next to a "For his Administration" bit. Place it right under the "For other uses" bit. GoodDay (talk) 23:31, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

That's worth serious consideration. I would consider "readers aren't likely to look at those hatnotes" a very weak argument against it; we should assume hatnotes will be used or get rid of them site-wide as unneeded clutter. It also dovetails nicely with this overall discussion, since Talk:Donald Trump/Current consensus#Current consensus #17 already addresses the top hatnotes. The first sentence would then be free to have a nice, completely EGG-compliant link to President of the United States, and everybody would be happy. Sdkb? ―Mandruss ☎ 08:23, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm firmly opposed (as I have been elsewhere) to the use of hatnotes for anything besides the disambiguatory purpose for which they were intended. Their function is not to be a catchall repository of other important related pages. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 09:29, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

WP:RELATED supports you, and I concede the point. But I think I'll defect to Oppose, reverting to the position I took the last time this linking question came up. ―Mandruss ☎ 09:50, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

• Space4Time3Continuum2x, I really don't think Presidency of Donald Trump is an implausible target for the wikitext, but if we wanted to make it ironclad clear, we could link over served as/was the 45th president of the United States. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:23, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Let's just not link president of the United States to presidency of Donald Trump. GoodDay (talk) 23:29, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose, same argument as what I said in July. ―Mandruss ☎ 09:56, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

  Mandruss, if the perceived egg is what bothers you, what would you think of my 23:23 suggestion to Space4Time3Continuum2x directly above? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 10:03, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

  It would be arguably better, but wouldn't tip the scales for me. That's still significantly more eggy than a link where the target article's title exactly matches the linktext (except for the capitalization of the first letter) – i.e., an unpiped link. Good EGG compliance should require predictability in my opinion, and I somewhat strongly oppose this sentence at MOS:EGG, which undermines that principle: "If a link takes readers to somewhere other than where they thought it would, it should at least take them somewhere that makes sense." I very rarely invoke IAR to disregard part of a guideline in all cases, but I make an exception in this. ―Mandruss ☎ 10:25, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

  Well, if you're going to invoke IAR to argue that we should make MOS:EGG way stricter than it actually is and aim to avoid all piped links, I can't argue against that. There's no plausible target for served as/was the 45th president of the United States other than Presidency of Donald Trump, so in my view it's about as EGG-compliant as you can get. And I think you made a great point above when you questioned is MOS:EGG the most important thing?—I think it's clearly a concern, but it's not more important than giving readers links to the pages they are most likely to want to go to. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:13, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

  I think we all agree that we should give readers links to the pages they are most likely to want to go to. Where we differ is on the importance of doing that in the first sentence of the article. I mean, there is something seriously wrong if a reader who wants to go to information about Trump's presidency can't be asked to scan the TOC for "presidency" – BAM, there it is, in the fifth first-level TOC entry, not hard at all to see – click there, and then click the "Main article" hatnote. That's one additional click in an environment designed around the concept of clicking, hardly a significant difference in usability. We aren't dealing with three-year-olds here – particularly among readers who care one whit about learning about Trump's presidency – and it does not serve a reader in the long run to protect them from learning how Wikipedia is structured. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:36, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

  And furthermore, how does it make sense to send a reader directly to the Presidency article without first asking them if our Presidency section is enough detail for them? We might as well give them a list of links to sub-articles and skip a large part of this article's content, saving an enormous amount of editor time. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:49, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

  and aim to avoid all piped links – (For the record, I didn't mean to go that far. His presidency is as predictable a link as Presidency of Donald Trump, but served as/was the 45th president of the United States is not. This is largely moot given the preceding points, but maybe worth clearing up anyway.) ―Mandruss ☎ 18:38, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

"Served as" vs. "was"

MOS:PUFFERY uses "public servants" as an example of loaded language, and served as is a little better but still not preferable when we could just use the perfectly neutral Donald Trump was the 45th... instead. Let's please not adopt the loaded terminology that politicians use to try to escape the connotations of their profession. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:07, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

"was" is much better. Neutrality^talk 22:40, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

I tend to agree, and I almost proposed "was" instead. Then I thought about the "we should do x because other U.S. presidents' BLPs do x" faction (which includes a few of our most experienced editors), and decided to avoid that. But Wikipedia would do well to deprecate the idea that things are Good merely because they are widespread. ―Mandruss ☎ 03:29, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

We use "served" in the intro to Barack Obama, so we can use it here, as well. GoodDay (talk) 12:53, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

"Served as" is used for every president going backwards from Obama until you get to Nixon. For Nixon we say he "was" the 37th president. "Served as" is then used again for every president until you get to Truman, who we say "was" the 33rd president. FDR again "served as" president, as did Hoover, and Coolidge, but Harding "was" the 29th president. For Wilson we're back to "Served as", but Taft goes back to "was". Theodore Roosevelt returns to "served as" while McKinley "was". "Was" is used for the next couple, but then Chester Arthur "served as". Garfield "was" and Hayes "was", but Grant "served as" while Johnson "was". Lincoln and Bucannan "served as" and Franklin Pierce "was". From Pierce backwards we use "was" until Martin Van Buren, who "served as" the 8th president. We then use "served as" language for all the remaining presidents.

In general, it seems like the trend is to use "served as" for the early presidents and the most recent presidents, and a mix of "was" and "served as" for those in the middle. Interestingly, although this isn't consistent (Hoover "served as") and which presidents were "good" or "bad" at their jobs is up for some debate, it seems for presidents with good reputations we are more likely to use "served as" whereas those who are controversial or widely viewed as "bad" we are more likely to use "was".

Frankly, I think "was" is more neutral, and it would be a good idea to use "was" throughout all U.S. president articles, but I'm not about to run around and try to force that kind of standardization, and I recommend against trying it. With things as they are, I'm afraid it would be seen as biased to use "was" for Trump when the modern presidents all use "served as" except Nixon, who many people think was not a good president. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 16:18, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Was is the NPOV statement. All sources agree on that. It's not yet clear whether, what or whom he "served". SPECIFICO talk 17:36, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

It's called self-service, I believe. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 23:00, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Salad bar. SPECIFICO talk 23:13, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Nobody ever seems to have objected to "is" or suggested changing it to "serves." Was is the logical continuation and NPOV, also shorter than "served as." Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 23:00, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

We've variations throughout the US presidents bios, on this matter. GoodDay (talk) 15:59, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

• "Served" does not mean he served well. There is such thing as a bad servant. In regard to the comment that Trump was self-serving, I have never seen a credible suggestion that this is true. He was a successful businessman. Did the presidency help him? Arguably it made him worse off.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:15, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

  He was a successful businessman What? Source for that? That's not the narrative told in this article. SPECIFICO talk 15:45, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

• Was is simpler, with less connotations, and therefore better. Levivich ^harass/_hound 17:51, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Devil's advocate alternative

• Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) was a businessman and television personality, who was the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.--Jack Upland (talk) 04:09, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

  This makes it sound like he's deceased. Placing his business/media careers first also makes no sense, since his presidential career is unquestionably more impactful on the world. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:09, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

  As I expressed early on, it would make sense (and seem natural) to say he "is" something as long as he still breathes. In the BLP for an actor that hasn't been heard from in 20 years, we say either "is an actor" or "is a former actor", not "was an actor". We switch to past tense only when they do. Trump will continue to be "heard from" probably as long as he can speak, as it's his nature to be heard from. I'm just not sure what to say Trump "is" after January 20, and we are obviously not going with loaded labels in the first paragraph regardless of any RS support for them. ―Mandruss ☎ 07:13, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant to say "is" a businessman. He still will be a businessman after January 20.--Jack Upland (talk) 09:24, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Ok, but he won't still be a "television personality" by the usual definition, at least not on January 20. We have to formulate something that makes sense on that day, without thinking about what might come later.

Perhaps: Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is a businessman and former television personality, who was the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.

Or, maybe the "former television personality" bit could be dropped now that it's over five years old. Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is a businessman, who was the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.

In either case, I think the comma preceding "who" is grammatically incorrect, even if it provides what might be considered a helpful pause in the sentence.

This would reduce the paragraph to a single sentence, which is not a sin of writing but should be noted anyway. ―Mandruss ☎ 09:39, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, OK. No comma. No mention that he is/was a TV personality. It will presumably be true that he is a businessman on January 20. This will probably cover subsequent events, and will probably provide a succinct account of who he is. I don't think that summing up his life by saying he was American President for four years makes much sense.--Jack Upland (talk) 09:56, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Good, then I hereby support this instead of my initial proposal: Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is a businessman who was the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Awaiting overwhelming support for that, leaving the "Wikilinks" amendment as yet unresolved. ―Mandruss ☎ 10:43, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

What is the "president of the United States" part, being linked to? GoodDay (talk) 14:19, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

This section does not address the linking. As I said just above, ...leaving the "Wikilinks" amendment as yet unresolved. If that was unclear, it was referring to the #Wikilinks section above. ―Mandruss ☎ 14:48, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Ok let's give it the pretty blue background like the rest. Still omitting the linking since that's a separate and independent question being handled at #Wikilinks.

Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is a businessman who was the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.

• Support per discussion in this subsection. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:03, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
• Support - as this is acceptable. GoodDay (talk) 04:30, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
• Support - Sometimes the Devil has good tunes. I think this sums up who Trump is. He has been a businessman all his adult life and made a late foray into politics, serving as President for the past four years. This avoids implying he ceased to be a businessman and that the presidency was the be-all and end-all of his life.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:10, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
• Support, as a nice way to emphasize that the presidency is, oddly, not the most defining thing about him. Although I might prefer a slightly simpler Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American businessman. He was the president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. I find the common phraseology X is a Y who is/was Z to be unnecessarily convoluted. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 14:43, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose. Not even a former politician like Schwarzenegger? Mandruss, Schwarzenegger has not returned to politics after his second term as governor ended. Trump's hints at running again may just have the purpose to induce supporters to donate to his PAC but what is the source for him leaving politics on January 20? Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 15:57, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

  @Space4Time3Continuum2x: Even if he runs again, that won't make him a politician per the dictionary entry (in the collapsed section below). If he runs and gets elected, he will then pass one narrow dictionary sense of "politician" (that merely being in office makes one a politician) while clearly still failing the other two (ignoring the "disparaging" one). At the same time, it would be CRYSTAL to call him a "former politician" in the first sentence, precisely because he's making noises about running again. He's nothing if not a moving target, and he deliberately makes it difficult to know what's real. Considering that the word at best stretches the definition (and most people's concept) in Trump's unusual case, I think it's best just left out as unnecessary; it's sufficient to say he was president. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:29, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

According to Bump’s semi-scientific study aka asking random people on the Web (WaPo link), "politician" is in the eye of the beholder. Webster isn’t infallible (see CNN). How is definition 2b supposed to work? You determine the politician’s motives and then call them a politician disparagingly or not? "Office politician" isn’t a compliment but "politician" seems neutral to me. Trump keeps insisting that he’s not a politician (WaPo, BBC, WaExaminer). That usually means that the opposite is true. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 18:34, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Notwithstanding all other arguments, the word is clearly problematic when applied to Trump, and we should omit problematic words from the first paragraph of the article. It's unnecessary as I said above, and it's potentially misleading. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:53, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose He stepped out of the Trump Org. Is he a businessman? SPECIFICO talk 19:16, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

  Oh come on. He "stepped out" while unofficially keeping his fingers in it through his family members, as I suspect you've probably said yourself at some point in the past. He is a businessman in life-long experience and instinct, in contrast to "politician". We pretty much have to say he's something besides a former president, and I don't know what could be less problematic than "businessman". A "man"? Yeah, that's verifiable since RS always uses the masculine personal pronouns when referring to him. But I wouldn't recommend it. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:09, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

  His foray into politics was predicated on the idea that he was a highly successful businessman who understood the "art of the deal". He continued to discuss political issues by referring to real estate opportunities and ratings. The Trump empire endures. Even the "Winter White House" was a Trump business.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:36, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose. "Businessman", especially when unaccompanied by "politician" or "television personality", fails to communicate how much Trump's career is intertwined with his personality, an essential fact about him. Also, it makes no sense to prioritize (by placing first) "businessman" over "president of the United States"; the latter is clearly more important. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 09:34, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

  Couldn't disagree much more with that last sentence. It makes perfect sense to me to say what he "is" in general terms before anything he has done. Businessman is a defining characteristic; former president is not. Besides, where is it written that the most important should be first rather than last? Isn't the last more likely to be retained than the first, having been read more recently? ―Mandruss ☎ 11:01, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

  We use "businessman", "politician" and or "lawyer" before "president of the United States", in several intros of the US presidents. GoodDay (talk) 17:23, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

• Support - In hopes of one of these proposals gaining consensus, this one is satisfactory. MyPreferredUsernameWasTaken (talk) 18:29, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
• Support He won one election, that does not make him a politician.Slatersteven (talk) 14:03, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
• Strongly Oppose - Not enough information. He served as the president of the United States, and is not even described as a politician? It also is inconsistent with other former presidents' pages. A better, more descriptive, and more consistent alternative would be:

Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. A member of the Republican Party, Trump previously was a businessman and television personality before entering politics.

-- Politicsfan4 (talk) 22:54, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose – Like it or not, Trump will be mostly remembered for his presidency rather than his business career. — JFG ^talk 15:40, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Do you have a crystal ball, JFG? They are not all accounted for. We can only document what Trump is known for now. Do you think that Arnold Schwarzneggar will be principally known as a politician in the future? Perhaps, but perhaps not. What about Peter Garrett? Bernard Shaw? Malcolm Muggeridge? Horace Walpole? Duff Cooper? Gyles Brandreth? Valentina Tereshkova? John Buchan? Bobby Sands? Gerry Adams? Douglas Hyde? W. B. Yeats? Michael Portillo? Geoffrey Chaucer? Soong Ching-ling? Annie Besant? Mahatma Gandhi? Peter Lalor? Vanessa Redgrave? Fred Thompson? Sonny Bono? Thomas More? John Newton? William Cowper? Jessica Mitford? A. P. Herbert? C. L. R. James?--Jack Upland (talk) 07:46, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose - many people are "a businessman", it doesn't tell the reader anything meaningful about him. President/former president should come first. Levivich ^harass/_hound 17:53, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Second alternative proposal for first sentence

While we haggle out the intro of this article, in preparations for Trump's departure on January 20, 2021. I've opened up a discussion at Joe Biden, concerning that article's intro, which will also change on January 20, 2021. GoodDay (talk) 04:39, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Alternative proposal for first paragraph

Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is a businessman, television personality, and politician who was the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. He is a member of the Republican Party. Prior to his presidency, he was a businessman and television personality.

Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 15:23, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

• Support - as this too is acceptable. GoodDay (talk) 16:33, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose per my comments elsewhere, including this and this. And the repetition of "businessman" and "television personality" is just poor writing, plain and simple. "John is an electrician and piano teacher. Four years ago, he was an electrician." ―Mandruss ☎ 18:34, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
• How about Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) was the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Prior to his presidency, he was a businessman and television personality.? Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:41, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose. As above, his presidency is clearly the most important, and should come first. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 09:36, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

In many of the other US president bio intros, we mention "lawyer" and or "businessman", before "president of the United States". GoodDay (talk) 15:29, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

• Support with caveat - I support this proposal if you cut the opening is a businessman, television personality and just have is a politician who was the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Since you have him being a businessman and television personality at the end of the sentence it seems redundant to repeat that. I understand some believe he'll return to business or become a media persona once more, but unless that's confirmed it's simply WP:CRYSTAL and he largely remains known as an ex-president. MyPreferredUsernameWasTaken (talk) 18:15, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) Support - Similar to Reagan's. Reagan kind of had the same career (media to politics), and this sounds much clearer. I think that this should be its own option. Something like this:

• Weak support I am not sure he is really a politician, rather then someone who won one ellection.Slatersteven (talk) 14:01, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose – Clumsy and repetitive phrasing. — JFG ^talk 15:41, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose - basically per JFG. "Politician" is redundant. "Businessman" is a really vague description that doesn't tell anyone anything. It's like saying someone was "a professional". Also, he is more known for being president and TV personality than businessman. As a businessman, he was known for being Fred Trump's son and putative heir. Levivich ^harass/_hound 17:46, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Another alternative proposal

Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. A member of the Republican Party, he was previously a businessman and a television personality.

Or:

Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. He is a member of the Republican Party. Prior to his presidency, he was a businessman and television personality.

Thanoscar21^talk_{contributions} 13:37, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose We do not need to say it twice.Slatersteven (talk) 13:30, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose. We already have too many alternative proposals. ―Mandruss ☎ 13:49, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose - on the basis that we've already too many alternate proposals. In the words of George Carlin - "Too many choices, people. It's not healthy". GoodDay (talk) 19:45, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
• As much as I'm disgruntled that yet another proposal has been added, I won't let my process objections color my opinion of the proposal itself. I'm hesitant about it, though, since calling him a politician and a member of the Republican Party together give the strong impression (even if it's not explicitly stated) that he's a conventional career politician who holds traditional Republican views, which is not the case. Also (and this is getting back to process again), those changes aren't really related to the transition. It'd be a lot easier to discuss them on their own merits, rather than throwing them onto the pile here. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:22, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
• Support - I feel like I am going against what everyone else thinks, but I support this. It is consistent with other previous presidents' articles, such as Barack Obama and George W. Bush, and the flow is good. -- Politicsfan4 (talk) 22:32, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose – Not primarily defined as a politician. Party affiliation has varied as well. — JFG ^talk 15:43, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
• Support - Fine. He's most notable for being a Republican, and has had great influence and reshaped it during his tenure as president so it is very lead sentence worthy. MyPreferredUsernameWasTaken (talk) 20:21, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

  On the contrary, most sources differentiate him and his actions from what was generally understood to be Republican. Yes, it has been noted that the ex ante Republicans have largely migrated to Trump-followers, but that is not quite the same as calling him a noteworthy Republican. SPECIFICO talk 20:47, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Hasn't the Republican Party now basically become Trump-centered? If you're anti Trump, now you're labeled as a RINO. Thanoscar21^talk_{contributions} 20:07, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose- He wasn't even a Republican until he pursued the nomination. At any rate, his Republican affiliation is incidental to his personal bio, except to the extent we describe his unexpected and brilliant takeover of the party and its elected federal officials. This part does belong in the article. SPECIFICO talk 21:04, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

@SPECIFICO: Reagan was a Democrat until 1962, and yet he is still remembered as a bastion of Republican values. Just because Trump used to not be a Republican doesn't mean that he shouldn't be described as such. During his entire political career (just like Reagan), he has identified as a Republican. Politicsfan4 (talk) 21:16, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

No similarity, for many reasons. SPECIFICO talk 23:14, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

@SPECIFICO: like it or not, Trump will always be remembered as a Republican, and not a member of one of his previous political parties. -- Politicsfan4 (talk) 23:51, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

No need to rebut something that nobody has said. My comment stands. SPECIFICO talk 00:19, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose - "American politician" is redundant. Levivich ^harass/_hound 17:45, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

new proposal (best proposal yet)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

"new suggestion" Donald Trump (born June 14, 1946) is a businessman, television personality, high-stakes grifter, politician, and con-artist who was the 45th president of the United States from 2017-2021. He is almost universally regarded as the worst president of all time, by relevant experts. His presidency, informally known as the "Dark Ages" by American historians, was marked by rampant corruption and nepotism, attacks on democracy, tax cuts for the wealthy while gutting social services for ordinary Americans, government sanctioned torture of immigrants, the construction of concentration camps on US soil, impeachment, fealty to foreign leaders and dictators, the bungled handling of a global pandemic, an economic depression, high turnover of cabinet members and senior White House personnel; a flood of insults of foreign leaders, countries, and perceived opponents; …}} — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.30.187.155 (talk) 21:03, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Comment - Not sure what you're trying to prove, but it's not helping. Please, take your personal politics off Wikipedia. GoodDay (talk) 21:51, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Light at end of tunnel?

The way things are going, do you see any consensus possible before January 20? I'm not seeing it. Perfect is the enemy of good, and we are all vigorously pursuing perfection with little willingness to compromise for the sake of consensus. What to do? ―Mandruss ☎ 11:05, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

I'll never accept linking president of the United States to presidency of Donald Trump. As for the rest? too many proposals will decrease the chances of a consensus for any intro. GoodDay (talk) 15:25, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

No one is proposing linking over president of the United States. If you are going to bludgeon us with your opposition, at least do it to the actual change proposed. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:29, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Have you dropped that linkage proposal? GoodDay (talk) 21:10, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

I thought your original proposal, with the modest changes to the wikilink, was fine - a minimal change to the status quo to update the situation to post 20 January. I think it is important to retain "television personality", since that is at the core to who Trump is and now he came to be president. That proposal has notable support, seems to me. Bdushaw (talk) 17:15, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I think the first proposal was largely fine, and to the extent it needs tweaks, those should be discussed in subsections describing the tweak, not "alternative proposal #X" subsections that try to offer a wholesale option. We'd be in a better place if those subsections had not been opened. As regards status quo, I think the first proposal, but with "was" rather than "served" per Space4Time3Continuum2x's point, is closest to the status quo, and should be what we default to if discussion deadlocks. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:29, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

(That’s not the end of the tunnel, just the glow from Trump’s phone as he’s blocking the view.) I would suggest one more tweak: Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) was the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Before his presidency, he was a businessman and television personality. That way we also have a link to Presidency of Donald Trump. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 21:13, 20 December 2020 (UTC) Assuming this is the first proposal we're talking about? Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 21:34, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

I would suggest one more tweak: - LOL. I rest my case. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:27, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

No objection to that. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 22:16, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: We'd be in a better place if those subsections had not been opened. I understand your point. When we have tried your method in the past, we often had editors creating dependent linkages between individual tweaks, as "Support only if Tweak X is made and Tweak Y is not made". If you want to drive yourself completely mad, try sorting out such tangles to divine a consensus. So we were faced with prohibiting such linkages (good luck) or giving up the separate-tweaks methodology. As it turned out, tweaks rarely exist in isolation, and both methods are about equally ineffective. But I'm not opposed to trying it again, and you can show us how it's done. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:30, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Just copy-paste the lede from Obama & Bush, and tweak it to fit Trump. That's the least controversial and simple way to do it, in my opinion. Thanoscar21^talk_{contributions} 20:57, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Are you suggesting we be logical about this? I'd like to see that. GoodDay (talk) 14:53, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

As I recall both Bush and Obama had been political figures before being president, as such they are not analogous.Slatersteven (talk) 15:00, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Trump previously ran for office and lost. A failed politician is still a politician. And now he is a politician, so it is absolutely analogous. -- Scjessey (talk) 18:25, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Well, this whole 'intro' discussion seems to have gotten ignored, these last few days. GoodDay (talk) 16:14, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

American as a descriptive

Interesting 'question' brought up at Kamala Harris. Do we need to say American politician or American anything? when it's the US president or US vice president? GoodDay (talk) 00:02, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, we do need to say "American" before their job description. I was looking for a section to point this out, so thank you. MOS virtually requires the nationality of the subject to be in the first sentence of a biography, per MOS:OPENPARABIO and even more specifically at MOS:CONTEXTBIO. Every recent president's article follows that MOS format, along the lines of "...is an American politician and attorney who was the...". See Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, etc. This article reached a local consensus not to start the lead that way, but now that we are moving toward a "past president" article we should do it the standard way. There are multiple suggested wordings above, and several of them would be acceptable to me - provided they start with the format "Donald Trump is an American (whatever profession is decided on - politician, businessman, former television personality - personally I would just go with American businessman) who was the ..." -- MelanieN (talk) 00:18, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Notwithstanding apparent wiki-tradition, I feel that "American" is obvious when talking about a U.S. president. — JFG ^talk 15:44, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, you can't be president if you aren't a natural-born American. Besides the requirements guidelines from MOS, is it really necessary to state the obvious? Mgasparin (talk) 06:13, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

There is no "requirement from MOS". MOS is a set of guidelines which, by definition, allow exceptions. This seems like a reasonable use of that flexibility to me. Regarding other U.S. presidents' BLPs, my response is the usual for elements lacking a community consensus covering all U.S. presidents: This article is not governed by what editors have chosen to do at those articles, and such reasoning can prevent improvements to the encyclopedia. ―Mandruss ☎ 09:00, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Mandruss You didn't really answer my question. Do we need to state that he is an American? Mgasparin (talk) 03:51, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

In my opinion, we do not. ―Mandruss ☎ 03:59, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Of course we should, but only when introducing the subject. Onetwothreeip (talk) 04:31, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Second interim proposal

Discussion has largely stalled, I see no particular consensus for any of the "comprehensive" alternatives offered, and we have a mere 15 days before we have to do something with the first paragraph. Consistent with comments from multiple editors at #Light at end of tunnel?, I think we should establish a consensus for a bare minimum of change at noon EST on January 20, and then proceed with discussions about further incremental changes. There is no reason to defer those discussions until after the 20th, and it would save time to go ahead with them now, but they should not affect the interim consensus unless they also reach consensus before the 20th.

In my opinion it would be cleaner to start over with those discussions, separately from #First paragraph on Inauguration Day, since they are logically separate from the interim content. What we have now is a disorganized mess not really suitable for linking from the consensus list.

This is basically what I had in mind when I started this on 19 December, but I didn't express it clearly enough and we needed the experience of failure to see the need for it.

I see weak consensuses on one or two points, but they are not within "a bare minimum of change" and are not included in this proposal. Per standard process at this article – the entire first paragraph is covered by Talk:Donald Trump/Current consensus#Current consensus item 17 – no edits to the first paragraph may be made without prior consensus, and any uninformed edits-without-consensus should be immediately reverted.

Is->was is less change than is->served as, so I'm proposing the former here on that basis alone.

This edit appears to be correct per #17, and I don't know how or when that link was removed.

Here is my proposal, then, for getting us past January 20. When evaluating it, don't ask whether it's optimal (it is not) but whether it's marginally acceptable in the short term. For my part, there are at least two things about it that I will strongly support changing after the 20th.

Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) was the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and television personality.

―Mandruss ☎ 17:55, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

• Support as proposer. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:55, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

  Would have to remove the linkage from "45th", as that's a practice no longer implemented on the former US presidents & former US vice presidents bio intros. However, I wouldn't object to the practice being re-stored to all of them. GoodDay (talk) 18:18, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

  GoodDay, could you find the discussion/edit that led to the removal? I don't want the link over 45th to be a sticking point. Apart from that, this is the option closest to the status quo and is what we should default to in the absence of an affirmative consensus for a change. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:39, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

  It was'bout 2 or 3 years ago. Some fellow went through all the US prez & vice prez bios & removed the links in the infoboxes. Since then 'someone' removed the links from the intros themselves. I can't remember 'who' did it & where the discussion was had to allow him to do it. I would gladly restore those links, if nobody will object. GoodDay (talk) 19:06, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

  That's part of our consensus #17 and there is no community consensus to override it, so you're mistaken. As we've established before, there is no general policy, guideline, or other community consensus governing cross-article consistencies in such details, so, absent a community consensus for the specific detail, this article is not bound in the slightest by what editors at other articles have done (see |successor= for a recent example of this principle in action). You really, really – did I mention really? – need to understand this and cease making such arguments.

  If that is not enough, this is clearly not "a bare minimum change" for the short term, a condition that was clearly stipulated above. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:54, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

  If noboby objects, I'll happily restore those links. GoodDay (talk) 19:08, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

  Per the instruction at the top of this page, "This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Donald Trump article." It is not the place to discuss what should or should not happen at other articles, and any decisions reached here would have zero weight there. This is Wikipedia Editing 101. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:14, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

  If the link-in-question is kept in the intro after January 20? I'll make linkages throughout the others. Somewhat of a long thankless task, but that's what gnome editors are for. GoodDay (talk) 19:17, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

  I’d like to see the descriptors fascist, despotic, or nazi-adjacent added, considering Mr. Trump’s recent ham-fisted attempts to end American democracy. Anyone else in favor? 108.30.187.155 (talk) 18:38, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

  Setting aside the fact that that's a total non-starter, please explain how that is something that satisfies "bare minimum of change" for the short term. The entire point of this subsection is that it is NOT merely a continuation of the discussion that has been ongoing since 19 December. If you have trouble with this concept, please re-read the above and let me know what's unclear. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:00, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

• Support - as it's acceptable. GoodDay (talk) 19:18, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
• Support - Simple, uncontroversial, and short. Thanoscar21^talk_{contributions} 20:19, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
• Comment: Why not move this to Talk:Donald trump#Highlighted open discussions and place an RfC tag for greater visibility? Thanoscar21^talk_{contributions} 18:32, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

  I've listed it at Highlighted open discussions. RfC would be premature per WP:RFCBEFORE, and I think it's unlikely to prove necessary. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:06, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

• Support - addresses concerns raised with the alternatives above. Concise and accurate, plus it emphasises presidency first. Jr8825 • Talk 11:00, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
• Meh. The wording is the best of all the choices so far. I think "real estate developer" should be used instead of "businessman" (more precise/descriptive than the meaningless label "businessman"), and the order should be switched, so it's stated as president->TV personality->real estate developer, in that order (the proper order of significance IMO). I disagree with the WP:SEAOFBLUE for "45th" and "president of the United States", it should just use the latter link. I wouldn't say "entering politics", as it's imprecise. He stood for and won one election (a big one, of course), it's not like he's had some long career in politics. If he holds other offices in the future, that might become an apt way of describing it, but not after one term in one office. Also, grammatically-speaking, the way it's written (for all these proposals), it suggests there were 45 presidents between 2017 and 2021. So my preference would be Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) was the 45th president of the United States, serving from 2017 to 2021. Before being elected, he was a television personality and real estate developer. Levivich ^harass/_hound 18:02, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

  This is far better than the suggested one, but remember, this is temporary. This is like a backup in case nothing else gets selected. Thanoscar21^talk_{contributions} 22:47, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

  @Levivich: The point is that we may not have a consensus for anything by noon EST on January 20 unless we limit this particular consensus to bare minimum change. If you don't believe that, you haven't been around for the discussions that have occurred since December 19. Then we would have a problem, as change could no longer wait for consensus (we can't continue to say Trump is the current president after noon on the 20th), Talk:Donald Trump/Current consensus#Current consensus #17 would have to be simply ignored, and we would have instability in the most visible part of the article, possibly lasting for a week or more. The orderly process provided by the consensus list would be lost and edit wars could break out, possibly requiring the article to be full-protected. In my opinion none of the changes you propose have to be in the temporary January 20 version. ―Mandruss ☎ 05:08, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

• Levivich's suggestions are an improvement. I think we should at least adopt the three non-controversial, technical tweaks (unlinked "45th", change to "before being elected" and "serving from" for grammatical clarity). The other two suggestions ("real estate developer", order change) are more than the minimal change we're trying to settle on here and should be put aside for now (and discussed separately) so that the updated fallback is closest to the current revision. The sentence would look like: Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) was the 45th president of the United States, serving from 2017 to 2021. Before being elected, he was a businessman and television personality. Jr8825 • Talk 06:02, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

  Somehow I'm failing to make my point clear. And I'm getting tired. ―Mandruss ☎ 06:11, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

  @Mandruss: I think I did get your point but my optimistic tone confused things – unless I'm completely overlooking something? I've edited my previous comment to make it more clear I think the 2 complex changes need later discussion. My point is that while the 3 tweaks I highlighted don't need to be in the temporary January 20 version, I don't see why they shouldn't be, as I consider them straightforward, non-controversial improvements. They're just wording adjustments, there's no substantive content change vis-à-vis your interim proposal. Jr8825 • Talk 08:51, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

  @Jr8825: Without existing consensuses, you can't assume anything will be uncontroversial. I've seen it time and time again, where an editor can't fathom why a different editor is objecting to their uncontroversial proposal. If we allowed in your uncontroversial tweaks, wouldn't we then have to allow in uncontroversial tweaks from other editors? What if you or someone else don't like their uncontroversial tweaks? And then we're back in the bind that got us to this point. In this unusual situation, we haven't the time to resolve all that, and I strongly feel we need to just stick to bare minimum change without uncontroversial tweaks. ―Mandruss ☎ 09:05, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

  I hear you. I have no issue setting these adjustments aside for the sake of finding something "marginally acceptable" and my previous support !vote still stands. However, I'd like to draw attention to the specific change before entering politics>before being elected. I think this is an significant improvement as it's contradictory to say Trump entered politics in 2016 when this article has a section entitled "Political activities up to 2015"! For me, "before entering politics" is only marginally acceptable; "before being elected" is imperfect, but less imperfect. Jr8825 • Talk 09:26, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

  Sorry, but I don't see how something that has been in the first sentence unchanged and unchallenged for several years can suddenly be so important to "fix" in the temporary, short-term version. ―Mandruss ☎ 09:38, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

  I don't think the current revision has quite the same issue. Right now, "before entering politics" is framed by "current president" so the inference for the reader is simply "Now he's president. Before he was a businessman". However, I'll readily admit that issues are always placed in much sharper relief when you're picking something apart word-by-word. Jr8825 • Talk 10:23, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

• Strong support The most achievable and necessary change is to change the word "is" to "was". We may never have consensus for anything else. All further proposals should remain minimal in nature, like one or two words each time, as we are clearly not able to do anything better than that. Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:58, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
• Support as marginally acceptable in the short term. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 15:05, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose – The initial "was" makes it sound like he's dead. The original proposal "served as" is factual and less ambiguous. (cue in jokes on "serving") — JFG ^talk 06:42, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

  Serving indeed. Thanoscar21^talk_{contributions} 17:06, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

• Support, but with the lead name amended to Donald John Trump Sr., as opposed to Donald John Trump Jr., per MOS:FULLNAME — amchow78 (talk) 18:57, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Update to Covid lead wording

In light of the substantial enhancements to the article text since the time we agreed on the lead wording, I proposed an update here. It rids us of the sensitive word "slowly", and it reflects current article text and mainstream narratives. Does anyone oppose this? Thanks. SPECIFICO talk 03:09, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

I reverted it, and I oppose it. As you know, the current wording was heavily debated, see consensus #48 above. You would need consensus as well as specific sources to replace the current “reacted slowly” with judgmental language like "negligent and ineffective". By the way, neither of those words appear in the article text, and the lead is supposed to summarize the article text. -- MelanieN (talk) 16:22, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

I believe many editors have objected to "slowly" on more or less the same grounds. As to procedure, do you think we will need an RfC to change the wording? If so, I will consider wording after comments are received here. SPECIFICO talk 15:52, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

I oppose it as well, specifically the inclusion of the word "negligent". I don't think we can use the word "negligent" without suggesting that he has been legally negligent. GorillaWarfare (talk) 16:27, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

That's a reasoned objection. Can you think of a word that refers to his lack of engagement and obstruction of ameliorative policies without using the word negligent? Recall that the word "slow" has raised a lot of concern from the first time it was proposed. There must be something along the lines of the proposed tweak that addresses both concerns. SPECIFICO talk 15:52, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

It's not up to us to "think of a word". We don't invent text. How are Reliable Sources describing his handling of the situation? We should put that into the article text, and THEN we can use it in the lead. -- MelanieN (talk) 22:59, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Let’s see what Reliable Sources can give us. Here is a source for “slow” and “played down”, as well as “failure”. [3]. Here’s another NYT source, this time for “unsteady, unscientific and colored by politics”, as well as “failure” again.[4] The New England Journal of Medicine described his handling as “dangerously incompetent”.[5]. Scientific American described it as “dangerous and inept”.[6] Any wording here yet that we can use? I didn't see "negligent" or "ineffective" anywhere; maybe one of these other terms, cited to the source? -- MelanieN (talk) 23:38, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Well,I believe we frequently think of a word that spans the many diverse words in the mainstream to convey the consensus of their meaning. We as editors cant choose one out of all the words except where that word is the mode among the RS writings. Also, while slow, or belated, response was reported, we really should be using recent sources to cover the entire 9+ months. SPECIFICO talk 00:31, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

SPECIFICO, I think what is needed some positive information to counteract the negative information given about his response to COVID-19, like he reacted slowly at first to the Covid-19 Pandemic but help put together Operation Warp Speed that helped deliver a effective COVID-19 Vaccine by the end of the year. BigRed606 (talk) 06:05, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

There is no reporting that Operation Warp Speed had any beneficial effect on the development or deployment of the vaccines. Far from it. SPECIFICO talk 21:46, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Source:https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/02/trump-covid-vaccine-czar-says-us-should-be-able-to-immunize-nearly-third-of-population-by-end-of-february.html

We can look into including the Moderna info in the body, not Pfizer, not sure about the lede. starship.paint (exalt) 06:34, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with Trump personally. It might go in the presidency article but so far there is little reporting it speeded or supported anything. SPECIFICO talk 13:45, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

This article in the NY Times today reviewing Trump's pandemic response is relevant to this discussion. It was all about politics, which still needs a bit of development in the article, e.g., the pressures on the states to open early were in the battleground states. Would be in favor of a more general, rather than chronological ("reacted slowly") summary, such as something like "Trump's response to the virus was governed by political, rather than scientific, considerations, resulting in an ineffective, often obstructive, management of the COVID crisis". "Negligent" seems not quite correct - he has been focussed on it, but in a political way. But it likely needs an RfA to change the wording. Bdushaw (talk) 21:25, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Let's just think about this. I agree that negligent is somewhat a relative concept -- negligent relative to an expected standard of care. So as MelanieN has pointed out, it may not be the word used in the current weight of RS reports (largely secondary sources, not tertiary). But "slow" is quite ambiguous. It was really intended to mean "late" or delayed, but the fact is that Trump never responded at all to the threat. Although his narratives changed every month or so -- as is his modus operandi for shaping media coverage -- the article text already explains that he adopted a posture of denial and rapidly-shifting, conflicting narratives in a hope that his political prospects would not be derailed. Alternative wording, invoking his, incompetence, ineffectuality, denial, etc. are likely to bother folks as well. But as I have said with respect to other sections of this article, we should not be describing his abdication of duty and promotion of fringe and nonsense messaging as if it were merely a failed effort to deal with the crisis. Those are the scenarious for GW Bush's Iraq War and for Jimmy Carter's travails with Iran or LBJ's in Vietnam. Trump-and-the-virus is not described that way in the mainstream sources. SPECIFICO talk 22:02, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

I am not seeing the new text as much of an improvement. I would leave the current for now. PackMecEng (talk) 04:22, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Bdushaw's suggestion seems like a big step in the right direction to me. Now's obviously not the right time to hash out a new consensus on COVID wording, but I'd like to see this wording revisited soon. I'm not a fan of SPECIFICO's suggestion, negligent doesn't work. The status quo text will have to do until current events die down. Jr8825 • Talk 10:08, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Sources for "negligent"

Seems to be fairly widespread in recent RS. Note, the "slow" language in article and lead came in the early months, when the full record of Trump's actions was not yet known. Indeeed, the implication that he eventually responded is, per current state of knowledge from RS, an UNDUE minority view, if not WP:FRINGE. SPECIFICO talk 17:01, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Pardoning murderers and Republicans guilty of corruption

I don't know if this article should mention Trump's controversial use of the pardoning power to pardon the convicted murderers of 14 Iraqi civilians and other, it seems to be, solely Republican officials who were convicted of multiple crimes of corruption and money schemes. If it already has, I overlooked it, thanks. Teammm ^talk
_email 15:51, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

NOt sure this can be done in a NPOV way.Slatersteven (talk) 15:53, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

"Trump was criticized for issuing presidential pardons for [insert names and crimes here]<references>" --Khajidha (talk) 16:01, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

We have a section in the article, Donald Trump#Pardons and commutations, and it could be updated with a mention of the more recent round - but only a mention, not an evaluation or criticism. There is a much fuller article, List of people granted executive clemency by Donald Trump, which goes into more detail about his relationship to the people and mentions criticisms. -- MelanieN (talk) 16:14, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

The Blackwater pardons are already in. Not sure how the Duncan Hunter and Chris Collins pardons (both supported Trump) compare to the already included pardons of pardoned former Navy sailor Kristian Saucier, who was convicted of taking classified photographs of a submarine, and white-collar criminals Michael Milken, Bernard Kerik, and Edward J. DeBartolo Jr. The pardons will be an enduring part of Trump’s legacy, unlike some of his policies. starship.paint (exalt) 03:45, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you all for the responses! Teammm ^talk
_email 22:53, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

"Solely Republican" would be incredibly disingenuous. While Rod Blagojevich was not pardoned, he had his sentence commuted Serafart (talk) (contributions) 02:30, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Long tag

There has been some back and forth on the article about whether this tag should be on the article. It seems clear to me that this article suffers from length issues and this should be brought to mind when editors seek to make changes to the article. Are there any objections? Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:09, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Prior consensus on the talk page states to leave the article alone, so I wouldn't add it. -- Politicsfan4 (talk) 07:04, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Are there any objections? – Beg pardon? You know very well there are objections. You have been a participant as this tag has been rejected again and again at this article, as I said in my edit summary,[7] and you don't get another bite at the apple every time a passerby drops in unaware of that fact.[8] I am not going to debate the merits yet again, and I'm asking you to drop this, preferably by self-closing this discussion as "withdrawn". ―Mandruss ☎ 10:12, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

I mean if there are any objections presently. If there aren't any objections at this present time, then the tag should go ahead. I'm aware in the past there has been more opposition than support for it, but I am gauging if that is still the case now. I apologise if that wasn't clear. Onetwothreeip (talk) 20:33, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Just gauge intermittently -- like every 6 months or so. SPECIFICO talk 20:53, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

I continue to oppose the tag with the same reasoning as all the previous times. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:11, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

@Mandruss: Should we add this to the Talk:Donald Trump/Current consensus#Current consensus? Something like:

050. Do not include the {{long}} tag at the beginning of the article. (link)

Politicsfan4 (talk) 03:54, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

There isn't a consensus on this talk page section, but there may be one. So far only I have indicated support of it, and only Mandruss has indicated opposition. Onetwothreeip (talk) 04:08, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Oppose. SPECIFICO talk 04:17, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Oppose. We all know it's too long, no need to state the obvious. Besides, having maintenance tags on articles gives them the appearance of being poor quality. Mgasparin (talk) 06:11, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

We clearly do not all know this, by the fact that the article is too long, otherwise it wouldn't be. Those who participate on the talk page may overwhelmingly know that the article is too long, but many editors of this article aren't checking the talk page, and most of the readers who are all potential editors don't check this talk page either. Onetwothreeip (talk) 09:37, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

I had the same thought, and it looks like that will be necessary. Since some editors in this thread are wisely refraining from engaging the debate yet again, the list item should probably link to one or two of the earlier discussions. I think this one is the most recent one. ―Mandruss ☎ 09:16, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

@Mandruss: Agreed. This is a controversial issue, so it should be included in the current consensus. Politicsfan4 (talk) 21:22, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Compromise/alternative idea - the editnotice for the page currently is itself too long and isn't going to be fully read by anyone probably. The "want to add new information" section is in smaller text than the other three sections of the editnotice, and is at the very bottom. Personally, I don't even know where the first red box comes from, but if nothing else we should put the "want to add new information" in larger text and at the very top so people who try to edit the article see that statement first. It also doesn't include all the other articles there are - that needs updating. Maybe that will prevent people from adding more while future discussion here can work on paring down what's already in? -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 02:55, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

• Support tag.--Jack Upland (talk) 07:18, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
• Support tag. At 122 kB readable prose size there is a problem. Fix it and you'll get to remove the tag. Maintenance tags are not badges of shame. They alert editors about a specific issue and serve as a call to action to fix/discuss it. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 03:23, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
• Support tag - It won't hurt to make it official. GoodDay (talk) 03:27, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

@Mandruss: Given your more recent comments about drastically reducing the size of the article, are you willing to reconsider your opposition to the maintenance tag? Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:33, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I think we can tentatively place the tag into the article, as the default circumstance when a tag is applicable to the article, until or unless there is a consensus against doing so. Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:30, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

I think it should be placed on the article. The opponents say it will have no effect — which might be true — but that's not a strong reason not to have the tag. At worst, it might not do anything. But it just might encourage editors to stop inflating the article. It is inconsistent for editors to bemoan the size of the article and to remain silent or actively encourage an expansion of the article. I have not seen a strong argument against having a tag. If no one presents a strong argument that a tag would be bad, rather than just ineffectual, I will impose the tag and enforce it as far and as much as I can.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:28, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

"irresponsible sulking"

The 2020 campaign section presently has the phrase "irresponsible sulking". That seems a little odd for an encyclopedia, true though it may be. I am wondering if this could not be replaced by something like how he obsessed over the election results and attempts to overturn it, while abandoning his presidential duties such as managing the rampaging COVID pandemic. I don't know enough about the RS to support that theme, but I think that's true. Would be more substantive than "sulking". (I just hesitantly removed the sentence in that section on the Giuliani allegations, which seemed redundant. Would not object to its return, as loopy as the allegations are. The various sentences/paragraphs seemed a little disjointed to me, hence the better (?) reorganization.) While I am here, I'll note also the recent Biden complaints that the DoD was not cooperating in the transition...one reason for including things as they happen is how rapidly the situation moves from one outrageous thing to another. Bdushaw (talk) 02:40, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

It's used as a quote though, so is appropriate. The title of the source is "Trump's monumental sulk: president retreats from public eye as Covid ravages US" Chaheel Riens (talk) 09:53, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

If its a quote fine, we just can't say its a fact.Slatersteven (talk) 11:44, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't say it is wrong or inappropriate - merely suggesting that it is a poor choice of how to frame the situation. Better to convey the information that he abrogated his responsibilities, while pursuing/obsessing election issues than to give a word like "sulking". Bdushaw (talk) 00:43, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Slatersteven, the exact context is that the phrase is enclosed in quotation marks, and the source is applied directly after it. It's eminently clear that this is a quote taken from a source, not synthesis or opinion. Chaheel Riens (talk) 10:39, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Coup d'etat attempt

Mr. Mandruss has reverted my well-sourced addition of "attempted coup" with a stern, gratuitous, and equivocal reprimand that I myself had opposed such context in the past.

Needless to say, the difference is that with the redoubling of POTUS' efforts and the passage of time, this has now achieved DUE WEIGHT in mainstream coverage -- as evidenced by the provided Washington Post source. Needless to remind Mr. Mandruss that Consensus can change.

Soliciting agree or disagree from other editors concerning the sentence I added? Thanks. SPECIFICO talk 16:55, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

I think we need a formal RFC.Slatersteven (talk) 16:59, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

I’m uncomfortable with the term at this point, even though his efforts appear to comprise attempts to override an election by unconstitutional means – which is to say, seize power. Now, we’ll see if he attempts to foment violence among his supporters today. O3000 (talk) 17:15, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Mr. SPECIFICO's defensiveness aside, I don't see enough RS change to warrant revisiting this, and the existing consensus is sufficient. And I certainly do not need reminding about WP:CCC. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:27, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

What changed my mind was that Washington Post reference [9] that surveys RS using the term "coup". I think it is now the mainstream description, after all plausible legal avenues have been exhausted. SPECIFICO talk 17:29, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Process discussion. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:17, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

By the way, Mr. SPECIFICO, a process point: The way to propose revisitation of an existing consensus is not to edit against it. I'm sorry-not-sorry if that's too stern, gratuitous, and equivocal for your delicate sensibilities. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:34, 6 January 2021 (UTC) No, Bold is good. SPECIFICO talk 17:39, 6 January 2021 (UTC) That statement is in direct conflict with the NOTE at the top of Talk:Donald Trump/Current consensus#Current consensus, which also applies to consensuses not listed there. That note has remained unchanged for four years, it has been supported by several admins and challenged by none, and we have routinely reverted edits against consensus for the same four years. By all means point to one or two cases where an existing consensus has been challenged by other editors via a BOLD edit. You can't, you know it, and you haven't a solitary leg to stand on on this point. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:50, 6 January 2021 (UTC) Take it elsewhere, please. Maybe Village Pump. SPECIFICO talk 20:21, 6 January 2021 (UTC) No, it doesn't work that way. When someone violates standard and long-standing process at this article, we handle it at this article. We don't go to Village Pump and ask the community if it's ok to adhere to this article's standard and long-standing process; that would be absurd. On the other hand, if you want to go to Village Pump and ask whether this article's standard and long-standing process is legitimate, feel free to do so and you will be advised that it most certainly is legitimate (I wonder why you never do that?). I'll now collapse this side discussion since it's becoming disruptive. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:17, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Well, let's see what happens today at the Capitol first. power~enwiki (π, ν) 19:29, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

So is it too early to say Coup yet?Slatersteven (talk) 19:32, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm afraid some of you who have been screaming coup for two months will see what a coup attempt really is today. power~enwiki (π, ν) 19:36, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

It would be confusing because readers might think we were using the term literally. TFD (talk) 19:40, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Well, my comfort level with the word is increasing. Let's see what the news says tomorrow. O3000 (talk) 20:15, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

I was just reading today's news and came here to post a "Coup revisited" inquiry. We do need to wait a day or two for some settlement of events, but when mobs break into the Capital to stop Electoral College vote proceedings, after incessant Trump instigations...I believe "coup" is the word. We'll need a number of reliable sources to use the word, but I believe they will appear in coming days, if not already available. (One can almost also talk of a "coup" in Georgia, with all the rhetoric of "fixing" the vote count.) I wrote against the word before, but the situation has done its predictable but shocking evolution. Bdushaw (talk) 20:25, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

• Whatever way one chooses to look at this, inciting supporters to storm and disrupt a building dedicated to a country’s democratic process, while that democratic process is in session, is an attempted Coup d'etat. What else other than the restoration of Trump were these revolutionaries seeking? It’s unbelievable, but seems to be true. Giano (talk) 20:30, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

• Both sides protest and both sides accuse the other of treason. It's as old as the Republic. TFD (talk) 20:45, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Storming the seat of democratic power is not as old as the “Republic.” It’s something that happens in tin pot banana republics. One hopes to see more civilised behaviour in the Land of the Free. The clue to that freedom is democracy, not billionaires inciting ignorant masses to revolution. Giano (talk) 20:53, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

See article from lasdt year: "Coronavirus: Armed protesters enter Michigan statehouse". TFD (talk) 20:58, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the coup attempt needs to be in the first paragraph of the lead and the body. It has been called that by an abundance of RS for two months now, it was called a coup attempt by Charles Schumer in the senate today, everyone but the fringe far-right recognises it as a coup attempt. There is no valid, policy-based reason not to include it, it would be like insisting that we shouldn't mention 11 September 2001 until a year had passed or something absurd like that. Had this happened in Ukraine or an African or Asian country, and been as widely described as a coup attempt by RS (and by some of the most senior politicians in the country in question), it would be included in all relevant articles a long time ago (while senior senators like Schumer describe Trump's coup attempt as a coup attempt, Trump himself said on Twitter today that the US election system "is worse than that of third world countries"; Biden just said that "our democracy is under unprecedented assault" and talked about sedition going on). --Tataral (talk) 20:55, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Stick to RS and leave personal opinions out of it, please. Here is one small look at mainstream RS. The current NYT headline is: MOB STORMS CAPITOL, INFLAMED BY ANGRY TRUMP SPEECH. Not MOB STORMS CAPITOL IN COUP ATTEMPT, INFLAMED BY ANGRY TRUMP SPEECH. Looking inside that article, the word "coup" occurs exactly once, quoting a GOP representative with no NYT endorsement of the word. Big deal. If that's typical MSM coverage, it falls far short of Wikipedia's requirements. I will await examples of stronger RS support for the word, but I doubt MSM varies that much from NYT's coverage. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:06, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

First, please address the RS tertiary summary of RS secondary narratives of "coup attempt" in the text that you have reverted. That text was not about today's events. SPECIFICO talk 21:11, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Could folks please stop offering Original Research as to the events of Jan 6 and focus on the RS that have called it a coup attempt over the past month or so since we first deferred considering this. The reference provided above provides a summary of the top RS calling it a coup attempt before today. SPECIFICO talk 21:09, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

I believe I've opposed "coup" language twice here already. I see no reason to re-visit that discussion while ignoring the issues of today. power~enwiki (π, ν) 21:15, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

We need sources that describe the events as being widely considered as a coup. It's not enough to find sources that call it a coup, and then claim that this is something widely considered, which would be original research. For now, there is not enough here to say that Donald Trump is attempting a coup. Onetwothreeip (talk) 21:31, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

The WaPo source I provided states that it is widely considered a "coup attempt", and itcites the sources it bases that on. Please read it. SPECIFICO talk 22:21, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

(Speaking humorously HERE is what a proper coup d'etat looks like.) I've noted that Trump has not offered any condemnations yet...he's pretty good at skirting the boundaries of calling a spade a spade. Bdushaw (talk) 21:34, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Numerous RS (CNN, BBC, Guardian etc.) explicity use "coup attempt" and also explicitly say that it is on Trump's encouragement. It definitely belongs in the first paragraph; Trump is one of 46 presidents, but the only one who encouraged a coup. Jeppiz (talk) 22:03, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

I have now read the WaPo piece provided by SPECIFICO, and I find it less compelling. A number of historians, academics, and others are cited as saying Trump's actions are not a coup attempt or not "technically" a coup attempt. That makes the word problematic at best for Wikipedia's purposes. But, on the basis of what I see there, I will support one sentence in the body, something like "Some academics, media pundits, and news outlets described his actions as an attempted coup d'etat, and others disputed the use of that term." I oppose anything like SPECIFICO's language, and anything in the lead. I strongly oppose anything in the first paragraph, and I think we have wide agreement that that kind of content does not belong in the first paragraph regardless of any RS support. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:20, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Quite frankly, any attempt to remove the description as a coup from the article should be reverted on sight at this point. We have long had a significant problem with how the portrayal of Trump in this article whitewashes the far right, an ongoing problem. The lead, and particularly its first paragraph, is ridiculously biased in portraying Trump as a normal democratic politician rather than the far-right authoritarian figure he's universally perceived as by reliable sources. We don't portray far-right authoritarian leaders involved in coup attempts (whether by military or "legal" means) from any other countries in such a manner. --Tataral (talk) 23:44, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Disparagement, snark
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Mandruss, you indicated that you hid my comment above solely as an exercise in WP:POINT (or a "game" as you called it) in retaliation against User:SPECIFICO for hatting your irrelevant comment above.[10]. (I wouldn't personally have hatted your comment). You may not touch my comment, which commented solely upon the content of this article, because you disagree with it. I stand by my comment, which is appropriate and on-topic. I caution you against such behaviour. --Tataral (talk) 00:45, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

For the word "coup", the case could certainly be made - he had motive, means, and opportunity; he even set up the means and set up the opportunity. You will never convince me that Trump did not hope that something like this today would occur, perhaps successful for him. Trump acts in "yes, but no, maybe it is (really yes)" kinds of ways - recall the "do me a favor though". All that being said, I suspect the RSs will likely avoid the word, per Mandruss. It seems a lot like the word "lie" - too incendiary to be flung about. We will see what the reporting in the coming weeks says about the situation, or whether Trump incurs more than usual condemnation. The word "insurrection" is used more concretely, which may perhaps be a compromise to "coup". I was reading this article on how the world was viewing the events of the day. All and all pretty horrible; a dark day indeed in US history. No one should ignore the fact that Trump was its root cause. Bdushaw (talk) 00:13, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Bdushaw, what is your assessment of the cited WaPo source? Let's no discuss today. Just the RS. SPECIFICO talk 00:19, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

I have seen that citation, but alas, I have only occasional access to WaPo articles. From what I've read above, I have a good idea of what the article contains (not the same as reading it). Without the events such as today's, I still think it hard to use the word "coup" wikipedia fashion; I've done the usual google searches. One way to look at it, would be that if there were an actual coup attempt established, people would be arrested. Can there be an established "coup attempt" without anyone being arrested? So the best one could hope for is the weasel word "critics say..." We do not use the words "lie" or "demagogue" though both are blatantly obvious. Today was different though; a line was crossed; a lady was killed. Trump was apparently repeatedly urged, by everyone, to condemn the insurrection and just as repeatedly did not do so. Bdushaw (talk) 00:41, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

If you have not read that source, which is the sole basis to reopen the issue, you should not be commenting and certainly not opening up your OR analysis. SPECIFICO talk 00:46, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

As noted, I have made good faith surveys/searches in support of "coup". Came up mostly empty. Not really OR analysis - I describe a process by which material is selected to form the article (per "lie" and "demagogue"); what I was looking for as justifying the word "coup" in the article. Bdushaw (talk) 00:56, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Even this article today Democrats, Republicans blame Trump for inciting 'coup' as mob storms Capitol (which I can read) falls short of using "coup" in the article, other than "critics say...", or even "bipartisan members of congress described/accused..." Its a word that has a high bar, IMO. (The article describes members filing articles of impeachment...if that were to occur (!!!), "coup" may well be appropriate! e.g., "impeached for attempting to instigate a defacto coup") Bdushaw (talk) 01:31, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

You really need to stick to the very narrow question of this thread. A single sentence and source, not the other sources you read, and not your opinion. SPECIFICO talk 01:37, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Oppose OK, then...I've reviewed the specific text, though I still cannot access the cited source. The text is vague (need to say who is describing) and one citation, not substantially supported by others, does not justify a strong word like "coup". Bdushaw (talk) 02:13, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Because you have not read the RS, your oppose is meaningless in addition to false. SPECIFICO talk 03:37, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

At no time did the military try to overthrow the US government. There was no attempted coup. Now calm down folk. The US House & US Senate have re-convene their duties under the 12th amendment. GoodDay (talk) 02:29, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Point of order

WTF is going on here? Have you all forgotten what we do here? In a sense, the "truth" is not important here. It is what "verifiable sources say" that matters. It makes no difference whether Trump has attempted a coup/self-coup/bloodless coup. What matters to us is that many RS have described these events as an attempted coup/self-coup/bloodless coup. That's what we document:

The disputed edit: His actions were widely described as an "attempted coup d'etat.

That is a very properly-worded documentation of the opinions in many RS (not a statement that it IS a coup), so it is proper to include it. -- Valjean (talk) 03:14, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

The military at no time attempted to overthrow the US government. GoodDay (talk) 03:16, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Makes no difference. We document what RS say, often NO MATTER WHAT THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER MIGHT BE. That's policy. We priotize "verifiability, not truth". We have a whole section about this here: Attempts_to_overturn_the_2020_United_States_presidential_election#Description_as_an_attempted_coup. -- Valjean (talk) 03:19, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Wish you'd stop for a sec, so I can avoid the edit-conflicts. The topic we're discussing belongs on the article you've linked to. GoodDay (talk) 03:28, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the topic is dealt with in-depth there. We're only talking about a one-sentence mention here. That's all. The subject has enough due weight for that short a mention here. -- Valjean (talk) 04:33, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

• The truth of the matter is that many RS have described these events as an attempted coup/soft coup/bloodless coup (the latter two require no military intervention). Whether it actually happens is of secondary importance at the present time. -- Valjean (talk) 03:24, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

  For one thing, I've yet to see much RS that calls it coup attempt in their own voices, but there is a lot that quote people who call it a coup attempt. As noted above, they also quote people who say it was not a coup attempt or was not "technically" a coup attempt. If you're going to issue lectures about compliance with RS, perhaps you could be less selective with your compliance. If we were to say that many have called it a coup attempt, we would also have to say that many have disputed the term – per your own reasoning. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:00, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

  Of course, but we're only talking about a one-sentence mention of what fills this whole section in the other article (Attempts_to_overturn_the_2020_United_States_presidential_election#Description_as_an_attempted_coup). No one is proposing a large addition here. The subject has enough due weight for that short a mention here. -- Valjean (talk) 04:33, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

  I haven't said anything about a large addition. One sentence in the body could convey what I said above, and in fact I provided an example of such a sentence previously. The point is that you can't report one side of what RS is saying, ignore the other side, and claim that you're complying with RS. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:40, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

  Mandruss, which is why I replied "of course". I was agreeing with that exact point. I have never addressed more wording, but your point is well taken and I would never oppose the understanding that NPOV does include the idea of telling both sides of the story, but there are situations where it isn't obviously necessary.

The question here is how much we want to delve into the subject HERE when WP:Mandy Rice-Davies Applies (yes, an essay, but one which prevents ridiculous additions of denials where unnecessary), IOW it might be pretty silly to add more. It really depends on how we word the mention. The proposed "were widely described" could be modified to say "described by some as", and that would obviate any need for any mention of a "duh" denial. My main point is that we don't need to go in-depth here. I wanted to counter the fears of some that there was any attempt to do more, which fears made them throw the baby out with the bathwater by rejecting any mention at all (that includes yours and GoodDay's oppose votes below). A total rejection also violates NPOV. This is something we can civilly discuss and come up with a satisfactory wording without total rejection of any inclusion. -- Valjean (talk) 16:36, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm just pointing out. Just because the MSM likes to go overboard for drama ratings, doesn't mean we should. CNN reporters saying "The Republic hung by a thread" or "Democracy is threatened"? PS - Are we gonna hear Carl Bernstein tell us that "This is worst then Watergate", again? GoodDay (talk) 16:43, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

@Valjean: Saying "described by some as" is NOT the same as "described by some as while others disagreed". I am saying we should say the latter or nothing. You pick. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:53, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

I have no problem with that wording. -- Valjean (talk) 16:59, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

@Valjean: Awesome. Thrilled we could reach agreement. Then your !vote below needs updating, since it clearly refers to SPECIFICO's original language. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:02, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose addition of proposed edit. GoodDay (talk) 03:29, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
• Include the one-sentence mention. That's all that we need here. -- Valjean (talk) 04:33, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose any one-sided statement about coup attempt per my comments here. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:44, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
• Include per Valjean, and because my neck is just not long enough to burrow my eyes subterranean level these days. Quick, Spot the Quetzalcoatl! (talk) 05:10, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose - It's too early to tell how widespread the term's use is/will be. "Coup" has partly been used in a knee-jerk manner to describe the confusing and dramatic nature of events and express disgust at events, rather than as a technical term (a reporter in the NYT writes: "the words used to describe it were ... alarming: Coup. Insurrection. Sedition."). "Coup" is definitely widespread among RS, but generally being used by opinion/commentary/analysis sections (e.g. The Atlantic's 'ideas' section) rather than in a descriptive sense within news reporting – basically I don't see the kind of unanimous usage that would justify rushing for its inclusion. Let's see wait to see how the RS describe it once the dust has settled. Perhaps "attempted coup" will gain ground or "mob" will remain the most common term (e.g. FT, NYT). Jr8825 • Talk 10:44, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
• Include for two months RS have been saying this is an attempted coup.Slatersteven (talk) 11:16, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
• Include for reasons previously stated. --50.69.20.91 (talk) 15:36, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose - coup is not in widespread use by RS. (It only "counts" if it's in the sources own voice, and not opinion.) Also fwiw oppose putting this in the first paragraph of the lead. In the lead, yes, but not first paragraph. It's too soon to say where this event will rank compared to other trump-related events. Levivich ^harass/_hound 16:55, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

• Wow! No one is proposing "putting this in the first paragraph of the lead" or "first paragraph". Look at the location, far down in the article, where the edit was made. -- Valjean (talk) 17:04, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

  Scroll up: It definitely belongs in the first paragraph. Levivich ^harass/_hound 17:38, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

• Comment There continue to be editors who are confusing 1) the WaPo sourced statement about how RS are describing Trump's actions -- a nice tertiary summary that references several RS secondary sources -- with 2) Descriptions of the storming of the Capitol yesterday, either per sources or editor OR. @GoodDay, Bdushaw, Jr8825, and Levivich:. Could those pinged please review the sentence and review the cited WaPo source and verify/justify their views so we can wrap this up. Thanks. SPECIFICO talk 17:10, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

I've already read the WAPOST source & it's full of opinions. Give an example of what I'm getting at. In these last few hours (like other times over the 4 years) CNN & The Young Turks (for example) having been bringing up the 25th amendment (they never tell their audience pacifically Section 4 of that amendment) & telling their viewers that it removes a president from office. Problem is, that's not what happens. Section 4 of the 25th amendment strips the president of his powers and duties & bestows it on the vice president. You see, MSM can make mistakes. GoodDay (talk) 17:19, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

I reviewed the cited WaPo source and it said:

Historians described Trump’s actions as dangerous, irresponsible, harmful and unprecedented, but most said his behavior does not yet meet the formal academic definition of an attempted coup, which typically describes a military-backed effort to seize power from a legitimate government. Senior Pentagon officials have made clear that the military has no role in the fallout over Trump's election defeat ... Some said he is tiptoeing toward an "autogolpe," a Spanish term popularized in Latin America to describe a "self-coup" attempted by leaders who came to power legally and acted outside the law to try to maintain it. "In technical terms, it’s probably not a coup. But it is an illegal and authoritarian attempt to stay in power," said political scientist Steven Levitsky ... "If this were a coup attempt, it’s perhaps the most bungled way to go about that I could imagine," [research coordinator at the Institute for Politics and Strategy] Chin said ... "The reason I don’t want to call it a coup is that it shifts the attention to the military," said Singh, the author of "Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic of Military Coups." ... "This is more of a textbook case of democratic backsliding, which is less sexy of a term," said Erica De Bruin, an assistant professor at Hamilton College and author of "How to Prevent Coups d'État."

No, we shouldn't say it was widely described as a coup citing to this WaPo source, because the WaPo source doesn't support it. If anything, political scientists and historians agree it wasn't a coup attempt, because the military wasn't involved. This was widely described as a riot by a mob of Trump supporters. Levivich ^harass/_hound 18:43, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

I finally got access to the citation in question. I would say that either we omit "coup", or we spend a lengthy paragraph describing all the facets - as I've mentioned before, explaining Trump takes words upon words. As I've also mentioned, I have made determined searches before for citations supporting "coup" and found them lacking. I personally believe he is attempting a coup, but RSs are not so clear. Since we are ever admonished to shorten the article, I come down again (referring prior to yesterday's events) against using the word. We worked through why we don't use the word "lie" though Trump lies like nobody's business, similarly demagogue has gone through those same sorts of arguments - they seem to me to apply here as well. Besides, as the citation notes, he's already in power, but wants to stay in power - that is not technically a coup. I might rephrase your RfA: should this article include a substantive paragraph(s) describing the various facets of how Trump's actions are or are not a coup? I doubt there would be support for that, but maybe; we did a similar exercise regarding "lie", which I think turned out well and has remained. Could develop a theme how his actions now threatened the long tradition of peaceful transitions of power. (Lot's of support for "insurrection" in regards to yesterday's events. Also much clearer today that Trump incited the events of yesterday, and was pretty much psychotically gleeful about it afterward, refusing to condemn the perpetrators; the cause of the various resignations. Awful.) Bdushaw (talk) 19:02, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose As Levivich pointed out, a proper reading of that WaPo article reveals a story about a bunch of political commentators and journalists calling this a coup attempt, while actual researchers and experts in coups all say it's not a coup. In any case, newspaper articles from just days after the event are really not an ideal source for this kind of thing. This is a really bad edit [11]. Presenting "both sides" when one side is experts in the field and the other is not is a violation of WP:FRINGE. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 20:29, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Read the definition of a "Coup d'etat" on wikipedia or Google. It has nothing to do with the people. It's either the military or a dictator KJ4488 (talk) 00:05, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

KJ4488, don't get hung up on one word. This describes a soft coup, and, until the riot, a bloodless coup attempt, none of which require the military or violence. Regardless, this has nothing to do with whether there was or was not any form of a coup attempt. That's irrelevant. This has ONLY to do with whether some RS have used such words to describe Trump's and his supporters' actions. Yes, RS have done so, and documenting that fact is the only thing we are concerned with here. -- Valjean (talk) 20:36, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Storming of the Capitol

• Interim action taken. There's clearly some discussion needed to hammer out the exact language to be used, but it's indisputable that an event of the magnitude of rioters breaching the U.S. Capitol Building (the first such instance since 1812) warrants mention here. I have taken the language currently on the In the News section of the main page, Pro-Trump rioters storm the US Capitol Building (pictured), disrupting certification of the presidential election and forcing Congress to evacuate., and copied that as closely as possibly. In the "2020 presidential election" section, immediately after Trump allies in Congress indicated they would object to the congressional certification of the results on January 6, 2021, I added the sentence, On that day, pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol Building, disrupting certification of the presidential election and forcing Congress to evacuate. I hope that this is a reasonable interim state for the page to have; per WP:NOW, it would grossly inappropriate to wait. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:28, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

References

• A key missing element from this (heroic) summary is that the mob was incited by Trump, per NY Times headline just now. Trump as the root cause is appropriate for this biography of him. Bdushaw (talk) 00:50, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

• "Demonstrators who broke into the Capitol building while Congress was in session," aka the "Beer belly Rebellion." It will make a great Trivial Pursuit question in the years ahead, but is of little historical interest. The main significance is the failure of D.C. security, but that belongs in other articles. Let's wait 2 days to see if U.S. democracy has survived. If we wake up Friday and find all the MSNBC hosts have been replaced by grim-faced soldiers, it will be time to consider adding it to the article. TFD (talk) 02:43, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

• Ah, right, so Wikipedia must wait for it to be LITERAL and SUCCESSFUL coup before mentioning it? Brilliant. --Calton | Talk 07:49, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

• As a result of President Trump's inflammatory post Capitol storming tweets, twitter suspended his account and threatened permanent suspension for future transgressions of their Civic Integrity or Violent Threats policies.[12] Cryellow (talk) 05:23, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
• Repeatedly, there has been significant editor support for a brief wait for perspective, and the content was added anyway with no better basis than two impossibly vague words – "vital content" – in an essay that is otherwise about removing misinformation and lacks widespread community support. Not wishing to seem disruptive, and preferring to work things out in talk, I have refrained from challenging those edits by reversion. I'm afraid that might have to change if this continues. ―Mandruss ☎ 06:29, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
• Headlines, front page, in big letters:

• Wall Street Journal: MOB STORMS CAPITAL
• New York Times: TRUMP INCITES MOB
• Washington Post: Trump mob storms Capitol

• So, yeah, add it, it's no-brainer, hand-wringing to the contrary. --Calton | Talk 07:49, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

• It is likely very relevant to add that at least four people have died due to this incident:

• https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/07/congress-riots-senate-georgia-result-donald-trump-capitol-latest/
• https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/capitol-riots-death-toll-trump-supporters-killed-b1783645.html
• https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/06/politics/us-capitol-lockdown/index.html

--Redgon (talk) 08:16, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

• Isn't it an important consideration that the riot/storming/incident was as a direct result of Trump's tweet inciting followers to do just that? Chaheel Riens (talk) 09:36, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

• Absolutely agree. --Redgon (talk) 17:14, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

• The horned one was enthroned in the Capitol. That has universal significance.--Jack Upland (talk) 23:16, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

lame duck

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I don't want to get drawn into an edit War here. I saw that someone removed lame duck regarding Trump's presidency. I didn't simply revert it. I changed it and linked the Wikipedia page that defines what a lame duck is and I put back the word "current ". Clearly, Donald Trump is a lame duck president. He is currently the president and he is a lame duck. Jackhammer111 (talk) 21:51, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Not once but twice, you ignored the prominent hidden comment at the end of the paragraph: "DO NOT CHANGE the first paragraph without prior consensus; see Talk:Donald Trump/Current consensus#Current consensus, item 17." The first paragraph is already under discussion elsewhere on this page and has been since 19 December. Therefore I'm closing this thread as duplicate. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:57, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

@Mandruss: Could you please include a helpful link in your close to where people should discuss this? There have been several reverts related to this, and I don't see anywhere else on this page where people are discussing the "lame duck" or "outgoing" thing. Maybe instead of closing this you can move it to be a subsection of the broader first paragraph discussion you mentioned. ~Awilley (talk) 23:49, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

@Awilley: At #Second interim proposal we are seeking a consensus for a "bare minimum" change to the first paragraph to be made on Inauguration Day. That should be our first priority, being a rare situation when there is in fact a deadline. Very low on the priority list would be something that would distract from that effort, would take at least a week to gain consensus (maybe even longer since it's in the ever-controversial first paragraph), and would be gone on the 20th anyway. Do you still feel this is something that needs to be left open? If so, I'll take care of it in deference to you. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:10, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

He is by definition a lame duck president, and, at the very least, the history of this article should show that we did include that fact in the article for as long as it was the case. The inclusion can be done quickly if no one prevents it, and since there is no policy-based argument for not including it, let's do it. (RS exist.) -- Valjean (talk) 21:55, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

We didn't add it for Bush in 2009 or Obama in 2017. Why add it for Trump? He's leaving office in 12 days, so why bother. GoodDay (talk) 23:24, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

@Valjean: The policy-based argument for not including it is WP:CONSENSUS. Content covered by a consensus cannot be changed without a new consensus. The first paragraph is covered by Talk:Donald Trump/Current consensus#Current consensus #17. So adding this without a new consensus for it would be a clear violation of policy and would earn you a visit to AE. Now, if you insist on wasting our precious time seeking a consensus for something that will be in the article for a few days – because of some half-baked, idiosyncratic "principle" about what "the history of this article should show", then do your worst. I will strongly oppose your proposal, and I don't need to cite any policy to justify my opposition. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:01, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

@Valjean: Alright, I was out of line there – I've had a sucky day and it's showing – and I would just remove that if I hadn't pinged you with it. I see now that you weren't suggesting we bypass consensus rules but were seeking a consensus. I oppose adding this for a matter of a few days without better justification than you have provided. All outgoing presidents are lame ducks after the election, so it's obvious and unnecessary. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:31, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the apology, but too little too late. I feel with Davey2010. I won't leave Wikipedia, but this article is a walled garden that is tightly guarded by a "consensus" wall that is being used as a trump card to preclude even the most obviously simple, policy-based edits. All other policies are irrelevant in this atmosphere. Consensus blocks their application. This is the type of situation where IAR should apply, but I won't bother. I'm not ambitious or combative enough. I have better things to do than try to improve this article. I'll keep watching, but don't expect much from me. -- Valjean (talk) 01:45, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

OK, let's wait until January 20, 2021 (Noon EST), which will make the proposed "lame duck" label, moot. Dare I say it, no more quacking, after that ;) GoodDay (talk) 17:37, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Attack vs mayhem

Re: [13]

Contrary to SPEICFICO's assertion, "mayhem" is in fact used in sources, including NYT today. Until earlier today, it was the word they chose for use in their top headline, and the word "attack" has never been seen there to my knowledge. While "attack" has also been seen in sources, that does not make it superior to "mayhem" is terms of RS, which is what SPECIFICO claims.

Given the above, we can now indulge in what some call original research and others call editorial judgment, often varying between the two depending on their immediate needs. Of the two words, "mayhem" is the less hyperbolic; while there was some violence, the majority of what I saw was a couple of thousand people standing around waving flags and signs. Thus "mayhem" better characterizes the events than "attack". ―Mandruss ☎ 17:19, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Calling this "mayhem" would downplay the fact that several of these rioters had weapons (five were confiscated) and carried improvised explosive devices: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/we-will-never-concede-trump-baselessly-asserts-voter-fraud-speech-n1253011

Weapons and especially explosives characterize an attack more than "mayhem." --Redgon (talk) 17:40, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

The word "insurrection" has been used quite a lot; there are cites for it. A compromise between attack and mayhem. Bdushaw (talk) 19:14, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

This seems reasonable to me, I agree with the comment above. Thank you. --Redgon (talk) 19:19, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Mayhem seems more hyperbolic than attack. Onetwothreeip (talk) 00:08, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

"Mayhem" implies chaos, whereas the mob seemed to be reasonably purposeful. Insurrection implies there was an uprising, an attempt to take over the government.--Jack Upland (talk) 04:57, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Dictionary entry for "mayhem". ―Mandruss ☎ 05:00, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I would call it a riot. Compare with the riot at the Australian parliament house in 1996. These things happen worldwide. They aren't insurrections. They are just protesters who cross the boundary of legality...--Jack Upland (talk) 05:02, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

The unrest of the Parliament House riot was far less extensive than this week's Capitol riot. Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:37, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

True. But there are many other examples. It's not unprecedented on a global basis.--Jack Upland (talk) 07:55, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

There are several hundred hippo attacks each year in Africa which the media and Wikipedia ignore, but, strangely, a hippo attacking a tourist in the middle of Times Square would be be noteworthy, widely covered, and rating a Wikipedia article. --Calton | Talk 09:35, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Without looking at sources, "bedlam" seems an appropriate word; I see no sources that this was a credible attempt to overthrow the USA government, but it was a lapse of the Civil Order. "Mayhem" is better than "attack". power~enwiki (π, ν) 07:56, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

And but ... no, we have 2021 storming of the United States Capitol; no other article is necessary. power~enwiki (π, ν) 08:03, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Without looking at sources... Seriously? It's what articles are BUILT ON.

I see no sources that this was a credible attempt to overthrow the USA government Sure, I mean other than the San Francisco Chronicle and Chicago Tribune using "INSURRECTION" in big letters as their front-page headlines.

Given that pretty much every single newspaper I looked at, of a couple of dozen, uses some form of "storm" or "assault", which involves intentional action, "mayhem", "protest" or even "riot" don't seem adequate at all. So "attack" or "assault" would be most on point. --Calton | Talk 09:35, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

It's completely arbitrary if assault is more serious than riot, or vice versa. Clearly there are different assumptions made about which words typically describe worse events than others. Likewise, it's not a given that insurrection means overthrow. Onetwothreeip (talk) 10:41, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I agree that intention and purpose is what's missing from "mayhem" and "protest." Still vote for insurrection. Here's a couple more respectable sources on this event:

• https://www.ft.com/content/92cea3b6-cc1e-4238-8166-d457d350a412
• https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/01/09/the-terrible-scenes-on-capitol-hill-illustrate-how-donald-trump-has-changed-his-party --Redgon (talk) 20:23, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

One more source, even the American Political Science Association (APSA) has made an official statement calling this an insurrection: https://politicalsciencenow.com/statement-on-the-insurrection-at-the-us-capitol/ --Redgon (talk) 20:35, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I think whatever word people will use to describe this (for arguments sake, ‘incident’), should also be used to describe the highly popular BLM ‘incidents’. If you are inclined to call the capitol incident, an ‘attack’, or a ‘riot’, then to describe the many instances, (in the name of BLM), of openly mass looting stores, attacking people, destroying stores, and vandalism, describing all those incidents, as ‘protests’, would be to set a record in double standards. And the other way too- if you are inclined to call the capitol incident a ‘protest’, I wouldn’t want to see you referring to the BLM incidents as riots or attacks (although this side of the argument is admittably less common). Personally I would be inclined to call them both ‘riots’, but I would probably be called racist by one side, and similarly insulted by the other (again, admittably much less common). I also do not see the argument that this is a real attack because it was on a federal building, to be valid at all. This was no coup, this was no rebellion, this was a classic riot where people got swept up with excitement. Not a ‘takeover of the government’ or a ‘threat to our democracy’. Again, if you disagree with me on my last point, I would tend to refer you to my original arguments. The hypocrisy is blatant, and the difference between a simple ‘protest’ and an ‘attack’ is not merely because it happened on a federal building instead of a Walmart, a supermarket, or a police car (although for that matter there have been many instance of BLM inspired vandalism on federal buildings, and of course police property is usually state/county/city [government] property.) KayFein613 (talk) 08:25, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Feel free to make those suggestions on the other pages you are suggesting (BLM, etc.). This is the page for suggesting modifications to the Wikipedia page of Donald Trump. Also, this was certainly an attack/insurrection. There were rioters carrying weapons, improvised explosives and shouting "Hang Mike Pence" around the US Capitol and there's videos to prove it: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/10/hang-mike-pence-twitter-stops-phrase-trending-capitol-breach --Redgon (talk) 17:51, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Watching Fox News is interesting. There they play a false bothsiderism game by trying to give the impression that Trump's opponents are the ones violently attacking Pence, when it was actually Trump's allies (the whole mob) who were the ones shouting "Hang Mike Pence". The Fox complains that Twitter doesn't treat both sides by banning such speech from Trump's opponents. Well, Twitter does ban both sides, but this happens to be coming mostly from Trump's own followers. The attempts by Fox and Parler to claim that Antifa is responsible for the siege of the Capitol are so ridiculous. -- Valjean (talk) 18:10, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

KayFein613, while it is plain enough to see that videos show a great number in the crowds were peaceable protesters, among many of the millions who voted for Trump, it is certain that what happened inside the Capitol amounted to indictably riotous conduct,[14] and the participants are liable to a fair trial under the constitutional rule of law. Qexigator (talk) 18:49, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Allegations of inciting violence section

The riot should also be listed under the above mentioned section too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump#Allegations_of_inciting_violence

2021 storming of the United States Capitol — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8802:2701:64E0:121:DA51:3293:EE2F (talk) 19:58, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

It's already there here. Thanoscar21^talk_{contributions} 22:09, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Category:Fugitives wanted by Iraq/Iran

Judges in Iraq:[15] and Iran:[16] have issued arrest warrants on Donald Trump. So far, Trump hasn't complied and surrendered to the judicial systems in these two country's.

Should these two category's be in the article? --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 00:01, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes, we should include the categories. We include Category:Fugitives wanted by the United States for many citizens of other countries wanted by the US. --Tataral (talk) 03:19, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

De-link "45th" in lead?

For some reason, when Trump is described as the "45th and current president of the United States", the "45th" is linked. This is inconsistent with other presidents' articles, and linking "45th" in the lead looks weird. The link also looks like it is linked to the Wikipedia page about the number 45. Linking the number of his presidency is inconsistent with other articles, and the link also looks unnatural. Please note that this would change Talk:Donald Trump/Current consensus#Current consensus, item 17. -- Politicsfan4 (talk) 01:18, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I thought it was just an incumbent thing (see Mike Pence article). GoodDay (talk) 01:26, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm known to oppose cross-article linkages absent community consensuses for them, but I would be happy to see this link go for at least two reasons. First, it's MOS:EGGy in the extreme. While EGG is widely disregarded even by editors who are aware of it and understand it, we're talking about the first sentence of the article here. And secondly, I really don't think a link to a list of U.S. presidents is particularly useful to a reader coming here to read about the life of Donald Trump. In that context, they probably don't care a lot about the names and dates of the preceding 44. While we're here, let's solicit more participation at #Second interim proposal, which has a deadline of January 20. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:32, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

@Mandruss: I've created a survey below discussing the change. -- Politicsfan4 (talk) 01:37, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Survey: Linking of "45th" in lead

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This change would alter Talk:Donald Trump/Current consensus#Current consensus, item 17.

Currently, Trump is described as the "45th and current president of the United States" in the lead sentence. The removal of the linkage of "45th" is being proposed.

---

• Support - Linking of "45th" is inconsistent with other pages, and looks unnatural. It also violates MOS:EGG, as stated by Mandruss above. -- Politicsfan4 (talk) 01:37, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
• Support delinking. For the reasons summarized by Politicsfan4 —Eyer (he/him) If you reply, add {{reply to|Eyer}} to your message. 01:40, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
• Delink, but only if the same is done for Mike Pence. I'm assuming this doesn't include the incumbents (which after Noon EST, Jan 20) will be Biden & Harris. GoodDay (talk) 02:03, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
• Comment, I already asked this to be changed, and an administrator did my request to delink it back in December 7th. Someone re-added it without seeing that the administrator was the one that changed it. Talk:Donald_Trump/Archive_128 PyroFloe (talk) 02:21, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Lead

Trump committed to an "orderly transition" of power in a statement after the violence and the joint session of Congress counted the vote of the Electoral College and certified Biden's victory needs to be in the lead.As the first time he has agreed to give power clearly sourced in WP:RSPharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 01:47, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Why put it in the lead? He's not the first defeated US president, to promise an "orderly transition". GoodDay (talk) 01:50, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

It is context of the violence and his refusal to accept the results including comments like Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Biden but refused to concede defeat.Now he has agreed to give up power.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 01:55, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I have removed your addition to the lead. The lead is meant to be a summary of the article. Do not add material to the lead that doesn't already exist in the body of the article. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 02:09, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

This needs to be mentioned in the article.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 02:16, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Does it really? Maybe this statement will be important, maybe it's just another meaningless empty promise. Right now, it's just one more statement issued by the administration among thousands over the past four years. It's newsworthy, but Trump does a dozen newsworthy things a week, and most of them do not belong in this article. How are we supposed to establish due weight based on persistent coverage in reliable sources when it's been less than a day since he said that? This is supposed to be a biography of Donald Trump, not an up-to-date ticker tape of everything he's said or done as president. Will this press release be significant in 5 years? It's questionable whether this should even be mentioned in this article, but it's not a question that it absolutely should not be in the lead. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 02:44, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

This article is about Trump's entire life, and this is not lead-worthy in that context. The article about his presidency is Presidency of Donald Trump. Proportion of this lead currently devoted to the most recent 6.7% of his life: 80%. Precisely because too many editors don't understand that this is a biography article. ―Mandruss ☎ 03:35, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Okay that is fine then if the consenus is against it fine.Thanks.Will not be reintroduced by me .Thanks.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 03:47, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

• The lead is far too long. I am not going to edit the page (I still have setting myself on fire as a less painful option) but could you who are working on this page please come to an agreement on a lead that is a reasonable length? --Guy Macon (talk) 04:00, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

  Based on my experience here since 2016, I seriously doubt it, at least as long as there are longer leads for editors to point to. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:10, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

  People keep saying the lead is too long, but (as I pointed out last time this came up), is that true? The leads on Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan are all roughly comparable in length. While Trump was only a one-term president, he did more notable things before the presidency, and the wide variety of things he's done throughout his life, plus the wide variety of controversies and distinct unrelated noteworthy events as President, make it harder to condense them into single paragraphs. (I don't think this particular tidbit needs to be in the lead right now, mind. But I'm not convinced the lead overall needs to be drastically reduced - it's roughly in the ballpark for other recent presidents.) --Aquillion (talk) 05:30, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

  Yeah, I don't disagree with that, so I'll strike my previous comment. My main issue is the excessive material on the presidency in both the body and the lead, for a person who was well-known worldwide and well-reported for ~40 years before he ran for president. Contrast with Obama and Bush43, largely known only in their home states. Obama became a U.S. senator from Illinois at age 43 and Bush43 became Texas governor at age 48. ―Mandruss ☎ 05:59, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

  I was not expecting anyone to defend the length. We have a guideline on this: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section says "As a general rule of thumb, a lead section should contain no more than four well-composed paragraphs and be carefully sourced as appropriate."

There are two possibilities, both of them undesirable:

1. The lead contains a bunch of material that is not found in the body.
2. We basically have two standalone articles on the same page; one at the top and the other farther down.

--Guy Macon (talk) 13:42, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

The lead is obviously much longer than our guidelines. I don't think it's either of those problems though, Guy Macon. It suffers from being overly bitty and contains too many non-essential, miscellaneous facts because of recentism. When freshly elected president, being "the first without prior military or government service" may have been significant to an overall summary of Trump; after a presidency full of dramatic events it doesn't deserve lead space. A more narrative-based summation with judicious cutting is the solution, but a consensus won't be possible right now because someone will be upset each time a detail is removed. Is "moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem" a key piece of information about Trump, discussed in significant detail in the article? As Aquillion points out, recent US presidents all have (overly) long leads. I went and practised shortening the Trump lead in my sandbox, and the problem isn't that it's particularly difficult, it's that the type of ruthless cutting necessary will bring it out of line with the detail in those other presidential leads; it wouldn't be even-handed to reduce the lead here without rewriting the others. I disagree that this means a controversial/noteworthy tenure requires a lead of this length though. Compare/contrast with Boris Johnson, Theresa May, François Hollande, Angela Merkel and Margaret Thatcher. Jr8825 • Talk 15:23, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Guy, it says "As a general rule of thumb", which provides room for editors to argue that U.S. presidents need to be exceptions to the general rule. We can disagree with that, but we can't say the argument is illegitimate, and it comes down to majority rule like everything else. The lead wouldn't be like it is if the majority didn't feel that putting all this presidency-related material in the lead is more important than a "silly MOS guideline" (I'm sure it's been cited sometimes in these discussions, so it's not something we didn't already know about). We (i.e. they) must push the Truth about Trump to the most visible part of the most visible article about Trump, since that's where it will be read by the largest number of readers. This is an example of the price we pay for flexible guidelines, and surely better than the alternative. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:37, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

...Resulting in our turning what should be "the most visible part of the most visible article about Trump, since that's where it will be read by the largest number of readers" into "a huge TLDR wall of text that is ignored by most readers, and those who do read it would have read the same material in the body". See unintended consequences and WP:TLDR. The effect of too much text has been proven to be true in multiple academic studies. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:39, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

"We have a problem. Most people don't read the entire article. They just read the lead."

"OK, I made the lead as long as the article."

"Now they only read the first paragraph of that long lead."

"OK, I made the first paragraph as long as the lead."

"Now they only read the first sentence of that long paragraph."

"OK, I made the first sentence as long as the paragraph."

"Now they only read the first word of that long sentence."

"OKImadeTheFirstWordAsLongAsTheSentence."

"Now they only read the first part of the first word."

"OK, I just sent The Wikipedia Police to kick in their door, tie them to a chair with their head in a clamp, tape their eyes open, put a self-refreshing scrolling feed of the article on a monitor, and the Wikipedia Song blaring into their ears." --Guy Macon (talk) 21:56, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Mandruss, You said, "This article is about Trump's entire life, and this is not lead-worthy in that context." I can't believe you said it, but you said it. Find me an event in his entire presidency more important ban the culmination of his " the election was stolen" rhetoric inciting a mob of his followers broke into the US Capitol building during with both houses in session in an attempt to prevent the final confirmation of the electoral votes that elect Joe Biden!!! This is clearly what he hoped would happen. We are used to seeing scenes like that in other countries and what came to mind was the attack on the Supreme Court in Columbia that was paid 4 by no less an immoral self-interested character than Donald Trump in Pablo Escobar. I have heard from Congressional members for 2 days now of how they feared for their lives. Of 1 remember texting her husband to remind him of where her will was. Of how they were certain if they'd been trapped in there and the mob had guns there be a lot of dead people. This is not lead Worthy.? The capital breached for the first time since the War of 1812 and it's not lead Worthy?! Now is not the time to worry about the lead being too long. If it's too long it's because of trump. There is a section below about the attack so you can't use the argument that you can't put it in the lead because it's not in the article as someone else did. My passion aside, the language at the bottom of the lead is clearly not nearly strong enough. Jackhammer111 (talk) 06:41, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Middle East Peace Deals

Trump brokered peace deals between Israel and the Arab nations of United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Bahrain, and Morocco. [17]

Trump was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in brokering the aforementioned peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. [18]

Trump also brokered an agreement that restored ties between Saudi Arabia and Qatar. [19]

These are major foreign policy achievements of the Trump administration, and they aren't mentioned in the wiki page. These foreign policy achievements should be mentioned alongside the other Middle East matters that are mentioned in the introductory section.

184.164.187.121 (talk) 04:53, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

He didn't "broker" the agreements, and his nomination (if it can be called that) for Nobel Peace Prize is not notable. Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:36, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

The NYTimes article at the 1st reference and the NBC article at the 3rd referenced both say that the Trump administration brokered the deals. Both the NYTimes and NBC use the word "broker" to describe Trump's role. Furthermore, the BBC article at the 2nd reference clearly says that Trump was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, so the word "nominated" is correct. A separate question is whether such a nomination is noteworthy. In any case, the Trump administration's role in BROKERING middle east peace deals is noteworthy, and ought to be mentioned. The only reason not to mention it is bias. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.164.187.121 (talk) 15:37, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

These agreements themselves aren't very significant on their own, and from what you are saying it sounds like it was the executive government that was involved, rather than Trump himself. Onetwothreeip (talk) 10:44, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

In essence , Onetwothreeip, these good things Trump has done, you will attribute to the executive government, but I’m sure you will be quick to blame the coronavirus on Trump, and the storm on the capitol, and pretty much anything bad that had happened during the Trump presidency? God help you. The double standard is unreal. Although I must admit that is an argument I haven’t heard before, to just attribute anything good Trump did to the executive government. You should suggest this to CNN I’m sure they would love to push this idea (although it’s probably better for them to just not mention all the peace deals in the first place, as has been their strategy so far). KayFein613 (talk) 08:05, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

@KayFein613: The agreements are between countries which are not the United States. The agreements themselves aren't particularly important either and are between countries which were not at war, and the sources do not say much about Donald Trump's role in them. Most of the reporting on the coronavirus pandemic has reflected on Trump's own actions and inactions, so this article has much to say about him on that issue. Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:17, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

@Onetwothreeip: I appreciate that you dropped the argument attributing his accomplishments to the “executive government”. Now, about how most of the article is about the coronavirus pandemic, this is unfortunately completely true, it’s almost like we are pretending the 3 years before the pandemic did not happen. I am all for a separate article entitled “completely opinionated and often debated article that we will present as facts by quoting sources to websites that happen to agree with this view, about how Donald Trump handled the coronavirus pandemic”. In fact, in the article at hand, the economy should be an important talking point in articles about a president, as should peace deals (and no, it’s not as simple as “hey we’re not at war, naturally we must be at peace, let’s make a treaty”). Downplaying the deals is upsetting, and leaving them out completely is even worse. Let the reader decide whether he considers the deals important- it is certainly important enough to deserve a mention. Ignoring how the economy has doubled since in 2016 (looking at the DJIA for this stat), even with the pandemic, is also upsetting. Again, some will say he just continued what Obama started, but that is certainly not a reason to leave the fact out altogether. As of the pandemic itself, I don’t think Trump could have known how badly some governors would handle the whole restrictions and lockdowns situation, as we saw utter failures and gross negligence in many states, specifically New York. You must concur that governors were voted in by the people of only that state, and in fact should represent an even more specific view of what people in that state want in a leader. People in New York should have been happy that Governor Cuomo can make the decisions about corona, since they voted him in, but were as a whole actually against Trump, right? I do think President Trump is merely holding true to one of the Republican Party’s core beliefs, which is that States should get a lot of individual power in major decisions. On a national level, he did take action to cut off travel from China, set up a very widespread testing system (the reason behind the US having so many statistic cases- more testing, more reported cases), provide accelerated vaccine development motivation and delivered PPE to spots with major outbreaks. Essentially, everything short of a national lockdown and mask mandate, in keeping with the GOP’s position, mainly that that is up to the states. I do think he downplayed the virus, although that was only in statements, and I always judge president purely by their actions or lack of actions. Therefore, I really disliked the articles implications of basically blaming the entire coronavirus on Trump. If only there was such a scathing article blaming China for starting the virus in the first place. KayFein613 (talk) 08:57, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 8 January 2021 (2)

there is some factual inaccuracies 38.141.57.133 (talk) 05:50, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit extended-protected}} template. ―Mandruss ☎ 06:17, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Reference trimming causing failure of WP:V

Onetwothreeip - I understand your intentions in trimming this article. However, I am concerned that you are not being careful enough in your efforts, because when you remove certain references, we are ending up with unreferenced content which fails WP:V.

• 7 January [20] trimming: Removed [21] [22] [23], losing verifiability for: called for the election result to be overturned and called on his supporters to "take back our country" by marching to the Capitol to "show strength" and "fight like hell" ... Trump released a video telling the rioters to "go home in peace", but described them as being "great patriots" and "very special".

• 5 January [24] Trimming overuse of citations: Removed [25], losing verifiability for: The report said Trump had withheld military aid and a White House invitation to pressure Ukraine to announce investigations into Trump's political rivals.

• 3 January [26] overcites: Removed [27], losing verifiability for: the Trump administration sanctioned 25 Iranian individuals and entities

• 30 December [28] Trimming: Removed [29], losing verifiability for: The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General inspections of migrant detention centers in 2018 and 2019 found that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) "in many instances" violated federal guidelines for detaining migrant children

• 25 December [30] Trimming, summarising: Removed [31], losing verifiability for: sharply increased the number of family separations at the border starting from the summer of 2017

• 23 December [32] overciting: Removed [33], losing verifiability for Trump has promoted ... QAnon

With so many recent instances of mistakes, I hope that Onetwothreeip can improve on this. starship.paint (exalt) 08:38, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Are you sure that the content is not also supported by the remaining sources? I'm not sure how many references I have trimmed out of the article, but six is a relatively small proportion. Still, it is important to me that all the remaining content is properly verified, and I will investigate this further. I would also appreciate if other editors would join in this task of trimming citations. Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:44, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

@Onetwothreeip: - yes, I am sure, and you can check. I had to check, otherwise I wouldn't know what was verified (which I didn't include above) and what wasn't. starship.paint (exalt) 09:06, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

@Onetwothreeip: It's not entirely clear to me that you fully understand that it's not up to others to check your work on this. If you had to ask whether Starship.paint was sure, that means you weren't sure, and that's unacceptable. Having too many citations is a FAR less serious problem than not having enough. If you can't do the legwork, leave cite-trimming to those who can. Please don't get called out on this again. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:21, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Mandruss, I checked the citations during those edits but clearly I've made some mistakes. I was simply asking if they were sure that those were mistakes that I had made, and I thanked them for bringing this up. I'm definitely not saying that other editors should have to check the work, I was saying that it would be good if other editors removed excessive citations as well. Of course I now have no choice but to be more careful if or when I continue to assess the article for references which can be removed. Onetwothreeip (talk) 20:30, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

This is a big problem, and it has been pointed out by several editors over a period of many months. It is very destructive. SPECIFICO talk 08:59, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Agreeing with this complaint about the deletion of citations. The article is regularly attacked for being biased, hence liberal use of citations is warranted. I am wondering if the deletion of citations is not a prelude to later deletion of text, for being unsupported. I've complained several times about the "trimming" - article size will not be reduced significantly by "trimming"; a different organization/article approach is needed; we should be smart about it. Bdushaw (talk) 16:44, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

article size will not be reduced significantly by "trimming"; a different organization/article approach is needed - There ya go. See, I'm not the only crazy person around here. I've been using the words "sea change" of late. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:07, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I can certainly assure you that removing citations has never been done by me with the intention of removing any content for being unsupported. A different organisation of the article would very much be a good idea. What proposals would you, or anybody else, have for this? Onetwothreeip (talk) 20:30, 8 January 2021 (UTC

You start by dramatically reducing the amount of detail about the presidency, given that his life is not the life of a typical U.S. president and therefore we need to stop looking at other presidents for guidance. We don't need all that detail about domestic policy and foreign policy here, for example, and both should be summarized at a higher level.

How do you know when you have reduced enough? In my opinion, a good rule of thumb would be 80 kB of readable prose, halfway between "Probably should be divided" and "Almost certainly should be divided" per WP:SIZERULE. The article is currently at 122 kB, so that's a reduction of one-third, resulting in something still significantly larger than the guideline recommends. I see no justification for completely throwing out size guidelines for Trump. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:36, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm not as convinced as you that Donald Trump was much more notable for non-presidential events as other presidents were, but I certainly agree that the detail about his presidency needs to be significantly reduced. In that sense we actually could look to the articles of other presidents, as they are much smaller than this one. I would be proposing more drastic reduction of content than I have been doing, but I am put off that by what feels like inevitable endless discussion and argument, where editors argue that removing anything negative about Trump is making him look too good. Onetwothreeip (talk) 01:33, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I am uncertain of a proper process by which an article undergoes dramatic revision. If it were me, naive me, I would first have a discussion, then perhaps an RfC, of a revised outline for the article, and an agreement on it. Then create "offline" subpages, one subpage for each new section, (or a new article subpage?) allowing material from this article to be copied to it, revised, developed as appropriate. Once the subpages have been developed to an appropriate form, the article could be replaced with the new one. If it were just me, that is how I would do it, but given that Wikipedia editors behave like a herd of cats, that might just be a car wreak of an article development. To start, the material on his presidency should be dramatically reduced, replaced by general summaries, and the Presidency section should be broken apart into separate main sections (the present table of contents is mostly unusable). In this biography of Trump page, the Media section needs major development. Trump's wall should be a subsection; he invested huge political capital in it; a monumental waste/fraud. Since the pandemic and election disinformation are defining aspects of Trump those should be major themes in the new article (we discussed once a breakaway article on Trump and pandemic; I am a little more in favor of such an article. Trump and election disinformation similarly? - uncertain of the present set of Trump articles.) Developing general summaries of aspects of the Trump presidency could be difficult - as I've mentioned before, one has to distill a large amount of information to a brief clear statement, which ends up, inevitably, looking very bad for Trump. Looking ahead...a legacy section is likely, eventually, warranted; what will the Republican Party and Trump will look like in coming years? One would think Wikipedia would have some guidelines for major article revision; part of the problem being that for a time, perhaps a long time, the article could look like a major construction zone, with the possibility the new article will look worse. Bdushaw (talk) 01:43, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

I've made an inquiry at the Village pump regarding major article revision. Bdushaw (talk) 02:08, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Refused to concede defeat

I partially reverted an edit by UpdateNerd which changed a sentence in the lead from "Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Biden but refused to concede defeat" to "Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Biden but initially refused to concede defeat".

The RS are split. For example, the FT says "Donald Trump concedes election", whereas The Guardian says "while stopping short of outright admitting defeat, Trump’s statement is the closest he has come to a concession speech."

There's no urgent need to adjust the existing sentence as it's written in past tense. I'm personally against change but thought I'd bring this up here as I imagine this sentence may become contentious. Jr8825 • Talk 12:04, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Just a day earlier he said [34] Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out... It seems that the new stance is that I did lose but illegitimately. starship.paint (exalt) 12:58, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Let's keep in mind. The news media created this idea that a presidential candidate has to concede, when he loses an election. Nowhere in the US Constitution is there any mention of a presidential candidate being required to declare victory or concede defeat. GoodDay (talk) 17:58, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Not really. The news media did not create longstanding norms in political processes, which exist outside written rules (the Constitution and the law). Asserting written rules, ignoring those norms, is the real-world equivalent of wikilawyering and has rightly earned Trump a partial community ban. He will continue to post on talk pages as long as he's physically able, but he can no longer edit articles. It's not a perfect metaphor but it'll do. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:09, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

It's still not called for in the US Constitution. GoodDay (talk) 18:27, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

It still doesn't matter. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:01, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm fine with the partial revert. However, I added a note with his quote about being willing to transition his power. UpdateNerd (talk) 10:06, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I object to the note. What's the point? He followed that up with the two tweets that got him banned from Twitter ("One stated that the 75 million who voted for him were “American Patriots” who will “not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” He then announced he would not go to Biden’s swearing-in ceremony later this month.WaPo). Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 15:38, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

The term far-right must be in the lead

It's an extremely glaring omission that the term far-right isn't mentioned anywhere in the lead, not even once, not even buried in the third paragraph. We can no longer accept this. Reliable sources have overwhelmingly described Trump's policies and views as far-right, and we even describe many of his own lesser officials (like Stephen Miller) as far-right. As reliable sources have agreed on for years now, all supporters of Trump are by definition far-right (in Europe Trump has been considered completely toxic and radioactive, something they wouldn't touch with a barge pole, even in the mainstream conservative parties for years), he's far-right if there ever was a far-right politician in the US; the idea that Trumpism is not a far-right ideology is a fringe POV with no support in RS.

At the very minimum, we should change the sentence Trump's political positions have been described as populist, protectionist, isolationist, and nationalist to Trump's political positions have been described as populist, protectionist, isolationist, nationalist, and far-right --Tataral (talk) 15:19, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

• Dang all Trump supporters are far-right now? By definition nonetheless. No. PackMecEng (talk) 16:32, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
  • No, not now, this was always the case, as far as mainstream scholarship and mainstream reliable sources are concerned. We are no longer going to indulge fringe views in this article, which has deviated substantially from the mainstream narrative for the past four years in the way it denies that Trump is far-right, normalises his views and conspicuously downplays criticism and the mainstream narrative. --Tataral (talk) 16:34, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
    • I mean that's just... not true at all, lol. There absolutely is no consensus among RSs that all Trump supporters are inherently far right. I hate to assume bad faith but I fear you might be letting your own views creep in here. — Czello 16:44, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
      • No, what I wrote above is simply a summary of the perception of every single reliable source in Europe not regarded as outright fringe white supremacist or something like that. It's time for Wikipedia to take the mainstream perception and narrative in RS into account. Local US debates are less relevant, we're not here to please the far right in the US. --Tataral (talk) 16:49, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
        • Largely Europe is not relevant. From what I can tell the views you are expounding are the fringe ones. PackMecEng (talk) 16:50, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
        • every single reliable source in Europe Again, simply untrue. I've read RSs myself that make an argument directly against this. It's time for Wikipedia to take the mainstream perception and narrative in RS into account. We literally do. If there are any sources in the article right now you think aren't RS, feel free to start a discussion on them here. Local US debates are less relevant, we're not here to please the far right in the US. Well I have good news for you, the far-right hates this article! — Czello 16:52, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
  • The proposed text doesn't say that his supporters are all far-right (or even that any of them are far-right), merely that Trump's own political positions have been characterized that way. People can support him for one of the many political positions he has been characterized as having without endorsing all of them; and even beyond that, the fact that this is expressed as summarizing how he is characterized by sources further down the article makes it clear that eg. his supporters may not all agree with that characterization. --Aquillion (talk) 19:57, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
    • You are misreading or misunderstanding mine and their comment. Please re-read them or perhaps others comments here that took issue with the same part. PackMecEng (talk) 21:45, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Disagree. The sources are not unanimous and the label is clearly contentious. For this reason it's mentioned at Trumpism. Including it in the lede would be wholly inappropriate given the ongoing debate about his views. the idea that Trumpism is not a far-right ideology is a fringe POV with no support in RS. -- this is flat-out wrong; there are plenty of sources that call him something else (right wing populist, usually) and it's most certainly not a fringe view. The debates regarding his political views have taken place regularly here, the Trumpism page, and the Political positions of Donald Trump talk page (which doesn't call him far-right once, either). As reliable sources have agreed on for years now, all supporters of Trump are by definition far-right -- this is also just simply untrue at all. There is no such consensus at all. How he's considered in Europe is also irrelevant. — Czello 16:38, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

"How he's considered in Europe is also irrelevant": Well, how telling, considering how many editors have pointed out US bias for years. How he is considered in Europe is more relevant than how he is considered domestically in his own country, just as our coverage of Putin is not based on Russian domestic propaganda but on the international view. This is not Wikipedia for the US. Europe is a larger region, and quite frankly European sources generally have more weight and credibility than local (often very biased) views in authoritarian states or less developed democracies, whether in the US or Russia. --Tataral (talk) 16:43, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Why would Europe's views take precedence over the rest of the world? Also, you're comparing Russian state propaganda to US media, which is a fallacy. You seem to want to dismiss US sources because you think they exist as part of an authoritarian regime; this is wrong. The fact that there more US centric sources is because he's the US President. Of course there are going to be more US pieces on him. — Czello 16:46, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

No, that is just a bunch of strawmen and has nothing to do with what I wrote. You claimed "how he's considered in Europe is also irrelevant", which is clearly wrong. The fact that European sources combined have more weight for a number of objective reasons related to WP:DUE and the quality of the sources doesn't mean that we should disregard US sources, only that US perspectives shouldn't be the only views represented in the article, and that the article shouldn't reflect a WP:FALSEBALANCE between a mainstream US view (as found in high-quality US sources like NYT and CNN) and the US far-right. It should represent a global perspective, where the mainstream US perspective is primarily represented by sources like NYT. It's not about Europe taking "precedence", it's about the global consensus in the same way that our critical coverage of Putin is about the global consensus in countries where freedom of speech exists. --Tataral (talk) 17:01, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

only that US perspectives shouldn't be the only views represented in the article I'm afraid you've talked yourself into a corner here. Previously you stated that all RSs described Trump and his supporters as far-right, but if you want to get away from just US sources, you must therefore be conceding that there are some (US) sources that disagree with that label? I mean, there are European sources that disagree too, but that's another issue. and the US far-right What US far right sources are being used in the article currently? it's about the global consensus in the same way that our critical coverage of Putin is about the global consensus in countries where freedom of speech exists Yes, we're already doing that now. There are sources in this article that aren't American. No matter what the balance between American vs non American sources there is, it doesn't support your view that he's unanimously viewed as far-right. — Czello 17:31, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I've not seen any mainstream sources claiming he isn't far-right. Even if not all sources don't use that specific term at all times, it doesn't mean that they view him as a centre-right politician. Your insistence that each and every source must have specifically declared him to be far-right or used the term in every article about him for us to mention that term along with nationalist and isolationist, as some of the prominent descriptions of him, is not how we do things. There is clearly global consensus that he is a far-right politician. --Tataral (talk) 17:43, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I've not seen any mainstream sources claiming he isn't far-right. Take a look at Trumpism and Political positions of Donald Trump, you'll see a bunch. Even if not all sources don't use that specific term at all times, it doesn't mean that they view him as a centre-right politician. The options aren't just "centre-right" and "far-right", y'know. There is a space between them. each and every source must have specifically declared him to be far-right I never said that at all: I was disputing your claim that reliable sources "have agreed" on this for years (your words, not mine), which simply isn't true. There is clearly global consensus that he is a far-right politician. There clearly is not, friend. Some call him far-right, some call him right wing populist, some call him a plutocrat. It's not a consensus. — Czello 17:49, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Plutocrat and far-right are not mutually exclusive terms, this is really only about what aspect the source is focusing on. Far-right refers to his openly stated racist views and policies, his openly stated support for white supremacists and so on. The term "consensus" doesn't mean that everyone, without exception, must agree. And even if you were right (which I disagree with), it would be sufficient for the term to be used to a significant degree for it to be included in a sentence mentioning some prominent desciptions, as outlined above ("Trump's political positions have been described as populist, protectionist, isolationist, nationalist, and far-right"). --Tataral (talk) 18:01, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

And the consensus among sources doesn't still support far-right, especially not to the point where it must be in the lead. It's obviously controversial. Currently this article describes him as "right-wing populist", and even goes out of its way to say "He supported or leaned toward varying political positions over time" and "described his positions as "eclectic, improvisational and often contradictory". These are the least controversial descriptors which are all supported by RSs -- to dismiss this in favour of shoe-horning far-right in there would be WP:UNDUE. The term "consensus" doesn't mean that everyone, without exception, must agree Yes, I know; but there isn't even a consensus when you keep this in mind. Again, it's clearly disputed which is why the more dedicated articles (the two I previously linked) dig into this in more detail. — Czello 18:12, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Similar to American English vs British English it depends on the subject of the article which we use. This article is about American politics so we use that as a level for spectrum, not whatever one the editor thinks is best. PackMecEng (talk) 16:49, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

That's completely wrong. The article on Putin is not written from the perspective of Russian Putinists, we are not going to write about Trump from a far-right Trumpist perspective either. This is a global encyclopedia, and our articles on Trump and Putin should reflect the consensus of high-quality sources worldwide. As a more advanced (human development, democracy, freedom of speech) and also larger region European sources clearly have more weight combined than local perspectives in a less developed, less democratic country. For instance, our articles on the Putin regime almost completely disregard Russian state propaganda because it's a fringe view worldwide. --Tataral (talk) 16:53, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

The article on Putin is not written from the perspective of Russian Putinists, we are not going to write about Trump from a far-right Trumpist perspective either. We don't. The far-right hates this article. For instance, our articles on the Putin regime almost completely disregard Russian state propaganda because it's a fringe view worldwide. Where in this article is there US "state propaganda"? — Czello 16:56, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't think I would go as far to say that Europe is a less developed, less democratic country. I mean yeah they have their problems but they are still mostly above 3rd world countries. PackMecEng (talk) 16:57, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I would agree that not all RS have said he is far right.Slatersteven (talk) 16:41, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I do not think such labels are useful, nor in this case do I see him described as such in RS. He is not personnally concerned with ideology as are even some of his entourage. SPECIFICO talk 16:57, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Agree with Slatersteven and SPECIFICO. Certainly the far-right are among his staunchest supporters, and certainly many aspects of his leadership are far-right. But, his decisions are more haphazard then ideological and I don’t see a unified, RS description of far-right. O3000 (talk) 17:06, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

@Tataral: you're doing your case no favours by saying this view is "overwhelming" among RS. At most, you could make the case that RS overwhelmingly describe him as indulging/appeasing/pandering/catering to the far-right. And which RS are saying all supporters of Trump are by definition far-right? I had scour through JSTOR a few months ago and my impression was that while the news media is continually hardening its stance on Trump, the academic sources are more explicit. His political style is described as authoritarian and fascistic by a number of professors. I gathered a few sources here. A distinction should be made between his rhetoric/political style and his personal views and/or policies as a whole; he's described (by journalists and academics alike) as an egotist rather than an ideologue. Also, 'far-right' and 'populist' are both problematically nebulous terms (right-wing populism ≠ far-right, despite the strong overlap). Anyway, the academic coverage is still very much in its infancy, as it grows it will become clearer if this warrants inclusion in this article. For now, I think the best place for discussion is Trumpism. Jr8825 • Talk 18:20, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I have never seen a source say he is not a hippopotamus, a dowser, or a handkerchief. SPECIFICO talk 18:24, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Add me to the list of editors here who disagree that all RSes say Trump or all Trump supporters are "far right", and who think that labelling biography subjects (or their supporters) with labels like "far right" is generally not productive or helpful. That said, I think enough RSes say something about Trump's relationships with (1) "right of center", (2) "conservatives", (3) "right wing", and (4) "far right", that the lead could be improved by adding a summary of those relationships. However, that would have to be done only after a careful source analysis and expansion/revision of the body (which somewhat covers those relationships but not completely). Levivich ^harass/_hound 20:10, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Even if sources were to label him as far-right, and I agree that this is certainly not demonstrated to our standards, we can still choose whether or not we find it to be the most informative description. There are no uses of the term on the article of Adolf Hitler. Onetwothreeip (talk) 01:47, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Regardless of what Tataral says, including "far-right" in the lede doesn't imply that all Trump's supporters are far-right (which would clearly be inappropriate). I think "populist and nationalist" is probably the best explanation for the lede, but would consider "far-right" if there are good sources. A quick Google search confirms that some of his supporters are far-right, but doesn't give sources saying he is. power~enwiki (π, ν) 02:45, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

TBH, he out-left the left, concerning the $2,000 stimulus checks & the $740 billion military budget. GoodDay (talk) 03:17, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Only if one believes that fiscal responsibility is a conservative ideal, but that's not true, it's just Republican propaganda: it's well established that deficit spending is a bipartisan ideal. Levivich ^harass/_hound 05:03, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm writing from a European perspective. From a European perspective, all Trump supporters are seen as inherently and self-evidently far-right by any quality source and the vast majority of people too (including conservatives). (Many sources in this part of the world also consider the US to have one generally centre-right party, the Democrats, and one far-right party, Trump's party). Supporting Trump is an extreme fringe position in a European context; for example, the only (few) politicians who have expressed support for him over the past five years are members of parties widely labelled as far-right extremist in their own countries (and incidentally in the English Wikipedia), typically parties like Germany's AfD that is described in our article as "on the far-right of the political spectrum" (and even there Trump is perceived as a bit too extreme by most). US-based editors always seem to believe that their own local in-universe perspective should dominate articles about their politicians, but that's not how we do it for politicians from any other countries, e.g. Jair Bolsonaro (who is described as far-right in the lead) or Putin, or indeed in our coverage of the European far right, including the AfD and other parties across the continent whose political positions are in fact more moderate than those expressed by Trump and his administration and party. Note that Trump's ambassador to Germany expressly said he was there to empower the (far-right) AfD and similar parties on behalf of Trump, and that Trump has aligned himself with the far-right in Europe throughout his presidency.

Regardless of all that, the concrete proposal above was simply to change a sentence in the third paragraph from Trump's political positions have been described as populist, protectionist, isolationist, and nationalist to Trump's political positions have been described as populist, protectionist, isolationist, nationalist, and far-right, a very reasonable and modest proposal indeed. How do the "populist, protectionist, isolationist, and nationalist" descriptions differ from far-right in their prominence and (universal?) acceptance? --Tataral (talk) 16:33, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

From a European perspective, all Trump supporters are seen as inherently and self-evidently far-right by any quality source and the vast majority of people too (including conservatives). As a European myself I'm not sure where you've gotten this from. There are certainly some sources that I've seen that imply that, but it's hardly the consensus you imply it to be. . How do the "populist, protectionist, isolationist, and nationalist" descriptions differ from far-right in their prominence and (universal?) acceptance? Because those first four labels are fairly uncontroversial and undisputed. Take a look at the Trumpism article for an alternative, which labels his views as an American politics version of the right-wing to far-right, which seems more reasonable and neutral to me. — Czello 16:59, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

You're not writing from a European perspective, you're writing from Tataral's perspective. Levivich ^harass/_hound 17:57, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

No, Tataral is accurately summarizing European views of Trump and his support of right-wing extremist autocratic leaders and parties. Those leaders and parties are his ONLY friends, no exceptions. No sane European leaders view Trump with anything but disgust and concern.

Keep in mind the Overton window. It is the GOP, pushed by Trump, which has slid far to the right from their previously more centrist positions. Both the Democrats and Republicans used to straddle the center, but now the GOP has a huge gap between them and the center, while the Democrats still have contact with it. That's why Republicans can even think that Democrats are socialists and communists, which is nonsense. They don't realize that it is themselves who have moved, and explains why they are (wittingly or unwittingly) allied with Neo-nazis, white nationalists, KKK, open racists, and violent groups, all of whom Trump thinks are "good people" whom he "loves". -- Valjean (talk) 18:33, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

There is no such thing as a "European perspective" or a "European view". 750 million people do not hold a single perspective or view (about anything). There is also no such thing as an "American perspective" or an "Asian perspective" or a "African perspective". These are all misnomers used by people claiming widespread support for their own personal views, as we see here. Don't kid yourself into thinking that you are observing the world from some position of objectivity, and it's everyone else who is shifting their political positions around you. If everyone agreed that Trump was "far right", we would see it in the RSes, but what this thread is glaringly missing is links to RS. Because they aren't out there. This is a giant exercise in confirmation bias. Levivich ^harass/_hound 16:34, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

I'll reply on your talk page. -- Valjean (talk) 18:00, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

A broader point about "far right": The reason most RSes don't, in their own voice, describe Trump as "far right", or describe all Trump supporters (as opposed to some) as "far right", is because half of Americans voted for him, twice. By definition, when half of the electorate supports a candidate, that candidate is a mainstream candidate, not "far" right or "far" left or anything else. By definition, something cannot be extremist if it's supported by half the people. Like it or not, Trump and Trumpism are parts of mainstream American politics (as are/were Biden, Clinton, and all general presidential election candidates, again, by definition). There is no objective place in politics from which one can judge "far right" or "far left"; the Overton window shifts; it's all relative. Levivich ^harass/_hound 16:49, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Twitter account RFC

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Almost unanimous consensus reached, Remove and replace with an archive link of Trump's permanently suspended account, and reinstate only if it gets unbanned. Non-admin close by PyroFloe (talk) 01:30, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

---

Should his Twitter account in the External links sections be removed? –Davey2010^Talk 00:37, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

(I removed it however I was reverted citing consensus #9 to have his account here however it's now permantely suspended. –Davey2010^Talk 00:37, 9 January 2021 (UTC))

• Yes - I see no point in listing a permantely suspended account?, If it comes back to life it can be readded however the chances of Twitter changing their minds seem slim to none. Thanks, –Davey2010^Talk 00:37, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
• Replace with link to the Trump Twitter Archive v2: [35] All of Trump's tweets can be accessed through the archive link. His tweets are historically significant enough to warrant inclusion. FunnyMath (talk) 00:40, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I can support that. Mgasparin (talk) 06:07, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

• Abort per WP:RFCBEFORE. Extremely unlikely we will need RfC to resolve this. Davey, you just said you don't like bureaucracy[36] and then created a lot more of it unnecessarily. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:42, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Tell you what Mandruss I'll scramble my password, delete my email and will fuck off from this place, That way I wont be creating any more beuocracy will I!, Can't fucking win here anymore. –Davey2010^Talk 00:49, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

And Donald Trump is not going to attend the inauguration. Please withdraw your RfC before you go. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:55, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Mandruss, withdraw your personal attacks against Davey and stick to the topic being discussed. This was pretty damn flagrant. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 01:39, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

• Yes - Twitter permanently suspended Trumps' Twitter account. Jack Reynolds (talk to me!) | (email me!!) 01:12, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Sources

• No need for an RfC...the Twitter account is not there anymore; the previous consensus is moot! Bdushaw (talk) 01:29, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
• Snow remove, if it's not a link to anything, it shouldn't be here. We don't need an archive either. Arguable if it should ever have been here. Onetwothreeip (talk) 01:35, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
• Yes removal, because it's basically already removed. GoodDay (talk) 01:42, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
• Remove and replace with a Twitter archive. Thanoscar21^talk_{contributions} 02:05, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
• Keep for now; if the "permanent" removal turns out to be permanent, the link should be changed to some type of archive. Trump's use of Twitter is still notable. power~enwiki (π, ν) 02:10, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

• If Twitter says it is permanent, why are we speculating as to it not being permanent? Wouldn't that violate WP:CRYSTAL? --OuroborosCobra (talk) 02:33, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

• I subscribe to the Wikipedia philosophy that an indefinite block/ban isn't infinite, it only lasts until the ban is removed. That said, there's little harm in switching to an archive link now; I'll outright support it if the ban lasts through February. power~enwiki (π, ν) 02:39, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

• Remove and possibly replace with an archive. Personally I don't the value, but I don't oppose putting in the archive link. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 02:33, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
• Replace with the archive link. Contents are no longer accessible at the original Twitter page. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 03:05, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
• Remove as the entirety of it is gone. Twitter said it's permanent. No use linking to it. Oppose any linking to a third-party archive. -Kai445 (talk) 05:58, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
• Remove no sense as keeping a suspended account there anymore. Mgasparin (talk) 06:06, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
• Bold-Revert-Discuss is not unnecessary but is a perfectly fine approach to editing an article, especially this article especially now — and especially since the discussion has presented the different route than the original edit of replacing the hyperlink that no longer serves a reader with a hyperlink to the archive. However, given Donald Trump on social media#External links the argument that this article needs such an external hyperlink at all, to only one of the social media accounts, seems a little weak. I'd agree with replacement or removal, but retaining a hyperlink that isn't actually useful to a reader, and is likely to remain so for weeks or even months (even if in the long term Twitter changes its mind), is definitely the worst choice of the three. At Donald Trump on social media#External links it makes more sense to list suspended accounts. Here, with only one social media hyperlink representing them all, it doesn't make sense for it not to be the currently most useful one for a reader. Uncle G (talk) 06:18, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
• Comment I would be in favour of a link to an archive, perhaps with a note that it is a closed account. The guiding principal should be the interests of the reader, and given the prominence of Twitter in Trump's life, it would be of interest of readers to see it. On the other hand, it is quite a lot of lies and dangerous rhetoric, do we want to further it? Bdushaw (talk) 06:31, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
• Remove per Davey2010. Replace per Finnusertop — Czello 09:33, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
• Remove and replace with a link to the archive. We link to Barack Obama's presidential library at his page, and while we'll someday have a Trump library, until then we should have a link to a full record of his official statements as president. His Twitter is not merely an important historical record but arguably the most important historical record of those statements, as it was his preferred venue. Arguments against including it because he won't be using it going forward smack of WP:Recentism, since he used it for 99% of his presidency. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 15:38, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
• Replace with archive link. The account is "Suspended", not eliminated. That would be illegal. It still exists and must be preserved, as it's official government records. Replace with an archive link. -- Valjean (talk) 16:40, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

@Valjean: That is the case with all Twitter accounts that have been banned from the platform. "Suspended" is Twitter's term for bans, however Twitter has effectively permamently banned his account from the platform due to everything that he did. - Kamran Mackey (talk to me · my contributions) 21:48, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes, but there is a fundamental difference here. While the hidden content of an ordinary suspended account might end up getting deleted after a period of time, Trump's will never be deleted. The law forbids it, because all of his tweets are considered legal government documents. They must be preserved. -- Valjean (talk) 21:53, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

• Remove and Replace The account has been permanently banned from the platform, thereby making the link to his Twitter redundant. Replace the link with a link to the Trump Twitter Archive (URL is https://www.thetrumparchive.com), as this contains all of Trump's tweets, going back to May 4, 2009. - Kamran Mackey (talk to me · my contributions) 21:48, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
• Remove Duh. ~ HAL333 06:24, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
• Replace As previously mentioned, his Twitter account was an important source of information and controversy throughout his presidency and an archive of his tweets should be linked by the Wiki article. PraiseVivec (talk) 14:54, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
• Replace with an archive link. Obviously a link to the defunct twitter account serves no purpose, but the contents of his Twitter are obviously important and relevant to the subject, so an archive link is the appropriate solution. --Aquillion (talk) 15:04, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
• Replace with archive, as Wikipedia aims to document the "sum of all human knowledge". — JFG ^talk 06:55, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Lead changes

There was a recent change to the lead section by Onetwothreeip (which I reverted) that added "...did not concede defeat until two months afterwards" and that eliminated the part about not cooperating with the transition. But point (1) is inaccurate. Trump conceded that his administration would end and that "a new administration will be inaugurated on January 20th" but he has still refused to concede that he was defeated (i.e., he lost a free and fair election). As for point (2), Trump pledged an "orderly transition" very recently, but the historical fact remains that he refused to cooperate in the transition for a significant time (and who knows what will happen in the next 12 days).

However, I do agree that some changes to the last paragraph of the lead would be a good idea. I propose changing the current version:

Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Biden but refused to concede defeat. He made unsubstantiated accusations of electoral fraud, pressured government officials, mounted a series of sixty unsuccessful legal challenges to try to overturn the results, and ordered his administration not to cooperate in the presidential transition. During the congressional certification of the results on January 6, 2021, Trump urged supporters to march on the Capitol, which they then stormed, forcing Congress to evacuate.

to something like:

Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Biden but refused to concede defeat. Trump attempted to overturn the results by making false claims of electoral fraud, pressuring government officials, mounting dozens of unsuccessful legal challenges, and stymieing the presidential transition. During Congress's counting of the electoral votes on January 6, 2021, Trump urged supporters to march on the Capitol, which they then stormed, forcing Congress to evacuate.

This is a tad shorter, while being more clear and accurate. It also avoids giving a specific number of failed election lawsuits brought by Trump and his allies. (The current text says "60" but USA Today says it's actually 62 -- I would just go with "dozens" or "scores." --Neutrality^talk 02:57, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Support though I'd change "dozens of" to "many". I don't want to do much to this article til Trump is gone from Washington DC, but this is a clear improvement. power~enwiki (π, ν) 03:04, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I also agree it's an improvement. I think "stymieing" is too uncommon a word for the lead and could make it harder to understand for some readers (it's also informal). "Obstructing" seems the obvious choice to me. Jr8825 • Talk 05:20, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

• Jr8825, I'm OK with "obstructing" ("delaying and obstructing" would be accurate too, although I'm mindful of space). Neutrality^talk 17:32, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

@Neutrality: The first edit I made was a partial revert per BRD, and the second was further changes. Can you confirm your revert only affected those further changes? Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:28, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

@Onetwothreeip: Could you clarify the reason for your first revert? It removed this sentence added by Football3434:

The storming of the Capitol resulted in five fatalities and at least 60 injuries. One of the fatalities was a police officer.

Per WP:BRD-NOT, "BRD is never a reason for reverting. Unless the reversion is supported by policies, guidelines or common sense, the reversion is not part of BRD cycle." As far as I can tell, Football3434's edit was made in good faith and did not violate any policies or guidelines. The comment states not to "change [the] language" without discussing first. Do you have another objection? The addition should have had a reference, but I can find several to back it up. -- Alex Rosenberg (talk) 10:12, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't think I ever gave BRD as the reason for my revert. I have no doubt that the content was added in good faith and is supported by sources. The reason I removed it was because it is far too much detail for the lead section, and far too specific as well. Further information about the events should be written elsewhere. Onetwothreeip (talk) 10:48, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Having also worked a little on recent lead changes, I support the more efficient re-wording. UpdateNerd (talk) 10:10, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Support - as heck knows, the lead in this BLP is way to big. GoodDay (talk) 18:19, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Skipping the inauguration

I feel that this should be included, especially if he ultimately follows through with it, but do not want to muck up the main page inappropriately.

Some variant of: Trump has announced that he will not attend the inauguration of Joseph Biden, the 46th President of the United States, marking the first time in 152 years that a departing President has refused to attend the inauguration of his successor. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wcmaney (talk • contribs) 04:22, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

FWIW, he'll join three (J. Adams, J.Q. Adams & A. Johnson) others in this action. GoodDay (talk) 04:51, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

It probably should be in the as-yet-written "post-Presidency" section. It's unusual per Wcmaney, and will likely define the rest of his post-Presidency (per WP:CRYSTAL). power~enwiki (π, ν) 04:52, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Far too trivial and irrelevant for this article. Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:30, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Per WP:CRYSTAL, let's wait until it has actually happened. If it does, one sentence at the most. It would be notable, but not a major incident. Jeppiz (talk) 17:06, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I would agree its too trivial and silly to include yet, if he skips it fine. But given donnys propensity for lies lets not assume he means it until its clear he does.Slatersteven (talk) 17:08, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I should have given it more thought before posting, but I agree that it should be a line item after the inauguration of Biden if he actually follows through with it. It will just be another in a long line of norms-breaking behavior and deserves documentation. wcmaney — Preceding undated comment added 18:50, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Trump has said he wants an orderly transfer of power, but the symbolic moment is when the outgoing president hands over to the new president at the inauguration. If he does not attend, it is highly significant, because he is not publicly recognising the legitimacy of the new president. 2A00:23C6:7608:D400:B427:832C:66FA:51AE (talk) 23:44, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 10 January 2021

The wikipedia article on President Donald Trump is extremely negative and does not touch upon some of his successes such as operation warp speed, the fact that job growth during the first three years of his presidency was excellent and the stock market grew to its highest levels during his presidency. The current article is very divisive and will alienate his seventy plus million people who voted for him. It is not good for America. It should be fairer. Cleobleo (talk) 00:11, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

 Not done Please phrase your request in the form of "change X to Y" and provide reliable sources. Mgasparin (talk) 00:32, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Removal of material on Trump donors

This removal of a short section on Trump's main donors[37] is totally unacceptable. Without his donors, he wouldn't have been able to have any presidential campaigns in the first place. It is necessary for us to mention the people behind him, particularly his most important donors. A lot of the content is less important than this material. The section should be reinstated immediately. --Tataral (talk) 05:14, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

That's true for every politician, but this is a biography about Donald Trump himself, not any of his supporters. That content is really information that belongs in the election articles. Onetwothreeip (talk) 05:24, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Completely wrong. His main financial backers (by far), who funded his presidency in exchange for political and other favours, are clearly of monumental importance to his entire presidency (without them, no presidency), and unlike previous presidents, Trump didn't have a lot of large backers. And why should information about the Adelsons being his largest backers before and throughout his presidency, including their support for his defense fund against the Mueller investigation, only be in the election articles? They are in fact mentioned there as well, but need to be mentioned/summarised here to provide an appropriate overview of their support of his presidency, not just scattered around in other articles (they were his largest donors in the 2016 and 2020 elections, his inauguration where they provided the largest donation to any presidential inauguration in history, and his legal defense fund against Mueller, something that can only be summarised here, not in any of the campaign articles). This has absolutely nothing to do with being a "biography" of his "supporters", but with explaining a key factor in Trump's own biography. --Tataral (talk) 05:31, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Every major political candidate has financial support. It is not as if the biography of Donald Trump is inseparable from Sheldon Adelson, and an expert about Donald Trump wouldn't be shocked in ten years' time to see that Sheldon Adelson has been omitted from the article. Onetwothreeip (talk) 05:40, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

The claim that it is "true" for "every politician" that they are funded by a Russian-style casino oligarch through lavish donations in exchange for supporting his hard-right agenda is simply false and bizarre. It's certainly not true for any European politician. And even in the context of a less democratic country such as the US, where people can buy(!) public offices, Adelson's financial support stands out, and has been extensively covered by RS. For instance all other large "Republican donors" refused to support his bid for the presidency as other articles here point out. Their role in facilitating and making his presidency possible, for which they were lavishly rewarded through political and personal favours (e.g. the presidential medal of freedom) is highly relevant to Trump's biography and must be mentioned. --Tataral (talk) 05:31, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Your remarks are getting more and more desperate. I never made any such claim and you obviously know that. You should withdraw your use of "Russian-style" as a derogatory term. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:23, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Yeah probably not for this article. Perhaps his campaign or presidency article. PackMecEng (talk) 05:41, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Lafayette Square protester removal and photo op

This is surely a subsection that this article can do without, especially given the article's extreme size. An example of something that seemed much bigger at the time than it does now and will seem in the future. Thoughts? Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:04, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

This was discussed here. That discussion resulted in it being reduced from a level 3 to a level 4 heading. Maybe now it could be reduced to On June 1, 2020, federal law enforcement officials used batons, rubber bullets, pepper spray projectiles, stun grenades, and smoke to remove a largely peaceful crowd of protesters from Lafayette Square. Trump then walked to St. John's Episcopal Church, posing for photographs with a Bible. Many religious leaders and military officials condemned the treatment of protesters and photo opportunity itself. Thanoscar21^talk_{contributions} 16:04, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

There were several previous discussions, [38], [39], [40], and especially this one. The proposed trimming misses the point, i.e., the seeming involvement of the military (in the persons of Milley and Esper) and the backlash against it. It's still in the news, e.g. It should probably be moved into a section with 2021 Capitol storming 2021 because the failure to secure a perimeter around the Capitol and adequately prepare for a mob attack seem to be connected to the reactions to that photo-op. Don't have the time right now to look up the sources; it's still a developing story anyway. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 22:00, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

The two events are clearly not connected, and it would be wrong for us to connect them. Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:28, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

That incident was a watershed moment of among other things abuse of power, military involvement, and violation of first amendment rights. Extensively sourced as such. Needs to stay as it was. SPECIFICO talk 23:40, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Not really, it was just another one of the many controversial events that Donald Trump has been seen as responsible for. No particular significance beyond the week in which it happened. Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:28, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

I agree. Some treated it as the equivalent of Kristallnacht. In fact, no dictatorship ensued. The protesters were not primarily protesting against Trump. The arson attack against the church was a valid police issue. Trump critics came off half-cocked and pumped the issue up. But now we can see that it was a blip on the radar. The incident is adequately covered by its own article. We don't need to refer to every incident Trump was involved in — from nappies to Napoleon.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:16, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

You misunderstand the issues: first amendment rights of lawful and peaceful demonstrators; using federal law enforcement, including seemingly the U.S. military, represented by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Milley, and the secretary of defense— with a National Guard commander later admitting 'excessive use of force'—for no other reason than Trump wanting to cross the street for a photo-op. This isn’t nappies, it’s wannabe Mussolini, "a defining moment of the Trump presidency" and a stark contrast to the lack of preparation for and the initially laid-back handling of the January 6 riot (The Guardian, WaPo). The wannabe Mussolini tried to get "his military" (NYT) to do his bidding, and—when they made it clear that their allegiance was to the Constitution and not to him—he sent his flock of conspiracy theorists and alt-right militants. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 12:40, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Quoting the NYT cite, dated September 25: The confrontation in Lafayette Square near the White House in June crystallized for the Defense Department just how close to the precipice the military came to being pulled into a domestic political crisis. Military helicopters and armed members of the National Guard patrolled the streets next to federal agents in riot gear so that the president, flanked by Mr. Esper and General Milley, could walk across the square to hold up a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church. Current and former members of the armed forces were outraged. ... Both men, but General Milley especially, were so sharply criticized by former military and Pentagon leaders for taking part in the walk that they spent the days afterward in serious damage control. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 12:51, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to explain that. Jack, it was extensively discussed and is only more significant in light of recent events. Also, your undocumented reference to Kristallnacht is inappropriate. SPECIFICO talk 13:39, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

What you say happened is indeed what happened, but it's just not particularly notable or important. The idea that a much more significant event which overshadows this one makes the Lafayette Square incident more significant is completely ridiculous. Onetwothreeip (talk) 20:39, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Is this an anti trump page

The article lists in great measure all of Trumps shortcomings but not once is there a mention of his historic peace deals with mean foreign nations, near doubling of the stock market during his term (I refer to the DJIA), limiting illegal immigration, lowering the unemployment rate significantly before the pandemic, and the list goes on. And no, I am not parroting what I heard from Trump, these are facts. I would venture to say that in history books the only thing that may even mention Trumps name will be about his foreign peace deals (UAE, Morocco, Saudi Arabia). Historians will not remember him for his tweets or his claims of a stolen election, or his controversial remarks. I am not saying this article must purely be singing his praises, but after reading it I honestly feel like I just read a page that should be titled “Why some people don’t like Trump”. I think there should be a little more balance, especially in regards to his historic peace deals which there was literally no mention of (that astounded me. We will talk about how he tweeted that the election was stolen, but we will not talk about how he normalized relations with the United Arab Emirates.) I would honestly say the two of the main functions of being President are to keep the economy strong and make peace with others countries. Not to appeal to people on a personal level, that they should love your personality, which is what most of this article attacks- his personality. Or completely opinionated and unfounded arguments, of which there are many (Trump is responsible for all the deaths of corona, Trump is the one who got people to storm the capitol, Trump is racist, Trump is homophobic, etc.) KayFein613 (talk) 07:52, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

You're more than welcome to voice what you think the article should or shouldn't include. 1) The sources do not appear to give Trump much credit for the peace deals between Israel and other countries. 2) You should surely find the relevant information about the stock market, immigration and unemployment in the article. Have you checked? It's a very big article but those things are there. 3) He clearly has responsibility for the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic, the rioting in the Capitol, and other such things. If there is an issue with the tone of the article, or how the article presents these facts, then please present us with examples. Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:01, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

In regards to the UAE, Abraham Accords, he is give direct credit, though whether that is true credit or just allotted time is questionable. I am willing to give this point because it is in the text.

As for Morocco, [this one is more blatantly grandstanding. At the same time as these are happening, however, there are apparently also various arms deals for each of them, too. So I cannot claim that these are historic peace treaties when they foster that sort of environment. However, they should certainly be mentioned. For this reason.

Regarding unemployment rate, looking at any twenty year chart explains that puzzle very quickly. The only reason it ever increased was because of the subprime mortgage crisis. He did not solve anything; he was simply present for the return to normal rates. Obama did not herald high unemployment, but rather was given a tough cookie signed by GWB. Understanding the financial crises of 2009 and looking at just one simple 20 year unemployment graph should be very obvious.

It's not that people will remember him because the media and archival systems are making everyone remember him for those tweets and accusations. Did you listen to his speech, or read it? It's all he talks about. Perhaps if he cared a little more about anything else, people wouldn't be inundated in searching through the trash for any value. It's hard enough independently. Thanks. I leave this up to whomever to sort. --Felicityful (talk) 22:35, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Responding to opening question. No, this is a Wikipedia page. GoodDay (talk) 22:45, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

The Lead Paragraphs need revamping

The lead paragraphs need to change. They are stuffed with information, but each of them lacks a clear theme. This makes the lead very hard to read and comprehend.

To that end, I suggest that we add a paragraph devoted to a clear and limited set of topics: allegations of corruption, lying (/conspiracy theorizing), and racism against Trump. This paragraph can cohesively cover much of the information that appears in the lead in a more scattershot fashion: impeachment(s), Trump's conspiracy theory about the election, Birtherism (how Trump got into Republican politics), allegations of racism, and the point about Trump's unprecedented number of false and misleading statements. This new paragraph could also be a logical and cohesive place in which to mention the 2021 storming of the Capitol, since that riot was inspired by one of Trump's falsehoods: namely, the claim that the election was stolen.

I also suggest we remove the Mueller stuff from the lede. It turned out to be quite inconsequential (no evidence of collusion). At most it deserves a brief mention in my proposed paragraph about allegations of corruption (with more emphasis given to the two impeachments, the storming of the Capitol, etc). LongtimeLurkerNewEditor08 (talk) 08:18, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

I am sketching out a possible alternative structure to the lead that would be representative of the information in the article as a whole, while addressing my concerns about the current lead paragraphs (that they are hard to read because they lack clear themes and are stuffed with information in a fairly helter-skelter manner). I am open to your opinions:

* 1. Biographical basics

* 2. Business career and entry into politics (incl. 2016 victory over HRC)

* 3. Foreign and economic Policies and ideology

* 4. Allegations of Corruption, lying, racism, and other malfeasance (mention here impeachment/storming of Capitol)

* 5. Failed Re-election bid and post-presidency LongtimeLurkerNewEditor08 (talk) 08:27, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

It would probably be better to draft your suggestions. Onetwothreeip (talk) 09:37, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Would you be willing to work with OP on a draft proposal? SPECIFICO talk 01:31, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Revamping requires consensus. The lead in this BLP has been vamped quite a bit, over time. GoodDay (talk) 12:42, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

It reads like a chain novel, which is to say it is very convoluted and disorganized. LongtimeLurkerNewEditor08 (talk) 20:59, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

"Peacefully and patriotically"

The section about the Capitol breach currently reads:

On January 6, 2021, while congressional certification of the presidential election results was occurring in the Capitol, Trump held a rally nearby where he called for the election result to be overturned and called on his supporters to "take back our country" by marching to the Capitol to "show strength" and "fight like hell."

This should clarify that Trump specified, during the speech, that the protests at the Capitol be done "peacefully and patriotically" per the statement found in the transcript cited:

I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard today.

So I propose an edit to reflect this, rather important, specification as follows:

On January 6, 2021, as congressional certification of the presidential election results commenced in the Capitol, Trump held a rally nearby where he endorsed an overturn of the election result and called on his supporters to "take back our country" by marching to the Capitol to "show strength" and "fight like hell" with "peacefully and patriotically" conducted protests.

William S. Saturn (talk) 08:11, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

I would rather remove all quotations for this, for the very reason that they can be selectively chosen one way or the other. Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:23, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

So how about:

On January 6, 2021, as congressional certification of the presidential election results commenced in the Capitol, Trump held a rally nearby where he endorsed an overturn of the election result and a march to the Capitol for a peaceful protest.

William S. Saturn (talk) 08:28, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

I would support On January 6, 2021, as congressional certification of the presidential election results commenced in the Capitol, Trump held a rally nearby where he endorsed an overturn of the election result and a march to the Capitol. Onetwothreeip (talk) 09:12, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Its hard to reconcile "fight like hell" with "peacefully". It might be best to not quit and just say what RS say.Slatersteven (talk) 11:35, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

One seeks to accurately represent the nature of the event, irrespective of quotes, etc. Per the RS, "peacefully" is a gross misrepresentation. See the citation I put in earlier today. There was a lot of violence and fighting in that speech, he roused the crowd, the text should reflect that, not cherry pick a single phrase to suggest the incident was more benign that it was. Trump also said he would go with the crowd to the Capitol, but he didn't; wondering if that does not warrant a mention. Bdushaw (talk) 14:17, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

We can't quote his dramatic language without also quoting that he said "peacefully". Much better to not quote him at all. Onetwothreeip (talk) 21:12, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Why? The RSs highlight the quotes, as does the article of impeachment. The citation I gave above use quotes as does this other WA post article Both explicitly mention "peacefully"...but in the context of dismissing it. It is one throw away phrase in a long speech pregnant with "warrior"/"fight"/"be strong" etc rhetoric. An accurate description without the quotes would take a paragraph (the citations take an entire article), whereas with the quotes the reader can judge for himself the nature of Trump's rhetoric. The "dramatic language" as you say is consistent with his rhetoric about voting for the past year. Bdushaw (talk) 06:42, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

The sources don't highlight them enough for us to include them. We don't have to replace the quotes with anything, we can simply omit them and keep it short. Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:20, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with this suggestion. The RS are clear that what mattered (and what was historically notable) was the language the article already highlights, "show strength" and "fight like hell." The RS are unanimous that "peacefully and patriotically" was contradictory to the main gist of Trump's speech and the message which supporters took from it – the sources say it was, essentially, insignificant. I don't have an issue with the current wording, but if the concern is about making it clearer the subject of the sentence is how the rally related to the Capitol riot – rather than the speech itself – it could be re-arranged to follow the description of the storming, so that it reads:

On January 6, 2021, thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol while congressional certification of the presidential election results took place, disrupting certification and causing the evacuation of Congress. The crowd had been whipped up at a rally Trump held nearby, where he called for the election result to be overturned and called on his supporters to "take back our country" by marching to the Capitol to "show strength" and "fight like hell."

To reiterate though, I think the existing text is fine. Jr8825 • Talk 09:25, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Historical View of Trump’s Presidency

As per every other article about US Presidents, they all include a link to Historical rankings of presidents of the United States and how historians view the presidency. With his term wrapping up, I’m assuming we would do the same for Trump. He’s generally viewed very unfavorably, and in some cases, the worst president we’ve had thus far. Is there a consensus on when this can/should be added to the article? ChipotleHater (talk) 16:12, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Whilst I agree he will be viewed "unfavorably" it's to early to really judge how historians will view him.Slatersteven (talk) 16:15, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

For goodness sake. He hasn't left office yet. GoodDay (talk) 17:17, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

The historian Victor Davis Hanson's works include The Case for Trump (2019), presciently pointing out that Trump has been too outspoken for his own good, and his fall is comparable to a protagonist in the tragic dramas of ancient Greek literature. Qexigator (talk) 18:06, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

• @ChipotleHater: If you want this to be included, your best bet is to collect a bunch of historians describing his presidency and propose specific text aligning with those materials. Even so, it'll possibly fail per WP:TOOSOON, but without sources and a specific proposal it's all but guaranteed to fail. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:48, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

We should have something on his legacy pretty soon, as in the coming weeks and months, certainly before summer, and it's a good time to start thinking/working on a section (given that it will take some time). Quite unlike other presidents who left office Trump already has a very well-established legacy in scholarship, rankings and coverage in RS that typically describes him as the worst president in U.S. history, or in similar terms. It might be relevant to include the historical assessment of his presidency by his own successor Joe Biden[41]: He has been an embarrassment to the country, embarrassed us around the world. Not worthy, not worthy to hold that office (That assessment is particularly notable because it's not the norm for U.S. presidents(-elect) to offer that kind of negative assessment of their predecessor; for instance Obama didn't say anything like that about George W. Bush). --Tataral (talk) 12:07, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

It's way too early to be talking about this while he is still president, or in the immediate aftermath of his presidency. Passions are running too high, memories are too recent, no perspective has been developed yet. I notice that in the Historical Rankings article, the most recent survey results are from 2018. We should wait until the next such survey comes out - possibly this year, possibly next year. In any case we should not add anything on the subject to this primary biographical article until it has been recorded and reported in one or more daughter articles, such as Historical Rankings or Presidency of... -- MelanieN (talk) 19:35, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

"no perspective has been developed yet": That is simply not true. We have five years of extreme coverage of him in RS (as in being the person on the planet covered the most by RS), both scholarly and other RS, we have rankings, huge amounts of scholarly assessments and discussion, and a clear RS consensus on a number of issues. His legacy is firmly established, at least to the extent that we can say something (although RS consensus may of course, in theory at least, evolve over time, and then we'll adjust the article accordingly). When we could add material about the legacy of a normal politician who didn't do anything spectacular after a couple of months, we'll certainly be able to add something about the legacy of Trump. There is consensus among RS about his legacy (or at least key aspects of it) to a degree that didn't exist at all when Bush or Obama or Clinton left office. --Tataral (talk) 20:03, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Look, I get it. The verdict of scholars is almost certainly going to be that he was so far-and-away the worst president ever, that there is no one in second place. (Like the first America's Cup race, when Queen Victoria was told the American boat was winning by 8 minutes, and she asked who was in second, and the reply was "Your Majesty, there is no second."[42]) But I still believe the reputable scholars will wait, and we will have to wait, until his presidency is over by at least some months before evaluating it. -- MelanieN (talk) 22:52, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

I think in reality the verdict of historians changes with time. Churchill's reputation has risen. Mao's has fallen.Nixon's has recovered somewhat. I don't think anyone would have predicted the fall from grace of Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein. We need to wait on this. In reality, Trump's style is very brash, but there is very little in his policies, such as negotiation with North Korean or building a wall on the Mexican border, that is genuinely unique.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:11, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Removal of arrest warrants

Neutrality, how can you possibly claim that two nations issuing arrest warrants on trump is not serious or significant? [43] --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 22:39, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

As this is aimed at a specific editor it could be worth tagging him. @Neutrality:. — Czello 22:42, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Doesn't seem that there's any possibility those warrants would ever be effectuated. Maybe this could go in a more specific article; i.e., Assassination of Qasem Soleimani. Neutrality^talk 22:54, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

If a person has arrest warrants, shouldn't that info be mentioned in that persons article? --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 00:02, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

The issuance of arrest warrants is one of the things that should rarely be in a biographical article. I think that's a very basic part of WP:BLP: not staining someone with criminal accusations unless they've been convicted. This might be an exception because WP:BLPCRIME is less strict when it comes to high-profile individuals, but you haven't made a case that these are at all significant. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 02:09, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

As Onetwothreeip says, secondary RS have reported on this so there is no issue with BLP.--Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 14:53, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

If the arrest warrants are in reliable secondary sources, there is no issue writing them in the article. Content about arrest warrants are usually on Wikipedia's biography articles, especially those about heads of state. Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:25, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Is it significant to Trump's life that Iran issued a warrant for his arrest? Out of all the stuff written about him, has this received a substantial portion of the coverage? It's certainly unusual, but I don't see how this is important enough to add to this already over-stuffed article. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 12:48, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Not only Iran but also Iraq. So Trump has warrants in two different nations. It certainly has received a substantial coverage, many media sites have reported on this: Reuters, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, Euronews, The Sun, Fox8, Al Jazeera, Jerusalem Post, Daily Mail, France24, Khaleej Times, Haaretz. So its a major deal and deserves mentioning in the article.--Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 14:53, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

All those are news stories from the day of the event. All the stories about Iran are from June 29th and 30th, and all the ones about Iraq are from January 7th. It's two stories that each made the news for a single day. Is there any sign of lasting significance? There have been dozens of news stories about Trump each day for the past 5 years. We can't put every single newsworthy item about Trump in this article article. Will these warrants have any impact on his life? Maybe. If he goes to Iraq or Iran. Who can say? If that happens, or if this becomes some major story with actual lasting coverage, then it can be added. This article is so bloated with little details of events and scandals from his presidency. Warrants being issued to arrest a head of state for actions taken in his official capacity are certainly unusual, but they just aren't that important to Trump's life. This is supposed to be an article-length biography of the man Donald Trump, not a list of all the shit he's got up as president. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 15:11, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

You would maybe have a point if there was a large section devoted to the warrants, but there wasn't. In this case there was two short sentences about both warrants. The warrants are significant and notable enough to be mentioned in the article.--Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 15:38, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

This article is made up of far too many short sentences about stuff that someone thought was significant enough to be mentioned, and this is just one more example. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 15:45, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

That's an idea... wait until Biden is inaugurated and then surrender Trump to the Iranian authorities. I GUARANTEE he would be out of our hair forever after that. --Khajidha (talk) 19:11, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

House Democrats?

It wasn't just House Democrats that called for the impeachment. This should be fixed --50.69.20.91 (talk) 00:57, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Provide facts and not opinions on what Trump said to his supporters on 1/6/2021

These statements are repeated multiple times in this article: "Trump urged his supporters to march on the Capitol" Where is the reference to this statement? Should we actually quote what Trump actually said? If Wikipedia wants to retain credibility, they need to provide actual quotes of what someone said instead of someone interpreting what was said.

I recommend changing these statements to: "We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.". He did not ask his supporters to march On the Capitol or storm the Capitol or break into the Capitol. If another politician said "we are going to walk down to the White House to protest." Are they saying to breach the fences and storm into the actual White House? If so you have a lot of other Wikipedia articles to fix and reinterpret.

Reference of actual quote made by Donald Trump: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/us/trump-speech-riot.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:982:8202:b2d0:4559:8c7d:75dc:c04 (talk) 08:51, January 11, 2021 (UTC)

That would provide an incomplete picture of Trump's intentions. According to Republican senator Ben Sasse, senior White House officials stated that President Trump was "delighted" to hear that his supporters were breaking into the Capitol building in a riot Wednesday that turned deadly. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/533403-sasse-says-trump-was-delighted-and-excited-by-reports-of-capitol-riot

This is rather damning that a riot was something Trump wanted: "As this was unfolding on television, Donald Trump was walking around the White House confused about why other people on his team weren’t as excited as he was as you had rioters pushing against Capitol Police trying to get into the building," Sasse told conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt in an interview. "That was happening. He was delighted."

Also enough dog whistles by the president were sufficient for many of his MAGA followers to make plans to storm the Capitol, as shown painstakingly in this thread containing screenshots of Trump supporter forums: https://twitter.com/LiteraryMouse/status/1347903604196306953 --Redgon (talk) 17:04, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

He also told his supporters to "fight like hell". Not sure how that's not urging them. Thanoscar21^talk_{contributions} 18:21, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

• The New York Times excerpts are from different parts of the speech. Here are more excerpts from the transcript of Trump's speech, including the part immediately leading up to the "walk down" part:

  (At 16:25) Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back. It’s like a boxer, and we want to be so nice. We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people. We’re going to have to fight much harder and Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us. If he doesn’t, that will be a sad day for our country because you’re sworn to uphold our constitution. Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. After this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you. We’re going to walk down. We’re going to walk down any one you want, but I think right here. We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.

  (At 01:11:44) Our brightest days are before us, our greatest achievements still wait. I think one of our great achievements will be election security because nobody until I came along, had any idea how corrupt our elections were. And again, most people would stand there at 9:00 in the evening and say, “I want to thank you very much,” and they go off to some other life, but I said, “Something’s wrong here. Something’s really wrong. Can’t have happened.” And we fight. We fight like Hell and if you don’t fight like Hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore. Our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun. My fellow Americans for our movement, for our children and for our beloved country and I say this, despite all that’s happened, the best is yet to come. So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the Capitol and we’re going to try and give. The Democrats are hopeless. They’re never voting for anything, not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I want to thank you all. God bless you and God bless America. Thank you all for being here, this is incredible. Thank you very much. Thank you.

The NYT wrote: The president’s speech was riddled with violent imagery and calls to fight harder than before. By contrast, he made only a passing suggestion that the protest should be nonviolent, saying, "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard." The attack on the Capitol is a pretty clear indication that the mob heard the calls to fight and not the passing suggestion. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 21:31, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Oppose quoting him at all here. There are no quotes from his remarks that are notable. It is the sentiments overall that he expressed which are notable, and reliable sources summarise them. Onetwothreeip (talk) 21:35, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

The responses here are riddled with more references to opinions. They can be included but they should best sighted as opinions and not what the president said.

• comment I think this might be a miscommunication. the lede says "Trump urged his supporters to march on the Capitol, which they then stormed" which seens to indicate that these are two separate events. It might be better to say "marched TO the capitol" which he undeniably encouraged, assuming this is what it is referencing Anon0098 (talk) 14:27, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that "march to the capitol" is better, more NPOV. I'll change it and see what happens. Bdushaw (talk) 15:48, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

North Korea's arsenal

I removed this, with a long edit summary, but it was restored with insufficient explanation:

During Trump's term, North Korea built up its arsenal of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

Firstly, this is an intelligence estimate, not a proven fact. If true, it is misleading to say this happened during Trump's term. It has happened in the term of every President since Clinton (or earlier). The terminology is also imprecise. Nuclear weapons usually means nuclear missiles. Ballistic missiles includes bullets and hand grenades. This sentence was added with the edit summary suggesting that it was "ultimate bottom-line outcome" and restored with the suggestion that it was "vital context". We have had this discussion before. It is too soon to declare an "ultimate" outcome. As for "vital context", let us remember that this is an overlong article about Donald Trump. It is not about North Korea's military capabilities. I would have thought that President Moon's activities were "vital context". But Moon isn't mentioned at at all. In the interest of brevity, I think that the fact that talks in Sweden broke down after one day is a sufficient conclusion. Adding speculation is unnecessary. Really, this is just another Democratic Party talking point. If editors insist on such a sentence, I would suggest something like this:

Since 2017, North Korea has not tested a nuclear bomb or an intercontinental ballistic missile, but intelligence suggests that it has continued to build up its nuclear arsenal.

I think leaving out the cessation of these tests is clearly leaving out vital context.--Jack Upland (talk) 14:30, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

• You removed reliably sourced content and want us to accept your—expert?—opinion that it ain't true and that bullets and hand grenades are ballistic missiles? Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 16:48, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Have a look at ballistics.--Jack Upland (talk) 18:43, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

• A ballistic path does not a ballistic missile make. By definition, ballistic missiles must have a powered portion of its flight, something that neither bullets nor hand grenades have. Hand grenades only have the energy imparted by the throw, and bullets the energy provided by the chemical charge inside the gun. Neither has a powered portion of flight. Ballistic missiles also require a guided portion of flight. With very few and extremely rare exceptions, neither bullets nor hand grenades have any guided portion of flight. This is a silly argument to make. Generally speaking, while the path of all objects with an unpowered portion of their trajectory follow the physics of ballistics, in military terminology, distinctions are made. Bullets, for example, are generally considered direct fire, which distinguishes them from indirect fire weapons, such as mortars and, yes, ballistic missiles. Hand grenades could be considered a form of indirect fire, but bullets generally speaking are not. All of these may technically follow ballistic physics in their unpowered portions of flight (which might be the entire flight), but technical terminology distinguishes between these different forms of ballistics. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 19:46, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

• This was aside that I made, which has generated too much interest. To be pedantic, a bullet is a missile and is also ballistic. The real issue with saying "ballistic missiles" is that it could mean ballistic missiles (i.e., non-guided missiles) in general or it could be a colloquial term for an ICBM. Yes, in the past few years, North Korea has been testing short-range ballistic missiles. But Trump's interest was clearly (and naturally) on missiles that could hit the USA (ICBMs). Saying "nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles" is problematic because "nuclear weapons" could mean "nuclear missiles", so either we are saying "missiles and missiles" or we are talking about nuclear missiles and conventional weapons. It's sloppy terminology however you look at it.--Jack Upland (talk) 03:52, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

• It is obviously improper to give several sentences on Trump's failed diplomatic effort without clearly noting the outcome/results: North Korea has continued to build up its nuclear arsenal. This is the kind of bottom-line context/conclusion that our readers expect and deserve. The idea that "ballistic missiles" in this context would be construed to mean "bullets and hand grenades" is, to put it politely, laughable; that's like saying our readers would confuse a baptismal font and a swimming pool. It's also wrong to suggest that this is just something that random intelligence "suggests" - it's almost universally understood within the relevant expert community and is in fact confirmed by a UN panel of experts. The temporary testing halt doesn't seem noteworthy, either. Neutrality^talk 18:19, 11 January 2021 (UTC) Also tagging Scjessey, who made the edit restoring the sentence.

I would argue the only reasonable summary of Trump's dance with North Korea is that Trump tried cosying up to Kim, then tried insulting him, then tried cosying up again, and the only result is that he succeeded in elevating Kim's status on the world stage by making him appear "equal" to the President of the United States while he continued to build up his nuclear arsenal. Any language that can be crafted that doesn't describe Trump's efforts as anything other than a spectacular foreign policy failure is likely to be a non starter. -- Scjessey (talk) 18:34, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

The issue with the phrase "nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles" is that it is sloppy. Yes, most readers will have a vague idea of what is mean. But we should avoid vagueness and sloppiness. I would have thought. It have never said the intelligence wasn't true, just that we shouldn't portray this intelligence as fact. The first paragraph of the UN report cited makes this clear: "North Korea’s production of nuclear weapons continues despite aggressive sanctions, according to an article by CNN on Aug. 4 of an unreleased report by a UN panel of experts. The new report says Pyongyang has likely developed the capability to manufacture miniaturized nuclear devices that can fit on its ballistic missiles." intelligence apparently reported the same thing in 2017. Is that progress???And please remember we are talking about Trump. In this context, a "temporary testing halt" is more noteworthy than North Korea's long-term acquisition of nuclear weapons — a process which began apparently in the 1980s — or its development of missiles — which has been ongoing since 1948... This is an interesting topic, but it doesn't really belong in a biography of TRUMP.--Jack Upland (talk) 18:52, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Not sure what relevance this really has to do with Donny. We need to strip this down to be about him as a person.Slatersteven (talk) 18:58, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

• If you look at the sources, they clearly reflect that Trump engaged in extensive personal diplomacy with Pyongyang. The outcome of that personal diplomacy is thus of course part of his legacy, as the RS reflect. Neutrality^talk 19:03, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

• But only as president, not in his capacity as a private individual.Slatersteven (talk) 19:07, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

• This biography covers his whole life, including the presidency, the most important part of his life. Neutrality^talk 19:13, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

• Saying that North Korea still has nuclear weapons is stating the bleeding obvious. It is not part of Trump's personal legacy.--Jack Upland (talk) 19:16, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

• The article says that Trump demanded denuclearization and held multiple summits with Kim, who claimed at one point that he would "work toward" that goal. It would be completely misleading, then, to omit the key part: North Korea never did that, and continued to build up its nuclear and ballistic missile arsenals throughout Trump's time in office. I also have no idea what kind of distinction you are trying to make between "personal legacy" and "presidential legacy," or why you contend such a distinction is relevant: all our presidential biographies cover both, as they should. Neutrality^talk 19:21, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

• I never said there was a distinction between a personal legacy and a presidential legacy. My point is simply that North Korea's nuclear arsenal — and its military capabilities in general — have developed over decades. It is not part of Trump's legacy. What he did — working in concert with Moon — was open a dialogue with Kim. This dialogue did not lead to the dismantling of North Korea's nuclear armaments but it did lead to an atmosphere of truce for several years. After a flurry of atomic bomb and ICBM tests, there was a moratorium which has held for three years. There are many sources which argue that North Korea has enhanced its nuclear arsenal in the mean time. But the same is true under preceding presidents. To say this is an "ultimate outcome" is highly misleading. It is merely the status quo. This should be an article about what Trump did. Not what he didn't do.--Jack Upland (talk) 03:43, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
• It is also wrong to argue for the addition of this sentence without addressing the issue of length. Simply citing sources doesn't justify it in an article of this size.--Jack Upland (talk) 03:53, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
• I also disagree with Scjessey's view that there is only one interpretation of Trump's approach to North Korea. There are several — not mutually exclusive — interpretations, including:

• He was following sound policy — a view apparently held by Bill Clinton.[44][45][46][[47][48]
• The total nuclear disarmament of North Korea was an unrealistic goal.[49][50]
• "Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump: this is a 20-year failure of American foreign policy", according to James Rubin.[51]
• Trump's involvement was a sideshow compared with North–South dialogue.[52]
• Trump was out of his depth on foreign policy.[53][54]
• Trump's approach was isolationist.[55]
• Trump was a Manchurian Candidate.

This makes me think we need an article about Donald Trump and North Korea...--Jack Upland (talk) 03:10, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

@Jack Upland: 2018–20 Korean peace process would be a good start for this, perhaps using some material from North Korea and weapons of mass destruction. — JFG ^talk 15:52, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Hmmm, yes. Not a particularly good article... Started by me...--Jack Upland (talk) 16:07, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

President Trump and his Wikipedia page

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Donald Trump has proven to be a very controversial figure. In the eyes of the greater part of the democratic world, he has disgraced his country and sunk its reputation to that of a tinpot banana republic. That opinion may well change in time - I sincerely hope it does. Would it not be better to freeze this article for a year, perhaps choosing the day of his inauguration as the freeze point? Then after a year, with the benefit of hindsight, allow the page to develop? At present, too many emotions are running in too many directions for this page to be objective. Giano (talk) 20:18, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

I'd agree with semi-protection or selective blocks to editors. Some of us have been able to control our emotions, during these last few days :) GoodDay (talk) 20:24, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

This article is extended confirmed protected. Semi-protection is a far lower protection level. It should remain extended confirmed protected. --Tataral (talk) 20:30, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Ok, cool. GoodDay (talk) 20:32, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

It’s far from cool! This page needs reverting to Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017, and then freezing for a year. This project has to be reliable and objective and this is the only way forward here. Giano (talk) 20:56, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Revert back to the January 20, 2017 version? I guessing there'll be no consensus for that. GoodDay (talk) 21:00, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

We absolutely don't "freeze" articles. We can protect them to stop vandalism, but we are aiming to be an up-to-date encyclopedia, and we're almost certainly going to need to update this article after the inauguration based on Trump's next actions. — Czello 21:02, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

in that case, “we” must accept that for a very long time the page will be unreliable, unstable and of no use to man nor beast. While in the meantime, Wikipedia’s reputation as a reliable source will suffer.Giano (talk) 21:13, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

If there are any specific parts of this article that you think are unreliable, or you dispute the sources that are being listed, then go ahead and start a thread about them. But freezing an article for a year is not only not a solution, but it's not even possible. Ultimately yes, Trump's article is always going to be somewhat "unstable" owing to the hundreds of edits per day, but you could say the same about every other popular article. We're also striving to make it as reliable as possible where we can, not shutting down debate altogether. — Czello 21:18, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia's reputation will suffer if this happens. It is virtually impossible for this to be vandalized, and if it is, it will be remedied quickly. This does not make any sense. This will set a precedent of locking pages when they are controversial. I'm sure with the thousands and millions of editors, there will be a couple of objective people SuperHeight (talk) 01:12, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

This isn't going to happen. Going back to 2017 (or 2015, when Trump's campaign started) is infeasible. We can't pursue being "reliable" (it's unclear what is claimed to not be reliable) by sticking our head in the sand. I'm tempted to just close this thread, but I'll let someone else do that with a bit clearer consensus. power~enwiki (π, ν) 01:19, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

@Giano: No, definitely NOT. Reverting this article to the version from January 20, 2017 will not go well across any reader of Wikipedia, and like other people have stated, Wikipedia aims to be an up-to-date encyclopedia. Yes, Trump has disgraced the United States, but that doesn't mean we should revert all the changes people have made since Trump's Inauguration to the end of his first (and possibly final, unless he somehow runs again in 2024) term as President of the United States as the article will end up being vastly out of date, and will be missing everything that has happened since said Inauguration. And with regards to what you stated earlier as to the article being unreliable, please point to the specific sections where the article is unreliable. The article probably has one of the most strict editing policies on the entirety of Wikipedia, and anything that does not have credible sources is removed. And yes, like someone else has stated, this page is going to be unstable, like nearly any other article on Wikipedia that gets a significant amount of edits a day. Trump is such a controversial figure, that the article has to be edited frequently to keep up with him and the actions he makes. So no, I definitely vote against freezing the article. - Kamran Mackey (talk to me · my contributions) 04:01, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

• Maybe the OP means we should freeze the article on the day of Trump's second inauguration? EEng 04:27, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

  I hope to god Trump doesn't have a second inauguration. Thanoscar21^talk_{contributions} 02:11, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Reverting back to the Jan 2017 version erases the advantage of Wikipedia. An online encyclopedia is one, well, free, but it also allows for rapid updates. No editor-in-chief, no printing process... fast, free, reliable info. I can't even believe that this discussion is entertaining this notion. Thanoscar21^talk_{contributions} 02:11, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

This discussion is completely pointless and should be closed and collapsed. It seems to be based on a disagreement with the very premise of Wikipedia (as even expressed in the project's name), and this talk page is not the place for that kind of discussion. --Tataral (talk) 03:28, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 11 January 2021

Edit Request

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 a television personality. Born and raised in Queens, New York City, Trump attended Fordham University for two years and received a bachelor's degree in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He became president of his father Fred Trump's real estate business in 1971, where he renamed it The Trump Organization, and expanded its operations to building or renovating skyscrapers, hotels, casinos, and golf courses. Trump later started various side ventures, mostly by licensing his name. Trump and his businesses have been involved in more than 4,000 state and federal legal actions, including six bankruptcies. He owned the Miss Universe brand of beauty pageants from 1996 to 2015, and produced and hosted the reality television series The Apprentice from 2004 to 2015. Trump's political positions have been described as populist, protectionist, isolationist, and nationalist. He entered the 2016 presidential race as a Republican and was elected in a surprise Electoral College victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton while losing the popular vote. He became the oldest first-term U.S. president and the first without prior military or government service. His election and policies have sparked numerous protests. Trump has made many false and misleading statements during his campaigns and presidency, to a degree unprecedented in American politics. Many of his comments and actions have been characterized as racially charged or racist. During his presidency, 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. He enacted a tax-cut package for individuals and businesses, rescinding the individual health insurance mandate penalty of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but has failed to repeal and replace the ACA as a whole. He appointed Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. In foreign policy, Trump has pursued an America First agenda, renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) and withdrawing the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations, the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the Iran nuclear deal. He imposed import tariffs which triggered a trade war with China, moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and withdrew U.S. troops from northern Syria. He met three times with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. He reacted slowly to the COVID-19 pandemic, downplayed the threat, ignored or contradicted many recommendations from health officials, and promoted false information about unproven treatments and the availability of testing. A special counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller found that Trump and his campaign benefited from Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, but did not find sufficient evidence to press charges of criminal conspiracy or coordination with Russia. Mueller also investigated Trump for obstruction of justice, and his report neither indicted nor exonerated Trump on that offense. Trump later pardoned five people who were convicted as a result of the Russia investigation. After Trump solicited Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden, the House of Representatives impeached him in December 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The Senate, after refusing to hear witness testimony, acquitted him of both charges in February 2020. Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Biden, but refused to concede defeat. House Democrats have expressed their intention to impeach Trump for the second time of his presidency because of these actions and also called for Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from office.

Keeping the fact straight RafalJakobsen (talk) 23:04, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. – Muboshgu (talk) 23:29, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

References

Minor link tweak - extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 12 January 2021

Very simple change! Under "Political career", > "Election to the presidency", there is a link "He is also the first president" which links to: List_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States_by_previous_experience

It should link to List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States_by_previous_experience instead (downcasing the "p" in "Presidents") qaisjp (talk) 12:05, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

 Done - Ryk72 ^talk 12:24, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Request for Comment - Arrest warrants

Continuing from the discussion above, should it be mentioned in the article that Trump has two arrest warrants issued by Iraq and Iran for the killing of Soleimani? --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 15:15, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

The two sentences can be seen removed here.

Sources: Reuters, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, Euronews, The Sun, Fox8, Al Jazeera, Jerusalem Post, Daily Mail, France24, Khaleej Times, Haaretz. --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 15:15, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

• No - It's theatre, like the Vermont towns that wanted to arrest Bush & Cheney. ValarianB (talk) 17:49, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

• Comment It may be somewhat more relevant. I wish that SD had mentioned what the warrants had been issued for in opening this discussion. They are specifically related to the US killing of Soleimani. That the US did this and that Trump ordered it isn't disputed, and is directly admitted to by the US and Trump. In general, the issuance of such arrest orders would be theater. A town in Vermont doesn't even stand to have jurisdiction over something as nebulous as "crimes against our Constitution." However, the charges in the warrants regarding Trump are not so nebulous. They are specifically related to the killing of Soleimani, which Trump admits he ordered. As he was an Iranian general, Iran definitely has at least the appearance of standing to issue such a warrant, and the crime took place on Iraqi soil while Soleimani was in Iraq on official business with the Iraqi government, so they also have at least the appearance of standing to issue such a warrant. The general idea that he has arrest warrants out on him isn't necessarily notable, but the fact that the warrants are specifically regarding the killing of Soleimani and issued by countries that actually have jurisdiction regarding that killing, that is. We discuss the killing of Soleimani in this article, and I do think that it is worth mentioning, as one sentence, that Iran and Iraq responded with the issuance of arrest warrants. We mention in that very section how Trump publicly threatened to retaliate against Iranian retaliation of firing at US bases in Iraq by saying he would attack Iranian cultural sites. We go so far as to say such retaliation on Trump's part would have been a war crime. But, that retaliation never happened, so is that not also just "theater"? If we are going to mention the proposed, but never executed retaliation against a retaliation against the killing of Soleimani, I don't think it is unreasonable to add the arrest warrants by the countries in question against Trump for the killing of Soleimani, even though they likely will never happen. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 18:05, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

I added that they were issued for the killing of Soleimani.--Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 18:52, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

• Yes Since we mention that Trump ordered the assassination of an Iranian general in Iraq, it would make sense to mention that arrest warrants have been issued in those countries. TFD (talk) 18:13, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
• Yes It's a direct result of his foreign policy, so it seems relevant to put in with the killing of Soleimani. – Muboshgu (talk) 18:18, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
• Yes- Very notable and important information that a president has two arrest warrants from two different sovereign nations. Also widely reported in reliable sources. Definitely belongs in the article.--Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 18:24, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
• Yes For reasons I stated above to provide context on why these warrants are relevant to content already in the article. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 19:14, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
• Comment If we do mention it, this only needs to be mentioned very briefly, along with the events that caused the warrants. Onetwothreeip (talk) 21:28, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

See here. it was very briefly, two short sentences.--Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 21:50, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

• Support - He killed Soleimani, this is the direct result. Also, if this was anyone else, it would definitely be included. Just because it's Trump doesn't mean that he's exempt from anything. Thanoscar21^talk_{contributions} 22:04, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
• Not at all. Countries such as Iraq and Iran are known for this sort of "political warrant" - I note that everyone here leaves out that this actually isn't a warrant - it's a request to interpol to arrest Trump - which Interpol denied - because it is a political warrant at its core. The inclusion of this is not any more encyclopedic than including the number of warts someone had on their foot as a child or some other random fact. And no, I don't think this sort of "political shitposting" should be included on anyone's article. These warrants are meaningless and absolutely not notable/important as they will never be actioned on by Interpol or any country other than the two that issued them - because they're political and under false pretenses to begin with. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 02:01, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
• Yes, per precedent. We always mention it in articles on citizens of other countries who are subjects of US arrest warrants. Iraq and Iran are (reasonably large) sovereign countries just like the US. As noted, also widely reported in RS. --Tataral (talk) 03:22, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
• No – How many people have had fatwas issued against them? — JFG ^talk 07:26, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

• Comment Apples and oranges. A court issues arrest warrant isn't a fatwa. We shouldn't be comparing it to a fatwa when it isn't a fatwa. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 18:35, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

• Yes -- notable, precedent, etc. I understand Berchanhimez's argument here, but the comparison to foot warts seems...unfitting. There's an argument this might not be the thing on the article that exists the most out of someone's head, but it's regardless still a non-trivial international event. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 15:07, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
• Yes - if a previously notable person takes a notable action, and a foreign country puts out an arrest warrant for this person, it certainly should be mentioned. 46.117.5.72 (talk) 16:33, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
• No Look at the dates of all all these news articles. They're all from the day the stories were first reported. I've tried finding more than were included here, and it's basically impossible. That's a big indication that this is just a minor event with no real importance: Iran's arrest warrants were newsworthy on the 30th of June, Iraq's warrant was newsworthy on the 7th of January, and both were forgotten by the next week. And it's easy to see why: these arrest warrants will not in any way affect Trump's life going forward. It's an interesting factoid, but just not important enough to include in this article. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 21:41, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Verb tense in the lead

I've been squeezing out outdated verb tenses in the article today - the annoying "has been", etc. I think that's for the better. In some cases it is modestly premature, but seemed innocuous to change now. I post here because I see such verb tenses (unsure of the precise wording to describe "has ...") are also in the lead; it would be a simple matter to correct such verbs to a simple past tense. But it is the lead, so I solicit something like a green light to just do it. e.g. "Trump's political positions have been described as populist, protectionist, isolationist, and nationalist." should be left alone, but "His election and policies have sparked numerous protests. Trump has made many false and misleading statements..." to "His election and policies sparked numerous protests. Trump made many false and misleading statements...", etc. Bdushaw (talk) 15:16, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

I would suggest we wait until after the 20th (at which time I suspect it have all its changes made at once, by some who has them all lined up and ready to slam into the article the minute Biden says "so help me God". I also suspect the page will be full-protected on that day to stop people from changing it prematurely.) After the inauguration-day changes have been made, we can then decide about any remaining verb tenses. In your example I would agree with changing "have sparked" to "sparked", but not with changing "has made" to "made" false statements, because that is likely to be ongoing. -- MelanieN (talk) 16:37, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

I suggested changing "have sparked" to "sparked" some time back, but there was no consensus. Editors argued that someone in Australia raising an eyebrow counted as a protest. Hence, so long as there are eyebrows somewhere, and the infamy of Trump continues to be noised abroad, the protests will continue.--Jack Upland (talk) 18:37, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

A link to the "2021 storming of the United States Capitol" should be included in the last statement of the lede

This is turning out to be the most notable event of his presidency, and hence should be linked to in the lede. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.190.226.125 (talk) 01:55, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

It already is. Thanoscar21^talk_{contributions} 02:40, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Oh wait, lede, not lead. The lede is for a description about the person, not the presidency. Thanoscar21^talk_{contributions} 16:19, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Will the new main image be his mug shot?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Sorry if this is too speculative. Since obviously we would cross that bridge when we come to it. But assuming that Donald Trump does eventually go to prison for the crimes he's committed in the white house, will this article's main image be his mug shot? Nikki Lee 1999 (talk) 04:17, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Are such images public domain? HiLo48 (talk) 04:27, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes, all US government works are copyright free. See John Wayne Gacy. But I think the chances of Donald Trump going to prison are very, very slim.--Jack Upland (talk) 04:41, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Very unlikely. The image should obviously be his presidential portrait, because he will be most notable for being a president. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:26, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should the fact he is the only president to be impeached twice be higher in the introduction?

He is the only US president that this happened to, does this mean it should appear higher in the introduction?

John Cummings (talk) 21:39, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

It should be mentioned that he was impeached twice, but it is completely unnecessary to say that he is the only president for this to happen. Onetwothreeip (talk) 21:47, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

This is not a baseball card.--Jack Upland (talk) 23:21, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Another perspective is that half of all impeachments in US history have been of Donald Trump. HiLo48 (talk) 23:33, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Presidential impeachments, that is. Three quarters of them have been in my lifetime. And Nixon was almost impeached, also in my lifetime. There is a trend towards more impeachments. Perhaps in the future every President will be impeached at least once...?--Jack Upland (talk) 02:41, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 13 January 2021

Change

impeached him again for "incitement of insurrection", making him

to

impeached him again for "incitement of insurrection," making him

Inploded (talk) 21:58, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

No; per MOS:LQ. "Include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material, and otherwise place it after the closing quotation mark." ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:26, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

The first paragraph

The first paragraph of the lead normally serves to briefly summarise the key aspects of the article. The current first paragraph doesn't do a very good job at that. It says nothing about how his presidency is not viewed as a "normal" presidency; he wasn't just a boring businessman who was elected to some office, did nothing spectacular, and then left, like a lot of elected officials. You have to read endless details about his beauty pageants and golf courses and so on and so forth until you get to the truly important material in the last paragraph of the lead, his violent insurrection against US democracy, his two impeachments, the things that really made history, the unprecedented scandalous nature of his presidency.

Therefore, I propose that we add a short sentence at the end of the first parapgraph that briefly summarises the extraordinary aspects of his presidency, including his two impeachments. I tentatively propose:

Throughout his presidency he has been widely accused of abuse of power and corruption, and he has been impeached twice.

--Tataral (talk) 22:28, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Tataral, what do you think about the second paragraph? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:31, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Normally, a lead section is structured somewhat chronologically and/or thematically, with the exception of the first paragraph that serves as a mini summary of the article. The second para discusses his background and business career, and that's ok as long as the first para adequately summarises the lead and article. --Tataral (talk) 22:33, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Ah, I mixed up first, second and third paragraph. I didn't count the first paragraph as paragraph. I thought your proposal was to add something at the end of the second paragraph, immediately before the third paragraph, adding redundance. Never mind. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:36, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

• Strong support — his presidency will be perhaps best remembered for this. Thanoscar21^talk_{contributions} 00:03, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose for 70 years he was known as a buisnessman and an entertainer. How it is writen is a good summary of his life and not just the last four years of it Anon0098 (talk) 00:11, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia articles are written relative to the importance of the material. His pre-presidential career owning a couple of beauty pageants is dwarfed in importance by his presidency a million times over. I hadn't even heard of him until 2015. --Tataral (talk) 00:25, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose: I agree with Anon0098 — we have to acknowledge his first 70 years. And this has recently been discussed. See above. An impeachment without a conviction — or two impeachments without a conviction, which looks like being the case — doesn't amount to much. It is the equivalent of being charged with a crime but being acquitted. I don't believe anything Trump has been involved in will be remembered as much as the Watergate scandal. Most people now do not remember why Bill Clinton was impeached — if they ever knew. Yes, Trump has had a turbulent term, but it's only four years of his life, and he hasn't been convicted of anything.--Jack Upland (talk) 01:01, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
• Support adding "impeached twice", without comment on his political career. Yes, he had 70 long, divisive, years before politics. But, and I don't think this is really CRYSTALBALL, he will be primarily remembered for getting impeached twice. It would probably be wrong to mention he (is/was) president without that footnote, even. Kingsif (talk) 02:13, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
• Support. The notability of T****'s presidency, corruption, and impeachments dwarf his ancient business career, so include it all in the first paragraph. -- Valjean (talk) 02:42, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 14 January 2021

Replace incumbent with will be succeeded by the 46th president of the United States, Joseph R. Biden Jr. This president is a lame duck and this article is inaccurate as it does not detail the successor to the office of the presidency. 73.40.185.243 (talk) 04:48, 14 January 2021 (UTC)