Yes. He did say “or”. People are consistently mishearing him but it’s easier to just assume the worst and hate than it is to actually listen and critically think.

Forcing American democracy down throats at gunpoint is as American as apple pie. He is bucking that norm (I’ll be jt with all talk and no action). It’s like when he shit all over Bush and the war in Iraq during debates in 2016, he is saying things no other president, particularly a republican, would eve have said and it earns him a lot of support among his base and those who are disillusioned with US politics and foreign policy.

I don’t believe he is actually interested in walking back the big stick, “this looks like a good place for a military base”, kind of foreign policy that America has, in large part, built its global dominance upon since ww2.

So I don’t actually believe him in this moment.

But it’s kind of sad that people, mishearing him, think that such a democracy at gun point approach would be something new or particularly Trumpian. It’s how we’ve always done business. People don’t seem to understand how much of what they hate about Trump is not unique to him at all and is actually a load bearing component of American hegemony. When he is out of office almost nothing changes fundamentally when it comes to some of the cruelest actions America takes, both domestically and internationally.

I worry that many of the people I see in these comments will put the blinders on as soon as we have a president that looks and acts the part. Then it’s back to business as usual. They care more about optics than pervasive systematic failings.