Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[PhaelixWW]

Fewer personnel > fewer people to conduct inspections and enforcements > companies can break the law without accountability. Please use your brain.

If a company drops nuclear waste in the woods and nobody is around to audit, did they break the law?

Sounds about right.

Famously, Trump on COVID: "If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any."

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It's a business which is racked with debt, losing money and lost most of its value, what other metric besides the financials do you use to evaluate a business? please do tell.

The only measure of success it's had is as an unofficial right-wing election campaign tool.

[Somewhatconcerned]

Fewer personnel > fewer people to conduct inspections and enforcements > companies can break the law without accountability. Please use your brain.

If a company drops nuclear waste in the woods and nobody is around to audit, did they break the law?

Again, has there been a quantifiable decrease in water quality since then? Dems were in charge the last 4 years, did they not re-staff the EPA or conduct any water quality tests?

I'd rather we argue the merits of keeping/downsizing an agency on the facts and not just on speculation or "what ifs."

Also Flint happened when Dems were in charge of the EPA.

[masterhorus8]

The UK government defunded the UK environment agency through the 2010s, the fallout is that now our rivers and beaches are in their worst shape for sewage pollution since the 1980s, only one site in the UK is deemed suitable for bathing. Water companies have taken on debt to pay shareholders, and not invested in distribution, leading to record burst mains and leakages, or sewage treatment leading to pollution.

I mean, Flint should be an object lesson for you in water mismanagement. Its literally a case study on degree courses.

Ignoring history is their soup du jour, so referring to anything in the past won't help.

[Doomcookie]

Again, has there been a quantifiable decrease in water quality since then? Dems were in charge the last 4 years, did they not re-staff the EPA or conduct any water quality tests?

I'd rather we argue the merits of keeping/downsizing an agency on the facts and not just on speculation or "what ifs."

Can you argue the merits of your support of a rapist.

Did that cause a quantifiable decrease in your support for the guy, while trying to pretend otherwise?

[prwraith]

Again, has there been a quantifiable decrease in water quality since then? Dems were in charge the last 4 years, did they not re-staff the EPA or conduct any water quality tests?

I'd rather we argue the merits of keeping/downsizing an agency on the facts and not just on speculation or "what ifs."

I love how you ignored the reply with details of what happens when water gets deregulated not one page back.

So childish and disingenous

[En Sabah Nur]

your position

You've seemingly just decided my position for me lol

[Ivanstone]

Also Flint happened when Dems were in charge of the EPA.

Flint was caused by the GOP governor of Michigan.

[Edge-]

Do you? Does anyone?

I don't, but just because you don't doesn't mean nobody does.

That's part of the reason for DOGE - "what do you exactly do here?"

No, that's not what it's for, lol.

They're not going to cut stuff that affects basic, essential services like infrastructure, and most of that is locally maintained anyways.

You literally have no way of knowing this, and evidence of the two people heading up the agency indicates this would be a very likely outcome.

My guess is whatever they cut, you will hardly feel the effects of, if at all.

This is bordering on delusion at this point.

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Also Flint happened when Dems were in charge of the EPA.

Really highlighting how the primary problem is that you don't understand what agencies do or who's responsible for what. Flint was a state/county issue and not an EPA issue.

Thanks for being another example of the dangerous ignorance of your average American voter. No wonder you're so excited for Donald and his merry band of coastal elite billionaire grifters.

[Jessicka]

Flint was caused by the GOP governor of Michigan.

And it was EPA scientists that uncovered it.

[En Sabah Nur]

I would argue that anything Musk gets behind...is indeed a serious endeavor.

The dude that sold flamethrowers? For sure. So serious.

I remember everyone here clowing on him for trying to buy twitter and thinking he wouldn't be able to pull it off.

My brother in Christ, people clowned on him for his overblown meme price, and his declaration of being able to get rid of all the bots. And then they clowned on him for trying to worm his way out of actually buying it. And then they clowned on him for tanking that meme amount into the floor. And now they clown on him for completely dropping his claims of being neutral, and going full-on MAGA, and allowing every possible cretin you can imagine on the site. While bots have proliferated.

[Edge-]

My brother in Christ, people clowned on him for his overblown meme price, and his declaration of being able to get rid of all the bots. And then they clowned on him for trying to worm his way out of actually buying it.

It's wild how some conservatives seem to genuinely struggle to remember anything beyond the past few months, and that their memories of recent events are very often more fictional than reality.

Great example of why eyewitness testimony is generally not the best evidence, especially the further out from the event in question you get.

[En Sabah Nur]

It's wild how some conservatives seem to genuinely struggle to remember anything beyond the past few months, and that their memories of recent events are very often more fictional than reality.

Great example of why eyewitness testimony is generally not the best evidence, especially the further out from the event in question you get.

I still marvel at how quickly the COVID years have been completely forgotten, tbh.

[Edge-]

I still marvel at how quickly the COVID years have been completely forgotten, tbh.

Watching /r/conservative be shocked that people like Mehmet Oz are being nominated for important positions really hammers it home.

Like...did they forget that this is exactly the kind of person he put in Acting positions his last term? That Linda McMahon or whatever was already a member of his last administration? I mean, come on. Donald does most of his auditioning on fucking TV, rofl.

[En Sabah Nur]

Watching /r/conservative be shocked that people like Mehmet Oz are being nominated for important positions really hammers it home.

Like...did they forget that this is exactly the kind of person he put in Acting positions his last term? That Linda McMahon or whatever was already a member of his last administration? I mean, come on. Donald does most of his auditioning on fucking TV, rofl.

Anyone he likes on TV, and anyone that kisses the proverbial ring, I guess. Fascinating to watch people across the internet realise what Trump is actually doing, and how that doesn't actually jive with what they thought was going to happen. Unless they've deluded themselves into thinking its all going to be ok, of course, because he's on "their" side.

Acting positions is how he's going to get all these people through again, isn't it?

[diller]

Does anyone think there will be a special name for the 'camps' ?

[Bwgmon]

I would argue that anything Musk gets behind...is indeed a serious endeavor. I remember everyone here clowing on him for trying to buy twitter and thinking he wouldn't be able to pull it off.

I agree that it may all amount to nothing, but we'll see. But a lot of politics is just optics. They are at least "trying" to identify and eliminate wasteful spending. It will probably go over very well with the voting public. Certainly will be more popular than anything Democrats have done/proposed recently.

Going with the myth that Elon actually does work instead of taking credit for things that the actually competent people who work for him do again, I see.

But sure, he'll be able to go through every government agency with a fine-toothed comb while also making twitter "successful" while inventing the auto-driving electric bus that definitely won't run over pedestrians while building rocket-catching chopsticks by hand while also finding the time to maintain his place near the top of the Diablo 4 seasonal leaderboards. Man can just do 300 hours of work a day through sheer force of brilliance.

[En Sabah Nur]

Does anyone think there will be a special name for the 'camps' ?

Freedom Camps, naturally.

[diller]

I would argue that anything Musk gets behind...is indeed a serious endeavor. I remember everyone here clowing on him for trying to buy twitter and thinking he wouldn't be able to pull it off.

It wasn't that people didn't think he could buy twitter just that it was a stupid thing for him to do, as you might also remember he actually regretted buying it and tried to get out of the deal

https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk...2dfa2176150a01

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Freedom Camps, naturally.

My guess as well - or Liberty!

[Lenonis]

The only silver lining about DOGE is that it'd take an act of Congress to make it, and even then Congress are the one's who approve the budget. At best Vivek and Elon can make asinine suggestions about what -should- be cut, so the worry comes with how much the House and Senate will listen to them.

In ordinary times I'd agree with you. But I also feel there is nothing stopping Trump from just creating this agency - as I understand it Elon and Vivek aren't looking to be paid so they don't need to be formerly installed. And once they are in an mucking about it would take someone holding them accountable or refusing their requests - which I don't anticipate this Congress being willing to do.

We'll see.

EDIT - I did not have Gaetz voluntarily withdrawing on my bingo card. I wonder just how bad the info on him is that they got him to drop out. At least the bonus is he also isn't in Congress - win in my book.

[Xyonai]

It's a business which is racked with debt, losing money and lost most of its value, what other metric besides the financials do you use to evaluate a business? please do tell.

One can Argue Twitter's value comes from how Musk turned it into the world's largest Right Wing misinformation and circlejerk machine. It's a fair bit more abstract than simply being profitable, since it allowed Musk no small amount of influence on US politics which - to the frustration of most of us - paid off.

And, more selfishly, he finds value in a platform where many of its remaining users (and most of its bots) will polish his boots and ride his dick for free.

By all accounts, Twitter has become a commercial failure and it'll only remain solvent if Musk uses funds from his other projects to keep it propped up (Like how Tesla paid for SpaceX before it started getting contracts), but the rich crybaby got exactly what -he- wanted out of it.

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In ordinary times I'd agree with you. But I also feel there is nothing stopping Trump from just creating this agency - as I understand it Elon and Vivek aren't looking to be paid so they don't need to be formerly installed. And once they are in an mucking about it would take someone holding them accountable or refusing their requests - which I don't anticipate this Congress being willing to do.

We'll see.

EDIT - I did not have Gaetz voluntarily withdrawing on my bingo card. I wonder just how bad the info on him is that they got him to drop out. At least the bonus is he also isn't in Congress - win in my book.

I mean, Trump's putting a P2025 guy in charge of the Office of Management and Budget, which is the department that actually does what DOGE thinks it does. So Trump's still gonna get what he wants out of it, but just gave Elon and Vivek unplugged controllers so they can feel special.