Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[ringpriest]

And if were to look at it from the Mexican side:
1 - America’s drug problems are entirely self inflicted. America loves getting high.
2 - America’s employment needs can only be solved by immigration. It used to be they just wanted cheep labour. Now the scaremongering has gotten out of control and it will start hurting the economy.

Oh, I don't disagree. It's just that Trump's accusations directed at Mexico play along with the commonly accepted American media narratives, while the ones he directed at Canada are straight up insane by any standard.

And in particular when it comes to America's employment needs, without a major change to the American modus vivendi, they can only be met by illegal immigration and the associated employment at wages and conditions that, if not unlawful (and they usually are), Americans would not accept.

Food production in particular, but also a number of trades, depend on being able to treat their workers poorly and pay them extremely low wages. Eliminate that - require fair wages and decent working conditions -and a great many things Americans take for granted suddenly become unaffordable, and there's likely a popular uprising within a few years. And then what happens to all the billionaires and their financial class?

[KrayZ33]

Under Biden:



Too bad nobody noticed. The problem with Biden's administration was its inability to promote its achievements. Which were considerable. Now, Trump will claim responsibility for all the goods that Biden did.

The lasting effects will be contributed to Trump now, while at the same time, the sudden rise in drug related deaths from 2015-2021 will of course, not be.

[Surfd]

This brings up two more questions. What is the nature of the classified materials, which I might add played no part in your previous post, that is in Treasury or USAID or whatnot? Secondly, do you recognize that Trump has the authority to declassify documents for use by his advisors (ie are you making a process complaint saying that of course Elon can do this, but Trump should’ve done the first act earlier)?

The main gist of my argument that I’ve been trying to convey to you is that much of what you’re talking about happened by Executive action, not Legislature.

Executive action does not magically bypass procedure and other laws.

The nature of the classified material in question is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that it's classified. And I 1000% guarantee you that 100% of the musk acolytes currently rooting around in it absolutely do not have any kind of legitimate security clearance to be accessing that shit.

As has already been established elsewhere, the President may have the power to declassify materials, but he still needs to go through the correct procedures to do so. He can't just wave his hand vaguely at an entire department and go "hey, that database full of insanely sensitive information on basically every American in the country is now is now fair game to a pack of completely unvetted literal script-kiddies who are barely old enough to grow beards that don't look like they belong on a scrotum yet. Which is a moot point anyway, as there's absolutely no chance ANY of that shit was declassified.

I mean, what you are suggesting is that the President has the power to literally just pick a random bum off the street and hand him access to the country's most sensitive information entirely on a whim? Hey, see that questionable looking rando over there? Give him access to all our most important financial information and let him do whatever the hell he wants with it. Security clearance? He has it because I said so. He's not a government employee? He is now, cause I said so. I'm violating fuckloads of safety protocols and procedures? Who cares, I'm the fucking President.

If that's the literal state of your government now, then you are absolutely, completely fucked.

[gondrin]

Executive action does not magically bypass procedure and other laws.

The nature of the classified material in question is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that it's classified. And I 1000% guarantee you that 100% of the musk acolytes currently rooting around in it absolutely do not have any kind of legitimate security clearance to be accessing that shit.

As has already been established elsewhere, the President may have the power to declassify materials, but he still needs to go through the correct procedures to do so. He can't just wave his hand vaguely at an entire department and go "hey, that database full of insanely sensitive information on basically every American in the country is now is now fair game to a pack of completely unvetted literal script-kiddies who are barely old enough to grow beards that don't look like they belong on a scrotum yet. Which is a moot point anyway, as there's absolutely no chance ANY of that shit was declassified.

I mean, what you are suggesting is that the President has the power to literally just pick a random bum off the street and hand him access to the country's most sensitive information entirely on a whim? Hey, see that questionable looking rando over there? Give him access to all our most important financial information and let him do whatever the hell he wants with it. Security clearance? He has it because I said so. He's not a government employee? He is now, cause I said so. I'm violating fuckloads of safety protocols and procedures? Who cares, I'm the fucking President.

If that's the literal state of your government now, then you are absolutely, completely fucked.

To add to this, while the President does have a right to declassify pretty much anything outside of nuclear secrets and some other very limited state secrets, the person getting the ability to see those documents still cannot share what they saw. They literally only have the ability to read what is on it. The moment they copy it, they break the law regardless of any declassification of said material by the President because, as you said, it still has to clear proper channels to be "properly" declassified for general consumption.

[Voidwielder]

Mark my words - Republicans will be the first to regret that they swallowed the tapeworm that is Elon Musk. He is going nowhere. DOGE is going nowhere. Trump may die, Vance may lose future elections but Elon Musk is now in control of the Republican party. He owns and runs the largest and most powerful propaganda platform in the world and he (with his fellow gigazillionaires) have enough resource to primary out and and all dissent. He owns them all, they exist by his mercy.
They will come to regret it once the hangover from election victory passes.

The question is - if (when) they wind blows the other way, will he turn his cloak again and will the Democrats take him back?

[gondrin]

Mark my words - Republicans will be the first to regret that they swallowed the tapeworm that is Elon Musk. He is going nowhere. DOGE is going nowhere. Trump may die, Vance may lose future elections but Elon Musk is now in control of the Republican party. He owns and runs the largest and most powerful propaganda platform in the world and he (with his fellow gigazillionaires) have enough resource to primary out and and all dissent. He owns them all, they exist by his mercy.
They will come to regret it once the hangover from election victory passes.

The question is - if (when) they wind blows the other way, will he turn his cloak again and will the Democrats take him back?

And Musk is still human.

I still don't know why people make rich people to be invincible or the like. As we saw with a certain CEO, all it takes is one determined individual to remove that person outright. Yes, the rich tend to have a stacked deck when it comes to legal issues and the like. But, they are still human and can be dealt with like a human. All it takes is a person or persons to be determined enough or desperate enough to do it.

The French did a long while ago when the elites decided to basically go tell everyone to go fuck off and starve.

Let this sink in. All it took was one deranged person to basically kill Kennedy, one deranged person to nearly mortally wound Reagan, one deranged person to kill Lincoln. And outside of Lincoln, the rest had extremely tight security.

[Voidwielder]

I honestly can't think of better honeytrapping and extortion targets than these.... err, twinks. Bets on how many of them will end up sharing government and civilian data with ''anons'' in Discord servers ''for the lols''?
And honestly, what's there from stopping them of importing all the data they've access to on to their private hard drives and selling it on the black market?

[DarkTZeratul]

You can check out how much money USAID wasted on projects in Afghanistan, for yourself. This is only up to 2015 and highlights only one country in the world. Have they also done some good? Possibly, but to act like they are beyond reproach is nonsense. This level of waste is staggering.


https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/afghan

"Some projects might be wasteful, therefore we should give an unelected billionaire with no security clearance access to our entire treasury system and let him personally decide what to cut, even though the Constitution unambiguously gives Congress sole control over spending."

[PhaelixWW]

"Some projects might be wasteful, therefore we should give an unelected billionaire with no security clearance access to our entire treasury system and let him personally decide what to cut, even though the Constitution unambiguously gives Congress sole control over spending."

Ah, but does it give Congress sole control over not spending?

/foreheadtap

5D chess, sirs. 5D chess.

[gondrin]

I honestly can't think of better honeytrapping and extortion targets than these.... err, twinks. Bets on how many of them will end up sharing government and civilian data with ''anons'' in Discord servers ''for the lols''?
And honestly, what's there from stopping them of importing all the data they've access to on to their private hard drives and selling it on the black market?

This. And since their actual addresses where they live were posted online, they literally now will be targets. And outside of someone who is pretty much insane, I don't see them dealing with that very well.

[DarkTZeratul]

Ah, but does it give Congress sole control over not spending?

/foreheadtap

5D chess, sirs. 5D chess.

I know you're being sarcastic, but for anyone out there who thinks otherwise? The Supreme Court has firmly said yes. If Congress "spend this money on X," the Executive has no choice but to spend the money on X.

[Corvus]

China has announced its response should Trump actually carry through for once, including 15% on coal and lng, and 10% on oil and various other things, and an anti-monopoly investigation into Google.

[PhaelixWW]

I know you're being sarcastic, but for anyone out there who thinks otherwise? The Supreme Court has firmly said yes. If Congress "spend this money on X," the Executive has no choice but to spend the money on X.

I'm sure the rules prohibit spending the money on anything other than X, but I'm not as sure that it prohibits simply not spending the money.

Of course, that doesn't just... put it back into the "bank", so that may be an irrelevant distinction, except that it puts the ball back into Congress' court to authorize the redistribution or let it stagnate.

If you know of a SCOTUS ruling that says otherwise, please share.

[gondrin]

I'm sure the rules prohibit spending the money on anything other than X, but I'm not as sure that it prohibits simply not spending the money.

Of course, that doesn't just... put it back into the "bank", so that may be an irrelevant distinction, except that it puts the ball back into Congress' court to authorize the redistribution or let it stagnate.

If you know of a SCOTUS ruling that says otherwise, please share.

What you are talking about is Impoundment Control Act of 1974 which states the President may ask Congress to withhold funds but if they don't agree to it that those funds must be released. The whole reason for this act to ever be a thing is because of Nixon pretty much doing what Trump is doing now. And it has been upheld in the past as legal by the SC. Neither the President nor the OMB can withhold funding with Congressional approval. Trump is literally trying to get this in front of the SC by doing what he is doing to try and overturn the Impoundment Act.

Train v. City of New York is the case that determined this.

[DarkTZeratul]

I'm sure the rules prohibit spending the money on anything other than X, but I'm not as sure that it prohibits simply not spending the money.

Of course, that doesn't just... put it back into the "bank", so that may be an irrelevant distinction, except that it puts the ball back into Congress' court to authorize the redistribution or let it stagnate.

If you know of a SCOTUS ruling that says otherwise, please share.

The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 explicitly prohibits the president from refusing to spend funds allocated by Congress, and the Supreme Court's Train v. City of New York ruling the following year affirmed that.

[gondrin]

The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 explicitly prohibits the president from refusing to spend funds allocated by Congress, and the Supreme Court's Train v. City of New York ruling the following year affirmed that.

The whole reason why Trump is doing this is, once again, something in Project 2025 that wants it to get put in front of a friendly SC to overturn the Act. However, this could literally go either way.

[PhaelixWW]

The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 explicitly prohibits the president from refusing to spend funds allocated by Congress, and the Supreme Court's Train v. City of New York ruling the following year affirmed that.

Doesn't that specifically reference federal disbursements to outside parties, though?

I'm not sure it applies to funds authorized for use internally by an entirely federal agency.

[KrayZ33]

Uh, Trump blamed the bad trade deals with Canada and Mexico on why he has to put Tariffs in. The trade deals currently in place were negotiated during Trump's last term. So really, it wouldn't matter if the Biden administration was more vocal, Republicans just can't be arsed to believe anything apart from the lies they want to believe.

It's really that simple.


One argument I keep hearing when they ask the common lower double-digit IQ mongrel, aka a Trumpee, "So you are telling me that Trump would just lie to us about X (this)? Yea, right.."
While at the same time, they would accuse Biden and Democrats of doing so in a heartbeat, at every possibility whatsoever, even for the most mundane shit and of course, even if that in turn would mean that the government is the most capable and efficient entity that every existed (i.e. the kind flatearthers would argue about when they talk about how the government is holding everyone in the dark, just like that)

You just can't do anything to make these people realize. It's a lost cause, try the next generation - by promoting education and (media-)literacy.

[Voidwielder]

On a more serious note, I think we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the American Republic. This was going to happen sooner or later. The Presidency is increasingly powerful and Congress is in steep decline. The Senate will be the last one to go but we are on our way to becoming something quite like modern Turkey or Belarus.

- - - Updated - - -

And I mean, props to Elon for figuring out that only a young 20-something will be willing to take up the liability for when something does leak. And Trump won't be able to pardon them either. I'm a bit sad for them. They are going to wreck their lives before they even began.

- - - Updated - - -

And I wonder for how much longer this momentum is going to last - I haven't seen people talk enough about this but one of the contradictions of Trump's 2024 platform is that its anti-statist while also advocating a very aggressive policy agenda which in fact requires strong state capacity.

[Azadina]

And I mean, props to Elon for figuring out that only a young 20-something will be willing to take up the liability for when something does leak. And Trump won't be able to pardon them either. I'm a bit sad for them. They are going to wreck their lives before they even began.

At the very minimum, China and Russia are already going to be scrambling to get their agents get a hold of some of them. Threaten them into submission, have them steal and share data, and "accident" them after. I don't expect them to live long lives.

Absolutely once in a lifetime opportunity for any foreign government.