Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Deus Mortis]

lotta discussion to be had on this that unfortunately goes into forbidden topics, but needless to say there's a reason Reagan has been a near god-like figure, revered as a saint by republicans since the 80's

a fucking b-list actor

and now their party is lead by a reality tv star

Worshipping any human as a god-like figure has always been ultra weird to me. Like they are just another human being.

Blame American actors going into politics ours seem to suck but this is not true everywhere, the one over in Ukraine is doing a pretty damn good job.

[Somewhatconcerned]

Covid happened under Trump my dude.

Such a disingenuous take when restrictions were happening in many blue counties well into 2021.

Lazy.

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it's good that you're moving these goalposts while OSHA is still a thing because otherwise I'd be really concerned about you not following best practices for safely lifting heavy objects.

Funny you mention OHSA, because when Biden tried to use it as a backdoor for vaccine mandates is when his ratings really began to tank.

And many here had the audacity to say "You don't HAVE to get the vaccine, you can just lose your job instead."

And you still don't get why Dems are so unpopular.

[Edge-]

Such a disingenuous take when restrictions were happening in many blue counties well into 2021.

Lazy.

my dude tried to blame democrats for lockdowns that happened under donald and is so big mad that he forgot that roflmao

[Breccia]

Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work
-acting undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, as chosen by Rubio

[Edge-]

Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work
-acting undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, as chosen by Rubio

Does he know his boss isn't white?

damn, they're just recruiting all the public white supremacists/racists, huh

[Nymrohd]

then all of a sudden, usually, they see first-hand that their gay/trans kid isn't the monster they've spent years making gay/trans folks out to be and they've "evolved on the issue"

Wish it was "usually". Queer youth are still 10 times more likely to be homeless.

[Bwgmon]

my dude tried to blame democrats for lockdowns that happened under donald and is so big mad that he forgot that roflmao

Also rich that they're ignoring that Trump dropping the ball is the reason the restrictions continued to be pushed harder; it turns out putting out a fire requires more drastic measures when the first house is allowed to burn and spread to 100 more.

[Endus]

Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work
-acting undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, as chosen by Rubio

In the end, let's recall that all white supremacist buttmonkeys like this potato of a man operate from a single primary operating principle;

They, personally, suck and cannot qualify on merit for anything, so they need their whiteness and man-ness (can't say "manliness" because fuck they're not "manly", ever) to stand in for their complete lack of personal merit. That's why they need those factors to be privileged. Because they've got nothing else and they can't succeed on their own.

Just complete and utter weak-ass dipshits.

[Breccia]

damn, they're just recruiting all the public white supremacists/racists, huh

Now to be fair, people say stupid things when they're younger. He posted that all the way back in...

(checks notes)

October. Of 2024.

[Edge-]

Now to be fair, people say stupid things when they're younger. He posted that all the way back in...

(checks notes)

October. Of 2024.

it's wild that their hires are seemingly all the actually "dei hires" of people grossly lacking in qualifications who are nothing remotely close to 'the most qualified'.

yet the "anti-dei crowd" continues to be dead silent

are they dead?

they might be

we should send someone to check on them, they might be furious to learn about these unqualified people being hired!

[Breccia]

Trump's immigration raids have ended with many of those detained being released-

"Yeah! MAGA!"

-back into the United States.

"Yeah! Wait, what?"

Yeah, turns out, Trump's plan would require detainment space for 100,000 people and we have 41,000.

"Who came up with those clearly fake numbers?"

Trump's border czar Homan.

Simply put, due to laws already in place, you know, the Constitution? You can't just arrest someone and hold them indefinitely. Trump has had to release 8,000 people already, and no, he couldn't deport them.

In a statement to NBC News, an ICE spokesperson acknowledged federal court cases limit ICE from detaining people indefinitely if their countries refuse to take them back, which can lead ICE to release them.

“The agency’s federal law enforcement officers do everything they can to keep our communities safe,” the spokesperson said. “In some cases, ICE is required to release certain arrested aliens from custody.”

So, remember how Colombia said "you should have just sent them on a civilian plane?" Apparently, at least one country said "you can't send them at all". And Trump had to back off.

Most people don’t even know that we have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people

--Trump

I mean, I guess there's space there, Trump did pardon 1500+ violent terrorists recently.

Trump also signed the Laken Riley Act.

"What does that do?"

Nothing. Courts took a dim view on indefinite incarceration of people accused of crimes. It was immediately blocked.

"Can't the immigrants just be put in regular jails?"

I mean, if the regular jails agree, I guess, a lot of those aren't federal so they can't just take them. That's unConstitutional, too.

So there you have it, Trump has been beaten by at least one other country who didn't just say "send a civilian plane" but "no thanks" entirely, did not get tariffed, did not get sanctioned, and the immigrants are now back in US and not in detention. Eight thousand.

The raids aren't even making headlines because they've died down, now we know why. The plan was impossible, and Trump made them try it anyhow.

Sad.

Pathetic.

IMPOTUS.

[Flarelaine]

on the bold

it really highlights how "no exposure to things" results in republicans being terrified of them

I have this memory from 2015 when the latest refugee crisis in Europe broke out. Suddenly we had throngs of (mostly Syrian) refugees camping out in Budapest, just waiting for trains to take them to Germany. And after the initial shock, the reaction from folks actually meeting them, such as yours truly passing them every day while commuting, was mostly "poor things", with a side of "have a sandwich". But the reaction from far-flung villages who only saw them on TV was "OMG SCARY BROWN PEOPLE WILL SOMEONE DO SOMETHING!"

[Belize]

And many here had the audacity to say "You don't HAVE to get the vaccine, you can just lose your job instead."

And they are correct. Welcome to working in industry.

You don't have to wear your PPE either, but you won't have a job for long if you don't. Crazy you're still discovering things about the world most people already know.

Also, isn't "Right to work" something Republicans push for all the time? Shouldn't you agree with losing your job if you don't follow the rules?

[Edge-]

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/04/nx-s1...ed-resignation

It's been a week since nearly all 2.3 million civilian employees of the federal government were presented with an offer: Agree to resign from your job by Feb. 6 and keep your pay and benefits through the end of September.

Now, with the deadline to accept the offer nearing, federal agencies have sent out new terms and conditions in the form of a sample contract agreement that employees are told they can use to "memorialize" the deal. It's unclear who from the government would sign the agreements, or whether the contracts would be legally binding.

Adding to the confusion, some of the sample contract language diverges from the first email, which came from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) with the subject line "Fork in the Road," and other guidance presented to date.

OPM is still being run by anarchists who have no clue what the fuck they're doing. Chaos really is the name of this administration, packed full of unqualified "DEI hires" who are not the best or the brightest as we're constantly seeing.

Yes, it does contradict the first email they sent out on this topic. No, they don't address that.

Seems like they're banking on funding running out on March 14 to supercharge this whole shebang.

[Paetolus]

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/04/nx-s1...ed-resignation



OPM is still being run by anarchists who have no clue what the fuck they're doing. Chaos really is the name of this administration, packed full of unqualified "DEI hires" who are not the best or the brightest as we're constantly seeing.

Yes, it does contradict the first email they sent out on this topic. No, they don't address that.

Seems like they're banking on funding running out on March 14 to supercharge this whole shebang.

So silly for anyone to accept that offer. I'd begrudgingly return to the office and maybe job hunt for a while, wouldn't want to bank on having something lined up before a forced resignation.

[gondrin]

Such a disingenuous take when restrictions were happening in many blue counties well into 2021.

Lazy.

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Funny you mention OHSA, because when Biden tried to use it as a backdoor for vaccine mandates is when his ratings really began to tank.

And many here had the audacity to say "You don't HAVE to get the vaccine, you can just lose your job instead."

And you still don't get why Dems are so unpopular.

The thing is, private businesses can deny employment for pretty much any reason except for innate characteristics like their age, their gender, their race, their religion. They can demand their employees be healthy before working with them or tell them to stay home.

[Edge-]

So silly for anyone to accept that offer. I'd begrudgingly return to the office and maybe job hunt for a while, wouldn't want to bank on having something lined up before a forced resignation.

it's the same stupid shit elon did at twitter - off a ton of instant buyouts/fire people, then realize "oops we needed a lot of those people" and then hire them back. which is incredibly expensive because hiring people is not cheap, especially if you've recently paid out 6+ months of severance etc.

because it's worked so well for twitter, which despite functionally operating with a skeleton crew with as few costs as possible is barely breaking even per elon.

[gondrin]

And they are correct. Welcome to working in industry.

You don't have to wear your PPE either, but you won't have a job for long if you don't. Crazy you're still discovering things about the world most people already know.

Also, isn't "Right to work" something Republicans push for all the time? Shouldn't you agree with losing your job if you don't follow the rules?

Hey, don't worry. With the bill they introduced that would abolish OSHA, having to wear PPE will be a thing of the past seeing as there would be no safety systems put in place.

[Belize]

Hey, don't worry. With the bill they introduced that would abolish OSHA, having to wear PPE will be a thing of the past seeing as there would be no safety systems put in place.

Oh good, I can't wait for the lessons literally learned in blood be relearned in blood yet again.

[Voidwielder]

There are a lot of hacks, frauds, charlatans and other cretins out there who comment on ''geopolitics'' and forecasting but this man has been quite solid for the last 25 years. Interesting read and somewhat beyond the ''current events''.
https://geopoliticalfutures.com/amer...conomic-cycle/

In the United States, a new socio-economic cycle shows its hand, its flaws and its power over time as a president, sometimes heedless of the emerging reality, manages the political system that will govern it and, in turn, be reshaped by it.

It’s important to remember that the president of the United States presides. He does not rule. His power rests in a profound awareness of the spirit of the nation and the forces that will shape it, ranging from the domestic economy to global interests. It is these forces and the president’s grasp of them that define the presidency, but the forces – be it technological innovation or unforeseen economic calamity – are not of the president’s own making. He presides over and facilitates the necessity that emerges and faces the inevitable. President Ronald Reagan politically engineered the financial foundation of our current cycle by creating a climate to increase investment capital and oversaw the founding of a new financial and social order following one of the models that new presidents employ on taking office: the ruthless and even reckless overthrow of the old.

The old order dated back to before World War II. Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933 amid the Great Depression and the coming of a great war. He did not know how to solve the problem; he just knew that national security required an economic and social shift in American society. He set himself a target, which appeared reckless to his enemies and supporters, of creating a program for ending the Depression. To do that, he had to break the economic orthodoxy that had dominated political thought, an orthodoxy that essentially argued that a balanced budget, among many other things, was the key to prosperity. He undertook what was seen as a wild, haphazard and reckless set of shifts in how the government and the financial system worked. He did not end the Depression right then, but he set the stage for solving it, challenging and wrecking the orthodoxy, and opening the door to a fundamental shift in the U.S. economy that in turn set the stage for reshaping the way the world worked. The opposition was appalled, but the public was relieved that someone had grasped the magnitude of the crisis.

Deliberately or not, President Donald Trump has followed the Roosevelt model. Roosevelt set about signaling that the old order was exhausted and that all that had been solid had to be overturned. He recognized what his opposition did not: that the system was broken and that something had to be done. He faced great opposition, from those who denied that the Great Depression was the result of a systemic failure that would solve itself, from those who thought his plans too mild and from those who thought the intent of the 100 days laudable but were convinced that caution was still essential.

Roosevelt’s solutions were not eternal. They eventually fell with the coming of the cycle ushered in by Reagan, but they saved the country by creating a middle class and financing a global war. Although his opponents never conceded and continued to revile him, Roosevelt and his heirs made no concessions.

Trump is now in his 100-day period. Roosevelt’s goal was to strip the old order of its power to rule by moral principles made obsolete and harmful. The current apparent randomness, unpredictability and recklessness should be seen in this light. Roosevelt’s goal was to shatter the old elite blocking evolution. That is Trump’s goal, albeit expressed radically differently. For Roosevelt, the elite represented the old orthodoxies on economics and the inevitable inequality that followed. Trump’s main antagonist is an ideology, which for the sake of argument I will call hyper egalitarianism, that was, in his mind, demonizing the country and its citizens and imposing an order on cultural institutions and values to solve the inequities of the old order. It was also redefining moral obligations and even medical norms. In a real sense, Trump’s goal is not to restore the country to what it was but to lay a new framework, which, I suspect, he has yet to devise. He is, for now, presiding over apparent disorder rather than aligning with what had been normal.

What will follow is a new economic cycle, shifting now as it has every 50 years. Each cycle was anchored in a new technology based on necessity. Andrew Jackson saw the creation of canals to bind the nation’s economy together. Rutherford B. Hayes presided over the railroad revolution, Roosevelt over the automobile revolution and the emergence of the middle class, and Reagan over the new financial order that would give way to what I call the microchip era. Each of these technologies had its roots in economic and social necessities and was accompanied by many other innovations, but they are symbols of unheard-of solutions that are the essence of America. Crucially, once a president presides over the transformation, the nation is not bound by any president but proceeds to solve and create new problems on its own accord.

The era being created under Trump will also have pivotal technologies reshaping it, many of which I can’t imagine. I’m confident that they will relate to the coming demographic crisis. The number of elderly Americans is growing while birthrates are falling. The elderly need to be taken care of, physically and financially. That means that a revolution in medicine and its understanding is indispensable, not only for certain diseases but also for the structure of life. If life is essential, then a new medical culture and technology will emerge, causing the usual anger and pain. But that is not all that is needed. The declining workforce will need to be supported by new technologies that combine genuine artificial intelligence with a new material science so that the constant reinvention of America, both a cultural and economic necessity, can take place. This will also require a reconsideration of all that was obvious in the past – that immigration is not essential for a shrinking workforce that is supplemented by technology.

The solutions I casually posit may well be wrong, insufficient, insufficiently imaginative or not well thought out. Yet the one thing our history assures is that they will, in due time, be dealt with. It is now the task of the president, as it was of all presidents, to preside over the process, clear the pathway for others to solve problems and duel with the inevitable enemies in battle. Presidents do not rule, but they clear the ground. The historical probability is that consistent successes in cycles since the founding, and allowing for the inevitable conflict, will continue.