Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Nymrohd]

I, for one, would welcome our Mooseback Overlords.

Eh, California alone has nearly the population of Canada. So they wouldn't be annexing the US, they'd at best be merging. Add New England and they'd be the ones being effectively annexed.

[Draco-Onis]

Remains to be seen how short their memories are past that point.

This isn't a failure for trusting Trump. This is the entire Republican Party. At best, they're passively compliant, but most are full-throated in support of everything that's happening.

If they weren't, they could impeach and remove Trump in like two days. It wouldn't even be hard, if they get even a quarter of Republicans backing it, because the Dems would almost certainly go along, unless they've all gone full accelerationist.

This is a correctable problem. And there's zero interest among Republicans in correcting it. This isn't a case where Trump can get voted out in 2028 and we're back to normal; this is the new normal.

There's 28-33% of the US population that would be fine with Trump murdering their loved ones and they would still vote for him. The rest of the people that voted for him that are "soft" Trump supporters have the memory of a fish and are easily manipulated by social media and main stream media. They will blame Obama, the deep state heck worse comes to worse they can throw Elon under the bus if it comes down to it. I don't see any scenario where the GOP is held accountable beyond a couple of elections at most no matter how bad it gets.

It's also the Democratic party who are weak on purpose and won't hold them accountable because they need the GOP to serve the oligarchy. They need the GOP to be relevant and a threat, they have had so many opportunities to kill this party but refuse to do so.

[Xyonai]

It's also the Democratic party who are weak on purpose and won't hold them accountable because they need the GOP to serve the oligarchy. They need the GOP to be relevant and a threat, they have had so many opportunities to kill this party but refuse to do so.

Dems also seem to just have a general issue with direction at the moment. Leadership is banking on 'wait and see' policies to work in their favor rather than chasing every single Trump Admin scandals, and the rest are split between wanting to be loud and disruptive or just sitting back because they're afraid of the blowback.

[Xath]

It wouldn't stop at those three, though. If those three move, we could expect basically every other blue state to go too. No reliable blue state is going to want to stay in a hypothetical US that's eternally Republican.

Would be pretty hilarious to watch the remains of the US fall apart once the blue state subsidies stopped propping up the red ones, though.

A lot of purple would move as well if it was an option Minnesota and Michigan for sure but probably eventually most of the northern border states as it got worse.

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There's 28-33% of the US population that would be fine with Trump murdering their loved ones and they would still vote for him. The rest of the people that voted for him that are "soft" Trump supporters have the memory of a fish and are easily manipulated by social media and main stream media. They will blame Obama, the deep state heck worse comes to worse they can throw Elon under the bus if it comes down to it. I don't see any scenario where the GOP is held accountable beyond a couple of elections at most no matter how bad it gets.

It's also the Democratic party who are weak on purpose and won't hold them accountable because they need the GOP to serve the oligarchy. They need the GOP to be relevant and a threat, they have had so many opportunities to kill this party but refuse to do so.

Uh maybe 10 to 12 percent if that. He only got 20ish percent of the total eligible voting population. The problem is a lot of people don't vote and many of those that do are strictly republican or strictly democratic rather than reading policy of the candidates. If people had actually read what he wanted to do and read p2025 they wouldn't be shocked by what is going on.

[Poopymonster]

A lot of purple would move as well if it was an option Minnesota and Michigan for sure but probably eventually most of the northern border states as it got worse.

Nah, they'd never take Michigan.
Michigan became the Car Capital to allow people to leave the state easier.

[Rasulis]

if voters are kinda dumb and only respond to the most immediate pain, real or imagined. ima chant this all the way to the mid terms.

TRUMP TAKE EGG.

Any politicians wanna hirez me for consultancy, i work for egg! Yes you, in the upper right corner. Guy that hires staffers that eventually work for Trump/musk/Putin. Use this slogan plz. I promiss to never work for hill.com in my life.

Buy duck eggs. We just paid $7.99 for a dozen. Considering 3 duck eggs = 4 jumbo chicken eggs, that's a great deal.

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TRUMP TAKE EGG

Kids that dont remember 2020, reminder: Kevin Hassett’s COVID model, which he was in no way qualified to create, predicted that American COVID deaths would be at ~zero by May 2020. He's a conservative welfare hire from AEI.

Kevin Hassett on Trump's avian flu plan: "What we need to do is have better ways w/ bio-security & medication & so on to make sure that the perimeter doesn't have to kill the chickens. To have a better, smarter, perimeter...they're killing chickens to stop the spread, but chickens don't really fly"


TRUMP GIVE FLU

TRUMP GIVE MEASELS

Trying to contain bird flu while cutting the CDC and NIH workforce and budget. Also taking down CDC/NIH websites that contained datasets from bird flu studies.

Smart. Very smart.

[Kaleredar]

Buy duck eggs. We just paid $7.99 for a dozen. Considering 3 duck eggs = 4 jumbo chicken eggs, that's a great deal.

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Trying to contain bird flu while cutting the CDC and NIH workforce and budget. Also taking down CDC/NIH websites that contained datasets from bird flu studies.

Smart. Very smart.

They’re trying to do what they failed to do with Covid: pretend it doesn’t exist.

Unfortunately for the Trump train of thought, every day that the process of eggs continue to rise is a reminder that not only is bird flu actually a thing, but it’s also a reminder that trumps one promise of “make prices lower” is an abject failure.

I wonder what @Somewhatconcerned take is on this; they’ve been silent here for a while.

I guess there just really isn’t much to claim trump is “winning” on… what with trump folding to Mexico and Canada, Trump folding to musk, trump folding to Russia… oh, and of course the price of eggs still having been better under Biden.

That’s a lot of folding for a guy that I’m 100% sure has never had to do laundry is in his life.

[Rasulis]

The next budget vote should be interesting. Many GOP reps realized that if they vote for any budget resolutions that include cuts to Medicaid/Medicare, they can kiss their chances of getting re-elected goodbye.

[Casterbridge]

What's a little book banning among friends?
https://variety.com/2025/film/news/j...ry-1236310153/

[Rasulis]

They’re trying to do what they failed to do with Covid: pretend it doesn’t exist.

Unfortunately for the Trump train of thought, every day that the process of eggs continue to rise is a reminder that not only is bird flu actually a thing, but it’s also a reminder that trumps one promise of “make prices lower” is an abject failure.

I wonder what @Somewhatconcerned take is on this; they’ve been silent here for a while.

I guess there just really isn’t much to claim trump is “winning” on… what with trump folding to Mexico and Canada, Trump folding to musk, trump folding to Russia… oh, and of course the price of eggs still having been better under Biden.

That’s a lot of folding for a guy that I’m 100% sure has never had to do laundry is in his life.

Members of the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) were told on Friday that they were among nearly 1,300 layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to reports in Stat News and CBS News.

Experts from EIS have been dispatched for decades to investigate disease outbreaks in the United States and abroad, including when state health departments have needed help determining the origin of foodborne illnesses.

The program’s emphasis on field work has earned members the nickname “disease detectives.” EIS members were among the first responders dispatched to investigate the post 9/11 anthrax attacks that targeted U.S. politicians and media, for example.

The EIS program was set up in 1951 to address concerns about biological warfare during the Korean War, and today operates as a two-year post-doctoral training program for epidemiologists who want hands-on experience.

Yep. Clown show.

[Twdft]

Dems also seem to just have a general issue with direction at the moment. Leadership is banking on 'wait and see' policies to work in their favor rather than chasing every single Trump Admin scandals, and the rest are split between wanting to be loud and disruptive or just sitting back because they're afraid of the blowback.

I mentioned it before, the very least they should do is to document all the illegal stuff Trump&co are doing. And then store it all on a couple EU servers that preferably not use AWS. And a couple physical copies, don't assume that any American tech giant will keep this data online.

[Draco-Onis]

Members of the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) were told on Friday that they were among nearly 1,300 layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to reports in Stat News and CBS News.

Experts from EIS have been dispatched for decades to investigate disease outbreaks in the United States and abroad, including when state health departments have needed help determining the origin of foodborne illnesses.

The program’s emphasis on field work has earned members the nickname “disease detectives.” EIS members were among the first responders dispatched to investigate the post 9/11 anthrax attacks that targeted U.S. politicians and media, for example.

The EIS program was set up in 1951 to address concerns about biological warfare during the Korean War, and today operates as a two-year post-doctoral training program for epidemiologists who want hands-on experience.

Yep. Clown show.

Also I don't think you need to be a national security expert to understand that firing tens of thousands of government workers including spies (CIA, DNS etc) is really bad for keeping state secrets. You have tens of thousands of pissed off people wanting some payback, that's not even going into the Department of government embezzlement (DOGE) whose security and personel has more holes than Swiss Cheese.

It must be an amazing time for any Russian, Chinese or any other intelligence, it's probably an all you can eat buffet of the nation's secrets. I mean looking back this makes the whole tik tok ban look like a bad joke surely Elon and his band of pimply teenagers will keep our data more secure /s

[Malkiah]

2026 is going to be a bloodbath for the GOP.

... but why?
i've been seeing more and more of this kind of sentiment in this thread the last few weeks and i cannot wrap my head around why you people think this and i'd dearly love to understand it, because as of now it's starting to feel like this is a weird coping mechanism some folks are using to try and convince themselves that "everything will be OK" and that they don't need to change their political values at all, which strikes me as being cowardly and a dodge of reality.

so, why do you think 2026 will be a bloodbath? and specifically, a *bloodbath* - i'm sure one of the two chambers will flip but that's because they almost always do in mid-terms, the way you word it sounds like some big repudiation of the GOP and i've got no clue why anyone would think that.

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Remains to be seen how short their memories are past that point.

but here's the thing: no it doesn't. it doesn't remain to me seen. it's been seen repeatedly.
seriously, does nobody remember past 5 years ago?
i suppose ironically the fact that none of you seem to kind of proves the point, but still.

This isn't a failure for trusting Trump. This is the entire Republican Party. At best, they're passively compliant, but most are full-throated in support of everything that's happening.

jfc, you've got this backwards.
passively compliant? this has literally been the republican political agenda for at minimum the last 55 years: this presidency and its behavior, explicitly and specifically.
every elected republican since the end of the 60s has been overtly working towards the goal of dismantling both the relationship between the federal government and the US population and also the US population's expectations of what is acceptable behavior by elected representatives, with the goal of dismantling the status quo of the federal government that had been established post great depression.

trump isn't an outlier or a flaw, trump is the end goal. he's not an operator outside of the designs of the system, he is the boss fight they have been building towards.
this belief that trump is somehow this agent of chaos that has totally disrupted the natural order (and/or created a new one) blows my mind because it's so obvious that trump is just a culmination of republican goals.

This is a correctable problem. And there's zero interest among Republicans in correcting it.

why would the republicans be interested in "correcting" things being exactly the way they've been working towards for half a century?
this was always their plan, i'm absolutely gob smacked that any of you are naive enough to try to suggest anything otherwise.

[Gorsameth]

... but why?
i've been seeing more and more of this kind of sentiment in this thread the last few weeks and i cannot wrap my head around why you people think this and i'd dearly love to understand it, because as of now it's starting to feel like this is a weird coping mechanism some folks are using to try and convince themselves that "everything will be OK" and that they don't need to change their political values at all, which strikes me as being cowardly and a dodge of reality.

Cultists will be cultists, tho even they may have some issue when they get fired by their 'god emperor'.

But at the end of the day a lot of voters care only about 1 thing, their wallet. I am fairly confident that the #1 reason Trump won re-election was because of inflation. A Democrat was President, prices went up, people voted for the other parties candidate.

It doesn't matter that inflation was a global issue, it doesn't matter that the US did better then the rest of the Western world. Prices were up, groceries were up, people felt it in their wallet so that decided their vote.
And Trump is going to wreck the economy with his tariffs and trade wars and general fuckery.

[Breccia]

The NYTimes reports what we pretty much knew,

Ukraine Rejects U.S. Demand for Half of Its Mineral Resources

because

President Volodymyr Zelensky publicly faulted the American proposal because it did not include security guarantees.

Yep, when I made those claims that Trump wanted $500 billion to sell out Ukraine to Trump, I had called it accurately. To be fair, so did everyone else here. And Zelensky knows full well Trump's word is useless.

[Kaleredar]

... but why?
i've been seeing more and more of this kind of sentiment in this thread the last few weeks and i cannot wrap my head around why you people think this and i'd dearly love to understand it, because as of now it's starting to feel like this is a weird coping mechanism some folks are using to try and convince themselves that "everything will be OK" and that they don't need to change their political values at all, which strikes me as being cowardly and a dodge of reality.

so, why do you think 2026 will be a bloodbath? and specifically, a *bloodbath* - i'm sure one of the two chambers will flip but that's because they almost always do in mid-terms, the way you word it sounds like some big repudiation of the GOP and i've got no clue why anyone would think that.

There's been zero things to chock up as a "Trump victory" so far. Zero. And with how he's set things out, I fail to see how any of that will change. Like, even the shitty stuff that his dumbass supporters want he hasn't been able to do. He hasn't, to paraphrase a trump supporter "been hurting the right people," even.

Trump won the 2024 election not on appeals to racism, not on being pro-Ukraine-surrender, not on being anti-trans, not on being "fire all federal employees."

Trump won because he controlled the narrative about the economy better than Harris did, plain and simple. And what has he done to make the economy better? Nothing. What has he promised to do to make the economy better? Nothing. The jig is up about "tariffs will save the economy," and even if it weren't he's failed to affect any of those anyway.

The ultimate matter is whether the democrats can capitalize on this. Trump can't blame "the democrats" for getting in his way, he nominally controls all three branches of the government. I'm sure he'll try to blame RINOs and the dems or minorities or whoever for being the reason all of his plans have gone to shit and have done nothing to save the average American any money, but I'm not sure that will resonate with people who were told that he'd make eggs less expensive while they're currently a dollar+ for a single egg.

The republicans ran on the price of eggs coming down and, unless the price of eggs go down, they're going to get excoriated for it. All of this shit about DOGE mismanagement and flip-flopping hiring and firing of government employees and Trump failing to implement tariffs (even if they weren't a stupid idea) does not make the GOP look better.

So why should the dems have to say anything more than "Look at these fucking morons. We told you so." They just have to... you know, actually say that. So I'd argue that this has almost nothing to do with the dem's "need to change their values" as it does them adequately mobilizing to communicate how absolutely incompetent the Trump administration has been. And we've got almost two years of this to go before 2026.

[Malkiah]

But at the end of the day a lot of voters care only about 1 thing, their wallet.

i hate to open a post disagreeing with you but i just can't say that this seems factual.
conservatives have been demonstrably making the financial situation of people in the US worse every time they're in charge for the last... about 90 years or so, since the ideology of conservatism in the US really coalesced around the intention to dismantle every single part of the new deal.
and once republicans became the party of conservatives, that has been the republican goal and they have been successfully chipping away at it for about 75 years.
if voters cared about their wallets, republicans would not be voted for.
i don't care how much brain washing or social media you try to blame for people not properly knowing about the state of reality, the financial policy and its outcomes are right there for everyone to see regardless of what's on talk radio or fox news.

i think that in fact, at the end of the day a lot of voters only care about 1 thing, other people's wallets and ensuring that they are smaller than their own.
they don't care about their own circumstances, they only care that the circumstances of the "right people" are worse than theirs.

I am fairly confident that the #1 reason Trump won re-election was because of inflation. A Democrat was President, prices went up, people voted for the other parties candidate.

well i respectfully but strongly disagree with you here, though i don't want to try and initiate a huge debate about sociopolitics so i'll leave it at agreeing to disagree.

And Trump is going to wreck the economy with his tariffs and trade wars and general fuckery.

question: do you or gondrin or fwc or timester or endus or anyone else actually legitimately think that if a different republican were president right now anything would be done differently?
(i mean obviously the mechanics and delivery systems would be different but i mean in terms of policy agenda)

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There's been zero things to chock up as a "Trump victory" so far. Zero. And with how he's set things out, I fail to see how any of that will change. Like, even the shitty stuff that his dumbass supporters want he hasn't been able to do. He hasn't, to paraphrase a trump supporter "been hurting the right people," even.

ok ya i agree with what you're saying here, i just don't see how this translates into changes in electoral behavior.

this exact set of facts could have been said about reagan and he got elected twice and is basically an annointed saint.
ditto bush jr and he's been just memory wiped from existence, i think i might be the only person alive who actually remember 2000 - 2008.
same thing with the first trump term, and now the second.

what you said is true, but it being true has always been true and has never impacted electoral behavior, so why would it in 2026?

The republicans ran on the price of eggs coming down and, unless the price of eggs go down, they're going to get excoriated for it.

why?
maybe i need to narrow this down some...
not "why" as in "explain how failing to deliver on a political promise should result in electoral losses when operating with a populace of sane and rational humans that vote based on observable physical reality" i mean "why" as in "what evidence from the last 75 years of politics and voting do you have that makes you conclude this will happen when it comes to republican voters"?

i'm not asking what you folks think is wrong with the trump admin, that's blindingly obvious - the big thing i'm super confused about is why anyone thinks this is any different from bush or reagan, both of which were at best equally bad and embarrassing and pathetic and nakedly against the american people and at worst were more effective at it than trump has been, and neither those presidents nor the GOP in general suffered any kind of electoral blowback or cultural loss from it.

i'm looking at 60-something years of consistent and persistent behavior from the US population, and many of you guys are talking like you think there is going to be a reckoning which is utterly unprecedented and i just want to understand the mechanics of how you think that's going to happen.

[Gorsameth]

i hate to open a post disagreeing with you but i just can't say that this seems factual.
conservatives have been demonstrably making the financial situation of people in the US worse every time they're in charge for the last... about 90 years or so, since the ideology in the US really coalesced around the intention to dismantle every single part of the new deal.
and once republicans became the party of conservatives, that has been the republican goal and they have been successfully chipping away at it for about 75 years.
if voters cared about their wallets, republicans would not be voted for.
i don't care how much brain washing or social media you try to blame for it, the financial policy and its outcomes are right there for everyone to see.

i think that in fact, at the end of the day a lot of voters only care about 1 thing, other people's wallets and ensuring that they are smaller than their own.
they don't care about their own circumstances, they only care that the circumstances of the "right people" are worse than theirs.


well i respectfully but strongly disagree with you here, though i don't want to try and initiate a huge debate about sociopolitics so i'll leave it at agreeing to disagree.


question: do you or gondrin or fwc or timester or endus or anyone else actually legitimately think that if a different republican were president right now anything would be done differently?
(i mean obviously the mechanics and delivery systems would be different but i mean in terms of policy agenda)

Would things be differently under another R? a little. Things would still go to shit but slower and more controlled. They wouldn't fire and rehire the DoE because they didn't know they handle the nuclear arsenal. They wouldn't threaten to invade Greenland or go into a trade war with the entire world. But they would still want to slash government programs (tho more hesitant to hit things like Medicare because they know their own voters are on it) and pretend to be harsh on immigration while opening the doors for more easily exploited illegals that the corporations love to use.

And I didn't say voters looked at fiscal policy and voted for the best candidate, There would be no Republican in power if they did as you say. I said they see their spending power go down and vote for the either guy, no matter who that other guy may be.
They aren't critically thinking because they have never been taught how to critically thing. They aren't looking at party programs because they don't read them, at most they pick up some snippets from reporting in whatever media bubble they are stuck in.
Yes the financial policy and its outcomes are right there to see, but the 'average voter' isn't looking. They never have.

[Malkiah]

Yes the financial policy and its outcomes are right there to see, but the 'average voter' isn't looking. They never have.

so how does that result in 2026 or 2028 being different in terms of electoral politics?
this is the part i don't get, why anyone thinks that some kind of great push back against republicans is coming.

[Kaleredar]

i hate to open a post disagreeing with you but i just can't say that this seems factual.
conservatives have been demonstrably making the financial situation of people in the US worse every time they're in charge for the last... about 90 years or so, since the ideology of conservatism in the US really coalesced around the intention to dismantle every single part of the new deal.
and once republicans became the party of conservatives, that has been the republican goal and they have been successfully chipping away at it for about 75 years.
if voters cared about their wallets, republicans would not be voted for.
i don't care how much brain washing or social media you try to blame for people not properly knowing about the state of reality, the financial policy and its outcomes are right there for everyone to see regardless of what's on talk radio or fox news.

i think that in fact, at the end of the day a lot of voters only care about 1 thing, other people's wallets and ensuring that they are smaller than their own.
they don't care about their own circumstances, they only care that the circumstances of the "right people" are worse than theirs.


well i respectfully but strongly disagree with you here, though i don't want to try and initiate a huge debate about sociopolitics so i'll leave it at agreeing to disagree.


question: do you or gondrin or fwc or timester or endus or anyone else actually legitimately think that if a different republican were president right now anything would be done differently?
(i mean obviously the mechanics and delivery systems would be different but i mean in terms of policy agenda)

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ok ya i agree with what you're saying here, i just don't see how this translates into changes in electoral behavior.

this exact set of facts could have been said about reagan and he got elected twice and is basically an annointed saint.
ditto bush jr and he's been just memory wiped from existence, i think i might be the only person alive who actually remember 2000 - 2008.
same thing with the first trump term, and now the second.

what you said is true, but it being true has always been true and has never impacted electoral behavior, so why would it in 2026?


why?
maybe i need to narrow this down some...
not "why" as in "explain how failing to deliver on a political promise should result in electoral losses when operating with a populace of sane and rational humans that vote based on observable physical reality" i mean "why" as in "what evidence from the last 75 years of politics and voting do you have that makes you conclude this will happen when it comes to republican voters"?

i'm not asking what you folks think is wrong with the trump admin, that's blindingly obvious - the big thing i'm super confused about is why anyone thinks this is any different from bush or reagan, both of which were at best equally bad and embarrassing and pathetic and nakedly against the american people and at worst were more effective at it than trump has been, and neither those presidents nor the GOP in general suffered any kind of electoral blowback or cultural loss from it.

i'm looking at 60-something years of consistent and persistent behavior from the US population, and many of you guys are talking like you think there is going to be a reckoning which is utterly unprecedented and i just want to understand the mechanics of how you think that's going to happen.

You vastly overestimate one thing about the American electorate:

Their attention span. Or rather, their ability to pay attention... in general.

"Republicans have historically been bad for people's wallets." This is a true fact. However, look at the timeline in which those affects happened, and how they happened. Bush caused the financial crisis in the early 2000s? Who had to deal with that? Obama. What caused the economic turmoil throughout the late 2010s? Trump, and his mishandling of COVID. Who had to solve that problem? Biden.

People see who is in charge and what they're paying. If it's high, then they blame the person in charge for it. Plain and simple. Asking the majority of voters to go even one step beyond that in thinking is, frankly, too much to expect from them. Certainly so when we have an uncooperative media focused on sensationalism and upset and a democratic party that can't unify their messaging worth a damn.

The cycle goes "Republicans ride in on a good economy and break it by the end of their tenure. People are sick of Republican's bullshit but Democrats take power and fix it, but the fixes only take hold near the end of their term so they're perceived to have not fixed it. Republicans run on a mantra of 'dems spend too much, that's why everything is expensive, we will reduce spending.'" And so the cycle continues again and again and again.

There are just enough ignorant voters in swing states that vote based off "vibes" who are basically otherwise politically checked out and listen only to news headlines to swing elections back and forth almost every. Single. Time.

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so how does that result in 2026 or 2028 being different in terms of electoral politics?
this is the part i don't get, why anyone thinks that some kind of great push back against republicans is coming.

Because that's been what's happened for the entire timeframe you've listed.

And Trump is not "immune" to this; in a lot of ways he's weaker than Bush or Reagan or any of them in that respect. He lost the incumbency in 2020, there was no "red wave in 2022," even the downballot flip in 2024 was nothing major. He is not an individual that commands glowing support from the average american, regardless of what his sycophant followers might inarticulately yell about.