Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Breccia]

What Vladimir Putin doesn't realize is that if it weren't for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He's playing with fire!

-- Trump, on his Chinese knockoff Twitter, six days ago

We just blew up $7 billion in Russian bombers and we didn't tell Trump first.

-- Ukraine (not an exact quote)

The exact quote was "Today Zelensky played the King of Drones" which goes back to a February meeting *ding* in which Trump said Ukraine had no cards to play. Zelensky's response, "I'm not playing cards," was so effective that you can find it on T-shirts, no really, Google the phrase, that's what'll come up

Trump protecting Russia might refer to him sparing them sanctions or tariffs for their objectively evil behavior, but laughably false in this case. I've heard this called Russia's Pearl Harbor (also laughably false) and Ukraine didn't tell Trump they were doing this.

Trump promised to end the Ukraine war before he was even in office. He is a dismal failure.

Unrelated: there's an online movement to rename Trump Force One into the Panda Express. Not because it's from China, but because it's filled with Orange Chicken. I endorse and approve of this renaming.

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DOGE came to DC, shut down the US Institute for Peace (kind of a questionable move when Trump says the world is safer under him...but nobody believed him, even Musk), this takeover/gutting got called illegal, Musk left his role, and the original staff moved back in.

Only to find the building had suffered water damage, a roach infestation, signs of pot use on site, and apparently rats had also moved in.

"Is pot use really that bad?"

No. But it is still federally illegal, this was a federal site, and DOGE workers were government agents or contractors. Musk's people directly broke federal law. Now, I don't happen to agree with that federal law, but I'm also not a federal employee in the Executive Branch, so my opinion isn't relevant.

"Who the hell is TechCrunch? I've never heard of them."

A trustworthy source of factual information. Rachel Maddow cited them, so, that's good enough for me. I'm sure if this article contains objective falsehoods, Trump will sue and win. Until that happens, the evidence all says this really happened.

Musk didn't drain the swamp. He just brought more rats.

[Edge-]

DOGE came to DC, shut down the US Institute for Peace (kind of a questionable move when Trump says the world is safer under him...but nobody believed him, even Musk), this takeover/gutting got called illegal, Musk left his role, and the original staff moved back in.

Only to find the building had suffered water damage, a roach infestation, signs of pot use on site, and apparently rats had also moved in.

"Is pot use really that bad?"

No. But it is still federally illegal, this was a federal site, and DOGE workers were government agents or contractors. Musk's people directly broke federal law. Now, I don't happen to agree with that federal law, but I'm also not a federal employee in the Executive Branch, so my opinion isn't relevant.

"Who the hell is TechCrunch? I've never heard of them."

A trustworthy source of factual information. Rachel Maddow cited them, so, that's good enough for me. I'm sure if this article contains objective falsehoods, Trump will sue and win. Until that happens, the evidence all says this really happened.

Musk didn't drain the swamp. He just brought more rats.

gosh, it's almost like they're all awful people and there are genuinely no well-intentioned, redeemable individuals amongst the modern republican party

just rotten to its core from top to bottom

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https://www.newsweek.com/trump-admin...g-plan-2080139

hey

how much do you love donald trump and his policies?

a lot?

a whole lot?

the most possible?

well it better be a lot because all new administration hires will be given purity tests where they must write an essay about how donald trumps policies are so wonderful and great!

i'm sure tehdang and others will be around to talk about how this is totally normal and not more weirdo dictatorial type shit as republicans continue to rush towards dismantling democracy and putting a reality TV show start in charge of the whole country without any checks or balances

[Rasulis]

NPR interview with former DOGE staff member in charge of the VA.

Former DOGE engineer shares his experience working for the cost-cutting unit

Is it possible for VA to reduce its workforce by 15%?

LAVINGIA: Yeah. I'd say, I mean, at the end of the day, I did help build org charts such that VA executives could understand, like, what their organization looks like. I don't believe that the VA will cut 15% of their staff. It's not actually possible, given that the vast majority of the VA is actually the 170 hospitals that serve veterans, and the VA has also said that they will not cut any jobs related to nursing, clinicians, physicians - anyone providing direct veteran care. When I've looked at the HR data that I had access to, it's just fundamentally not possible to cut 15% of the staff.

Is it true that the Federal bureaucracy full of waste and abuse?

LAVINGIA: Frankly, no. I did not find the federal government to be rife with waste, fraud and abuse. I was expecting some more easy wins. I was hoping for opportunity to cut waste, fraud and abuse. And I do believe that there is a lot of waste. There's minimal amounts of fraud. And abuse, to me, feels relatively nonexistent. And the reason is - I think we have a bias is people coming from the tech industry where we worked at companies, you know, such as Google, Facebook, these companies that have plenty of money, are funded by investors and have lots of people kind of sitting around doing nothing.

The government has been under sort of a magnifying glass for decades. And so I think, generally, I personally was pretty surprised, actually, at how efficient the government was. This isn't to say that it can't be made more efficient - elimination of paper, elimination of faxing - but these aren't necessarily fraud, waste and abuse. These are just rooms to modernize and improve the U.S. federal government into the 21st century.

LAVINGIA: Definitely. The sort of first thing that comes up anytime you question, you know, why does a veteran's disability claim take 133 days on average to process - the answer is not because people are just sitting around doing nothing all day long. It's because there are a lot of rules and regulations that Congress has put in place over decades that just make it very, very complicated.

Why did DOGE fire him?

LAVINGIA: Yes. So I, probably stupidly, was asked by a - not even a journalist but a writer who just has a blog about my business going open-source, and I spoke to him. You know, he had a bunch of questions about me working for DOGE, and I felt that Elon was pretty clear about how he wanted DOGE to be maximally transparent. That's something he said a lot in private and publicly. And so I felt, OK, cool, I'll take him at his word. I will be transparent and, you know, sort of an ask forgiveness not permission sort of thing. I said mostly that the government was not as inefficient as I was expecting. And then, my access got revoked pretty shortly after. I didn't get notified. I was basically ghosted, and I just got an email notification that my access was no longer valid.

But he was just being transparent?

LAVINGIA: I don't know. I can't think of any other reason. I'm just thinking that, like - unfortunately, they did not tell me directly that the reason I was let go was because of my transparency. So I don't know if irony is the right word, but I do think that it's maybe, as Elon says, the most entertaining outcome is the most likely, and, you know, letting someone go for being transparent in the most maximally transparent organization is a little bit entertaining.

[Edge-]

NPR interview with former DOGE staff member in charge of the VA.

Former DOGE engineer shares his experience working for the cost-cutting unit

Is it possible for VA to reduce its workforce by 15%?



Is it true that the Federal bureaucracy full of waste and abuse?



Why did DOGE fire him?



But he was just being transparent?

it would all be fucking hilarious if it wasn't so fucking sad and pathetic and predictable

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...rump-fake-plot

Prosecutors in Milwaukee have charged a man with four felonies for attempting to frame an undocumented immigrant he is accused of assaulting, by sending forged letters in the immigrant’s name with a threat to kill Donald Trump.

The handwritten, forged letters were mailed to Wisconsin’s attorney general, Milwaukee police and US Immigration & Customs Enforcement (Ice). The story received a flood of media attention and was highlighted by the White House and Trump’s allies, but appears to have been a hoax.

WISN-TV, an ABC affiliate in Milwaukee, reported on Monday that a criminal complaint alleges Demetric Scott admitted to investigators he wrote the letters threatening to kill the president in the name of Ramon Morales-Reyes, whom he was previously charged with assaulting.

Among those who fell for the hoax was Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, who released a statement praising immigration officers for arresting Morales-Reyes on 22 May, one day after the forged letter was received by an Ice field intelligence officer.

“Thanks to our ICE officers, this illegal alien who threatened to assassinate President Trump is behind bars,” Noem said in a press release. Her department also released to news agencies an image of the handwritten note in light blue ink, expressing anger over Trump’s deportations and threatening to shoot him in the head with a rifle at a rally. Noem also shared the letter on X along with a photo of Morales-Reyes, and the White House also shared it on its social media accounts.

“We are tired of this president messing with us Mexicans – we have done more for this country than you white people – you have been deporting my family and I think it is time Donald J. Trump get what he has coming to him,” the letter said. “I will self deport myself back to Mexico but not before I use my 30 yard 6 to shoot your precious president in the head – I will see him at one of his big ralleys.”

The biggest problem with this story?

Last week, one of Morales-Reyes’ children told an immigrant rights group that he could not have written the letters since he cannot read or write in Spanish, let alone English.

So to summarize -

Natural-born American citizen assaults an undocumented migrant with a box cutter, attempting to steal his bike.

While waiting on trial, forges a letter from the victim, who cannot read or write in Spanish let alone English, threatening the president.

The White House immediately blasts that publicly without any investigation because of course they do, it's an apparent story of a brown foreigner threatening Dear Donald!

The story immediately falls apart with the most basic investigation if you're not a white supremacist.

According to a transcript of a phone call prosecutors say Scott made while awaiting trial for assaulting Morales-Reyes, Scott framed Morales-Reyes to keep him from testifying against him. “If he gets picked up by Ice,” Scott allegedly said in the call, “there won’t be a jury trial, so they will probably dismiss it that day. That’s my plan.”

Morales-Reyes works as a dishwasher in Milwaukee, where he lives with his wife and three children. He had recently applied for a U visa, which is carved out for people in the country illegally who become victims of serious crimes, according to his attorney.

While I expect this white supremacist administration to lie and refuse this, he should absolutely be granted his U visa for being the victim of another home-grown violent American criminal.

[Paranoid Android]

https://bsky.app/profile/patriottake.../3lqpu3jq5yc2e

If you actually cut $2.5 trillion to Elon and Republican's mind of a balanced budget; you would destroy the government.

Elmo doesn't go further but of course it would be every social program, but once more $2.5 trillion so it would cut deep into every agency. Then back to this dipshit logic of the tax cuts with notion people are going to be flush with money and what??, donate to the Transportation Dept to repair a strip of highway.

[Edge-]

https://www.military.com/daily-news/...milk-ship.html

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to take the rare step of renaming a ship, one that bears the name of a gay rights icon, documents and sources show.

Military.com reviewed a memorandum from the Office of the Secretary of the Navy -- the official who holds the power to name Navy ships -- that showed the sea service had come up with rollout plans for the renaming of the oiler ship USNS Harvey Milk.

I think Secretary Alcoholic is worried sailors might catch the gay if they serve on a ship named after a gay man.

anyways, good to see this administration still has their priorities correct and are focusing on the most important issues!

[Bodakane]

https://bsky.app/profile/patriottake.../3lqpu3jq5yc2e

If you actually cut $2.5 trillion to Elon and Republican's mind of a balanced budget; you would destroy the government.

Elmo doesn't go further but of course it would be every social program, but once more $2.5 trillion so it would cut deep into every agency. Then back to this dipshit logic of the tax cuts with notion people are going to be flush with money and what??, donate to the Transportation Dept to repair a strip of highway.

Stop eating this cake I put arsenic in!

[diller]

Musk is ranting like crazy, new post every few minutes it seems....

[Twdft]

all new administration hires will be given purity tests where they must write an essay about how donald trumps policies are so wonderful and great!

I wonder if writing o/ Heil Trump will be enough to pass.

[Belize]

Musk is ranting like crazy, new post every few minutes it seems....

Being high on ketamine 24/7 will turn most brains into fried eggs

[Edge-]

Being high on ketamine 24/7 will turn most brains into fried eggs

dude's stuck sitting on the toilet to pee because he broke his dick and has nothing else to do but shitpost

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When Donald Trump pardoned former Culpeper County Sheriff Scott Jenkins last week, the president called him a "victim" who had been "persecuted by the Radical Left 'monsters' and 'left for dead.'"

Jenkins is an outspoken supporter of Trump. The reprieve spared Jenkins from what Trump called an "unfair sentence" — 10 years for bribery, conspiracy, and honest services fraud — just before the former sheriff was to start serving it.

More than 60% of voters in Culpeper backed Trump in last year's election. But many there, including Trump supporters, say pardoning the former sheriff was wrong.

"That's a terrific mistake," said Ken Green, a retired entrepreneur and three-time Trump voter, as he ate breakfast at the counter at Frost Cafe in downtown Culpeper. "It's a failure of our justice system. He was guilty as could be. He needed to go to jail, and he didn't. So what kind of signal does that send?"

"Totally surprised, stunned," added John Cook, another Trump voter who runs a tree service and was sitting just a few stools away. "It's unbelievable."

https://www.npr.org/2025/06/02/nx-s1...former-sheriff

Donald's voters, idiots, are constantly shocked that he pardons corrupt, extremely guilty and bad people like he did in his first administration but this time it's personal to them and they finally paid attention.

Both Green and Cook said they still like many of Trump's policies, his forthright style and still support him as president. "It's kind of a two-edged sword," Green said. "You either support him or you support the other side, and I can't support the other side right now so … it's the evil you know."

Gordon Clore, a retired salesman who did not vote for Trump, said he doesn't know anyone in Culpeper who supports the pardon: "I believe everyone is against it."

NPR interviewed more than two dozen people in Culpeper about the pardon. All but one opposed it — and that person refused to speak on the record.

A jury convicted Jenkins last year of effectively selling auxiliary deputy badges to businessmen for $75,000 in cash and campaign contributions. It was largely a local story.

Nobody votes against their own interests like Trump supporters, absolutely nobody.

[s_bushido]

Nobody votes against their own interests like Trump supporters, absolutely nobody.

One day, I'd like someone to sit down with one of these brain-dead muppets and have them explain exactly what "the other side" is doing that's bad enough to have them still support "the evil you know." I'm guessing "they're murdering da babies!!!" would be about the only consistent thing.

[Kathandira]

I'm guessing "they're murdering da babies!!!" would be about the only consistent thing.

Don't forget the gays. Oh, and hair that is not black, brown, blonde, or red.

[Kaleredar]

One day, I'd like someone to sit down with one of these brain-dead muppets and have them explain exactly what "the other side" is doing that's bad enough to have them still support "the evil you know." I'm guessing "they're murdering da babies!!!" would be about the only consistent thing.

“Illegals,” “the queers,” and, as you said, “murdering babies.”

Every one of them an imagined boogeyman.

[Xyonai]

One day, I'd like someone to sit down with one of these brain-dead muppets and have them explain exactly what "the other side" is doing that's bad enough to have them still support "the evil you know." I'm guessing "they're murdering da babies!!!" would be about the only consistent thing.

I don't really think there's anything of value to that sort of discussion when their grievances are based on talking points about shit that: Isn't happening, or hasn't happened but they think -might-. Or they just like that their guys are the ones who get to be the authoritarians rather than anyone else because they're 'winning'.

[Shadowferal]

Musk fight escalates with threat to unseat any Republican who backed Trump bill

The love is gone..*sigh*

[Kaleredar]

Musk fight escalates with threat to unseat any Republican who backed Trump bill

The love is gone..*sigh*

Despotic clowns never do get along well together do they

[Shadowferal]

Despotic clowns never do get along well together do they

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump...463009d28a/amp

[Poopymonster]

Musk fight escalates with threat to unseat any Republican who backed Trump bill

The love is gone..*sigh*

How long until Elongated Muskrat is under investigation?

[Edge-]

Musk fight escalates with threat to unseat any Republican who backed Trump bill

The love is gone..*sigh*

i hope this is a really messy fight