Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Breccia]

Desperate for anything to move away from Trump being given a trophy that looks like people tickling his balls, I will post this Washington Examiner headline:

None of Trump’s tariff promises are coming true

A strong, direct message that cannot be misinterpreted.

Once again, last week, Trump predicted that "over the next couple of years I think we'll substantially be cutting them, maybe cutting out completely, but we'll be cutting income tax, could be almost completely cutting it because the money we're taking in is going to be so large."

The ability to jump from “maybe” cutting to “almost” cutting to “sustainably” cutting to “completely” cutting income tax in a single sentence speaks to the complete absurdity of the premise.

The first problem, even for supporters of protectionism, is that revenue generated from Trump’s tariffs isn’t meeting expectations. In August, the aggressively inaccurate Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent predicted tariffs would raise “well over half a trillion, maybe toward a trillion-dollar number.” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick promised tariffs would raise over $50 billion a month.

The Congressional Budget Office now predicts tariff revenue will be $400 billion a year, around $30 billion a month, or $100 billion less than it forecasted during the summer. The United States collected $195 billion in tariff revenue during 2025, which amounts to 3.7% of all tax receipts and 2.7% of all spending.

This isn’t a necessarily bad thing for consumers, because, among other factors, it means Trump has been walking back tax hikes to stave off price spikes. If the administration had followed through on “Liberation Day” promises, the economy would likely be in big trouble.

Even if the Trump administration’s lofty guesstimates came to fruition, it still wouldn’t come anywhere close to eliminating income taxes. As of now, Americans pay around $2.6 trillion in individual federal income taxes yearly. The government would need to generate around — let’s be charitable — a 1,000% increase in tariff yearly revenue “over the next couple of years” before any initial discussion about eliminating federal income taxes without plunging the nation into a debt emergency.

Or, rather, a bigger one than we already have.

None of this even considers the damage historically high tariffs would have on overall economic activity and tax receipts.

Remember, this is all allegedly aimed at helping the “working class.” Right now, the top 50% of all taxpayers are on the hook for something like 97% of income taxes. Tariffs are a more regressive form of taxation than personal income tax, which is perhaps one of their only redeeming features. This is why populist senators and Trump keep promising the public $2,000 rebate checks from the “literally trillions of dollars” of imaginary revenue generated by tariffs.

A rebate check is just another means of redistribution. Surely there are less destructive ways of socializing the economy than setting up a byzantine and erratic regulatory regime to redistribute cash.

Then again, no one, as far as I know — no think tank or administration official or congressional leader — is even proposing any policy that would gradually, or ever, eliminate income taxes, probably because the notion exists solely in Trump's imagination.

“We were at our richest from 1870 to 1913. That's when we were a tariff country. And then they went to an income tax concept,” the president has argued.

He's wrong. We are the richest right now. And it’s not particularly close. Of course, in 1913, the federal government spent around 1% of GDP. Today it spends around 25%. There’s no indication that we won’t spend more in the future.

And yet, another Trump promise that seems to resonate with his supporters entails the notion of paying off the national debt with tariffs. The president says deficits are mere “peanuts” compared to revenue from tariffs. "You got to remember — this is going to pay off our deficit,” Lutnick told Face the Nation over the summer.

According to CBO estimates, Trump's tariff increases on imports from foreign countries will reduce deficits by $3 trillion over 10 years. Even as it stands, that’s still a trillion less than the $4 trillion the agency projected in August and far less than the too-numerous-to-mention fictional numbers thrown around by the administration.

Nevertheless, you can plug in the rosiest Make America Great Again prediction, and it still would take around a century of tariffs to pay off the debt — that’s if we didn’t add another penny from this moment forward. The feds added $1.8 trillion to the debt in 2024 alone, a record. The debt is projected to grow by nearly $22 trillion over the next decade. It’s now at $38 trillion. It generally grows more than projected. Of course, tariffs are unilaterally implemented according to the whims of one mercurial man, so forecasting is nearly impossible anyway.

The emotional impetus for protectionism is a romantic notion that tariffs will rehabilitate manufacturing and “reshore” jobs, saving the “working class.” Yet, U.S. manufacturing has now contracted for the ninth consecutive month during the Trump administration, a decline that most manufacturers have attributed to unpredictability and the cost of tariffs.

There’s a faction on the modern Right that is intent on bringing back low-paying menial factory work for Americans. Their case is based on the widespread myth that we have “deindustrialized” even when output is at an all-time high in real, inflation-adjusted terms. The U.S. is the world’s second-largest manufacturer and exporter after China, which has four times the population. Only about 17% of the U.S. economy is imported goods and services.

Yet, many voters are apparently under the impression that Americans, who enjoy a $89,000 per capita GDP, should be copying the trade policies of the Chinese, who have a $13,000 GDP per capita.

Then again, there’s rarely any coherence or consistency to pro-tariff messaging. When it suits his needs, Trump argues that tariffs will help implement “fair” deals and open even more free trade.

Those quotes around "fair" are valid. Tariffs to punish individual countries or goods, on the basis of "National Security Lol", is not fair trade. That's Trump picking favorites by bribery, what FOX News said, or whim.

I also like the Washington Examiner's closing lines:

These days, protectionists claim that tariffs are successful because the economy hasn’t collapsed as “panicians” allegedly predicted. Serious critics of protectionism, however, have always conceded that we are wealthy and resilient enough to withstand bad economic policy without crumbling. This has been the case through numerous presidents.

But we judge policy by whether it lives up to the promises made by those who implement it. Not one of the administration’s promises has been fulfilled. And it’s extraordinarily unlikely they ever will be.

[Belize]

I can't imagine being such a pathetic weak willed ass kisser that I make up a fake award for another loser.

Incredible cringe all around

[PhaelixWW]

Well, so... the DC bomber is apparently a Trump cultist.

[Edge-]

Well, so... the DC bomber is apparently a Trump cultist.

every time it's another crazy right winger or accelerationist lmao

seriously

obama and janet napolitano need to be doing the shittiest victory laps over the DHS report on the rising risks of right wing extremism being so fucking correct

[Twdft]

How does one describe in words, the most cursed looking trophy?[/IMG]

Tbh Infantino/FIFA doing their best to ruin football for decades now (why again do we need a 6week event with 48 teams??)

So the trophy can very well be the fans trying to get Football back but Trumpy helps Infantino to keep it away. Trophy rightfully earned!!

[Xyonai]

Well, so... the DC bomber is apparently a Trump cultist.

Does that mean he's already been pre-emptively pardoned as part of Trump's blanket J6r pardons or nah?

[PACOX]

Well, so... the DC bomber is apparently a Trump cultist.

Twitter is saying "but he ain't white!"

Goofey clown asses, he is stil a card caring Red Hat. Dont disavow your melanated kinfolk now.

[PhaelixWW]

Does that mean he's already been pre-emptively pardoned as part of Trump's blanket J6r pardons or nah?

The pipe bombs were placed on January 5th, so... hopefully not.

[Draco-Onis]

Twitter is saying "but he ain't white!"

Goofey clown asses, he is stil a card caring Red Hat. Dont disavow your melanated kinfolk now.

What a self own, they are openly saying MAGA is a white only (racist) movement. That's nothing surprising to us but you would think they'd have some self awareness.

[Kaleredar]

Well, so... the DC bomber is apparently a Trump cultist.

Now now now I must say our resident trump apologists appear to have learned a lesson.

Instead of jumping in saying one of the imaginary “violent leftists” did the attacks without a shred of proof or evidence, they simply didn’t say anything. Maybe they’ve finally learned.

…Not to stop supporting Trump and the GOP that spread the hateful rhetoric that creates these people, mind you, they’ve learned to just silently support that happening because they still want him to brutalize brown people and/or persecute trans people and/or restrict women’s rights and they don’t like being so publicly wrong all the time.

[Breccia]

Well, so... the DC bomber is apparently a Trump cultist.

I can't wait for Trump to pardon him, too.

[Gabriel]

Twitter is saying "but he ain't white!"

Goofey clown asses, he is stil a card caring Red Hat. Dont disavow your melanated kinfolk now.

Remember this chuddies; nobody is ever white enough.

[PhaelixWW]

I can't wait for Trump to pardon him, too.

Don't have to pardon him if they retract the charges.

<roll_safe.jpg>

[Poopymonster]

Twitter is saying "but he ain't white!"

Goofey clown asses, he is stil a card caring Red Hat. Dont disavow your melanated kinfolk now.

They're a big tent community.
I mean, they have rapists, pedophiles, terrorists, fraudsters, druggies, war criminals.
And that's just their leader.

[Cthulhu 2020]

The only reason you get pushback, really, is the "have our politician's balls in a vice grip", which implies control and duress. Which leans towards antisemitic conspiracy theory.

It's much simpler, IMO.

Israel holds influence because they throw money at candidates, via sources like AIPAC. Legally and cleanly. And those candidates are soulless and easily-bribable so they take the money and say whatever they need to in order to keep the cash flowing. For many of those candidates, like Adams, there's also that they're legitimately really fuckin' stupid, but Hillary Clinton's supposedly not an idiot and she went full-on genocide-denial this week, herself, at a NYC summit.

I think they just lack any real sense of ethics or responsibility and are driven largely by greed.

Endus you're making the same mistake the zionists make. Criticizing Israel's vice grip over our politicians, which is EXTREMELY and GROSSLY obvious, is not antisemitic because I do not believe "the Jews" run the world.

I believe that ISRAELI ZONISTS both have lots of blackmail material and financially fund a ton of our politicians which is why they're trying so hard to make boycotting/protesting Israel a crime. Why else would US politicians care about what US residents think of Israel unless they were told to do it?

In a microcosm of Israel's blackmail, Ethan Klein of H3H3 literally just forced Kaceytron to both eat a fine and do a public apology, and for someone making a fake apology to Israeli blackmailers it went about how you'd expect. I don't care if a person is Israeli but that entire regime is infesting the US government to its core, and that's not some antisemitic conspiracy, it's happening.

I'm non-practicing part Jewish and Israeli Zionists are literally the most entitled people in the world.

- - - Updated - - -

This, right here? This is absolutely conspiracy nonsense.

The claim that the location was "Tel Aviv, Israel" is suspect on the face of it because the location feature only showed countries, not specific cities,

You do realize there's a setting where you can change just how accurate your location information is... right? For some people it's Tennessee, for others you can see United States, and for some it's North America. That's all part of the feature LMFAO.

All of the rest is perfectly true, and that people can't fathom the idea of the DHS social media intern being in Israel is mind boggling. With how close the Trump admin is to sucking Netanyahu's dick it wouldn't surprise me if they had some social media interns are are expats to Israel. But we'll never know because both Elon Musk and Google are doing their best to cover the tracks of this shit.

Remember the shooting on capital hill not long ago? And how people were suspecting it was a false flag? And then people started looking into Google trends and the names of both the shooter and the victim had been googled from Israel and Washington DC days before the attack. But now all of the information has disappeared, so there's no "proof". Google completely wiped the search heat map for searches for those two names.

Your minds aren't prepared for what's coming when even Google is taking part in the coverups.

But sure, call me a conspiracy theorist. I know exactly what I saw with my own two eyes, and all of the big data brokers will only leave out the information they want you to have.

[PhaelixWW]

Does anyone want to explain to him how VPNs work?

[gondrin]

Now he has a peace prize:



Will he now shut the fuck up about a Nobel peace prize? ...After all Obama didn't get the first ever! (and last I bet!)

PS fuck Infantino!

And remember, he wants to change the name of American Football to "Tackleball". I wonder how many MAGAts are going to call up and complain to their favorite football team and tell them that it is now the NTL(National Tackleball League).

- - - Updated - - -

So, the administration is actively promoting the "Great Replacement Theory". Before it was more of a subtle thing with the occasional slip up on camera. Now it is full blown out there with actual policy being promoted.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...ate-rcna247534

A new national security document released by the White House late Thursday claimed without evidence that Europe is facing “civilizational erasure” and will be “unrecognizable in 20 years or less” due to immigration that has made European powers militarily weak.

The 33-page document, titled National Security Strategy and dated November 2025, is a detailed expression of President Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy and argues the United States should scale back its vast commitments around the world and focus its efforts on securing the Western Hemisphere.

The document has no listed author but features a foreword by Trump. The president calls the document a “roadmap to ensure America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history.”

The comments on immigration echo the “great replacement theory,” experts told NBC News, a debunked white nationalist conspiracy theory that white populations are being replaced by immigrants from majority nonwhite nations, particularly from Africa.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said the comparison was "total nonsense."

"The devastating impacts of unchecked migration, and those migrants’ inability to assimilate, are not just a concern for President Trump, but for Europeans themselves, who have increasingly noted immigration as one of their top concerns," she said. "These open border policies have led to widespread examples of violence, spikes in crime, and more, with detrimental impacts on the fiscal sustainability of social safety net programs. As the President remarked at the United Nations General Assembly, his efforts to secure the border saved America from such destruction, and other countries would be wise to follow suit.”

Some believers of the theory, which include Elon Musk and various far-right groups, think the racial replacement is actively planned and administered by national and multinational governments, often as part of a wider Jewish conspiracy.

Mark Sedgwick, a professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at Aarhus University in Denmark, who has written about the great replacement conspiracy theory, told NBC News that the language of the White House document fits in with the language typically used by proponents of the theory.

Sedgwick said the assertion that Europe would be unrecognizable in 20 years was “obviously complete nonsense.”

“Demographic change just doesn’t happen that quickly. So they’re drawing on not very well-grounded panic scenarios,” he said.

In a section titled “Promoting European Greatness,” the national security document references the long-term economic decline of European nations’ share of global economic output, which is blamed on “transnational regulations” — referring to the 27-nation European Union — and the changing ethnic mix of the continent.

“But this economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure,” the document says.

“The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence,” the document continues.

The document adds that as a result, it is “far from obvious” whether European countries can “remain reliable allies.”

“We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation,” the document reads.

In listing the strategy’s priorities, the document says ending mass migration is essential.

“In countries throughout the world, mass migration has strained domestic resources, increased violence and other crime, weakened social cohesion, distorted labor markets, and undermined national security,” it says.

Rod Dacombe, a politics expert from King’s College London, said: “The phrase 'civilizational erasure' does indeed sound aligned to Great Replacement Theory and this shouldn’t be a surprise — it has been a feature of populist right rhetoric for some years now.”

[Trifle]

In a microcosm of Israel's blackmail, Ethan Klein of H3H3 literally just forced Kaceytron to both eat a fine and do a public apology, and for someone making a fake apology to Israeli blackmailers it went about how you'd expect. I don't care if a person is Israeli but that entire regime is infesting the US government to its core, and that's not some antisemitic conspiracy, it's happening.

Eh streamers "reacting" to content has always been very shaky ground and it sounds like she fucked around and found out copyright is a real thing, and "fair use" actually has some requirements to it. This is more an example of streamers being out of touch with reality than it is of Israel being evil.

[gondrin]

Greg Gutfeld is still showing he is one of the biggest Trump ass kissers there is.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/wh...0cdd3e6d&ei=10

Fox host Greg Gutfeld snapped back at co-host Gillian Turner on Friday after she pointed out that the peace prize awarded to President Donald Trump by FIFA was created specifically for him.

During a discussion on The Five about the United State’s hosting of the upcoming FIFA World Cup, Gutfeld praised the soccer governing body for choosing Trump as the recipient for their newly created award.

“I also love that the peace prize from FIFA, it didn’t go to like Greta Thunberg or some silly little peace activist,” said Gutfeld.

Turner quickly interrupted his comment.

GILLIAN TURNER: Because it was created for the president.

GREG GUTFELD: So?

TURNER: That’s what [FIFA President] Gianni Infantino said.

GUTFELD: What’s your beaf with this? What’s your problem?

TURNER: I’m saying there were no other candidates.

GUTFELD: So?

TURNER: It wasn’t like Trump beat out other people for the prize.

GUTFELD: So? What’s your point? Do you with that it went to Amnesty International or Greenpeace?

TURNER: I don’t understand why FIFA needs a [inaudible] award.

GUTFELD: I’ll tell you why, because they care.

JESSE WATERS: Because they’re kissing his butt–

TURNER: Correct.

WATERS: Because he’s hosting the game.

GUTFELD: By the way, let me ask you this. Who deserves a peace prize?

TURNER: No–

GUTFELD: Who deserves a peace prize?

TURNER: I’m not getting into this with you.

GUTFELD: No, you started it with me.

TURNER: This is not about–

[crosstalk]

HAROLD FORD JR.: You started three conversations here.

GUTFELD: You started it with– I want, look, he is going around the world basically brokering peace. Why shouldn’t he get a peace prize? Not that I really care, but this is just fun.

TURNER: I didn’t say he didn’t deserve it.

GUTFELD: Yes, you did.

TURNER: I said it’s not gonna help him in his quest–

GUTFELD: Why do you hate President Trump?

TURNER: –to get the Nobel Peace Prize. That was my point. That was my free expert advice for Gianni Infantino.

[Captain N]

FIFA Awards Trump a Participation Trophy - Greg Gutfeld runs to his defense faster than Cult Members in a Facebook Comment section.