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I mean i get the whole "it gives him more power, he can decide who is essential, he will eliminate even more", etc etc etc

But the dems really need to let him own this economy, gov shutdown, etc etc etc. Give the people what they deserve, its the only way we get rid of him and his type for good

3/13/2025 10:11:03 PM

My concern at this point is what does Trump start doing when everything crumbles around him. Nothing that he’s doing at the moment is working out for him - his EO’s are getting blocked left and right, his Russian diplomacy is showing him to be the weaker man in the Trump/Putin face-off, and his tariffs are tanking the economy.

I’m afraid after too many more failures he just goes scorched earth.

3/19/2025 11:21:05 AM

his second term was always going to be scorched earth. his only goal is to get even with everyone who made him miserable the past four years.

3/19/2025 12:50:50 PM

^^
They want crumbling. Crumbling is the goal. Read Curtis Yarvin.

3/19/2025 9:00:06 PM

"They" is not a monolith.

3/19/2025 9:57:14 PM

The musk-Vance-techbro-podcast wing of MAGA

I think the project 2025 wing is sympathetic though because they believe they can mop up the majority of white people of things collapse.

3/19/2025 10:26:18 PM

^^^ how do you get that? Have you read Gray Mirror or Unqualified Reservations?

3/20/2025 7:49:03 AM

^lol, actions speak louder than words

[Edited on March 20, 2025 at 6:29 PM. Reason : .]

3/20/2025 6:28:15 PM

^^ eww no. His interviews and blogs

3/20/2025 7:50:32 PM

Theyre really doing the American nazism reboot

Quote :

"BREAKING — DHS Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman is the latest casualty of a Reduction in Force (RIF), an agency source confirms. It was created by Congress to examine violations of standards and misconduct of DHS officials and contractors related to immigration detention."

3/21/2025 3:33:18 PM

The buck never stops with this guy

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/21/politics/trump-signature-alien-enemies-act-proclamation/index.html

3/21/2025 9:28:23 PM

I know it's not fun to just roast the dumb shit he says anymore, but

Quote :

"President Trump on Barron Trump outsmarting him with computers: “I turn off his laptop… I go back 5 minutes later, he's got his laptop. I say, 'how did you do that?' None of your business, dad. He’s got an unbelievable aptitude in technology.""

https://twitter.com/sumityou40/status/1902723814322221427

Maybe there is some context that doesn't make this wildly dumb but I'm not gonna look for it

3/22/2025 11:08:03 AM

Quote :

"Rasmus Jarlov & @RasmusJarlov I dont know if there is a kill switch in the F35's or not. We obviously can not take your word for it. As one of the decision makers behind Denmark's purchase of F35's, I regret it. The USA can certainly disable the planes by simple stopping the supply of spare parts. They want to strengthen Russia and weaken Europa and are showing that they are willing to do tremendous damage to peaceful and loyal allies like Canada just because they insist on existing as a country. I can easily imagine a situation where the USA will demand Greenland from Denmark and will threaten to deactivate our weapons and let Russia attack us when we refuse (which we will even in that situation). Therefore, buying American weapons is a security risk that we can not run. We will make enormous investments in air defence, fighter jets, artillery and other weapons in the coming years, and we must avoid American weapons if at all possible. I encourage our allies and friends to do the same. "

On the one hand, trump is dismantling the military industrial complex, but on the other hand he’s doing it by making sure people can’t trust us on any level.

3/22/2025 11:21:43 AM

https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2025/03/18/usda-expediting-10-billion-direct-economic-assistance-agricultural-producers

So we’re in to the literal actual nationalist socialism phase of the musk trump presidency

3/22/2025 12:01:02 PM

Looking forward to the “DraftKings White House Easter Egg Roll”

3/23/2025 11:17:42 AM

This article gets worse than this snippet too

This is worse than people realize. It’s not just bluster from hohman, this guy is actually a Nazi (trump musk flavored)

Quote :

"I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a barber.’ I believed him. He “began to whimper,” as his head was roughly shaved, “folding his hands in prayer as his hair fell.” He “asked for his mother & cried as he was slapped again.” "

https://time.com/7269604/el-salvador-photos-venezuelan-detainees/


Here’s what the guy looks like too btw

https://bsky.app/profile/thetnholler.bsky.social/post/3ll2by2dzok24

3/23/2025 3:03:44 PM

^^ Brought to you by Carl's Jr

3/23/2025 5:08:18 PM

My only purpose for re-entering the thread again just now was to post exactly the above, so GG.

3/23/2025 5:12:14 PM

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/23/g-s1-55368/us-lifts-bounties-taliban-officials

Quote :

"The U.S. has lifted bounties on three senior Taliban figures, including the interior minister who also heads a powerful network blamed for bloody attacks against Afghanistan's former Western-backed government, officials in Kabul said Sunday. Sirajuddin Haqqani, who acknowledged planning a January 2008 attack on the Serena Hotel in Kabul, which killed six people, including U.S. citizen Thor David Hesla, no longer appears on the State Department's Rewards for Justice website. The FBI website on Sunday still featured a wanted poster for him."

3/24/2025 9:57:49 AM

Soooooo now we’re imposing tariffs on counties that do certain business with other countries???

WTF. What the F.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/24/business/trump-venezuela-oil-tariffs/index.html

3/24/2025 12:15:04 PM

I don’t know where S. Americans usually get their oil, but the through did cross my mind that somehow, he’s trying for force countries to get their oil from Russia.

3/24/2025 12:19:51 PM

3/26/2025 1:58:26 PM

[Edited on March 26, 2025 at 2:03 PM. Reason : Fixed it]

3/26/2025 2:02:49 PM

How is everyone celebrating liberation day?

4/2/2025 1:01:53 PM

I'm not sure I have a fundamental problem with reciprocal tariffs.

Although I assume we are not going to lower our tariffs on imports if tariffs going the other direction are already lower. That would be true reciprocity.

I'm not sure we realize how globally uncompetitive we are in many areas. The default response of US manufacturing companies who might feel protected from imports by tariffs is to raise their own prices and get fat. When the field is eventually leveled, we are nowhere close to foreign competitors on price.

4/2/2025 4:26:11 PM

Stupid me!

I thought reciprocal tariffs were going to be based on specific rates stratified by harmonized tariff code, but apparently it's just a top-line number for everything from a certain geography based on bogus calculations, as read poorly by the President off a poster board.

4/2/2025 5:37:40 PM

Assume the worst, hope for the best

4/2/2025 6:43:47 PM

Yeah, I just thought I understood the basic meaning of words.

Oops!

4/2/2025 6:44:54 PM

Quote :

"I'm not sure we realize how globally uncompetitive we are in many areas"

Seems to be at least part of the reason why the tarriffs are a thing. If China could flood the market with $30k crossovers American auto would be fucked. Downside is all the parts makers and accessory companies that are going to be totally fucked in the short-term.

4/2/2025 7:02:41 PM

Yes, I understand. Dumping can be a problem if that's a foreign strategy. But I'm telling you from the point of view of an American manufacturer that most don't even attempt to compete. Tariff protection is artificial, and domestically manufactured products will raise prices as high as they possibly can to just barely beat tariffed imports on delivered pricing.

4/2/2025 7:33:02 PM

Same feelings for sure!

4/2/2025 8:37:35 PM

The tariff rates are even dumber than you might assume

Quote :

"Just figured out where these fake tariff rates come from. They didn't actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us. So we have a $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. Its exports to us are $28 billion. $17.9/$28 = 64%, which Trump claims is the tariff rate Indonesia charges us. What extraordinary nonsense this is. "

https://bsky.app/profile/adamkeiper.com/post/3lluicay2ys2u

The other crazy thing about this is if we just stop buying stuff from them it looks by trumps metrics that we’ve lowered tariffs, when we just have less raw materials or other items. Or if they lower their tariff rate and Americans start buying more stuff, it looks like the trump metric gets worse.

This all continues to look idiotic with no goal except to be disruptive. We’re trying to squeeze more money from poor countries?

[Edited on April 2, 2025 at 8:43 PM. Reason : ]

4/2/2025 8:38:43 PM

that's boneheaded even by trump standards if that's true. I can't verify it anywhere else, yet.

^well yeah that's what a trade deficit is here and it seems to be that's what his goal is. So to that end, they are well designed, I guess. It's just that it's a stupid goal.

[Edited on April 2, 2025 at 9:23 PM. Reason : ]

4/2/2025 9:21:16 PM

^ the (extremely simple) math checks out if you look up the imbalance data

Nypost is sort of confirming it too

Quote :

"WH has now confirmed: this is insane https://nypost.com/2025/04/02/us-news/trump-slaps-at-least-10-tariffs-on-all-imports-in-declaration-of-economic-independence-half-of-what-they-could-be/ The specific "reciprocal" tariff rate was half of the current trade imbalance because "the president is lenient and he wants to be kind to the world," a Trump aide told reporters. "The numbers [for tariffs by country] have been calculated by the Council of Economic Advisers ... based on the concept that the trade deficit that we have with any given country is the sum of all trade practices, the sum of all cheating," a White House official said, calling it "the most fair thing in the world." "

4/2/2025 10:02:47 PM

Yeah the math is 3rd grade level. I just don’t want to look up all the trade data.

What a moron. Trade imbalances are a measure of cheating? A fucking 12 year old ought to be able to grasp the concept better than that.

4/2/2025 11:32:51 PM

I think that crashing the stock market so that Trump's wealthy allies can "buy the dip", implementing tariffs causing a tax on American consumers, and disrupting the global economy are just ancilliary effects for Trump. I think his real goal is to impose power of American companies.
Trump is okay with crashing the economy, if it means that every CEO in America will be willing to bend to his will. Every CEO in America whose bottom line is affected by these tariffs, after enough time, Will be willing to do almost anything in order to remove the tariff that affects their bottom line. This includes imposing any of Trump's agenda within their private company.
Have employees that are speaking out against Trump? Fire them.
Not implementing any of Trump's anti-DEI policies? Fall in line.
Not supporting Trump's allies? Operating as a private company? Heh, nope.

Not if you want the person with sole discretion over your bottom line, POTUS, to make your company profitable again.

Mob tactics, B.

[Edited on April 4, 2025 at 12:05 PM. Reason : h]

4/4/2025 12:03:59 PM

Or like a King…

4/4/2025 1:05:56 PM

where is the deep state

4/4/2025 3:16:45 PM

just phantoms in diseased minds

the lunatics run the asylum and we're all going to pay

4/4/2025 3:35:37 PM

^^^^ I think that it's partly that he's simply genuinely a huge protectionist and has been forever, and partly that it's what you described of his typical mob boss behavior of trying to put everyone under his thumb to where he can selectively grant relief if you grovel and do what he wants.

I really don't have any reason to believe he's deliberately crashing the economy to create a buying opportunity.

4/4/2025 6:50:01 PM

DJT is losing more than the broader market, but he has no shortage of other scams for self-enrichment.

4/4/2025 7:02:08 PM

Nice to see the nyt being so direct about this

https://nyti.ms/3XPqyIa

4/6/2025 10:25:23 AM

Quote :

"The Trump administration is dismantling Freedom of Information Act offices. Then the offices send out emails like, “Hello, the FOIA office has been placed on admin leave and is unable to respond to any emails.” The lengths this administration will go to ensure zero transparency with the American people is astounding. "

4/7/2025 10:31:32 AM

Can someone explain to me why they are just blanket removing visas from all Sudanese in the country?

4/7/2025 10:49:16 AM

I don't know that anyone can "explain" it but here is a Rubio tweet

Quote :

"I am taking actions to revoke all visas held by South Sudanese passport holders and to restrict any further issuance to prevent entry into the United States, effective immediately, due to the failure of South Sudan's transitional government to accept the return of its repatriated citizens in a timely manner."

4/7/2025 11:09:55 AM

To me, seeing Vietnam try to come to the table and then get told their deficit needs to shrink lets me know that this is just a “burn it all down” phase in Trump’s presidency. They were willing to negotiate on tariffs, but to think that a country like Vietnam would ever have 0 trade deficit with the US is just ludicrous.

4/8/2025 8:40:33 AM

They should buy our rice.

4/8/2025 7:48:09 PM

This ability to easily incite huge swings in the market will surely not be abused

4/9/2025 2:19:04 PM

^ That's what we have the SEC for... oh... wait... fuck

4/9/2025 2:34:42 PM

^^If they became predictable and repeatable, they would cease to have an effect as his bluster would eventually be ignored by markets.

4/9/2025 4:01:33 PM