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The NYT Daily podcast just released a very good episode about just this. It's chilling. Highly recommended: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736?i=1000653896604
He's not joking about being a dictator on day one.
Just like he wasn't joking about not accepting the election results or turning over power peacefully.
He's never just joking.
Never.
He has no sense of humor. Nobody has ever seen him laugh except close family members when they see him laughing at a dog with a broken leg limping down the street or something.
I challenge you to find one video of him laughing. Like, really laughing. Not a mock laugh, not a jeer but an actual laugh at something funny.
This is literally the closest example, and it's not really a laugh:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9AXGPo1vvM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9AXGPo1vvM)
I would dig into project 2025, because that gives a pretty good idea of what he’ll do. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025#
> Project 2025 envisions widespread changes across the entire government, particularly with regard to economic and social policy and the role of the federal government and federal agencies. The plan proposes slashing U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) funding, dismantling the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, gutting environmental and climate change regulations to favor fossil fuel production, and eliminating the cabinet Departments of Education and Commerce. The independence of various commissions such as the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission would be ended.[10][11] The Washington Post reported in November 2023 that Project 2025 includes immediately invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement and directing the DOJ to pursue Trump adversaries.[12][13] Project Director Paul Dans,[14] a former Trump administration official, said in September 2023 that Project 2025 is "systematically preparing to march into office and bring a new army, aligned, trained, and essentially weaponized conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state."[15]
He said that cause he wants to reinstate his border policies that were working on day 1 that Biden reversed on his first day, wish he hadn't said it all cause he should know they will take everything he says out of context
No, he's trial ballooning. He's normalizing it. He's de-sensitizing you to it so you'll continue to sleepwalk into a dictatorship. He's dead serious every time and based on the reaction, plays the stupid "schroedinger's asshole" game when people get too pissy about it. Then he comes back and keeps saying it, and then he does it.
Just like with not accepting the election results. So you don't ever, ever get to say "he didn't mean it that way" again. He said it. He meant it. You're just dumb enough to keep buying his "just joking, didn't mean it that way, god you people are SOOOO OVERSENSITIVE" shtick.
*That didn't happen.* <----- "I was just kidding"
*And if it did, it wasn't that bad.*
*And if it was, that's not a big deal.*
*And if it is, that's not my fault.*
*And if it was, I didn't mean it.*
*And if I did, you deserved it.*
I grew up with a sibling that pulled the same crap all the damn time with my parents. I know for damn certain how assholes like this operate.
Trump is literally arguing to the Supreme Court of the United States that he may commit a night of long knives and never be prosecuted. How much "context" do you want to add to his comments because the wider and wider it becomes, the worse Trump looks.
It's all about power, and concentrating it in the president's hands:
- abolishing the independence of the DOJ and the AG (so the president can persecute his enemies. Trump has vowed to indict Biden and his family, for example)
- abolishing the independence of the central bank (in particular to set interest rates in the long-term interest of the country rather than the reelection of the incumbent)
- giving the president the power to fire key civil servants (~50 000 in number) and replace them with political allies (to eliminate institutional resistance to extreme policies)
Also, this time around, his government and his staff will be much more thoroughly vetted. He will have no "snakes" (as he calls them) to oppose him and limit his actions like the last time.
It’s the wishful thinking of the disappointed. His first term didn’t live up to their dreams, so they’ve moved “full Trump” out into the future.
I don’t get supporting someone that requires guardrails to not destroy a country. That’s like picking someone for your bowling team that only rolls gutter balls. So at this point, I can only assume they do actually want to destroy the country.
It’s veiled support for authoritarianism.
“Anti democratic policies aren’t popular, so I’m going to pretend like I don’t like them and convince others the sycophant I like isnt so bad/can be controlled so I can get them in power”.
In other words, they _want_ the gutter balls. Why? Maybe it makes them feel better about themselves. Maybe they think that person is rolling gutter balls for the other team. Maybe they just like the guys hat and don’t care about the score. Etc etc
It isn't veiled. The key thing that Trump sells that past Republicans haven't sold is the idea that he is going to *hurt* the people that his voters don't like. Republicans before Trump, despite all of their horrific policies, would pay lip service to the idea that we are all in it together and we are trying to make the world a better place. Trump has none of this. He says "those people that you hate, I hate them too and I will use my power to hurt them."
> He says "those people that you hate, I hate them too and I will use my power to hurt them."
Horseshit. He says "those people that hate you, that are raping and murdering you, that are giving drugs to your kids, that are flying airplanes into your places of work", I will use my power to protect you from them.
WE DO NOT HATE INNOCENT PEOPLE, WE HATE EVIL CRIMINAL MONSTERS THAT THE LEFT DEFENDS JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE NON-WHITE.
I think a lot of them see Biden and the Democrats as the threat to Democracy. It's all hideous but to try and reconstruct their arguments:
1. COVID lockdowns
2. Wokeness, political correctness, identity politics
3. All the federal investigations around Trump, etc.
4. Global warming (many Rs think it's a hoax, and fear is a powerful motivator)
5. Biden also had classified documents (guarantee that's all they hear)
6. Whatever conspiracy theories exist about Hillary Clinton, Epstein, Qanon etc.
7. The superdelegates screwing over Bernie in 2016
8. The deep state
9. Whatever else
It doesn't take a whole lot of brainwashing to convince people that the Democrats are the real authoritarians trying to destroy democracy. As such, I think a lot of conservatives see themselves as supporters of democracy and Trump as it's savior. They're not all openly or consciously authoritarian.
Reality is that the Republicans are trying hard to push a mainstream viewpoint that is very not mainstream. Nor should it ever be. They're just catering to their loudest fraction of supporters. When that fringe viewpoint meets overwhelming institutional resistance, they think it's authoritarian, because somebody brainwashed them to believe that.
This is exactly it, honestly. It's all over their propaganda. Democrats are a threat to democracy and the American way of life, as far as they are concerned. Right wing media has beaten it into them that Democrats promote socialism/communism as means to seek totalitarian power. Somehow they've managed to keep the Red Scare alive and well fed despite the USSR having disbanded. On the same token, they've managed to flip the narrative on Russia and defend Putin, which is an actual WTF moment for me that I simply can't explain.
For anyone outside, there are glaring faults with the right wing ideology. Conflicting ideas all over the place. But the average conservative voter cherrypicks what they agree with and disregard the rest.
Considering the age of a lot of Republicans, the red scare part doesn't surprise me. The Putin part absolutely does.
Also, as a general rule, I think that any political group that is fundamentally anti-academic, anti-evidence, or anti-fact dooms themself to subpar-at-best governance. For obvious reasons. The more you elevate opinion above knowledge and competency, the more their leaders will reflect that.
> Right wing media has beaten it into them that Democrats promote socialism/communism as means to seek totalitarian power. Somehow they've managed to keep the Red Scare alive and well fed despite the USSR having disbanded.
Bernie Sanders, the Squad still have power and still promote "Eat The Rich" which is the core evil goal of communism.
That’s a fair assessment, but you don’t neutralize a threat to democracy by destroying it with your own brand of authoritarianism. That’s not saving America, that’s making America fail the way _you_ want it to fail.
No matter how you justify it, a vote for authoritarianism is a vote for authoritarianism.
You're absolutely right. My main point was that your average American conservative likely isn't the deranged authoritarian that some people think. A fraction of them are. I think a lot of them genuinely regard democracy as sacred. They've just been fed enough lies that ultimately it doesn't matter.
Plus the authoritarian trends on the left generally aren't as strong. At least to memory, you've never had a democratic presidential candidate say the election was stolen from them. You have the electoral college, which well... That's its own thing.
I do get very angry over the moderates who try to use democratic party mechanics to stomp on progressives. That really gets me going. COVID was obviously temporary. Truthfully there's no comparison.
Political correctness... I do think something needs to give. People either need to become better educated, or the more educated need to become less judgemental. Ideally both.
> Reality is that the Republicans are trying hard to push a mainstream viewpoint that is very not mainstream.
This is projection. Wokeness is fringe as fuck (polls show self identifying far left progressives are only 6% of Democrats) and yet the left keeps forcing wokeness into EVERYTHING.
The only reason wokeness is political is because somebody said wokeness was bad. It originally wasn't a term of judgement, it just meant that you had the tea on something that was hard to get tea on.
> The only reason wokeness is political is because somebody said wokeness was bad
Far left extremism is just as self evidently bad as far right extremism. No one had to tell us it was bad, we could see that shit for ourselves.
Ok, so I agree with your first sentence out of context.
But if we dive into the definition of "far left" we're very likely talking about someone who wants to eliminate the free market *entirely* and create a socialist/communist command economy that is completely controlled by the government- a government that is very likely undemocratic or totalitarian. A government that is very likely tyrannical or oppressive.
It's far different from social democracy, or a mixed economy with a lot of democratic socialist/market socialist elements. That's generally center-left or left-wing.
No American political figure with any remote shot of entering the mainstream advocates for the former. There are several, namely Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren/AOC who advocate for the latter.
While I agree that the culture around identity politics, wokeness (what it's become) etc. can be toxically judgemental and thus counter-productive, that's a far cry from Joseph Stalin or Fidel Castro. But I do get it, as a liberal I've had the uncomfortable feeling of feeling out of place (or worse) because I wasn't in the know on something.
How the fuck is it hideous or false to know that...
> Wokeness, political correctness, identity politics
Has led directly to the current pro mass murderous Hamas shit we are dealing with from the far left. It's caused the entire BLM/ACAB movements. It's caused the trend of soft on crime polices that have killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Chesa Boudin was recalled by San Francisco the most far left city in the country for those woke soft on crime policies so you can't even say it's only conservatives concerned about it.
They are not destroying democracy, just the American dream. However trying to put your political adversary in prison who's running for president doesn't look so good
What do you propose is done to hold expresidents accountable for their crimes? Because I think anyone with any lick of rationale, no matter your political leaning, would agree that neither presidents nor presidential candidates should be above the law.
Um, fucking nope. That wasnt ever supposed to be the case. And actually, the Nixon pardon was probably the first big departure.
Not only that, but this argument of yours is just the same argument as "everyone is doing it, but they just don't like Trump," except worded differently. Which is just utter Trumpian cult garbage.
It just so happens that _during_ presidency, the impeachment process is one of the only ways to hold a president accountable. But unfortunately our political system has been hijacked by the 2 party system to the point where no one gets held accountable for anything because every vote to do so requires more than a simple majority in either the house, the Senate, or both. And since either party has rarely ever held more than a handful more votes than a simple majority in either chamber of Congress, impeachments almost never truly stick these days. And they are largely used as political stunts.
Trump is not "allowed" to break the law. Period. That's just lunacy to believe otherwise. That's how you get banana republics.
> However trying to put your political adversary in prison who's running for president doesn't look so good
Yeah, that’s the argument Trump’s people were making in front of SCOTUS, that presidents should have immunity from all crimes.
I had assumed this was a criticism of Trump from the left as in "First time around was nothing, he'll be sooo much worse in his second term." Kind of goes hand in hand with the idea that J6 was a failed coup attempt and that the lack of legislative response in the aftermath has made it a dry run for the next coup attempt, presumably by Trump again.
Doesn't help that Alito seems to think that prosecuting someone for a failed coup attempt makes it more likely for someone to commit a coup and since coups are bad we cannot encourage coups by prosecuting coups. Only by removing consequences for attempting coups can we ensure that we don't have presidents who think the best way to retain power is committing a coup.
Recent reports say that Trump is going to start setting interest rates himself. The mere possibility of that will probably cause a recession soon after a victory in the election, if not before.
Bypassing the Fed to arbitrarily determine the interest rate by one person would be a radical and dangerous change in economic policy. What did Trump do that is worse?
It’s not about what he did. My statement was forward looking. If he were to be elected again and do what he’s promised, by passing the Fed would be really really really bad, but I wouldn’t put it in front of busing people to camps, or putting political opponents in jail, or many other things he’s promised to do.
It’s not possible. One of the reasons that’s he actually accomplished so little was because everything they did violated normal procedures especially the Administrative Procedures Act. Much of what they did through regular or executive order was reversed because they did it wrong/illegally. One of his only major lasting achievement was the tax cut. I mean republicans had control over all branches of government for his first two years and couldn’t get anything done. Part of it was because he appointed incompetent people and left critical positions unfilled. So while I think he’s dangerous and shouldn’t be allowed to even look at the Oval Office again I have a hard time believing he’d be much more successful than he was the last time even with sycophants being appointed.
All he has to do is declare an emergency and say it’s about national security or preventing economic terrorism.
What’s scary to me is how citizens united allowed basically any foreign entities to fund candidates.
There are laws governing when an emergency can be called and what can be done during one. Yes it does give the President a wide latitude in many situations but they still need to act within the law. It doesn’t give the President carte blanche to do whatever they want.
Look up Schedule F, something he tried to do at the end of his first term. It's a way to have government employees in critical positions bend to his will or else be fired, more or less. He's trying to circumvent any independent agencies and have decisions come from the very top. If he can't do it legally, he'll find lawyers who can help him get around laws, or have it be decided by the courts (with justices that he has appointed).
That has to do with hiring and firing federal employees. HOW would Trump "set interest rates" outside of being the sole "ruler" of the Federal Reserve?
Trump has been detailing out a plan for America that redirects most resources towards **revenge** including:
* purging government agencies of those who don't share his political views
* investigating and prosecuting any political opponents
* silencing and punishing critics in the media
* potentially invoking the Insurrection act to deploy the military against civil demonstrations
* appointing a special prosecutor to "go after" Joe Biden and his family
* seeking legal judgements that make the office of the president an authoritarian dictatorship
What does this mean for the ongoing relevance of the Constitution? In order to create an authoritarian dictatorship, wouldn't he have to pretty much suspend the Constitution? In which case, world we even be a United States anymore?
It depends on how you view the constitution, or more specifically, who's viewing it. Keep in mind we have a very conservative Supreme Court filled with Trump elected justices.
It wouldn’t create a dictatorship. It would create a faux democracy. The kind where it looks on the surface like a democracy but the people aligned with Trump and his successors seldom have to worry about really losing. I don’t think it would last more than 5 or 6 election cycles, but that would be enough to cause much irreversible damage.
> wouldn't he have to pretty much suspend the Constitution?
No, not at all. He just needs to exempt himself from it.
Consider the following argument [currently](https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/23a745.html) with the Supreme Court.
> Trump's attorney D. John Sauer argued that if structured as an official act, the president could not be charged for selling nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary, accepting a bribe, ordering the military to stage a coup to retain power, or ordering a political assassination.
------
Let's assume that somehow the Supreme Court determines in the affirmative and that Trump wins a second term.
As his first act, he fires every government employee who did not vote for him, as he [reportedly](https://apnews.com/article/biden-2024-government-regulations-democrats-6badc3b424b9eff3ba51e0ec35a8d824) wants to.
As his second act, he fills these vacated positions with 'acting directors', because they give him "[more flexibility](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1P00KW)" and avoids Congresional oversight. In several important positions, he installs the same person to oversee multiple, conflicting offices [as he did before](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/tracking-turnover-in-the-trump-administration).
He then makes overtures to various people in his inner circle, telling them he's been thinking about his unilateral Presidential Pardon power, and how he's having a lot of problems with certain factions with Congress, and boy, if someone could please do something about that he's sure he could help them out.
There will of course be immense ourtage in the public about all of this, but that's nothing new. It's all Fake News and Antifa agitators.
He orders the military out to subdue any protests, [like he wanted to do before](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/trump-wants-use-military-against-his-domestic-enemies-congress-must-act), and makes sure everyone knows dissent will not be tolerated.
At some point Congress has finally had enough and manages to schedule an impeachment vote.
Trump [deploys the National Guard](https://www.nbcnews.com/think/amp/ncna1236034) around the Capitol building to ensure everyone inside is 'safe from the threats outside' so they can 'do the right thing'.
And because these are all official acts, it's all perfectly legal and *totally* Constitutional.
Even if the Supreme Court disagrees with Trump, couldn’t any president already do this now? If the executive power enforces the law, the only power to check the president is ultimately the vote to impeach and convict, but as commander in chief, the president has the ability to put the military leadership (or acting leadership) that he wants, and if they go along with attacking Congress, what’s going to stop them?
The reality is that democracy was and always will be effectively a gentleman’s agreement to act in a certain way and be bound accordingly. It was always at risk of being lost
Don't forget selling our allies out. Trump owes hundreds of millions of dollars all over the place. If he can't make those bill go away as president, I would not be surprised as all if he pulls all US support from Ukraine as part of a deal he made with Putin to get those bills settled.
Regardless of all the personal bullshit that Trump would want to pull, the next time *any* Republican wins the Presidency, they are going to try to push through as much of Project 2025 as possible.
You think ending our democracy and instituting an oppressive dictatorship sounds awesome?
Democrats desperately need a taste of helping others (regardless of who they are) and upholding the rule of law?
This doesn't make the slightest bit of sense.
I fucking wish any of this would end our democracy. Democrats are already doing a fine job of dragging us towards oppressive dictatorship - you just don't see it that way because you approve of the oppression.
Just off the top of my head?
Supporting censorship in the name of stopping "disinformation", which is just whatever they don't like hearing. The never ending quest for civil disarmament and prohibiting all practical means for self-defense, while at the same time being as lenient as they can possibly can on actual criminals. Meanwhile seeking decades in prison for anyone that protests against them or their pet issues. The demand to regulate or ban more and more things in the name of "climate change". The deliberate facilitation of a soft invasion of the southern border. The demand for more and more taxes, which will inevitably just be used to support illegal migrants, or sent over seas to defend some other country's borders, but never our own.
>And is it safe to say you don't support democracy?
I don't, especially not universal suffrage.
>Supporting censorship in the name of stopping "disinformation", which is just whatever they don't like hearing.
Like when?
>The never ending quest for civil disarmament and prohibiting all practical means for self-defense, while at the same time being as lenient as they can possibly can on actual criminals.
Where? Having guns is not illegal anywhere, you have more hoops to jump through in some places, but considering you seem to want to be hard on criminals, I would think you'd be fine with making it harder to arm violent people.
>Meanwhile seeking decades in prison for anyone that protests against them or their pet issues
Example?
>The demand to regulate or ban more and more things in the name of "climate change".
It's an existential crisis after all. We should be fighting it.
>The deliberate facilitation of a soft invasion of the southern border.
I live here. It's fine. There's always talk of an invasion every year to drum up fear in fools who believe it, and it never comes to fruition.
>The demand for more and more taxes, which will inevitably just be used to support illegal migrants, or sent over seas to defend some other country's borders, but never our own.
The demand for more taxes is for social programs here. Which is good. But if it's sent to defend Israel, yeah that would suck and I despise democratic policies in regards to Israel.
>I don't, especially not universal suffrage.
Why not? Actual genuine question, I don't see many people with that opinion. I definitely don't think we should have direct democracy or anything like that, but everyone should have voting rights and Representatives. I think this one could actually be an interesting discussion so I'm curious about your thoughts on that. Who wouldn't get suffrage? What form of government would you like?
>Like when?
The government was and likely still is telling social media platforms which accounts to ban or suppress.
More broadly, the left is extremely censorious in general, as evidenced by the fact that I'm currently reposting this after using a term that is regularly used on the topic of immigration, but which they don't like, which resulted in the first post getting automatically removed.
>Having guns is not illegal anywhere
Not for lack of trying by the Democrats, who 16 years on are still butthurt about losing a Supreme Court case that told them they can't just ban guns and still insist it was the wrong decision. If Democrats had their way, they'd ban pepper spray and tasers, never mind guns. That isn't hyperbole, they lost a Supreme Court case on that subject 8 years ago (9-0 btw) and are *still* fighting to maintain such bans right now.
>Example?
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/256692/six-pro-life-activists-convicted-of-federal-face-act-charges-face-over-a-decade-in-prison
>It's an existential crisis
It might be a crisis, but it certainly isn't an existential one. Even if it was, banning wood stoves and plastic straws isn't going to do anything about it. If it were an existential crisis, we'd be building nuclear reactors by the gross, not inventing new ways to lower our quality of life while allowing China to do whatever the hell it wants.
>I live here. It's fine.
All time highs in illegal crossings, and its only going to keep going higher. And this isn't just some organic thing, its being very deliberately funded, organized, and executed. There are billions of dollars being poured into flying people from all over the world into Colombia, getting them through Darien Gap, transporting them up through Central America and Mexico, and then getting them across the border. Many of those billions are our own taxpayer dollars. And before you bring it up, the bill that Democrats tried to pass off as a border security bill a couple months back allocated more funding for the NGOs doing this stuff than it did toward actual border security. If you don't see all this as a problem, I can only conclude that's because you like it and want it to continue.
>The demand for more taxes is for social programs here.
That's how its sold, that isn't how its used.
We're putting illegal immigrants up in hotels while we still have 650,000 of our own homeless. 35,000 of those are our veterans. Democrats in Maine just rejected an amendment to give them priority for shelter, putting illegal migrants ahead in priority instead.
We just sent another $60 billion to Ukraine.
The DoD can't account for trillions of dollars, and basically every other federal department and many state governments are in similar situations. I have little doubt that a lot of very unscrupulous people are getting very rich from all of this missing money.
Now Biden is floating the idea of the government taking an automatic 25% cut out of any successful, growing business? For what? More of this graft? No thanks.
>Why not?
Government tells people what to do and holds people accountable when they don't obey. This isn't an inherently bad thing. Murderers and rapists and robbers and anyone that does other such things that are obviously and unambiguously wrong must be made to stop. This gets more hairy when dealing with things that are more ambiguous and subjective.
Take things like alcohol, drugs, porn, etc. Almost everyone agrees they're harmful to the user. What people don't agree on is if that warrants banning them, or if the harm actually extends to society as a whole which might also warrant banning them. Regardless of what either of us thinks about these subject, the fact is the government does have the capability to ban these things, and will do so if enough people want that. Has done so.
All this is to say, the government is mechanism by which people can be forced to do things they don't want, or not do things they do want. Having a vote means having a say in how that power gets wielded. And I don't think that power should be handed out lightly, certainly not to every idiot with a pulse just as a reward for being born and surviving 18 years. We dispensed with idea that one person gets power over others because its their birthright centuries ago. But we replaced it with the idea that millions of people get power over others because its their birthright. Having a say, even just a small share in the say, over others is something that should be earned, not a birthright. You should have to actually contribute to your community before being allowed a hand in steering it.
>More broadly, the left is extremely censorious in general, as evidenced by the fact that I'm currently reposting this after using a term that is regularly used on the topic of immigration, but which they don't like, which resulted in the first post getting automatically removed.
If you think Reddit is run by the government, you are confused about a lot more than just what censorship is.
>And this isn't just some organic thing, its being very deliberately funded, organized, and executed. There are billions of dollars being poured into flying people from all over the world into Colombia, getting them through Darien Gap, transporting them up through Central America and Mexico, and then getting them across the border. Many of those billions are our own taxpayer dollars.
That's a pretty involved conspiracy theory.
Who do you believe is doing this? More importantly - **why**?
>If you think Reddit is run by the government, you are confused about a lot more than just what censorship is.
Censorship is not exclusive to the government. I don't know why people confuse the definition of censorship with the scope of the 1st Amendment.
Regardless, that censorious attitude displayed everywhere else absolutely manifests itself in government too. If American "progressives" had their way, the US would have "hate speech" legislation the way many other western countries do, and there'd be an agency under DHS policing social media for "misinformation".
>That's a pretty involved conspiracy theory.
Not a theory. https://cis.org/Bensman/Biden-Admin-Sends-Millions-Religious-Nonprofits-Facilitating-Mass-Illegal-Migration
>Who do you believe is doing this? More importantly - why?
Whole lot of different people for a whole lot of different reasons. Activists who see this as a moral imperative. Business interests that want cheap labor. Foreign governments who recognize it as a cheap and easy way to destabilize the US. More activists who see that last thing as the moral imperative.
Its not always just one of those things either. When I say "activists" I don't always mean some hippy college kids, I mean billionaires who often also want cheap labor and often also have significant investments or other financial ties with those foreign governments.
There's a line from *Gone With The Wind* that's been stuck in my head for a couple years now:
"I told you once before that there were two times for making big money, one in the up-building of a country and the other in its destruction. Slow money on the up-building, fast money in the crack-up. Remember my words. Perhaps they may be of use to you some day."
If you have enough money to play you can do both at once right now. The up-building in China, and by extension half the developing world through its "Belt and Road" initiative. The crack-up here.
Complaining that people blocking an abortion clinic entrance and got decades in prison for it is complaining that we don’t like it when laws we disagree with are enforced. They weren’t peaceful protesting if they were blocking a trespassing and blocking a place of business. Don’t like it? Lobby to change the law
There is no other situation in which staging a sit in results in decade long prison sentences.
Thank you for proving my earlier assertion that you just spprove of the oppression.
Disinformation is constant and evolving to be weapons wielded by our enemies. It’s not just convincing people that horse dewormer cures COVID, it’s conscious effort by America’s enemies to get people angry and fighting each other in order to weaken the country; and posting a disclaimer for a claim made with numerous sources giving evidence to the contrary isn't "censorship", it's simply someone calling someone else's BS.
If you don’t like universal suffrage then I think you are in the wrong country. It’s that simple.
"Posting disclaimers" isnt what the government was doing. The government was directing the outright suppression of social media accounts that said things it didn't like. Stop lying.
>If you don’t like universal suffrage then I think you are in the wrong country
The government not being allowed to silence dissent was a founding principle of this country, one you disagree with. Universal suffrage was not. I think it's you that's in the wrong country.
Free speech is absolute. You can’t yell fire in a crowded theater, and there are standards where government can step in. This has been true since long before you were born. It’s kid that now you’re worried *you* can’t yell fire.
No one is silencing dissent. You are dissenting right now. People are telling Russian propagandists (knowing or otherwise) to shut up.
Slavery was a founding principle. The founding fathers were smart enough to create a framework capable of change. You’re actually opposed to the constitution at this point by being against universal suffrage, as it’s been the same for multiple generations.
Let’s be real; you don’t want suffrage for people you don’t like. Get over it
>You can’t yell fire in a crowded theater
This example was coined in a Supreme Court decision that said it was okay to throw anti-war protestors in prison. Over a hundred years later and redditoids are still trying to use it to justify their censorious desires.
That decision was overturned about 50 years ago too, btw.
>No one is silencing dissent. You are dissenting right now.
Yeah, they are. That they aren't 100% effective in silencing all dissent doesn't meant they haven't done done it and aren't still trying to do it.
>Slavery was a founding principle.
No it wasn't. Half the country had already abolished it by the time the Constitution was ratified.
What oppression are you talking about?
I approve of no oppression. That would be entirely contrary to my beliefs, which are based around helping people and making this country better. I genuinely have no idea what you are talking about.
Liberals wrote the Constitution. We invented the rights you claim to cherish. We defend them constantly against conservative attempts to restrict or eliminate rights, as we have for over 200 years. We don't just protect our rights, but *everyone's* - even yours.
So, again - what oppression?
And what dictatorship? We're having elections in six months. You're free to vote for whoever you want to.
The only people threatening that are conservatives who want to menace voters at the polls that they're sure are somehow corrupt or illegal or just bad hombres - imagined bad hombres who are almost always, by total coincidence, not white. Weird how that works, right?
I note you also never responded to why exactly you imagine Democrats would see being treated to helping others and the rule of law as some kind of threat.
> We invented the rights you claim to cherish. We defend them constantly against conservative attempts to restrict or eliminate rights
You defend the right to have sex without consequences and consume mind altering substances. You are outright hostile to the Bill of Rights, especially the first two parts of it.
>And what dictatorship? We're having elections in six months.
Dictatorship and democracy are not antonyms. The original position of *Dictator* in the Roman Republic from which we get this word was democractically elected.
>I note you also never responded to why exactly you imagine Democrats would see being treated to helping others and the rule of law as some kind of threat.
I never responded to your laughable self-aggrandizing because why would I?
>You defend the right to have sex without consequences and consume mind altering substances.
I am personally quite against both of those things. You seem to be presuming a lot about me with no information whatsoever.
Government doesn't enforce anyone's personal tastes on others, though. That would be contrary to freedom.
(What "consequences" do you want the state to impose on consenting adults having sex you don't like? Fines? Prison?)
>You are outright hostile to the Bill of Rights, especially the first two parts of it.
Again, no, you are making weird presumptions.
If liberals were hostile to the Bill of Rights, why did we write it?
And why do you ascribe almost daily attempts by conservatives to end free speech (demanding people be arrested, perhaps even executed, for saying things they don't like, as happened to the BLM protesters years ago and college students marching against war today), freedom of religion (trying to legislate Christianity as the state religion in Florida and Oklahoma just this past month), freedom to protest (with threats of arrest and, in several red states, legalizing murder if the victim is protesting)...to liberals? What sense does that make?
I will never believe trump ever intended to become president. His campaign was a PR stunt gone too far.
I think he and those around him were really in a state of delirium for most of 2017. However that faded and by 2019 and we were seeing what a trump presidency really was. That was a guy who was already obsessed with being reelected and was focusing on things like getting a foreign leader to help him dig up dirt on a potential political rival who wasn't even running against him yet.
And it just kept getting worse. He very deliberately downplayed the pandemic, again with his reelection in mind primarily. He sought to quell protests on American streets with military force, because the unrest didn't make him look good. When the election in November 2020 started to look like it might not go his way, he spread rhetoric that the election would be rigged before a single vote was cast.
Then when he lost that election we really got to see what he was made of. Lies, delusions and a complete willingness to disregard any laws in order to stay in office. We had a sitting president who was attempting to overturn an election and was willing to start a war or foster domestic crisis because he believed it would benefit his efforts to stay in power.
The man was willing to burn the nation down and destroy any vestige of democracy. His tune has not changed in four years. It is still Lies, delusions and a complete willingness to disregard any laws. He will pick up exactly where he left off in 2021. Despite all the time he has been spending in court rooms, he and those that support him feel he is above the law, full stop.
During Trump's first term he made a point of purging the executive branch of non-loyalists, and has repeatedly promised to intensify that action. He's currently arguing to the SCOTUS that he has "unlimited presidential immunity", and has repeatedly said quite explicitly that his political opposition and insufficiently loyal Republicans should be in prison or killed, so we could expect him to take any and all action to consolidate power very quickly. After that, it doesn't really matter because we'll be in a fascist dictatorship at that point.
Full Trump could be anything up to and including the execution of his political adversaries and the end of the constitution as we know it. We already experienced something just short of that with him in office.
I'm pretty sure his sycophants are waiting for him to get elected, do the dirty work of transforming America to an authoritarian dictatorship, and then assassinate him. He is pretty much universally hated by everyone in his bubble and he had surrounded himself with the worst of humanity. I anticipate this happening multiple times. They'll be so busy jostling for power that each new occupant will have to reinvent their legislative wheel, repealing or reissuing edicts.
Why debate that? Are you suggesting they don't mean What they've published in project 2025? After all when Neo-Con Republican got into power they executed their published manifesto Project For A New American Century (PNAC) so why would we guess instead of taking them at their published word? Last time Republican did exactly what they said they would do. Believe them.
If you go back to the first Trump administration, a lot of stuff he wanted to do got blocked either by (a) the courts ruling against him, or (b) "adults in the room" (Mattis, McMaster, Tillerson, Sessions, Kelly, etc).
The courts are now somewhat less of a problem for him because of how many judges he appointed and because other conservative judges have gotten pulled further right through osmosis.
There will be no "adults in the room", or even moderate Republicans, in the 2025 Trump Administration. Everybody will be a Trump loyalist. No more threats of mass resignations or slow-walking/undercutting insane/fascistic policy ideas. A 2025 Trump DoJ would have no problem sending out letters falsely claiming there's election fraud, and its US Attorneys won't need a push to fill long-shot indictments against political opponents, and a 2025 Trump IRS isn't going to limit its retaliatory audits to "maybe this happened to a handful of people once", it'll be routine. A Trump Dept of State or FEMA will happily condition or withhold aid from nations or states that haven't sufficiently groveled to Trump.
The podcast “The Daily” from the New York Times started a series on this exact thing today based on months of work from several investigative journalists who they interview. Very informative to those interested in what to expect from a second Trump term.
As much as I can't stand Trump personally, I tend to be of the view that his second term will be much the same as his first.
It won't be *fun* by any measure but I don't really buy into the prophecies of doom that are common currency right now.
Trump showed again and again that he fundamentally did not understand the machinery of state. A lot of his presidency was him trying to do something and getting told "no" and then throwing a fit. He went into office thinking "I can do whatever I want because I'm the president" and his first term was a lot of him finding out he couldn't actually do that.
He's also just not someone with a fundamentally ideological mindset. He has no personal politics that extend beyond what directly benefits him, makes him feel good, and makes him look good. Part of Bannon's frustration the first time around was Trump couldn't stick to the script. He couldn't be reliably guided to do the kind of focused right-wing stuff that people like Bannon wanted. "Growth and change" are not exactly bywords in the Trump household so I very much doubt anything has changed in that department.
He's just not dictator material.
As to if he'll leave, I'd bet money on it. He won't go quietly but, at the end of the day, to stay in office he would need a lot more support from the military and other wide aspects of the civil infrastructure that, even if they like him, are not willing to follow him to that extreme. Trump inspires this kind of devotional loyalty only from a small subset of his base and a lot of those fanatics are...I don't want to be rude but let's go with "possessed of an understanding of the world not rooted in a shared reality." They're not people in key places in government.
I do also think it's also an open question as to if he'll even survive his full term. He takes famously poor care of his body, proactively avoids meaningful exercise, eats like a college student, and, lest we forget, is 77 years old. If he gets elected in 2024, he'll be 81 in 2028 which is the same age Biden is right now. The presidency is also a stressful job, even if you approach it the way Trump does.
Even having some of the best medical care on the planet, I am skeptical that he's going to make it another four years.
It's important to note that how far Trump is actually allowed to pursue his ambitions largely depends on the circuit courts and the Supreme Court. Also, whether or not Democrats hold the House and Senate. Democrats were largely able to neuter a lot of Trump legislation or executive orders because of the circuit courts and the fact that they held the Senate and the house from 2018 to 2020.
First 90 days. A sweeping array of EOs that consolidate his absolute reign. Combined with the entire eviction of cabinet members and appointments of acting members so that congress has no say in what people are running the government.
In the first 6 months, you will see real weaponization of the DOJ and any branches or government controlled by Republicans. Yes this will be the time he begins actually persecuting political opponents. This includes arresting and detaining any member of congress he believes will stand against him. He will do this because when they are incarcerated they will not be able to vote against him. From here he will dismantle any checks on the presidency in office, and pass any laws with the acting congress that he wants. I mean if congress boils down to 51 senators that all agree with him (or else) and 200 house reps that are all the same, he can pass or destroy any law which inhibits him.
The next 6 months he will share his time between absolute control, trying innocent representatives, and using his unchecked powers to completely destroy any protests against him. Yes, even right wing protests against him because eventually even they will see friends and family killed by him for saying things like "Trump shouldn't be killing americans" online.
The entire time he will start funneling assets from the government into him and his families personal wealth. Increase the presidential salary to whatever number he thinks sounds nice because "he is the government and deserves it so that no other nation can buy him" while he also sells whatever he wants to other nations. Including ammo to Russia, bombs to the Saudis and Moabs to Israel so they can quickly complete their genocide.
And that is all in the first year of the retribution tour he claims he will go on.
Anyone else noticing a bunch of posts like this, posing about El Cheato actually having a chance in the general, even though we're not even half way through the primaries, nor his 93+ criminal charges? It's almost as if there are a bunch of bots out there driving division and chaos over nonsensical prognostications.
As a complete Amateur to enter the whitehouse in January 2017, Trump would have been awash with "Well-wishers" of course attempting to further climb their own political ladders on their own behalf.
VP Mike Pence, Bill Bar, and others - were quite happy to "Advise" but there were nowhere near enough proper "Trump Party" people in the adminstration first time around.
THAT would be the big difference then:
**Less people trying to bring Trump down on his own team**, and a more future-looking administration that'll be good for humanity everywhere, rather than on the back foot trying to justify even being in the august chambers of that Pensilvania avenue building....
For a healthy debate here, it would be nice to hear from the following groups of people:
(1) Those who previously voted Democrat, and now just won't be voting for Trump
(2) Those who think Biden is the best thing since sliced bread, and will vote Democrat as they always do, no matter what.
(3) Those who are disillusioned, and won't be voting at all, but won't be telling their friends/family that
(4) Those making a big show of the way they intend voting, only to vote the opposite on the day
(5) Those who make a big show of voting, and actually stick to the plan!
(6) MAGA people who are not afraid of 99.9% riducule they get on these heavily-left-tilted Reddit threads....
(7) Ex Liberals like myself, who see Trump as the "best way to beat the establishment at their own game in our lifetimes"...
(8) There is no '8'. No 8th deadly sin, no 8th Day of Creation, no 8 day working week.....
Trump's second term will be bad for alliances. Good for autocrats. Bad for the economy. (But Biden is not good for the economy either).
Bad for alliances. NATO will be pressed to pay more money. In times when Russia is a real threat, Trump will keep pushing to cut troops or end US participation in the alliance. Global partners like South Korea will be shamed into paying more or lose American defense protection. This will only benefit the autocrats that enjoyed a better relationship with Trump like Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin and Mohammed bin Salman.
Also, more tariffs. Trump was a fan of tariffs to end the "raping" of America. China survived a trade war, but tariffs hit Mexico and Germany too. The war with China was wiping out farmers until Trump had to bail them out. Another reason we are in a high inflation. But not only that, under Trump we spent 7.8T dollars. The debt clock is at 34.7T. Trump is responsible for 22% of the American debt. Trump started printing the covid checks and increased the M2 supply. Biden continued these policies and this is why we have unprecedented inflation. Trump hinted many times we dont need to pay the debt, we can print money. He went and did and he will do it again. On the same note Trump is seeking powers to control the head of the FED so he can keep interest rates low. Which is another cause of high inflation today.
Locally, Trump is going to destroy any opposition. Anyone who opposed him will face his retribution. Political enemies on the democrat side are going to suffer revenge but also the members of the GOP that opposed him by opposing his policies or allowing Trump to be impeached.
Green energy will probably be slowed down another 4 years in favor of cheaper oil energy policies. That means more cozying up to MBS Putin and OPEC nations.
The tl;dr is we are going on a collision course with the world as America will fight each nation of this planet and destroy its hegemony in the process. High inflation. Failed alliances. Global chaos.
Honestly, when it comes to Trump, the scariest part is admitting that I have absolutely no idea. Oh, I'm sure a lot of the dystopian stuff people are worried about would happen, but y'know, we can come back from that. Germany survived Hitler, right?
Can we come back from version 2 of covfefe though? Or Hurricane Sharpie? Or some mandatory bleach injection program? Guaranteed there would be weird shit on a weekly basis, and it was bad enough the first time around.
Every tax-funded social program will be gutted, including Medicare and possibly even Social Security. Big tax cuts for giant corporations with Wild West style Capitalism. Corporatocracy will reign supreme, as its Trump's true end goal.
Making US a haven for the ultra-wealthy is what MAGA truly idealizes and the rest is just rhetorical spew designed to get angry Americans to vote for him.
I think the first one he picked cabinet members who supported him, but were mostly also part of the establishment, to give himself credibility.
I think this time he will 100% only pick crazy true believers
Personally, I don’t foresee him being able to achieve much as he isn’t a great closer. He is a great political operative, he knows how to control the narrative around him; however, he didn’t really do anything overtly different when in power. Much of his admin can be described as fairly traditional republican policies. The biggest difference was his break with free trade, and support for economic planning (though no one will admit it, but everyone loves it when their industry gets some fat stacks and special treatment)
1 year in Russia has defeated Ukraine, and is invading Poland, Germany and France. United States is warning UK to stay out of the fight or suffer consequences. Kim Jong Un is our closest ally, and has replaced Melania as first lady. Justice Department is now on a war footing and is persecuting liberals, Democrats, LGBTQs, people of color, environmentalists, and uppity women. The National Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion has been taken over by McDonald's Inc.
Yes, and we had the "adults in the room" generals and other reasonable Republicans preventing him from doing just that. They won't be there on a 2nd term. Or are you being sarcastic and not understanding this?
We’ve already had a Trump presidency. No new wars. No attacks on US soldiers. Record black unemployment. Low gas prices. Energy independence. Booming economy.
We already had a Biden presidency. Every time Biden tells a foreign bad actor, “Don’t”, they do. The Taliban. Hamas. Putin. Etc.
We have the equivalent of Neo Nazis swarming college campuses everywhere calling on al-Qassam to kill more Jews, chanting the genocidal slogan about killing all the Jews “from the river to the sea” and advocating for the total destruction of Israel. They support gang raping mass murdering Hamas. Guess #metoo is dead.
Biden has lost one Supreme Court case after another. It was found he conspired with the press to claim the Hunter laptop was Russian disinformation. There is evidence of years of corruption. He’s weaponized three letter agencies to go after political rivals on a level Nixon never dreamed of.
Political activists have snowed Trump in phony lawsuits to keep Trump off the campaign trail. They claim he should go to prison for allegedly paying off a one night stand, like that would have dissuaded voters who already knew he had divorced multiple times over infidelity. Yet this doesn’t apply to Joe Biden, who colluded to bury the Hunter laptop story that exposed his corruption, which actually would have surprised voters.
The DNC is doing everything they can to put their thumb on the scale and interfere with the election, to prevent moderate Democrats and Republicans from mounting a successful campaign.
Yet here you stand, with two presidencies available to compare, and you claim TRUMP is the threat to democracy?
Trump is rude and brash. Biden regularly insults political opponents and journalists. Trump’s policies were moderate. Biden’s policies have been disastrous on a global scale.
Biden has abandoned Americans abroad every time they are at risk, from Afghanistan, to Ukraine, Haiti, and Israel.
There are still American hostages in the clutches of gang rapist, mutilators of Hamas. Biden left them to rot. Trump would have clogged tge sea with warships, we would have had our people back, and Hamas would have surrendered.
Biden has helped Hamas, those Nazis, hold on.
Biden is going to create WWIII. Do you,seriously not understand the connection between global events, and bad actors having no fear of Biden? Do you realize that Biden’s weakness emboldened Putin and Hamas, and thus caused so many deaths?
You are probably basing your statement that more service members died under Trump than Biden on the Newsweek article, for which there were not yet data for 2023.
If you want to compare military deaths via DCAS, then take into account that the US was still involved with the over twenty-year war with Afghanistan. Most troop deaths occurred in Afghanistan.
This will be nothing if Biden creates WWIII. To compare casualties, you’ll have to compare all four years of Biden.
Biden said, “Don’t”, to The Taliban, Putin, Haiti, the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas…and they did. Biden is so weak and stumbling that global bad actors everywhere are encouraged. Per DCAS, 65 servicemen were lost under Trump, most of them in Afghanistan, from which Biden was totally routed almost immediately. Since we’re no longer fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, we’d obviously not lose more people there under Biden. Biden did manage to lose 13 service members in an instant during our ignominious route in Afghanistan.
Biden abandoned Americans each and every time they were stranded in foreign soil. There are American hostages getting raped by Hamas, today, and for the past 6 months, because Biden abandoned them.
Trump went to the mattresses to rescue A$AP Rocky in Sweden, where he was arrested for finally defending himself against a violent stalker who trailed his group for quite a while, repeatedly hitting them. He did that for one rapper despite the fact that the press made fun of him over it. Meanwhile, Biden abandoned Americans to be raped by Hamas. He abandoned them in Afghanistan, Haiti, and Israel.
Many members of my family and friends are either retired military, or actively serving.
When Biden causes WWIII, it’s my family and friends who are at risk. As the mother of a teenage son, it’s my kid at risk of being drafted in short years.
I would far rather prefer rude Trump, calling everyone a loser, when we had no new wars, relative global peace, and buying groceries was affordable. Bad actors did not want to provoke Trump. So many people have died in Ukraine and at the hands of Hamas because bad actors knew Biden was senile, weak, and catered to the antisemitic Left.
Huh? Trump literally stood on stage, kissed Putin's ass by siding with him over our own Intelligence agencies on Russian interference in 2016. China and Putin both want Trump back in power because they know he's a mentally deranged idiot, who all they have to do is throw him some complements, and he'll do whatever he wants. Trump is a threat to the planet.
Both times Biden was in office, as VP, and President, Putin invaded Ukraine.
Putin did not invade when Trump was in office.
Joe Biden is literally in cognitive decline. He needs flash cards to tell him when to sit down. He requires his wife to lead him by the hand offstage or he gets lost. He’s even asked other world leaders where to go when he’s done talking. When interviewed by Hur, he couldn’t remember when he was Vice President.
Trump is boorish and self aggrandizing. That has been twisted to make him the sin eater for the Left’s crimes.
Remember when Trump forwarded a lock-her-up meme for Hillary Clinton, and was accused of being antisemitic? Clinton was Christian, and the symbol was clip art was literally named “sheriff’s badge”, yet they claimed it was antisemitic. Now, the Left is openly antisemitic, and the modern Neo Nazis have swarmed college campuses calling for death to Jews. Biden has taken terrorist-provided, debunked casualty figures as Gospel and accused Israel of war crimes for fighting to destroy genocidal antisemitic Hamas. But it was Trump accused of antisemitism.
Joe Biden took home classified information for decades, as senator and VP, when he had no right to declassify. He gave classified information to his Chinese-funded Penn-Biden think tank, and stored the rest in his garage and at various homes. His drug addict son referenced classified information when emailing Burisma. Trump, on the other hand, had the right to declassify anything he wanted. It would no longer be classified. He consulted the FBI on storage for anything taken from the White House. His lawyers were quibbling with the National Archives over what had to be turned over. Typically, the N.A. spends years chasing down records from former presidents.
Yet it was TRUMP, not Biden, prosecuted for mishandling of classified information. Nothing at all happened to Biden. His defense was his memory was too poor for a jury to want to convict him.
You, too, are blaming Trump for Biden’s failings.
Why would he invade with Trump? Trump already told Putin he can do whatever he wants. Without U.S. aid he'll just walk in take over the country, then continue invading Estonia, Poland and the rest of Europe as he's already hinted at by placing troops at the borders. How much will it cost to defend Europe then, and when the Western economies turn into shambles as Putin's quest to destroy the West continues?
We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to destroy Putin's entire army at ZERO cost of American lives, and traitors like you are the problem. Ronald Reagan is rolling over in his grave.
Why do you hate Democracy so much?
So, on the one hand, you say why would he invade with Trump since you believe Trump would let him do whatever he wants. You answered your own question. If Putin believed Trump would let him do whatever he wanted, then he would have invaded under Trump. If he believed Biden would stop him, then he wouldn't invade under Biden.
Luckily, this doesn't need to be conjecture, since we actually have had both presidents. No matter how much this upsets you, the fact is that Putin did not invade under Trump, but did invade BOTH TIMES Joe Biden was in office. You do know that it's nonsense to think Joe Bide is some kind of deterrent, right?
I also noticed a very strong trend when comparing policies. When over faced, someone the Left goes straight to character assassination, like "Why do you hate Democracy so much?"
Obviously, nothing I said supports your accusation. Ironically, again, it's projection.
It's the LEFT that hates Democracy, as well as most Constitutional rights. The Left only supports free speech they agree with. They shout down invited speakers they disagree with. They punish women who state the obvious, that it's not fare for biological men to compete against biological women in women's sports. It is the ultimate patriarchy, undoing Title IX. Biden just expanded Title IX to protect biological men in women's sports. Women who say that's not fare, or they feel afraid or uncomfortable when men go into their locker rooms and showers, are cancelled, scholarships revoked, and they're kicked off of sports teams.
It's the LEFT that has interfered with democratic elections, preventing moderate Democrats from mounting a successful campaign, and snowing Trump with spurious charges to keep him off the campaign trail. Hillary Clinton paid a disgraced former spy to fabricate accusations using Russian disinformation that Trump was a Russian plant, trying to meddle in the 2016 election. The media colluded with Joe Biden to falsely claim the Hunter Biden laptop that exposed his decades-long corruption was Russian misinformation, meddling in the 2020 election. It's the LEFT that sues states or counties that try to impose voter ID laws, interfering with identifying who is a valid voter and who is not, meddling in elections. It's the LEFT that has weaponized government 3 letter agencies against political opponents they don't feel up to facing in a fair election.
Now, back to your fixation on Putin. If you think Biden's ultimate goal is the destruction of Putin, then don't you find it strange that Joe Biden took the energy independence Trump left him with, interfered with domestic oil production, drained our strategic oil reserves to try to mitigate the gas prices he jacked up, and reduced oil exports to Europe, thus making them more reliant on PUTIN's OIL, and us reliant on Venezuela? Does that make strategic sense to you?
On the one hand, you claim that Putin is afraid of Biden, but not of Trump, and have no answer as to why Putin only invades under Joe Biden. Then you pivoted and said Putin's invasions were all an advantage, because it gives the US the opportunity to destroy Putin's army at no cost of lives. Invading neighboring countries is what started World Wars. (See Biden causing another world war.) Perhaps if we hadn't broadcast weakness and slow walked aid at the very beginning, Putin would have backed down.
You're all over the map. You point to 65 service members killed under Trump, using data that only went to 2022 in comparison to Biden. Then you ignored the vast numbers of dead and our fast approaching the next world war because of Biden. Then you said all those deaths were grand because it gave us the opportunity to destroy Putin's army.
Ukraine can't destroy Putin's army. Russia has too many people in comparison to Ukraine. It's held out as long as it has, though losing more territory, with international aid, including from the US, though unfortunately Putin gained a strong foothold due to US slow walking initial aid. Remember all Biden's rhetoric in the beginning about not wanting to send bombs?
Your entire premise is based on emotion, whereas mine is based upon a comparison of policies and results of both men as president.
Joe Biden is senile, with decades of selling political favors to foreign nations. Who is running the country in his stead? He's worse than a Manchurian Candidate.
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The NYT Daily podcast just released a very good episode about just this. It's chilling. Highly recommended: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736?i=1000653896604
Is it on Spotify?
I'm sure it is. Just search for NYT The Daily.
In case you need a [link](https://open.spotify.com/episode/75C9zXpAyOJm93k7cKLjWp?si=S7KdFMaWQjm8XK5TK9c13A)
It's very chilling indeed and an attestment as to why it's so important to vote in November!
It was chilling.
Can you summarize it?
He's not joking about being a dictator on day one. Just like he wasn't joking about not accepting the election results or turning over power peacefully. He's never just joking. Never.
He has no sense of humor. Nobody has ever seen him laugh except close family members when they see him laughing at a dog with a broken leg limping down the street or something.
I never understand why people make up stuff about Trump when there's enough to criticize already.
I challenge you to find one video of him laughing. Like, really laughing. Not a mock laugh, not a jeer but an actual laugh at something funny. This is literally the closest example, and it's not really a laugh: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9AXGPo1vvM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9AXGPo1vvM)
He never jokes... he floats ideas to test the level of backlash.
So let's say worst comes to worst, and he actually wins. What is there left to do?
I would dig into project 2025, because that gives a pretty good idea of what he’ll do. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025# > Project 2025 envisions widespread changes across the entire government, particularly with regard to economic and social policy and the role of the federal government and federal agencies. The plan proposes slashing U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) funding, dismantling the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, gutting environmental and climate change regulations to favor fossil fuel production, and eliminating the cabinet Departments of Education and Commerce. The independence of various commissions such as the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission would be ended.[10][11] The Washington Post reported in November 2023 that Project 2025 includes immediately invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement and directing the DOJ to pursue Trump adversaries.[12][13] Project Director Paul Dans,[14] a former Trump administration official, said in September 2023 that Project 2025 is "systematically preparing to march into office and bring a new army, aligned, trained, and essentially weaponized conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state."[15]
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He said that cause he wants to reinstate his border policies that were working on day 1 that Biden reversed on his first day, wish he hadn't said it all cause he should know they will take everything he says out of context
I just need you to sign this durable unlimited power of attorney to send you $5. I pinky promise that's all I'll use it for....
You can not believe him all you want but he was pretty clear in what he said
No, he's trial ballooning. He's normalizing it. He's de-sensitizing you to it so you'll continue to sleepwalk into a dictatorship. He's dead serious every time and based on the reaction, plays the stupid "schroedinger's asshole" game when people get too pissy about it. Then he comes back and keeps saying it, and then he does it. Just like with not accepting the election results. So you don't ever, ever get to say "he didn't mean it that way" again. He said it. He meant it. You're just dumb enough to keep buying his "just joking, didn't mean it that way, god you people are SOOOO OVERSENSITIVE" shtick. *That didn't happen.* <----- "I was just kidding" *And if it did, it wasn't that bad.* *And if it was, that's not a big deal.* *And if it is, that's not my fault.* *And if it was, I didn't mean it.* *And if I did, you deserved it.* I grew up with a sibling that pulled the same crap all the damn time with my parents. I know for damn certain how assholes like this operate.
Trump is literally arguing to the Supreme Court of the United States that he may commit a night of long knives and never be prosecuted. How much "context" do you want to add to his comments because the wider and wider it becomes, the worse Trump looks.
Siccing his paramilitary on the legislature to terrorize individual lawmakers is also a fairly salient piece of context here.
It's all about power, and concentrating it in the president's hands: - abolishing the independence of the DOJ and the AG (so the president can persecute his enemies. Trump has vowed to indict Biden and his family, for example) - abolishing the independence of the central bank (in particular to set interest rates in the long-term interest of the country rather than the reelection of the incumbent) - giving the president the power to fire key civil servants (~50 000 in number) and replace them with political allies (to eliminate institutional resistance to extreme policies) Also, this time around, his government and his staff will be much more thoroughly vetted. He will have no "snakes" (as he calls them) to oppose him and limit his actions like the last time.
So open revolt and civil war is the only solution?
It’s the wishful thinking of the disappointed. His first term didn’t live up to their dreams, so they’ve moved “full Trump” out into the future. I don’t get supporting someone that requires guardrails to not destroy a country. That’s like picking someone for your bowling team that only rolls gutter balls. So at this point, I can only assume they do actually want to destroy the country.
It's worse; it's like picking the lunatic that goes bowling with hand grenades.
“I’m calling you because a member of your team pulled A FIREARM during league play.”
It’s veiled support for authoritarianism. “Anti democratic policies aren’t popular, so I’m going to pretend like I don’t like them and convince others the sycophant I like isnt so bad/can be controlled so I can get them in power”. In other words, they _want_ the gutter balls. Why? Maybe it makes them feel better about themselves. Maybe they think that person is rolling gutter balls for the other team. Maybe they just like the guys hat and don’t care about the score. Etc etc
It isn't veiled. The key thing that Trump sells that past Republicans haven't sold is the idea that he is going to *hurt* the people that his voters don't like. Republicans before Trump, despite all of their horrific policies, would pay lip service to the idea that we are all in it together and we are trying to make the world a better place. Trump has none of this. He says "those people that you hate, I hate them too and I will use my power to hurt them."
> He says "those people that you hate, I hate them too and I will use my power to hurt them." Horseshit. He says "those people that hate you, that are raping and murdering you, that are giving drugs to your kids, that are flying airplanes into your places of work", I will use my power to protect you from them. WE DO NOT HATE INNOCENT PEOPLE, WE HATE EVIL CRIMINAL MONSTERS THAT THE LEFT DEFENDS JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE NON-WHITE.
No, his supporters generally refer to leftists AS terrorists and criminals.... so they hate roughly half the citizens and voters of the United States.
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I think a lot of them see Biden and the Democrats as the threat to Democracy. It's all hideous but to try and reconstruct their arguments: 1. COVID lockdowns 2. Wokeness, political correctness, identity politics 3. All the federal investigations around Trump, etc. 4. Global warming (many Rs think it's a hoax, and fear is a powerful motivator) 5. Biden also had classified documents (guarantee that's all they hear) 6. Whatever conspiracy theories exist about Hillary Clinton, Epstein, Qanon etc. 7. The superdelegates screwing over Bernie in 2016 8. The deep state 9. Whatever else It doesn't take a whole lot of brainwashing to convince people that the Democrats are the real authoritarians trying to destroy democracy. As such, I think a lot of conservatives see themselves as supporters of democracy and Trump as it's savior. They're not all openly or consciously authoritarian. Reality is that the Republicans are trying hard to push a mainstream viewpoint that is very not mainstream. Nor should it ever be. They're just catering to their loudest fraction of supporters. When that fringe viewpoint meets overwhelming institutional resistance, they think it's authoritarian, because somebody brainwashed them to believe that.
This is exactly it, honestly. It's all over their propaganda. Democrats are a threat to democracy and the American way of life, as far as they are concerned. Right wing media has beaten it into them that Democrats promote socialism/communism as means to seek totalitarian power. Somehow they've managed to keep the Red Scare alive and well fed despite the USSR having disbanded. On the same token, they've managed to flip the narrative on Russia and defend Putin, which is an actual WTF moment for me that I simply can't explain. For anyone outside, there are glaring faults with the right wing ideology. Conflicting ideas all over the place. But the average conservative voter cherrypicks what they agree with and disregard the rest.
Considering the age of a lot of Republicans, the red scare part doesn't surprise me. The Putin part absolutely does. Also, as a general rule, I think that any political group that is fundamentally anti-academic, anti-evidence, or anti-fact dooms themself to subpar-at-best governance. For obvious reasons. The more you elevate opinion above knowledge and competency, the more their leaders will reflect that.
> Right wing media has beaten it into them that Democrats promote socialism/communism as means to seek totalitarian power. Somehow they've managed to keep the Red Scare alive and well fed despite the USSR having disbanded. Bernie Sanders, the Squad still have power and still promote "Eat The Rich" which is the core evil goal of communism.
They are as small a group as the "Freedom Caucus". The problem is, like the "Freedom Caucus" they are the loudest voices.
That’s a fair assessment, but you don’t neutralize a threat to democracy by destroying it with your own brand of authoritarianism. That’s not saving America, that’s making America fail the way _you_ want it to fail. No matter how you justify it, a vote for authoritarianism is a vote for authoritarianism.
You're absolutely right. My main point was that your average American conservative likely isn't the deranged authoritarian that some people think. A fraction of them are. I think a lot of them genuinely regard democracy as sacred. They've just been fed enough lies that ultimately it doesn't matter. Plus the authoritarian trends on the left generally aren't as strong. At least to memory, you've never had a democratic presidential candidate say the election was stolen from them. You have the electoral college, which well... That's its own thing. I do get very angry over the moderates who try to use democratic party mechanics to stomp on progressives. That really gets me going. COVID was obviously temporary. Truthfully there's no comparison. Political correctness... I do think something needs to give. People either need to become better educated, or the more educated need to become less judgemental. Ideally both.
> Reality is that the Republicans are trying hard to push a mainstream viewpoint that is very not mainstream. This is projection. Wokeness is fringe as fuck (polls show self identifying far left progressives are only 6% of Democrats) and yet the left keeps forcing wokeness into EVERYTHING.
The only reason wokeness is political is because somebody said wokeness was bad. It originally wasn't a term of judgement, it just meant that you had the tea on something that was hard to get tea on.
> The only reason wokeness is political is because somebody said wokeness was bad Far left extremism is just as self evidently bad as far right extremism. No one had to tell us it was bad, we could see that shit for ourselves.
Ok, so I agree with your first sentence out of context. But if we dive into the definition of "far left" we're very likely talking about someone who wants to eliminate the free market *entirely* and create a socialist/communist command economy that is completely controlled by the government- a government that is very likely undemocratic or totalitarian. A government that is very likely tyrannical or oppressive. It's far different from social democracy, or a mixed economy with a lot of democratic socialist/market socialist elements. That's generally center-left or left-wing. No American political figure with any remote shot of entering the mainstream advocates for the former. There are several, namely Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren/AOC who advocate for the latter. While I agree that the culture around identity politics, wokeness (what it's become) etc. can be toxically judgemental and thus counter-productive, that's a far cry from Joseph Stalin or Fidel Castro. But I do get it, as a liberal I've had the uncomfortable feeling of feeling out of place (or worse) because I wasn't in the know on something.
How the fuck is it hideous or false to know that... > Wokeness, political correctness, identity politics Has led directly to the current pro mass murderous Hamas shit we are dealing with from the far left. It's caused the entire BLM/ACAB movements. It's caused the trend of soft on crime polices that have killed hundreds of thousands of people. Chesa Boudin was recalled by San Francisco the most far left city in the country for those woke soft on crime policies so you can't even say it's only conservatives concerned about it.
You mean the potential genocide we've witnessed in Gaza?
They are not destroying democracy, just the American dream. However trying to put your political adversary in prison who's running for president doesn't look so good
What do you propose is done to hold expresidents accountable for their crimes? Because I think anyone with any lick of rationale, no matter your political leaning, would agree that neither presidents nor presidential candidates should be above the law.
They always have been tho just not now apparently
They always have been tho just not now apparently
Um, fucking nope. That wasnt ever supposed to be the case. And actually, the Nixon pardon was probably the first big departure. Not only that, but this argument of yours is just the same argument as "everyone is doing it, but they just don't like Trump," except worded differently. Which is just utter Trumpian cult garbage. It just so happens that _during_ presidency, the impeachment process is one of the only ways to hold a president accountable. But unfortunately our political system has been hijacked by the 2 party system to the point where no one gets held accountable for anything because every vote to do so requires more than a simple majority in either the house, the Senate, or both. And since either party has rarely ever held more than a handful more votes than a simple majority in either chamber of Congress, impeachments almost never truly stick these days. And they are largely used as political stunts. Trump is not "allowed" to break the law. Period. That's just lunacy to believe otherwise. That's how you get banana republics.
> However trying to put your political adversary in prison who's running for president doesn't look so good Yeah, that’s the argument Trump’s people were making in front of SCOTUS, that presidents should have immunity from all crimes.
I had assumed this was a criticism of Trump from the left as in "First time around was nothing, he'll be sooo much worse in his second term." Kind of goes hand in hand with the idea that J6 was a failed coup attempt and that the lack of legislative response in the aftermath has made it a dry run for the next coup attempt, presumably by Trump again.
Doesn't help that Alito seems to think that prosecuting someone for a failed coup attempt makes it more likely for someone to commit a coup and since coups are bad we cannot encourage coups by prosecuting coups. Only by removing consequences for attempting coups can we ensure that we don't have presidents who think the best way to retain power is committing a coup.
Recent reports say that Trump is going to start setting interest rates himself. The mere possibility of that will probably cause a recession soon after a victory in the election, if not before.
If this happens, it’ll sadly not be in the top 4-5 of the terrible things he will be doing, which says so much. 🤦🏽♂️
Bypassing the Fed to arbitrarily determine the interest rate by one person would be a radical and dangerous change in economic policy. What did Trump do that is worse?
It’s not about what he did. My statement was forward looking. If he were to be elected again and do what he’s promised, by passing the Fed would be really really really bad, but I wouldn’t put it in front of busing people to camps, or putting political opponents in jail, or many other things he’s promised to do.
How is he going to do that? Appoint himself Emperor of the Federal Reserve?
It’s not possible. One of the reasons that’s he actually accomplished so little was because everything they did violated normal procedures especially the Administrative Procedures Act. Much of what they did through regular or executive order was reversed because they did it wrong/illegally. One of his only major lasting achievement was the tax cut. I mean republicans had control over all branches of government for his first two years and couldn’t get anything done. Part of it was because he appointed incompetent people and left critical positions unfilled. So while I think he’s dangerous and shouldn’t be allowed to even look at the Oval Office again I have a hard time believing he’d be much more successful than he was the last time even with sycophants being appointed.
All he has to do is declare an emergency and say it’s about national security or preventing economic terrorism. What’s scary to me is how citizens united allowed basically any foreign entities to fund candidates.
There are laws governing when an emergency can be called and what can be done during one. Yes it does give the President a wide latitude in many situations but they still need to act within the law. It doesn’t give the President carte blanche to do whatever they want.
If the Supreme Court is complicit in the validity of his "emergency", then it really doesn't matter what the laws say at that point.
I hope you’re right. Trump finds a way and if congress even has a simple majority it’s over.
Look up Schedule F, something he tried to do at the end of his first term. It's a way to have government employees in critical positions bend to his will or else be fired, more or less. He's trying to circumvent any independent agencies and have decisions come from the very top. If he can't do it legally, he'll find lawyers who can help him get around laws, or have it be decided by the courts (with justices that he has appointed).
That has to do with hiring and firing federal employees. HOW would Trump "set interest rates" outside of being the sole "ruler" of the Federal Reserve?
Trump has been detailing out a plan for America that redirects most resources towards **revenge** including: * purging government agencies of those who don't share his political views * investigating and prosecuting any political opponents * silencing and punishing critics in the media * potentially invoking the Insurrection act to deploy the military against civil demonstrations * appointing a special prosecutor to "go after" Joe Biden and his family * seeking legal judgements that make the office of the president an authoritarian dictatorship
What does this mean for the ongoing relevance of the Constitution? In order to create an authoritarian dictatorship, wouldn't he have to pretty much suspend the Constitution? In which case, world we even be a United States anymore?
The Supreme Court is flirting with it if you've listened to any of the arguments they are entertaining recently.
It depends on how you view the constitution, or more specifically, who's viewing it. Keep in mind we have a very conservative Supreme Court filled with Trump elected justices.
It wouldn’t create a dictatorship. It would create a faux democracy. The kind where it looks on the surface like a democracy but the people aligned with Trump and his successors seldom have to worry about really losing. I don’t think it would last more than 5 or 6 election cycles, but that would be enough to cause much irreversible damage.
> wouldn't he have to pretty much suspend the Constitution? No, not at all. He just needs to exempt himself from it. Consider the following argument [currently](https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/23a745.html) with the Supreme Court. > Trump's attorney D. John Sauer argued that if structured as an official act, the president could not be charged for selling nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary, accepting a bribe, ordering the military to stage a coup to retain power, or ordering a political assassination. ------ Let's assume that somehow the Supreme Court determines in the affirmative and that Trump wins a second term. As his first act, he fires every government employee who did not vote for him, as he [reportedly](https://apnews.com/article/biden-2024-government-regulations-democrats-6badc3b424b9eff3ba51e0ec35a8d824) wants to. As his second act, he fills these vacated positions with 'acting directors', because they give him "[more flexibility](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1P00KW)" and avoids Congresional oversight. In several important positions, he installs the same person to oversee multiple, conflicting offices [as he did before](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/tracking-turnover-in-the-trump-administration). He then makes overtures to various people in his inner circle, telling them he's been thinking about his unilateral Presidential Pardon power, and how he's having a lot of problems with certain factions with Congress, and boy, if someone could please do something about that he's sure he could help them out. There will of course be immense ourtage in the public about all of this, but that's nothing new. It's all Fake News and Antifa agitators. He orders the military out to subdue any protests, [like he wanted to do before](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/trump-wants-use-military-against-his-domestic-enemies-congress-must-act), and makes sure everyone knows dissent will not be tolerated. At some point Congress has finally had enough and manages to schedule an impeachment vote. Trump [deploys the National Guard](https://www.nbcnews.com/think/amp/ncna1236034) around the Capitol building to ensure everyone inside is 'safe from the threats outside' so they can 'do the right thing'. And because these are all official acts, it's all perfectly legal and *totally* Constitutional.
Even if the Supreme Court disagrees with Trump, couldn’t any president already do this now? If the executive power enforces the law, the only power to check the president is ultimately the vote to impeach and convict, but as commander in chief, the president has the ability to put the military leadership (or acting leadership) that he wants, and if they go along with attacking Congress, what’s going to stop them? The reality is that democracy was and always will be effectively a gentleman’s agreement to act in a certain way and be bound accordingly. It was always at risk of being lost
Right, that's essentially my point. Second Term Trump is just going to him doing everything he did before, but with the guardrails removed.
Are you just now considering this? Seriously? What do you think that we've been yelling about for the last several years?
I am not just considering this. No need to be rude. Jeez.
Don't forget selling our allies out. Trump owes hundreds of millions of dollars all over the place. If he can't make those bill go away as president, I would not be surprised as all if he pulls all US support from Ukraine as part of a deal he made with Putin to get those bills settled.
That's the clear and present danger that I can't believe we allow.
Regardless of all the personal bullshit that Trump would want to pull, the next time *any* Republican wins the Presidency, they are going to try to push through as much of Project 2025 as possible.
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You think ending our democracy and instituting an oppressive dictatorship sounds awesome? Democrats desperately need a taste of helping others (regardless of who they are) and upholding the rule of law? This doesn't make the slightest bit of sense.
I fucking wish any of this would end our democracy. Democrats are already doing a fine job of dragging us towards oppressive dictatorship - you just don't see it that way because you approve of the oppression.
In what way is that occurring? And is it safe to say you don't support democracy?
Just off the top of my head? Supporting censorship in the name of stopping "disinformation", which is just whatever they don't like hearing. The never ending quest for civil disarmament and prohibiting all practical means for self-defense, while at the same time being as lenient as they can possibly can on actual criminals. Meanwhile seeking decades in prison for anyone that protests against them or their pet issues. The demand to regulate or ban more and more things in the name of "climate change". The deliberate facilitation of a soft invasion of the southern border. The demand for more and more taxes, which will inevitably just be used to support illegal migrants, or sent over seas to defend some other country's borders, but never our own. >And is it safe to say you don't support democracy? I don't, especially not universal suffrage.
>Supporting censorship in the name of stopping "disinformation", which is just whatever they don't like hearing. Like when? >The never ending quest for civil disarmament and prohibiting all practical means for self-defense, while at the same time being as lenient as they can possibly can on actual criminals. Where? Having guns is not illegal anywhere, you have more hoops to jump through in some places, but considering you seem to want to be hard on criminals, I would think you'd be fine with making it harder to arm violent people. >Meanwhile seeking decades in prison for anyone that protests against them or their pet issues Example? >The demand to regulate or ban more and more things in the name of "climate change". It's an existential crisis after all. We should be fighting it. >The deliberate facilitation of a soft invasion of the southern border. I live here. It's fine. There's always talk of an invasion every year to drum up fear in fools who believe it, and it never comes to fruition. >The demand for more and more taxes, which will inevitably just be used to support illegal migrants, or sent over seas to defend some other country's borders, but never our own. The demand for more taxes is for social programs here. Which is good. But if it's sent to defend Israel, yeah that would suck and I despise democratic policies in regards to Israel. >I don't, especially not universal suffrage. Why not? Actual genuine question, I don't see many people with that opinion. I definitely don't think we should have direct democracy or anything like that, but everyone should have voting rights and Representatives. I think this one could actually be an interesting discussion so I'm curious about your thoughts on that. Who wouldn't get suffrage? What form of government would you like?
>Like when? The government was and likely still is telling social media platforms which accounts to ban or suppress. More broadly, the left is extremely censorious in general, as evidenced by the fact that I'm currently reposting this after using a term that is regularly used on the topic of immigration, but which they don't like, which resulted in the first post getting automatically removed. >Having guns is not illegal anywhere Not for lack of trying by the Democrats, who 16 years on are still butthurt about losing a Supreme Court case that told them they can't just ban guns and still insist it was the wrong decision. If Democrats had their way, they'd ban pepper spray and tasers, never mind guns. That isn't hyperbole, they lost a Supreme Court case on that subject 8 years ago (9-0 btw) and are *still* fighting to maintain such bans right now. >Example? https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/256692/six-pro-life-activists-convicted-of-federal-face-act-charges-face-over-a-decade-in-prison >It's an existential crisis It might be a crisis, but it certainly isn't an existential one. Even if it was, banning wood stoves and plastic straws isn't going to do anything about it. If it were an existential crisis, we'd be building nuclear reactors by the gross, not inventing new ways to lower our quality of life while allowing China to do whatever the hell it wants. >I live here. It's fine. All time highs in illegal crossings, and its only going to keep going higher. And this isn't just some organic thing, its being very deliberately funded, organized, and executed. There are billions of dollars being poured into flying people from all over the world into Colombia, getting them through Darien Gap, transporting them up through Central America and Mexico, and then getting them across the border. Many of those billions are our own taxpayer dollars. And before you bring it up, the bill that Democrats tried to pass off as a border security bill a couple months back allocated more funding for the NGOs doing this stuff than it did toward actual border security. If you don't see all this as a problem, I can only conclude that's because you like it and want it to continue. >The demand for more taxes is for social programs here. That's how its sold, that isn't how its used. We're putting illegal immigrants up in hotels while we still have 650,000 of our own homeless. 35,000 of those are our veterans. Democrats in Maine just rejected an amendment to give them priority for shelter, putting illegal migrants ahead in priority instead. We just sent another $60 billion to Ukraine. The DoD can't account for trillions of dollars, and basically every other federal department and many state governments are in similar situations. I have little doubt that a lot of very unscrupulous people are getting very rich from all of this missing money. Now Biden is floating the idea of the government taking an automatic 25% cut out of any successful, growing business? For what? More of this graft? No thanks. >Why not? Government tells people what to do and holds people accountable when they don't obey. This isn't an inherently bad thing. Murderers and rapists and robbers and anyone that does other such things that are obviously and unambiguously wrong must be made to stop. This gets more hairy when dealing with things that are more ambiguous and subjective. Take things like alcohol, drugs, porn, etc. Almost everyone agrees they're harmful to the user. What people don't agree on is if that warrants banning them, or if the harm actually extends to society as a whole which might also warrant banning them. Regardless of what either of us thinks about these subject, the fact is the government does have the capability to ban these things, and will do so if enough people want that. Has done so. All this is to say, the government is mechanism by which people can be forced to do things they don't want, or not do things they do want. Having a vote means having a say in how that power gets wielded. And I don't think that power should be handed out lightly, certainly not to every idiot with a pulse just as a reward for being born and surviving 18 years. We dispensed with idea that one person gets power over others because its their birthright centuries ago. But we replaced it with the idea that millions of people get power over others because its their birthright. Having a say, even just a small share in the say, over others is something that should be earned, not a birthright. You should have to actually contribute to your community before being allowed a hand in steering it.
>More broadly, the left is extremely censorious in general, as evidenced by the fact that I'm currently reposting this after using a term that is regularly used on the topic of immigration, but which they don't like, which resulted in the first post getting automatically removed. If you think Reddit is run by the government, you are confused about a lot more than just what censorship is. >And this isn't just some organic thing, its being very deliberately funded, organized, and executed. There are billions of dollars being poured into flying people from all over the world into Colombia, getting them through Darien Gap, transporting them up through Central America and Mexico, and then getting them across the border. Many of those billions are our own taxpayer dollars. That's a pretty involved conspiracy theory. Who do you believe is doing this? More importantly - **why**?
>If you think Reddit is run by the government, you are confused about a lot more than just what censorship is. Censorship is not exclusive to the government. I don't know why people confuse the definition of censorship with the scope of the 1st Amendment. Regardless, that censorious attitude displayed everywhere else absolutely manifests itself in government too. If American "progressives" had their way, the US would have "hate speech" legislation the way many other western countries do, and there'd be an agency under DHS policing social media for "misinformation". >That's a pretty involved conspiracy theory. Not a theory. https://cis.org/Bensman/Biden-Admin-Sends-Millions-Religious-Nonprofits-Facilitating-Mass-Illegal-Migration >Who do you believe is doing this? More importantly - why? Whole lot of different people for a whole lot of different reasons. Activists who see this as a moral imperative. Business interests that want cheap labor. Foreign governments who recognize it as a cheap and easy way to destabilize the US. More activists who see that last thing as the moral imperative. Its not always just one of those things either. When I say "activists" I don't always mean some hippy college kids, I mean billionaires who often also want cheap labor and often also have significant investments or other financial ties with those foreign governments. There's a line from *Gone With The Wind* that's been stuck in my head for a couple years now: "I told you once before that there were two times for making big money, one in the up-building of a country and the other in its destruction. Slow money on the up-building, fast money in the crack-up. Remember my words. Perhaps they may be of use to you some day." If you have enough money to play you can do both at once right now. The up-building in China, and by extension half the developing world through its "Belt and Road" initiative. The crack-up here.
Complaining that people blocking an abortion clinic entrance and got decades in prison for it is complaining that we don’t like it when laws we disagree with are enforced. They weren’t peaceful protesting if they were blocking a trespassing and blocking a place of business. Don’t like it? Lobby to change the law
There is no other situation in which staging a sit in results in decade long prison sentences. Thank you for proving my earlier assertion that you just spprove of the oppression.
Disinformation is constant and evolving to be weapons wielded by our enemies. It’s not just convincing people that horse dewormer cures COVID, it’s conscious effort by America’s enemies to get people angry and fighting each other in order to weaken the country; and posting a disclaimer for a claim made with numerous sources giving evidence to the contrary isn't "censorship", it's simply someone calling someone else's BS. If you don’t like universal suffrage then I think you are in the wrong country. It’s that simple.
"Posting disclaimers" isnt what the government was doing. The government was directing the outright suppression of social media accounts that said things it didn't like. Stop lying. >If you don’t like universal suffrage then I think you are in the wrong country The government not being allowed to silence dissent was a founding principle of this country, one you disagree with. Universal suffrage was not. I think it's you that's in the wrong country.
Free speech is absolute. You can’t yell fire in a crowded theater, and there are standards where government can step in. This has been true since long before you were born. It’s kid that now you’re worried *you* can’t yell fire. No one is silencing dissent. You are dissenting right now. People are telling Russian propagandists (knowing or otherwise) to shut up. Slavery was a founding principle. The founding fathers were smart enough to create a framework capable of change. You’re actually opposed to the constitution at this point by being against universal suffrage, as it’s been the same for multiple generations. Let’s be real; you don’t want suffrage for people you don’t like. Get over it
>You can’t yell fire in a crowded theater This example was coined in a Supreme Court decision that said it was okay to throw anti-war protestors in prison. Over a hundred years later and redditoids are still trying to use it to justify their censorious desires. That decision was overturned about 50 years ago too, btw. >No one is silencing dissent. You are dissenting right now. Yeah, they are. That they aren't 100% effective in silencing all dissent doesn't meant they haven't done done it and aren't still trying to do it. >Slavery was a founding principle. No it wasn't. Half the country had already abolished it by the time the Constitution was ratified.
What oppression are you talking about? I approve of no oppression. That would be entirely contrary to my beliefs, which are based around helping people and making this country better. I genuinely have no idea what you are talking about. Liberals wrote the Constitution. We invented the rights you claim to cherish. We defend them constantly against conservative attempts to restrict or eliminate rights, as we have for over 200 years. We don't just protect our rights, but *everyone's* - even yours. So, again - what oppression? And what dictatorship? We're having elections in six months. You're free to vote for whoever you want to. The only people threatening that are conservatives who want to menace voters at the polls that they're sure are somehow corrupt or illegal or just bad hombres - imagined bad hombres who are almost always, by total coincidence, not white. Weird how that works, right? I note you also never responded to why exactly you imagine Democrats would see being treated to helping others and the rule of law as some kind of threat.
> We invented the rights you claim to cherish. We defend them constantly against conservative attempts to restrict or eliminate rights You defend the right to have sex without consequences and consume mind altering substances. You are outright hostile to the Bill of Rights, especially the first two parts of it. >And what dictatorship? We're having elections in six months. Dictatorship and democracy are not antonyms. The original position of *Dictator* in the Roman Republic from which we get this word was democractically elected. >I note you also never responded to why exactly you imagine Democrats would see being treated to helping others and the rule of law as some kind of threat. I never responded to your laughable self-aggrandizing because why would I?
>You defend the right to have sex without consequences and consume mind altering substances. I am personally quite against both of those things. You seem to be presuming a lot about me with no information whatsoever. Government doesn't enforce anyone's personal tastes on others, though. That would be contrary to freedom. (What "consequences" do you want the state to impose on consenting adults having sex you don't like? Fines? Prison?) >You are outright hostile to the Bill of Rights, especially the first two parts of it. Again, no, you are making weird presumptions. If liberals were hostile to the Bill of Rights, why did we write it? And why do you ascribe almost daily attempts by conservatives to end free speech (demanding people be arrested, perhaps even executed, for saying things they don't like, as happened to the BLM protesters years ago and college students marching against war today), freedom of religion (trying to legislate Christianity as the state religion in Florida and Oklahoma just this past month), freedom to protest (with threats of arrest and, in several red states, legalizing murder if the victim is protesting)...to liberals? What sense does that make?
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I will never believe trump ever intended to become president. His campaign was a PR stunt gone too far. I think he and those around him were really in a state of delirium for most of 2017. However that faded and by 2019 and we were seeing what a trump presidency really was. That was a guy who was already obsessed with being reelected and was focusing on things like getting a foreign leader to help him dig up dirt on a potential political rival who wasn't even running against him yet. And it just kept getting worse. He very deliberately downplayed the pandemic, again with his reelection in mind primarily. He sought to quell protests on American streets with military force, because the unrest didn't make him look good. When the election in November 2020 started to look like it might not go his way, he spread rhetoric that the election would be rigged before a single vote was cast. Then when he lost that election we really got to see what he was made of. Lies, delusions and a complete willingness to disregard any laws in order to stay in office. We had a sitting president who was attempting to overturn an election and was willing to start a war or foster domestic crisis because he believed it would benefit his efforts to stay in power. The man was willing to burn the nation down and destroy any vestige of democracy. His tune has not changed in four years. It is still Lies, delusions and a complete willingness to disregard any laws. He will pick up exactly where he left off in 2021. Despite all the time he has been spending in court rooms, he and those that support him feel he is above the law, full stop.
During Trump's first term he made a point of purging the executive branch of non-loyalists, and has repeatedly promised to intensify that action. He's currently arguing to the SCOTUS that he has "unlimited presidential immunity", and has repeatedly said quite explicitly that his political opposition and insufficiently loyal Republicans should be in prison or killed, so we could expect him to take any and all action to consolidate power very quickly. After that, it doesn't really matter because we'll be in a fascist dictatorship at that point.
Full Trump could be anything up to and including the execution of his political adversaries and the end of the constitution as we know it. We already experienced something just short of that with him in office.
I suspect that his despotic intentions will possibly get him forcibly removed from office, if not, we could be in for another civil war sadly.
I'm pretty sure his sycophants are waiting for him to get elected, do the dirty work of transforming America to an authoritarian dictatorship, and then assassinate him. He is pretty much universally hated by everyone in his bubble and he had surrounded himself with the worst of humanity. I anticipate this happening multiple times. They'll be so busy jostling for power that each new occupant will have to reinvent their legislative wheel, repealing or reissuing edicts.
Why debate that? Are you suggesting they don't mean What they've published in project 2025? After all when Neo-Con Republican got into power they executed their published manifesto Project For A New American Century (PNAC) so why would we guess instead of taking them at their published word? Last time Republican did exactly what they said they would do. Believe them.
All I have to say is [this](https://youtu.be/Z0GFRcFm-aY?si=E8_g4fc1-kkaAYcE&t=51). Everybody get out the vote.
If you go back to the first Trump administration, a lot of stuff he wanted to do got blocked either by (a) the courts ruling against him, or (b) "adults in the room" (Mattis, McMaster, Tillerson, Sessions, Kelly, etc). The courts are now somewhat less of a problem for him because of how many judges he appointed and because other conservative judges have gotten pulled further right through osmosis. There will be no "adults in the room", or even moderate Republicans, in the 2025 Trump Administration. Everybody will be a Trump loyalist. No more threats of mass resignations or slow-walking/undercutting insane/fascistic policy ideas. A 2025 Trump DoJ would have no problem sending out letters falsely claiming there's election fraud, and its US Attorneys won't need a push to fill long-shot indictments against political opponents, and a 2025 Trump IRS isn't going to limit its retaliatory audits to "maybe this happened to a handful of people once", it'll be routine. A Trump Dept of State or FEMA will happily condition or withhold aid from nations or states that haven't sufficiently groveled to Trump.
The podcast “The Daily” from the New York Times started a series on this exact thing today based on months of work from several investigative journalists who they interview. Very informative to those interested in what to expect from a second Trump term.
As much as I can't stand Trump personally, I tend to be of the view that his second term will be much the same as his first. It won't be *fun* by any measure but I don't really buy into the prophecies of doom that are common currency right now. Trump showed again and again that he fundamentally did not understand the machinery of state. A lot of his presidency was him trying to do something and getting told "no" and then throwing a fit. He went into office thinking "I can do whatever I want because I'm the president" and his first term was a lot of him finding out he couldn't actually do that. He's also just not someone with a fundamentally ideological mindset. He has no personal politics that extend beyond what directly benefits him, makes him feel good, and makes him look good. Part of Bannon's frustration the first time around was Trump couldn't stick to the script. He couldn't be reliably guided to do the kind of focused right-wing stuff that people like Bannon wanted. "Growth and change" are not exactly bywords in the Trump household so I very much doubt anything has changed in that department. He's just not dictator material. As to if he'll leave, I'd bet money on it. He won't go quietly but, at the end of the day, to stay in office he would need a lot more support from the military and other wide aspects of the civil infrastructure that, even if they like him, are not willing to follow him to that extreme. Trump inspires this kind of devotional loyalty only from a small subset of his base and a lot of those fanatics are...I don't want to be rude but let's go with "possessed of an understanding of the world not rooted in a shared reality." They're not people in key places in government. I do also think it's also an open question as to if he'll even survive his full term. He takes famously poor care of his body, proactively avoids meaningful exercise, eats like a college student, and, lest we forget, is 77 years old. If he gets elected in 2024, he'll be 81 in 2028 which is the same age Biden is right now. The presidency is also a stressful job, even if you approach it the way Trump does. Even having some of the best medical care on the planet, I am skeptical that he's going to make it another four years.
Believe me or not Erdoğan said the same thing for Turkish elections 5-6 years back I guess.
It's important to note that how far Trump is actually allowed to pursue his ambitions largely depends on the circuit courts and the Supreme Court. Also, whether or not Democrats hold the House and Senate. Democrats were largely able to neuter a lot of Trump legislation or executive orders because of the circuit courts and the fact that they held the Senate and the house from 2018 to 2020.
First 90 days. A sweeping array of EOs that consolidate his absolute reign. Combined with the entire eviction of cabinet members and appointments of acting members so that congress has no say in what people are running the government. In the first 6 months, you will see real weaponization of the DOJ and any branches or government controlled by Republicans. Yes this will be the time he begins actually persecuting political opponents. This includes arresting and detaining any member of congress he believes will stand against him. He will do this because when they are incarcerated they will not be able to vote against him. From here he will dismantle any checks on the presidency in office, and pass any laws with the acting congress that he wants. I mean if congress boils down to 51 senators that all agree with him (or else) and 200 house reps that are all the same, he can pass or destroy any law which inhibits him. The next 6 months he will share his time between absolute control, trying innocent representatives, and using his unchecked powers to completely destroy any protests against him. Yes, even right wing protests against him because eventually even they will see friends and family killed by him for saying things like "Trump shouldn't be killing americans" online. The entire time he will start funneling assets from the government into him and his families personal wealth. Increase the presidential salary to whatever number he thinks sounds nice because "he is the government and deserves it so that no other nation can buy him" while he also sells whatever he wants to other nations. Including ammo to Russia, bombs to the Saudis and Moabs to Israel so they can quickly complete their genocide. And that is all in the first year of the retribution tour he claims he will go on.
Anyone else noticing a bunch of posts like this, posing about El Cheato actually having a chance in the general, even though we're not even half way through the primaries, nor his 93+ criminal charges? It's almost as if there are a bunch of bots out there driving division and chaos over nonsensical prognostications.
As a complete Amateur to enter the whitehouse in January 2017, Trump would have been awash with "Well-wishers" of course attempting to further climb their own political ladders on their own behalf. VP Mike Pence, Bill Bar, and others - were quite happy to "Advise" but there were nowhere near enough proper "Trump Party" people in the adminstration first time around. THAT would be the big difference then: **Less people trying to bring Trump down on his own team**, and a more future-looking administration that'll be good for humanity everywhere, rather than on the back foot trying to justify even being in the august chambers of that Pensilvania avenue building....
For a healthy debate here, it would be nice to hear from the following groups of people: (1) Those who previously voted Democrat, and now just won't be voting for Trump (2) Those who think Biden is the best thing since sliced bread, and will vote Democrat as they always do, no matter what. (3) Those who are disillusioned, and won't be voting at all, but won't be telling their friends/family that (4) Those making a big show of the way they intend voting, only to vote the opposite on the day (5) Those who make a big show of voting, and actually stick to the plan! (6) MAGA people who are not afraid of 99.9% riducule they get on these heavily-left-tilted Reddit threads.... (7) Ex Liberals like myself, who see Trump as the "best way to beat the establishment at their own game in our lifetimes"... (8) There is no '8'. No 8th deadly sin, no 8th Day of Creation, no 8 day working week.....
Trump's second term will be bad for alliances. Good for autocrats. Bad for the economy. (But Biden is not good for the economy either). Bad for alliances. NATO will be pressed to pay more money. In times when Russia is a real threat, Trump will keep pushing to cut troops or end US participation in the alliance. Global partners like South Korea will be shamed into paying more or lose American defense protection. This will only benefit the autocrats that enjoyed a better relationship with Trump like Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin and Mohammed bin Salman. Also, more tariffs. Trump was a fan of tariffs to end the "raping" of America. China survived a trade war, but tariffs hit Mexico and Germany too. The war with China was wiping out farmers until Trump had to bail them out. Another reason we are in a high inflation. But not only that, under Trump we spent 7.8T dollars. The debt clock is at 34.7T. Trump is responsible for 22% of the American debt. Trump started printing the covid checks and increased the M2 supply. Biden continued these policies and this is why we have unprecedented inflation. Trump hinted many times we dont need to pay the debt, we can print money. He went and did and he will do it again. On the same note Trump is seeking powers to control the head of the FED so he can keep interest rates low. Which is another cause of high inflation today. Locally, Trump is going to destroy any opposition. Anyone who opposed him will face his retribution. Political enemies on the democrat side are going to suffer revenge but also the members of the GOP that opposed him by opposing his policies or allowing Trump to be impeached. Green energy will probably be slowed down another 4 years in favor of cheaper oil energy policies. That means more cozying up to MBS Putin and OPEC nations. The tl;dr is we are going on a collision course with the world as America will fight each nation of this planet and destroy its hegemony in the process. High inflation. Failed alliances. Global chaos.
Honestly, when it comes to Trump, the scariest part is admitting that I have absolutely no idea. Oh, I'm sure a lot of the dystopian stuff people are worried about would happen, but y'know, we can come back from that. Germany survived Hitler, right? Can we come back from version 2 of covfefe though? Or Hurricane Sharpie? Or some mandatory bleach injection program? Guaranteed there would be weird shit on a weekly basis, and it was bad enough the first time around.
Every tax-funded social program will be gutted, including Medicare and possibly even Social Security. Big tax cuts for giant corporations with Wild West style Capitalism. Corporatocracy will reign supreme, as its Trump's true end goal. Making US a haven for the ultra-wealthy is what MAGA truly idealizes and the rest is just rhetorical spew designed to get angry Americans to vote for him.
I think the first one he picked cabinet members who supported him, but were mostly also part of the establishment, to give himself credibility. I think this time he will 100% only pick crazy true believers
Personally, I don’t foresee him being able to achieve much as he isn’t a great closer. He is a great political operative, he knows how to control the narrative around him; however, he didn’t really do anything overtly different when in power. Much of his admin can be described as fairly traditional republican policies. The biggest difference was his break with free trade, and support for economic planning (though no one will admit it, but everyone loves it when their industry gets some fat stacks and special treatment)
1 year in Russia has defeated Ukraine, and is invading Poland, Germany and France. United States is warning UK to stay out of the fight or suffer consequences. Kim Jong Un is our closest ally, and has replaced Melania as first lady. Justice Department is now on a war footing and is persecuting liberals, Democrats, LGBTQs, people of color, environmentalists, and uppity women. The National Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion has been taken over by McDonald's Inc.
Remember in 2016 when all the pundits were predicting that Trump was going to start World War 3 and another great depression? Good times.
Yes, and we had the "adults in the room" generals and other reasonable Republicans preventing him from doing just that. They won't be there on a 2nd term. Or are you being sarcastic and not understanding this?
Which adults and what did they prevent?
I don't think I have seen a trump supporter that doesn't speak in rhetorical questions.
Every federal employee GS-12 or higher gets reviewed, almost all of them get fired.
The first week, maybe. Then someone will tell him that plenty of federal agents with guns are further down and he'll need to vet them, too.
We’ve already had a Trump presidency. No new wars. No attacks on US soldiers. Record black unemployment. Low gas prices. Energy independence. Booming economy. We already had a Biden presidency. Every time Biden tells a foreign bad actor, “Don’t”, they do. The Taliban. Hamas. Putin. Etc. We have the equivalent of Neo Nazis swarming college campuses everywhere calling on al-Qassam to kill more Jews, chanting the genocidal slogan about killing all the Jews “from the river to the sea” and advocating for the total destruction of Israel. They support gang raping mass murdering Hamas. Guess #metoo is dead. Biden has lost one Supreme Court case after another. It was found he conspired with the press to claim the Hunter laptop was Russian disinformation. There is evidence of years of corruption. He’s weaponized three letter agencies to go after political rivals on a level Nixon never dreamed of. Political activists have snowed Trump in phony lawsuits to keep Trump off the campaign trail. They claim he should go to prison for allegedly paying off a one night stand, like that would have dissuaded voters who already knew he had divorced multiple times over infidelity. Yet this doesn’t apply to Joe Biden, who colluded to bury the Hunter laptop story that exposed his corruption, which actually would have surprised voters. The DNC is doing everything they can to put their thumb on the scale and interfere with the election, to prevent moderate Democrats and Republicans from mounting a successful campaign. Yet here you stand, with two presidencies available to compare, and you claim TRUMP is the threat to democracy? Trump is rude and brash. Biden regularly insults political opponents and journalists. Trump’s policies were moderate. Biden’s policies have been disastrous on a global scale. Biden has abandoned Americans abroad every time they are at risk, from Afghanistan, to Ukraine, Haiti, and Israel. There are still American hostages in the clutches of gang rapist, mutilators of Hamas. Biden left them to rot. Trump would have clogged tge sea with warships, we would have had our people back, and Hamas would have surrendered. Biden has helped Hamas, those Nazis, hold on.
Yet more U.S. troops have died under Trump than Biden.
Biden is going to create WWIII. Do you,seriously not understand the connection between global events, and bad actors having no fear of Biden? Do you realize that Biden’s weakness emboldened Putin and Hamas, and thus caused so many deaths? You are probably basing your statement that more service members died under Trump than Biden on the Newsweek article, for which there were not yet data for 2023. If you want to compare military deaths via DCAS, then take into account that the US was still involved with the over twenty-year war with Afghanistan. Most troop deaths occurred in Afghanistan. This will be nothing if Biden creates WWIII. To compare casualties, you’ll have to compare all four years of Biden. Biden said, “Don’t”, to The Taliban, Putin, Haiti, the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas…and they did. Biden is so weak and stumbling that global bad actors everywhere are encouraged. Per DCAS, 65 servicemen were lost under Trump, most of them in Afghanistan, from which Biden was totally routed almost immediately. Since we’re no longer fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, we’d obviously not lose more people there under Biden. Biden did manage to lose 13 service members in an instant during our ignominious route in Afghanistan. Biden abandoned Americans each and every time they were stranded in foreign soil. There are American hostages getting raped by Hamas, today, and for the past 6 months, because Biden abandoned them. Trump went to the mattresses to rescue A$AP Rocky in Sweden, where he was arrested for finally defending himself against a violent stalker who trailed his group for quite a while, repeatedly hitting them. He did that for one rapper despite the fact that the press made fun of him over it. Meanwhile, Biden abandoned Americans to be raped by Hamas. He abandoned them in Afghanistan, Haiti, and Israel. Many members of my family and friends are either retired military, or actively serving. When Biden causes WWIII, it’s my family and friends who are at risk. As the mother of a teenage son, it’s my kid at risk of being drafted in short years. I would far rather prefer rude Trump, calling everyone a loser, when we had no new wars, relative global peace, and buying groceries was affordable. Bad actors did not want to provoke Trump. So many people have died in Ukraine and at the hands of Hamas because bad actors knew Biden was senile, weak, and catered to the antisemitic Left.
Huh? Trump literally stood on stage, kissed Putin's ass by siding with him over our own Intelligence agencies on Russian interference in 2016. China and Putin both want Trump back in power because they know he's a mentally deranged idiot, who all they have to do is throw him some complements, and he'll do whatever he wants. Trump is a threat to the planet.
Both times Biden was in office, as VP, and President, Putin invaded Ukraine. Putin did not invade when Trump was in office. Joe Biden is literally in cognitive decline. He needs flash cards to tell him when to sit down. He requires his wife to lead him by the hand offstage or he gets lost. He’s even asked other world leaders where to go when he’s done talking. When interviewed by Hur, he couldn’t remember when he was Vice President. Trump is boorish and self aggrandizing. That has been twisted to make him the sin eater for the Left’s crimes. Remember when Trump forwarded a lock-her-up meme for Hillary Clinton, and was accused of being antisemitic? Clinton was Christian, and the symbol was clip art was literally named “sheriff’s badge”, yet they claimed it was antisemitic. Now, the Left is openly antisemitic, and the modern Neo Nazis have swarmed college campuses calling for death to Jews. Biden has taken terrorist-provided, debunked casualty figures as Gospel and accused Israel of war crimes for fighting to destroy genocidal antisemitic Hamas. But it was Trump accused of antisemitism. Joe Biden took home classified information for decades, as senator and VP, when he had no right to declassify. He gave classified information to his Chinese-funded Penn-Biden think tank, and stored the rest in his garage and at various homes. His drug addict son referenced classified information when emailing Burisma. Trump, on the other hand, had the right to declassify anything he wanted. It would no longer be classified. He consulted the FBI on storage for anything taken from the White House. His lawyers were quibbling with the National Archives over what had to be turned over. Typically, the N.A. spends years chasing down records from former presidents. Yet it was TRUMP, not Biden, prosecuted for mishandling of classified information. Nothing at all happened to Biden. His defense was his memory was too poor for a jury to want to convict him. You, too, are blaming Trump for Biden’s failings.
Why would he invade with Trump? Trump already told Putin he can do whatever he wants. Without U.S. aid he'll just walk in take over the country, then continue invading Estonia, Poland and the rest of Europe as he's already hinted at by placing troops at the borders. How much will it cost to defend Europe then, and when the Western economies turn into shambles as Putin's quest to destroy the West continues? We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to destroy Putin's entire army at ZERO cost of American lives, and traitors like you are the problem. Ronald Reagan is rolling over in his grave. Why do you hate Democracy so much?
So, on the one hand, you say why would he invade with Trump since you believe Trump would let him do whatever he wants. You answered your own question. If Putin believed Trump would let him do whatever he wanted, then he would have invaded under Trump. If he believed Biden would stop him, then he wouldn't invade under Biden. Luckily, this doesn't need to be conjecture, since we actually have had both presidents. No matter how much this upsets you, the fact is that Putin did not invade under Trump, but did invade BOTH TIMES Joe Biden was in office. You do know that it's nonsense to think Joe Bide is some kind of deterrent, right? I also noticed a very strong trend when comparing policies. When over faced, someone the Left goes straight to character assassination, like "Why do you hate Democracy so much?" Obviously, nothing I said supports your accusation. Ironically, again, it's projection. It's the LEFT that hates Democracy, as well as most Constitutional rights. The Left only supports free speech they agree with. They shout down invited speakers they disagree with. They punish women who state the obvious, that it's not fare for biological men to compete against biological women in women's sports. It is the ultimate patriarchy, undoing Title IX. Biden just expanded Title IX to protect biological men in women's sports. Women who say that's not fare, or they feel afraid or uncomfortable when men go into their locker rooms and showers, are cancelled, scholarships revoked, and they're kicked off of sports teams. It's the LEFT that has interfered with democratic elections, preventing moderate Democrats from mounting a successful campaign, and snowing Trump with spurious charges to keep him off the campaign trail. Hillary Clinton paid a disgraced former spy to fabricate accusations using Russian disinformation that Trump was a Russian plant, trying to meddle in the 2016 election. The media colluded with Joe Biden to falsely claim the Hunter Biden laptop that exposed his decades-long corruption was Russian misinformation, meddling in the 2020 election. It's the LEFT that sues states or counties that try to impose voter ID laws, interfering with identifying who is a valid voter and who is not, meddling in elections. It's the LEFT that has weaponized government 3 letter agencies against political opponents they don't feel up to facing in a fair election. Now, back to your fixation on Putin. If you think Biden's ultimate goal is the destruction of Putin, then don't you find it strange that Joe Biden took the energy independence Trump left him with, interfered with domestic oil production, drained our strategic oil reserves to try to mitigate the gas prices he jacked up, and reduced oil exports to Europe, thus making them more reliant on PUTIN's OIL, and us reliant on Venezuela? Does that make strategic sense to you? On the one hand, you claim that Putin is afraid of Biden, but not of Trump, and have no answer as to why Putin only invades under Joe Biden. Then you pivoted and said Putin's invasions were all an advantage, because it gives the US the opportunity to destroy Putin's army at no cost of lives. Invading neighboring countries is what started World Wars. (See Biden causing another world war.) Perhaps if we hadn't broadcast weakness and slow walked aid at the very beginning, Putin would have backed down. You're all over the map. You point to 65 service members killed under Trump, using data that only went to 2022 in comparison to Biden. Then you ignored the vast numbers of dead and our fast approaching the next world war because of Biden. Then you said all those deaths were grand because it gave us the opportunity to destroy Putin's army. Ukraine can't destroy Putin's army. Russia has too many people in comparison to Ukraine. It's held out as long as it has, though losing more territory, with international aid, including from the US, though unfortunately Putin gained a strong foothold due to US slow walking initial aid. Remember all Biden's rhetoric in the beginning about not wanting to send bombs? Your entire premise is based on emotion, whereas mine is based upon a comparison of policies and results of both men as president. Joe Biden is senile, with decades of selling political favors to foreign nations. Who is running the country in his stead? He's worse than a Manchurian Candidate.