It feels like every pick of this administration is just someone who has a motivation for corruption.
replies(6):
No; the problem with Trump is the specific types of laws he broke. He broke laws around honesty, fair dealing, obstruction of justice, and, of course, the integrity of elections and our democratic process. He is, very plainly, opposed to democracy and the rule of law, preferring to replace it with cronyism and nepotism.
That's why he's bad for the country, not simply "because he's a convicted criminal."
"In-groups who are protected by the law, but not bound by it, alongside out-groups who are bound by the law, but not protected by it."
He may have been convicted, but he faced no consequences. He was not bound by the law, so not only did his convictions and investigations not deter him, the lack of consequences emboldened him.
Convicted criminal + blatant lies = disregard for society, disregard for people, disregard for rules/norms/laws. It all adds up to who he is and what he values and represents.
NOBODY should be surprised at this administration's disregard for society. You should be actually surprised if he does anything good/lawful.
During Trump 1, there were some adults in the room -- congress seemed to be less complacent, the cabinet appointees had more independent (and more pragmatic) judgement, and the scale of purges across the government felt like nothing compared to what's currently going on.
There's none of that now. Congress is complacent and arguably complicit in an ongoing constitutional crisis, the admin is just breaking a number of laws without even putting in the work to have plausible deniability, and with every passing day the corruption's growing to levels that many of us who've been born and raised in the modern economic west just haven't seen in a few generations.
I'm sorry, I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say here.
Are you saying it's normal or acceptable to have your expectations be that a "convicted criminal" is automatically a bad person?
If so, then particularly given the large and very-well-documented racial biases in arrest, prosecution, and conviction for crimes here in the US, perhaps you should consider adjusting those expectations?
If not, then please actually say what you mean clearly.
That you think we should not be "cancelling" anti-vaxxers and your implication of we should listen to anti-vaxxers (because they "dare to think differently", as if this is about their dyed hair color or something) says a lot about you. And that you use "canceling" in quotes because you can't point to a real thing "liberals" did.
> As a result they kicked off from public discourse huge groups of electorate, polarizing society.
OHHHHH, the liberals are the one who polarized society? Not Trump from the start saying these people are my enemies? Your right-wing bias is showing
> There were topics that you just could not discussed, twitter (pre Musk) was looking to it, same Facebook or Youtube (still, good luck having a monetized film with the forbidden word like Gaza Strip), similarly mainstream media.
And there are now topics that can't be discussed on Twitter (post-Musk) like the word "cisgender". And Facebook and Youtube had TONS of anti-vax misinformation, anti-abortion groups, and general right-wing algorithmic boosting. That maybe "some" topics aren't allowed then but a ton of others still are is you trying to pick one spoon out of a pile of knives and saying its full of spoons.
What other topics could not be discussed? The value of white supremacy? How homosexuality is a choice? That the Jews run the world? Be specific please.
Does it make it ok because you try to equivocate?
Is it so hard to just say "corruption is bad all the time and we should not tolerate it from anyone" - it is not a controversial position at all.
If there are anyone on the (currently) winning side in this Congress who aren't a bunch of greedy, self-serving boot lickers they better step up soon. I can't imagine someone like John McCain would remain silent in this environment. Best case scenario: history will forget most of these assholes; if not, it will not be kind.
After he won I started reading more about who these people were and what they were planning to do and sold all my stocks after the inauguration, there was no way it was going to be a normal presidency, even compared to the last one.
I expected a repeat of his first term. Which honestly was quite uneventful. This is not.
Even when the candidate speaks of people not having to vote again in the future, if they just vote for him this last time?
I mean, I'm not even in the US and probably missed a lot of stuff that happened during the election. But no one around here is surprised about what's happening now, surely most of the US population was that aware too?
I believe what the parent comment is trying to say is: someone who committed crimes in the past has evinced a lack of respect for the law, and is therefore more likely to commit crimes in the future than someone with a history of law-abiding.
"Bad person" is a value judgement, which is besides the point.
They were quite candid with their intent. Aside from him casually/flippantly brushing off Project 2025 during his campaign (when it was clear that his campaign was deeply connected to it), it was tremendously obvious to anybody paying attention that things would be much different during round two, and in a more aggressive manner.
You had your head in the sand. If you voted for him, this is your fault. Damn you.
Downvotes be damned.
Anyone that expects this will only last four years hasn't been paying attention on history books.
Collins, McConnell, and Murkowski have been voting against the administration for more traditional Republican policy, sometimes.[3]
Nine Republican Reps blocked H.Res 282[4] because it would have killed bipartisan H.Res 164[5] and that caused the House Republican leaders to cancel votes for the whole week.
It's not all lockstep boot licking. Just mostly.
[1] https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/202550
[2] https://xcancel.com/RepThomasMassie/status/18995193281369747...
[3] https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1...
[4] https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/202587
[5] https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-resolutio...
What's the point of phrasing this as though you're off to the gallows for your beliefs? It's an internet forum.
Case in point:
https://sandersinstitute.org/event/bernie-sanders-arrest-at-...
Convicted of resisting arrest.
I figure the people who want the US to withdraw from the global stage have been working on Trump ever since 1987 when he paid for that full page pro-tariff ad in the New York Times. Power hungry maniacs are a dime a dozen, but ones that are also hell bent on committing economic suicide are a scarce resource and need to be nurtured with care if you want them to actually do it.
It's what I'd do if the US was bullying me around. It's a well tested play (refined during the US interventions in South America in the 70's and 80's).
Keeping it impersonal (and only understanding/analyzing "how" the elections were won/lost), I think that "Trump didn't win". Instead "Democrats lost", took a risky bet and to quote the meme "the risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math". [0]
[0]: https://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/963/073/e2...
EDIT: I think it was Bill Burr that said on his (latest) SNL monologue "you would think that after the assassination attempt they would just give it to him" (because yes, that was a critical security failure, and so badly designed (the "security" of the event") that one could easily be tricked into thinking that it was purposeful)(a proper Hanlon's razor)
Now, they've taken that cue and just turned the dial to an 11. There's currently very little resistance, and in the places where there is, they've just flat out ignored it. Of course the snowball is going to pick up speed
He spent the majority of his term being blocked from doing completely problematic stuff by his staff who he increasingly fired or resigned.
He finally got the end of his term with many more yes-men and started doing things like impounding funds for Ukraine.
The first thing he does at the start of term 2 is more impoundment. Like sure, Day 1 Year 1 Trump doesn't bleed into Day 1 year 5 but Day 364 Year 4 bleeds into Day 1 Year 5 pretty well.
The examples are all just so disgustingly blatant now, like Eric Adams in NYC, or the founder of Nikola paying millions in bribes (err, sorry, "campaign donations") to get a pardon.
Our republic may survive the current administration (not sure, probably give it less than a 50% chance these days), but the facade of our righteousness is gone forever. Trump won the election fair and square, and both the electoral college and the popular vote. People knew exactly what they were getting, and they wanted this.
The Fed chairman is going to make a speech in 10 min, and the US President is currently live on his social platform accusing him of playing Politics. You will then achieve the same level of governance as Türkiye.
My read is the election was a rejection of globalist neoliberal capitalism and Trump was the closest choice to that. If the democrats had run someone who was even willing to lie about making changes for regular people they would have won easily.
I still can't believe we had an "alternative facts" moment and that somehow that pales compared to the rest.
So all those that didn't vote, obviously didn't hate what Trump proposed enough to vote against him.
once the world was willing to forgive, but twice is a pattern that can't be ignored
the 97% of the rest of the world now needs to de-risk itself from the US and its businesses
longer term, the self-inflicted loss of economic, military and cultural domination will hopefully result in the US electorate realising that "US exceptionalism" was only ever a set of lucky circumstances, which are unlikely to be repeated
at which point the forced humility should result in a return to long-term stability
the worse outcome is the US attempts to hang onto its dying empire with warfare, and it appears we're seeing the groundwork being laid for this already (canada, greenland, panama, ...)
I think most will not have the will once they steel the cost. I know this forum loves to prognosticate but the right thing is what one must do to survive.
This doesn't even count the global pandemic.
Setting all that aside, everything he's done is something he campaigned on.
if you're a government it's quite easy to "encourage" it to occur
example: "US cloud provider revenue levy", starting at 0%, increasing 1% each month until 40%
the aim being to add a large risk premium to all purchases of US cloud services, encouraging companies to switch to domestic suppliers
the EU is already publicly talking about retaliating in this manner
They have an agenda that is based on errors, ignorance, and being manipulated by parties that are adversaries to America and democracy. Soon this will be irrecoverable within this generation, at least.
People have the mistaken belief that things are bad right now. They can get drastically worse.
Those positions are diametrically opposed.
The 3rd Amendment exists for a reason. The police of colonial times _were_ the Redcoats. They _were_ soldiers working for the king. Modern police serve the same function and have basically the same powers. They are not peace officers - they are soldiers, and I hope one day the people living in this country wake up and say "no more".
Edit: once your regime has achieved a certain level of internal cohesiveness and stability, you can begin the next step, which is to turn lower-level state actors against the population. You can do this partly by ordering them to perpetrate violence and outrage. This has a numerous benefits: first, it makes the state actors themselves afraid of the population, partly because they fear accountability, which makes them more inclined to violence and more protective of the regime; second, it stokes anger against them, which validates all the fears I listed under the first point; third, it distracts from the less shocking crimes of the regime (mere theft as opposed to bodily harm or murder -- but eventually that too!); fourth, as the regime gradually ratchets up the violence, the population becomes increasingly fearful and willing to collaborate and thus decreasingly capable of organizing and resisting.
Edit 2: I've noticed in my two or three decades of intellectual and political awareness that the right frequently seems to benefit from this kind of compounding effect and stacked benefit. No matter what happens, good or bad, it seems to redound to their benefit. I can't think of any cases where I've felt that the left enjoyed similar structural or inherent political advantages.
I think the rest of the world is just dealing with the reality that the US is now an unreliable partner and cannot be trusted. In the face of that, yes, I agree that most of them won't dump the US immediately with big fanfare, but they will start to decouple in the background where it matters - making trade deals that exclude the US, building real incentives for the intelligentsia to stay away from the US (though the US is already doing a fairly decent job of that themselves), taking more responsibility for their own defense, etc.
I mean, look what happened to Vietnam and Israel. They capitulated in the face of the tariff threat and removed their tariffs on US imports, and they still got hit with some of the highest (or, it Vietnam's case, the highest) tariff rates. Europe has already realized (and this is a good thing and a long time coming IMO) that they need to rebuild their defense capacity because they can't depend on the US.
So no, I don't believe it will happen immediately, but I also believe that over the longer term (5-10-15 years) that decoupling from the US is inevitable solely because not doing that will be more difficult for other countries.
He didn't have "his" people in place to help him the first time because much of the establishment at the time was still Romney/Bush/McCain/McConnell types and they kept a firm hand on the reigns of power and often undercut his ability to do things because they felt like he was an aberration.
This time around, there is no "primary opposition" (intraparty conflict) in any meaningful way. He wants, they do, it is truly Trump's party.
This is a long time in the making. Florida is Ground Zero, and if you care to look back in time to the late 1990s, there is much to find.
Epstein was cooking. Offshore Playboys were living large and public lives and making plans for the future.
St. Petersburg, FL in particular holds so many secrets.
> "Everything here smacks of a bargain: dismissal of the Indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions," he said.
> His decision to drop the case permanently, Judge Ho said, ensured that the administration could not use the indictment as "leverage" over Adams or the city of New York.
[1] "...The relevant legislation holds that a member of the Federal Reserve board may be “removed for cause by the president”. But in this context, courts have interpreted “for cause” to refer to misconduct or impropriety. The president cannot remove the members of the board purely for policy or political reasons.
However, Trump could attempt to demote Powell from chair to an ordinary member of the Federal Reserve, and put another candidate in charge. Here, there is less of a legal precedent. Previous presidents have always assumed they did not have the power to do this..."
[1] https://theconversation.com/trump-has-threatened-to-fire-the...
I don't personally buy into this framing, but it sure seems like millions of people do since points at results
A psychological device of "blutkit" (blood cement). For example; young Nazi SS officers were recruited via a ritual attrocity like participation in a massacre. After that "we're all in this together" sealed loyalty through a mix of guilt and fear.
The race is on for the Trump administration to elicit the most unforgivable and insane actions in order to sinter those participants into a "death pact".
EDIT: spotted recently posted [0] (Also of course C.R Browning's Ordinary Men [1]) both underline the point that you don't need to recruit intrinsically corrupted people - you can make them,
Trump will try to replace Powell extra-constitutionally and at this point, I suspect he may succeed. It will be close to the lights going out at that point.
I live in NYC, and I have triple-checked to make sure that I will be able to vote in the primary to try and avoid him getting the democrat nomination, and this is the first time in my life that I've genuinely considered voting Republican if he does manage to get the nomination.
This was among the greatest threats to democratic self governance in well over a century.
I'd say that Trump 2.0 is more eventful than Trump 1.0, but I absolutely would not call Trump 1.0 uneventful.
But there's only one POTUS. There are multiple people out there who could do a decent job of being POTUS. Many of them are not convicted felons. We wouldn't lose much if we filtered out the entire convicted-felon category from this particular job.
This rationale doesn't apply to any other person in a similar state in Florida, it was just for Trump.
I could put on a mask and stay at home for COVID, but I can't do much about shunning our allies, disrupting the world economy, disappearing people, electing a cabinet of highly unqualifed individuals, putting the SCOTUS in pocket, etc. I can advocate, stay informed, support my community, etc., but this feels on another level than the first term and that's what I meant by my comment.
What you're describing is the first step, where the wealthy attempt to install a ruler friendly to their interests, someone they think they can control and reason with. Joke's on them -- and on everybody else, too, unfortunately.
Edit: this led me to realize that the advanced age of Fake Tan President is a saving grace. He simply won't live long enough to implement the kind of system Putin has been able to solidify over the past twenty or thirty years. And I'm not aware of anybody in the GOP who can replace him in the cult of personality that a stable dictatorship generally requires.
The US has historically held the rule of law as an important idea. Social security has largely eliminated deep elderly poverty.
"Trump won't be present today for the dignified transfer of four U.S. soldiers at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware.Instead, he'll be attending a LIV Golf dinner reception in Florida. The White House and the Defense Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on which administration officials might be in attendance.
The soldiers died during a training exercise in Lithuania. They were honored during a dignified departure ceremony from Lithuania, with Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda and other dignitaries paying tribute.
Trump isn't attending dignified transfer of soldiers who died in Lithuania, continued The 3rd Infantry Division identified the soldiers as Sgt. Jose Duenez Jr., 25, of Joliet, Illinois; Sgt. Edvin F. Franco, 25, of Glendale, California; Pfc. Dante D. Taitano, 21, of Dededo, Guam; and Staff Sgt. Troy S. Knutson-Collins, 28, of Battle Creek, Michigan."
He gets the police to arrest this opposition candidate, let's say for marijuana possession with the intent to sell (a felony), and with procedural chicanery ensures that the court trying the case is run by a Trump-appointed judge.
The opposition candidate is convicted of this charge.
Under your suggestion, they would then become ineligible to be elected.
It gets even worse if the corrupt President has a compliant Congress (which it seemed like he did for a little while, but that's less sure now). If he can ram through a new law making "criticizing the sitting President" a felony, then basically anyone who would oppose him and his regime would clearly be guilty.
In general, the sitting government decides what is a crime and what is not. If you make a law that says that those convicted of crimes cannot run for public office—either "any public office" or "only this specific public office"—then the sitting government, if it is seeking to act in its own interests rather than those of the people, has a perverse incentive to preferentially criminalize things that those who disagree with them are more likely to do, and to encourage (or coerce) bias in policing and trials to ensure conviction.
A headline from the times during that same year: TRUMP GIVES A VAGUE HINT OF CANDIDACY (https://archive.is/xF2pW)
As much as I dislike advertising in general, and specifically the opinions in that ad, I think that whether the New York Times was willing to publish it is not the important detail here.
This was at a time when the US and China were working together to keep the USSR in check while at the same time the US was sending weapons to Taiwan so that they could be used to keep China in check. So imagine being China in 1991. The USSR has just fallen, so they're no longer a threat, but US-sold weapons are still being pointed at you from Taiwan. You'd want the US to leave you alone and stop arming your enemies. And here's this candidate who wants the US to step off the world stage and focus instead on what it can build alone at home.
It seems pretty likely that they'd be in favor of getting Trump elected. Whether they ultimately did is an open question, but if so then it's not shame on the New York Times, but shame on us for not better protecting ourselves against foreign interference.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:42jq5uvg6p2shi5gqifor22e/po...
Barely mentions the stock market crash.
I wasn’t looking forward to his inauguration, but I did expect him to not care about the rest of the world for another 4 years.
