Second ('Third') Trump Presidency Thread
- Thread starter thethe
- Start date
That’s a worthwhile criticism, but the media/grifter/commentator bubble isn’t making that. They’re instead inserting whichever narrative they can find that turns a civil conversation into a chess match that their preferred side has clearly won. I find that particularly bad for society, and it’s what is frustrating me.
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
Mamdani has to make nice with Hochul too if he is to achieve anything. He's also working on his relationship with her. He started doing this even before being elected. This is a normal thang in politics.
There was a dsyfunctional relationship between Cuomo and de Blasio. It wasn't a good thang.
There was a dsyfunctional relationship between Cuomo and de Blasio. It wasn't a good thang.
57Brave
Well-known member
Peter Coyote
13h
Peter Coyote
SILENCE IS ASSENT
When King Henry II said ( or was paraphrased saying) “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” he was referring to Thomas Beckett, the man he appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. The King expected his loyalty and was angered by Beckett’s fealty to the Catholic Church. When he spoke he stated an “intention,” (not an order) fairly certain that one of his loyal followers would handle the matter for him.
When President Trump accused six military Congress-persons of sedition for an advertisement reminding soldiers that they must not follow illegal orders—a simple statement of the law—made in the context of the President’s deploying the military into American Cities, and the execution of at least 80 Venezualans without a shred of evidence that they were a threat to the Nation— the President reiterated several times that the six should be hanged or put to death. Like Henry II, Trump stated an intention, with some certainty based on past events, that a feckless mouth-breather, perhaps one he’d pardoned for assaulting police at the Nation’s capitol on January 6th, would at the very least, insure the six receive, as they have, the vilest and most terrifying of death threats, if not actual execution.
When Mike Johnson,Lindsay Graham and Karoline Leavett deliberately misstate the simple message of six veterans’s PSA— You can refuse illegal orders— by omitting the world “illegal” to suggest they are calling for mutiny, they are supporting and condoning the President’s behavior and are consequently responsible for any violence levied against their colleagues.
One can hear the threats on Jason Crow’s answering machine posted online, and calling for the deaths of his wife and children. I find it difficult to believe that the Department of Homeland Security ( current $411.3 billion dollar budget) could not trace these calls and hold the perpetrators responsible. If they can’t do something that elemental, what are we paying them for. If they can, and don’t then we have to accept Trump’s Department of Justice has no intention of including Democrats (who he reviles as “the lunatic left”) sheltered by any policies, laws, or protections of the Constitution. His intentions are solely for loyal Republican.
So, to be clear, we are witnessing half the population of the country being stripped of protections under the law and that behavior is being supported by the entire Republican Congressional delegation. At least 600 government employees across various agencies and states were fired, suspended, placed under investigation, or otherwise punished for remarks about Charlie Kirk following his assassination in September 2025 when MAGA vigilantes scoured the internet and reported their remarks. The current silence of the entire Republican delegation to the violent threats to their colleagues, faithfully mimic the President’s diminished concern for the Nation’s health.
Should Democrats retake Congress and the White House, the first order of business should be the legal impeachment of those who abandoned or violated their oaths of office. Let’s see how silent they remain then.
13h
Peter Coyote
SILENCE IS ASSENT
When King Henry II said ( or was paraphrased saying) “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” he was referring to Thomas Beckett, the man he appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. The King expected his loyalty and was angered by Beckett’s fealty to the Catholic Church. When he spoke he stated an “intention,” (not an order) fairly certain that one of his loyal followers would handle the matter for him.
When President Trump accused six military Congress-persons of sedition for an advertisement reminding soldiers that they must not follow illegal orders—a simple statement of the law—made in the context of the President’s deploying the military into American Cities, and the execution of at least 80 Venezualans without a shred of evidence that they were a threat to the Nation— the President reiterated several times that the six should be hanged or put to death. Like Henry II, Trump stated an intention, with some certainty based on past events, that a feckless mouth-breather, perhaps one he’d pardoned for assaulting police at the Nation’s capitol on January 6th, would at the very least, insure the six receive, as they have, the vilest and most terrifying of death threats, if not actual execution.
When Mike Johnson,Lindsay Graham and Karoline Leavett deliberately misstate the simple message of six veterans’s PSA— You can refuse illegal orders— by omitting the world “illegal” to suggest they are calling for mutiny, they are supporting and condoning the President’s behavior and are consequently responsible for any violence levied against their colleagues.
One can hear the threats on Jason Crow’s answering machine posted online, and calling for the deaths of his wife and children. I find it difficult to believe that the Department of Homeland Security ( current $411.3 billion dollar budget) could not trace these calls and hold the perpetrators responsible. If they can’t do something that elemental, what are we paying them for. If they can, and don’t then we have to accept Trump’s Department of Justice has no intention of including Democrats (who he reviles as “the lunatic left”) sheltered by any policies, laws, or protections of the Constitution. His intentions are solely for loyal Republican.
So, to be clear, we are witnessing half the population of the country being stripped of protections under the law and that behavior is being supported by the entire Republican Congressional delegation. At least 600 government employees across various agencies and states were fired, suspended, placed under investigation, or otherwise punished for remarks about Charlie Kirk following his assassination in September 2025 when MAGA vigilantes scoured the internet and reported their remarks. The current silence of the entire Republican delegation to the violent threats to their colleagues, faithfully mimic the President’s diminished concern for the Nation’s health.
Should Democrats retake Congress and the White House, the first order of business should be the legal impeachment of those who abandoned or violated their oaths of office. Let’s see how silent they remain then.
57Brave
Well-known member
Lucian K. Truscott IV
@lucianktruscottiv
The raging trash fire that is the so-called “peace plan” for Ukraine is all the evidence you need that Donald Trump has not only lost the narrative, he’s lost the last clue he ever had about the location of anything even resembling reality.
Trump has been bragging that he will end the war in Ukraine and get the Nobel Peace Prize seemingly since he was in diapers. Ooops. Come to think of it, he is in diapers. He keeps claiming that he has ended seven wars, at least three of which weren’t even wars to begin with. Ukraine, he realizes, is The Big One. We don’t know how often he’s been on the blower with Pal Putin, but a good guess would be weekly. One of their big ideas was to meet in Alaska to discuss the war that Putin could end if he wanted to with a single phone call. That idea fell apart after an entirely embarrassing display of obsequiosity that included greeting a man facing indictment by the Court International Justice with a red carpet that ran between two F-35 fighter jets parked on the tarmac of Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson.
Putin fired rockets and armed drones at the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv the night he and Trump flew back to their respective lairs in Moscow and Washington D.C., so that plan, which never was a plan, utterly fell apart.
It was strange to me at the time, and it remains strange today, that the mainstream media and politicians, especially Republicans, had so little to say about the fact that Putin was ordering up a war crime – purposefully killing civilians – at the same time he was holding “peace” talks with Trump. It’s as if what passes for a political class in this country has completely lost the ability to discern what is criminal and immoral in the actions of a dictator like Vladimir Putin. The “analysis,” such as it was, after the Alaska talks focused on the fact that the talks ended earlier than expected and what that meant. Well, it meant the talks had failed spectacularly, which should have been apparent when there was no press conference held by Trump and Putin afterwards. Instead, Trump stood mute as Putin launched into one of his Khrushchev-style lectures on the “root causes” of his war against Ukraine and a gratuitous and deadly boring history lesson about Russia’s former ownership of Alaska.
Trump’s remarks were uncharacteristically brief. He claimed “great progress” had been made in the talks. Incredibly, as he stood next to the man who was responsible, all by himself, for the war, Trump noted that “five, six, seven thousand people a week” are being killed while claiming that Putin wanted to see an end to the killing as much as he did.
All of which is to say, we should have seen this disaster coming. This week’s “peace plan” turned out to be the same Russian demands that Putin has been making all along – recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson and Ukraine’s acceptance of being turned into a half-country with a smaller military, no rights to treaties or defense agreements with other countries, a defenestrated defense establishment with no right to own or use offensive missiles…one fantasy demand after another.
That was Russia’s stance way back in August in Alaska, and it hasn’t changed a whit since then.
So, what did Trump do? Well, he took Putin’s Alaska “peace plan,” put his stamp of approval on it, and announced that Ukraine had until this Thursday to agree to it.
But that was before Rubio told a gaggle of Senators that the Russians had written the plan, then he said the plan was ours, and then Trump started to back off and claim that it was just a suggested plan and the deadline wasn’t final.
Yet another example of what you get when you mix utter incompetence with a total lack of any morals at all.
Trump is spazzing. He’s lost his grip on his own party. House and Senate Republicans both stiffed him and passed the bill forcing the release of the Epstein files. Marjorie Taylor Greene is using this moment to put herself in the spotlight as a potential future candidate for something or another by standing up to Trump and trashing him in a YouTube video announcing her resignation from the House. Greene has been something of a joke to Democrats, but she’s got the political instincts of a scorpion, and now she has shown herself willing to sting any creature that gets in her way, including Trump.
The Epstein scandal, combined with Trump’s complete capitulation to Putin, shows his weakness and proves he’s the lamest of lame ducks, even with three years left to serve in the now-desecrated White House. He’s incompetent on foreign affairs, he’s crashing the economy with his tariffs, inflation is sitting out there in the weeds just waiting to pop up and bite him in his copious ass, he has allowed the Republicans to show themselves, once again, to have nothing whatsoever to say about health care and insurance other than the same old “free market” garbage that no one takes seriously, and his poll numbers are headed for the third basement below loser.
Best of all, Trump is looking at the midterm elections knowing Republicans are going to lose the House and might lose the Senate. If that happens, he’s going to face yet another Bill of Impeachment in the House and trial in the Senate. Trump hasn’t got enough gold leaf to paper over his ego if that happens.
Mamdani created a YouTube video of how to handle a blowhard in his meeting last week with Trump. If you stand up to him, Trump doesn’t know how to act. Gavin Newsom should be on a plane to New York to sit down with Mamdani to learn his secrets, including his magic with younger voters and Latinos.
Trump is weak. Strike now.
@lucianktruscottiv
The raging trash fire that is the so-called “peace plan” for Ukraine is all the evidence you need that Donald Trump has not only lost the narrative, he’s lost the last clue he ever had about the location of anything even resembling reality.
Trump has been bragging that he will end the war in Ukraine and get the Nobel Peace Prize seemingly since he was in diapers. Ooops. Come to think of it, he is in diapers. He keeps claiming that he has ended seven wars, at least three of which weren’t even wars to begin with. Ukraine, he realizes, is The Big One. We don’t know how often he’s been on the blower with Pal Putin, but a good guess would be weekly. One of their big ideas was to meet in Alaska to discuss the war that Putin could end if he wanted to with a single phone call. That idea fell apart after an entirely embarrassing display of obsequiosity that included greeting a man facing indictment by the Court International Justice with a red carpet that ran between two F-35 fighter jets parked on the tarmac of Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson.
Putin fired rockets and armed drones at the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv the night he and Trump flew back to their respective lairs in Moscow and Washington D.C., so that plan, which never was a plan, utterly fell apart.
It was strange to me at the time, and it remains strange today, that the mainstream media and politicians, especially Republicans, had so little to say about the fact that Putin was ordering up a war crime – purposefully killing civilians – at the same time he was holding “peace” talks with Trump. It’s as if what passes for a political class in this country has completely lost the ability to discern what is criminal and immoral in the actions of a dictator like Vladimir Putin. The “analysis,” such as it was, after the Alaska talks focused on the fact that the talks ended earlier than expected and what that meant. Well, it meant the talks had failed spectacularly, which should have been apparent when there was no press conference held by Trump and Putin afterwards. Instead, Trump stood mute as Putin launched into one of his Khrushchev-style lectures on the “root causes” of his war against Ukraine and a gratuitous and deadly boring history lesson about Russia’s former ownership of Alaska.
Trump’s remarks were uncharacteristically brief. He claimed “great progress” had been made in the talks. Incredibly, as he stood next to the man who was responsible, all by himself, for the war, Trump noted that “five, six, seven thousand people a week” are being killed while claiming that Putin wanted to see an end to the killing as much as he did.
All of which is to say, we should have seen this disaster coming. This week’s “peace plan” turned out to be the same Russian demands that Putin has been making all along – recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson and Ukraine’s acceptance of being turned into a half-country with a smaller military, no rights to treaties or defense agreements with other countries, a defenestrated defense establishment with no right to own or use offensive missiles…one fantasy demand after another.
That was Russia’s stance way back in August in Alaska, and it hasn’t changed a whit since then.
So, what did Trump do? Well, he took Putin’s Alaska “peace plan,” put his stamp of approval on it, and announced that Ukraine had until this Thursday to agree to it.
But that was before Rubio told a gaggle of Senators that the Russians had written the plan, then he said the plan was ours, and then Trump started to back off and claim that it was just a suggested plan and the deadline wasn’t final.
Yet another example of what you get when you mix utter incompetence with a total lack of any morals at all.
Trump is spazzing. He’s lost his grip on his own party. House and Senate Republicans both stiffed him and passed the bill forcing the release of the Epstein files. Marjorie Taylor Greene is using this moment to put herself in the spotlight as a potential future candidate for something or another by standing up to Trump and trashing him in a YouTube video announcing her resignation from the House. Greene has been something of a joke to Democrats, but she’s got the political instincts of a scorpion, and now she has shown herself willing to sting any creature that gets in her way, including Trump.
The Epstein scandal, combined with Trump’s complete capitulation to Putin, shows his weakness and proves he’s the lamest of lame ducks, even with three years left to serve in the now-desecrated White House. He’s incompetent on foreign affairs, he’s crashing the economy with his tariffs, inflation is sitting out there in the weeds just waiting to pop up and bite him in his copious ass, he has allowed the Republicans to show themselves, once again, to have nothing whatsoever to say about health care and insurance other than the same old “free market” garbage that no one takes seriously, and his poll numbers are headed for the third basement below loser.
Best of all, Trump is looking at the midterm elections knowing Republicans are going to lose the House and might lose the Senate. If that happens, he’s going to face yet another Bill of Impeachment in the House and trial in the Senate. Trump hasn’t got enough gold leaf to paper over his ego if that happens.
Mamdani created a YouTube video of how to handle a blowhard in his meeting last week with Trump. If you stand up to him, Trump doesn’t know how to act. Gavin Newsom should be on a plane to New York to sit down with Mamdani to learn his secrets, including his magic with younger voters and Latinos.
Trump is weak. Strike now.
I have some ideas on changes he can make to boost his chances.
acesfull86
Well-known member
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trump-needs-a-supply-side-solution-38e94f90?mod=opinion_lead_pos7
What can Mr. Trump do? He can start acting like a traditional, pro-growth Republican. Pivot to the party’s historic supply-side strength. Ditch the populist mumbo jumbo about tariffs, subsidies and redistribution. Stop trying to jawbone the Fed on interest rates. Americans don’t want welfare. They’ve never wanted it. They want to work and take care of their families. And they’re smart enough to know that having everything in their shopping carts say Made in the USA isn’t necessarily a good deal.
Voters—that is, adults—want a growing economy that keeps inflation at bay and creates opportunities for work and investment. That’s all they’ve ever wanted from Washington. Republicans across the country should focus on shrinking the government and promoting economic dynamism. Instead of trying to buy voters with mailbox money, let people keep more of their weekly paychecks.
What can Mr. Trump do? He can start acting like a traditional, pro-growth Republican. Pivot to the party’s historic supply-side strength. Ditch the populist mumbo jumbo about tariffs, subsidies and redistribution. Stop trying to jawbone the Fed on interest rates. Americans don’t want welfare. They’ve never wanted it. They want to work and take care of their families. And they’re smart enough to know that having everything in their shopping carts say Made in the USA isn’t necessarily a good deal.
Voters—that is, adults—want a growing economy that keeps inflation at bay and creates opportunities for work and investment. That’s all they’ve ever wanted from Washington. Republicans across the country should focus on shrinking the government and promoting economic dynamism. Instead of trying to buy voters with mailbox money, let people keep more of their weekly paychecks.
cajunrevenge
Well-known member
Well I guess that makes sense why Milo doesnt like him.
I found the Congressional Dems’ video about not obeying illegal orders to be a bit cringey and performative, but if their actual goal was to goad the Trump Administration into handling it in the dumbest possible way, they sure did succeed. They did not do anything seditious or illegal, and Hegseth is really showing his ass with how he’s responded.
zitothebrave
Connoisseur of Minors
It's weird that Hegseth threw "captain" in quotes. Kelly retired with the rank of captain and wasn't discharged in disgrace, etc. While he can't jump on a ship and be it's captain because of retiring, He still has the rank, and if his medals are on wrong whatever, what a horrible attempt to own someone by someone who's military service is being a reservist.
I suspect Hegseth is so stupid he thinks Captain in the Navy is a rank below his rank he achieved of Major, which is true in the army. But not the navy. They the highest rank below Admirals.
Hegseth is such a moron.
I could certainly be wrong about how all this plays to the median voter, but I don’t think being a dick to Kelly about his distinguished service record and threatening punishment for what is clearly free speech is likely to be broadly appealing.