The Trump Presidency, Season 2

[Innula Zenovka]

Trump scares Europe more than Hitler’s grandchildren

Stopping the resistible rise of Donny T

nickcohen.substack.com

The disdain for democracy at home is matched by an admiration for dictatorship abroad, as Trump’s sycophantic eagerness to please Vladimir Putin shows.

German conservative leaders have their red lines, as we have seen. No such firewall exists in the US, however.

With a few honourable exceptions in the “Never-Trump” movement, the entire Republican party establishment capitulated before Donald Trump. Their firewall turned into a fire sale where they sold off their principles at bargain-basement prices.

The great question for historians of our time will be why more people did not try harder to stop Trump and Putin when they still had the chance. Why did US conservatives capitulate? Why were US progressives so terrible at mounting an effective opposition?

 

[Cindy Claveau]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The fog of lawlessness: what we can see – and what we cannot see – in the current confusions in the United States

25th February 2025 * “l’histoire […] [est] après tout qu’un ramas de tracasseries qu’on fait aux morts.” [“History […] [is] an annoying trick we play upon the dead.”] ~ Voltaire (…

davidallengreen.com

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Evernote Link

Edward Luce (@edwardluce.bsky.social)

Here's another gift link on.ft.com/41hFkrM [contains quote post or other embedded content]

bsky.app

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Here it is in motion.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Emmanuel Macron visited Trump in the Oval Office. Trump has been spitting his usual lies. The thing is that Trump does not allow fact checkers during such events.

So Emmanuel Macron did the fact checks personally, and spoke in plain old English so that even the dumbest MAGAist could spot the obvious lies.

The French journalists also pulled a stunt: since AP is now forbidden in the White House due to the refusal of calling the Golf of Mexico the other name, they collected money and smuggled a French AP journalist into the White House with them, who also asked the first question.

 

[Isabeau]

Financial Times (@financialtimes.com)

FT Exclusive: Peter Navarro, one of the US president’s closest advisers, is pushing for the US to remove Canada from the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network — which also includes the UK, Australia and New Zealand. https://www.ft.com/content/2dfa3c11-64a7-49f6-83df-939b8d1cfb8e

bsky.app

Who amongst the other three would prefer keeping United States of Russia over Canada?

 

[Free]

An Obituary for the FBI

America's dream of a politically independent bureau is officially dead

www.doomsdayscenario.co

 

[Free]

Let's hope they're as clever at getting these things passed and acted on as they are at naming them.

House Democrat planning ‘Bad DOGE Act’

Rep. Dave Min (D-Calif.) is planning to introduce a bill titled “Bad DOGE Act” in the House against the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), arguing that it is engaged in an “abuse of power.”

Speaking on MSNBC’s “Way Too Early” Monday morning, Min said his bill aims to question “the abuses of power, the illegalities, the blatant attacks on our Constitution that Elon Musk and DOGE are engaged in right now.”

The executive order from the White House that established DOGE grants it the authority to undertake a data modernization project. Min argued that it has exceeded its mandate by conducting federal firings and trying to shut down entire agencies without congressional approval.

 

[Noodles]

> Democrat Bill

Yeah, that's not going anywhere. GOP.is.in control, they have learned how to pull out all the stops for permenant power, they don't give a shit about anyone else, including MAGA.

 

[Free]

It seems not all of the team is on board with dismantling Democracy.

Federal technology staffers resign rather than help Musk and DOGE

Twenty-one civil service employees have resigned from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, saying they're refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”

apnews.com

More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”

“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”

The employees also warned that many of those enlisted by Musk to help him slash the size of the federal government under President Donald Trump’s administration were political ideologues who did not have the necessary skills or experience for the task ahead of them.

 

[Isabeau]

Nancy Levine Stearns (@nancylevinestearns.bsky.social)

💥 UPDATE: Apple shareholders voted today by a margin of about 98-2 percent to uphold diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) — @droste.bsky.social reports. Costco shareholders voted by the same margin on an identical anti-DEI proposal brought by the same shareholder activist group, NCPPR, last month

bsky.app

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

This bizarre and tacky vision of the future for the Gaza strip has been posted by Trump on Instagram. It includes Trump balloons, a Trump statue and the Trump Gaza Hotel, bearded male belly dancers with female breasts (wasn't Trump anti woke?) and lots of Elon Musk, also Trump chilling with Bibi at a beach. In short Gaza strip should become a generic carbon copy clone of Dubai we could just label Trumpland.

It really makes me wonder if this was done by Trump&his team, or somebody hacked the account seriously. Youtube because easier to click, instagram to proof it is on an official account of Trump.

President Donald J. Trump on Instagram

672K likes, 69K comments - realdonaldtrump on February 25, 2025

www.instagram.com

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

This bizarre and tacky vision of the future for the Gaza strip has been posted by Trump on Instagram. It includes Trump balloons, a Trump statue and the Trump Gaza Hotel, bearded male belly dancers with female breasts (wasn't Trump anti woke?) and lots of Elon Musk, also Trump chilling with Bibi at a beach. In short Gaza strip should become a generic carbon copy clone of Dubai we could just label Trumpland.

It really makes me wonder if this was done by Trump&his team, or somebody hacked the account seriously. Youtube because easier to click, instagram to proof it is on an official account of Trump.

President Donald J. Trump on Instagram

672K likes, 69K comments - realdonaldtrump on February 25, 2025

www.instagram.com

Poe's law. Can't tell the difference between a parody of Trumpism and the real thing. I bet Trump posted this not seeing it was making fun of him. ...or the person who made it didn't even get how absurd it was.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Old and busted: the green card.

New hotness: the US gold card, only $5mn. each, a bargain and giving fast track access to green card privileges, possible American citizenship and more. Sale will start in about 2 weeks.

According to its creator Donald Dumbsky estimated sales are in the millions, so if only 1 million would be sold the revenue is 5 trillion US$. What a great way to balance the federal budget!

He would also consider selling it to Russian oligarchs, quote: "Yeah, possibly. I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people. "

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/25/politics/us-gold-card-foreigners-trump/index.html

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Financial Times (@financialtimes.com)

The US is now the enemy of the west | Opinion https://www.ft.com/content/b46e2e24-ca71-4269-a7ca-3344e6215ae3

bsky.app

Evernote Link

I'd never thought to see a headline like that in the Financial Times (which, as a journalist friend once explained to me, should be considered the most authoritative British newspaper, since it's read by the people who actually own the country and who therefore have a huge interest in receiving accurate news reports).

These past two weeks then have made two things clear. The first is that the US has decided to abandon the role in the world it assumed during the second world war. With Trump back in the White House, it has decided instead to become just another great power, indifferent to anything but its short-term interests, especially its material interests. This leaves the causes it upheld in limbo, including the rights of small countries and democracy itself. This also fits with what is happening inside the US, where the state created by the New Deal and the law-governed society created by the constitution are both in danger of destruction.

In response, Europe will either rise to the occasion or disintegrate. Europeans will need to create far stronger co-operation embedded in a robust framework of liberal and democratic norms. If they do not, they will be picked to pieces by the world’s great powers. They must start by saving Ukraine from Putin’s malevolence.

Also, quite a striking chart

 

[Cindy Claveau]

I was wondering what happened behind the scenes when the election was over and MSNBC went all spastic. The new owner is a MAGA or reasonable facssimile.

What Do Joy Reid, Katie Phang, Jonathan Capehart, Ayman Mohyeldin, José Díaz-Balart and Alex Wagner Have In Common?

Way back last November, MSNBC (and also CNBC) became no longer affiliated with NBC in any way. The channels’ overlord, Comcast, spun them off into a new company called SpinCo, headed by a guy named Mark Lazarus, who said he wanted to make the channel more appealing to Republicans while keeping its appeal to progressives. Which is kind of like saying you want to enjoy the flavor of orange juice, and simultaneously the minty freshness of toothpaste. Seems pretty obvious that Joe Buildthewall is not going to start watching MSNBC no matter what, even if the hosts were replaced with topless fire-jugglers.

Also probably-not-coincidentally, the week of November 18 when the SpinCo spinoff was announced happened to be the very same week Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough crawled down to Mar-a-Lago to try to find “common ground” with the guy they used to freely call fascist, unmoored, mentally unstable, liar, and an insurrectionist, and who had tweet-called them “low I.Q. Crazy Mika” with a “bleeding facelift,” and “Psycho Joe,” respectively. If you were wondering what the backstory was with their 180.

 

[Isabeau]

In case it still wasn’t clear to anyone


Jeff Bezos overhauls Washington Post opinion section, says it will focus on 'personal liberties and free markets'

Wasn’t sure which part to quote.

“We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” he wrote. “We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The Guardian (@theguardian.com)

Musk’s cost-cutting drive quietly deletes billions in claimed savings from website https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/26/musk-doge-savings-website?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=bluesky&CMP=bsky_gu

bsky.app

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

It really makes me wonder if this was done by Trump&his team, or somebody hacked the account seriously. Youtube because easier to click, instagram to proof it is on an official account of Trump.

Is it tacky, crass, ostentatious, and covered in gold? Then, yeah, it was Trump.