The Trump Presidency, Season 2

[Jopsy Pendragon]

"I tried - Watching - Trumps add... ress to con... gress, (some good people there, some bad, some good), and, I'll tell ya, after five (that's a lot!) min utes, I could... I could not keep watch watching. The pain pain-full way he red reads, (I'm good at reading I know the best words!), the telepho, telepronto, teleprompter is drive driving me cray zee."

Hooked on pha nicks POTUS edit, edishion.

I'll go find a transcript later. His voice is like nails on chalkboard to me.

 

[Monica Dream]

From MAGA to monarchy: How tech billionaires are engineering American autocracy - Salon.com

Common sense for the Trump age

www.salon.com

 

[Noodles]

Stupid, misleading headline.

It's NOT a reversal, it's just a change of tactics. Instead of the OPM firing employees, which was patently illegal and without any authority, they will put that responsibility back on the individual departments and agencies.

Yeah its so awful. It needs to be something like "Trump Bitch slapped by Court because He Dis Something Illegal."

But this headline, the Idiot Cult will just be all, "Oh Trump, he's so smart and beautiful and look how generous he is giving those nice people their jobs back!"

 

[Noodles]

"I tried - Watching - Trumps add... ress to con... gress, (some good people there, some bad, some good), and, I'll tell ya, after five (that's a lot!) min utes, I could... I could not keep watch watching. The pain pain-full way he red reads, (I'm good at reading I know the best words!), the telepho, telepronto, teleprompter is drive driving me cray zee."

Hooked on pha nicks POTUS edit, edishion.

I'll go find a transcript later. His voice is like nails on chalkboard to me.

For a second I thought you were making a "Person, Man, Woman, Camera, TV," joke with that "Telephone, Trlepronto, Teleprompter" bit.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Thinking about a revolution

Some things are changing rather fundamentally and the way we think should perhaps change too

emptycity.substack.com

The United States’ current deliberate alienation (and worse) of its long-term allies is a similarly fundamental - and, no doubt, similarly consequential - shift.

And although one should hesitate before saying anything as pointed as describing president Trump and Vice-President as Russian assets, their conduct is indistinguishable from them being so.

Everything they are doing appears to increase Russian power and to limit United States power.

There seems to be no other explanatory model that explains as much.

 

[Free]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

This is an incredibly entertaining read…MAGA are pissed off about the Epstein stunt today.

AG Bondi blames deep state for nothingburger Epstein files

Conspiracies are fun. Reality notsomuch.

www.publicnotice.co

it’s wholly unsurprising that in 2007, the US attorney for the southern district of Florida, Alexander Acosta, would allow Epstein to plead to prostitution charges and serve a few months in an unlocked jail cell with liberal “work release.” Like everyone else, Acosta thought the girls were prostitutes — despite being too young to legally consent to sex with an adult — who got what they bargained for.

It never occurred to him that this decision would later derail his career and force him to resign his position as Trump’s secretary of labor. Nor did it occur to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute Epstein between 2011 and 2018 when she was the chief law enforcement official in the state. As Donald Trump once put it, “When you’re a star, they let you do it.”

But now Bondi is in between a rock and hard place. She fed the jackals who bray that the “Epstein client list” will bring down the pedo cabal covered up by the evil deep state. She can’t go back to them now and admit that the episode is part of a sad era in which girls were treated like expendable commodities to be rented by the hour — particularly when her boss has promised to return to that past, restoring America to a halcyon time before Marxist liberals supposedly ruined it with DEI.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Thinking about a revolution

Some things are changing rather fundamentally and the way we think should perhaps change too

emptycity.substack.com

Also

On 8 November, 2024, the day after he won his second term, Putin’s propagandists treated the re-elected US president with a contempt that serious American journalists had declared impossible.

The Russians acted as if Trump were Putin’s plaything.

So relentless are the concessions to Putin that you risk missing the big picture.

Trump is giving Moscow everything it has wanted since Truman and Attlee founded Nato in 1949 to contain Stalin’s Soviet Union.

The first aim of the Russian empire in its Soviet and Putinist guises has been to break the alliance between Europe and the United States. Donald Trump has now given Putin what no Russian leader thought possible – and without asking for a single concession in return.

Why is it so hard to believe that Trump is a Russian asset?

Kompromat and the betrayal of the West

nickcohen.substack.com

Evernote Link

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Also

Why is it so hard to believe that Trump is a Russian asset?

Kompromat and the betrayal of the West

nickcohen.substack.com

Evernote Link

Yeah.... the fact that Russia has benefited from his actions so much more than anyone else shows he's either unfathomably incompetent, or Putin has a claw in him. The fact we elected then REELECTED a Russian asset just sounds too crazy and fantastic to be believed, no matter how strong the evidence.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Yeah.... the fact that Russia has benefited from his actions so much more than anyone else shows he's either unfathomably incompetent, or Putin has a claw in him. The fact we elected then REELECTED a Russian asset just sounds too crazy and fantastic to be believed, no matter how strong the evidence.

Is it any more crazy or fantastic, though, than the idea that the US would elect (by no matter how narrow a margin) Donald Trump for a second term?

 

[Beebo Brink]

And although one should hesitate before saying anything as pointed as describing President Trump and Vice-President as Russian assets...

Oh ffs. We've been "hesitating" to say that for altogether too long.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

Stupid, misleading headline.

Since January, I've found it even harder than ever to find accurate headlines.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Oh ffs. We've been "hesitating" to say that for altogether too long.

David Allen Green is an English solicitor and former government contracts lawyer. That makes him express himself extremely cautiously, and he's very aware of his reputation for caution and precision. When he says something like that, it means he thinks we can all be pretty damn sure of it.

I've always suspected that, whatever other kompromat the Russians may have on Trump, it's a racing certainty they've got plenty of evidence of his taking undeclared payments from Russian intelligence, and of his laundering money for Russian oligarchs and mob leaders, going back decades. Water sports with Russian hookers , whether true or not, is just a distraction.

It's unprovable either way and serves to divert attention from his far more boring financial dealings. If and when they want to pull the plug on him, it'll be with documentary evidence of bank transfers, not with videos of him and hookers.

 

[Khamon]

This is true for Musk as well. He's destroyed US agencies that had records pertinent to investigations that he was laundering money, through fake charity efforts that USAID was tracking to see if they needed to apply for additional funding in those areas for example, thinking that he's secure. But Putin knows. And Putin documents.

 

[Isabeau]

Malhuret is from the centre-right in France.
(Video at the link, longer snippet of speech but in french.)

Adam Schwarz (@adamjschwarz.bsky.social)

French Senator Claude Malhuret: "Washington has become Nero’s court, with an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers and a jester high on ketamine... We were at war with a dictator, we are now at war with a dictator backed by a traitor."

bsky.app

 

[Essence Lumin]

David Allen Green is an English solicitor

It is only because of Kate Bush I know what a solicitor is across the pond, from There Goes a Tenner.

Apart from a photograph
They'll get nothing from me
Not until they let me see my solicitor

Huh? So I looked it up.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Trump administration plans to cut 80,000 employees from Veterans Affairs, according to internal memo

The Department of Veterans Affairs is planning an “aggressive” reorganization that includes cutting 80,000 jobs from the sprawling agency.

apnews.com

 

[Free]

Our reality is hanging by a fucking thread.

Supreme Court rejects Trump bid to withhold $2bn in foreign aid

The order is the latest in a legal battle challenging the Trump administration's efforts to cut foreign aid.

www.bbc.com

The US Supreme Court has rejected a request by the Trump administration to withhold nearly $2bn (£1.6bn) in payments to foreign aid organisations for work they have already performed for the government.

On Wednesday, the top court upheld a lower court ruling ordering the administration to release the funds to contractors and grant recipients of the US Agency for International Development and the State Department.

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has cut numerous aid programmes and placed most USAID staff on leave or dismissed them.

On Wednesday, the top court in a narrow 5-4 decision declined to halt the lower court order that required the Trump administration to release the payment.

 

[Isabeau]

I mean good, but WTF 5-4

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Bluesky

bsky.app

As several replies point out, this attempts to extend executive power as far as, if not further than, did Charles I when he precipitated the English Civil War by trying to abrogate the power of taxation from the legislature.