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Trump Dictatorship and All Things Politics

Sardines said:
If there is one thing you can count on a Trump administration to do it is this:

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Or government overall…


View: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1905481564756087222?s=46&t=BMMZjW7vq0_zwnmLDjNTgQ
 
fishonjazz said:
Didn't the deportations already happen anyways?
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Some of them yes, because they just skirted the law, but the courts issued a restraining order, eh, that's not exactly right but I can't remember what it was called, anyway they basically said, no more starting now. And in the end my bet is they bring a chunk of them back that they already sent considering many were not part of the gang in any way and had zero criminal record. But they had tattoos and were brown, so you know, huge threat!!1!!
 

When Donald Trump won the election last November, I think those of us who are mercifully immune to the lure of the MAGA cult knew that this second term was going to be bad. If you were following the campaign closely (many people were not) you knew about Project 2025 and you knew that Trump was inexplicably attached at the hip to the weird multi-billionaire Elon Musk. You also knew that he was fixated on starting a tariff war with America's biggest trading partners and was irrevocably hostile to our long-standing allies around the world. But I don't think any of us could have predicted the exact confluence of atrocities being committed at warp speed from every direction. Shock and awe doesn't adequately describe it. It is a cataclysmic political earthquake.

The full list of outrages is too long to list here, and I assume that most informed readers know about most of them. But the general outline includes such abominations as masked government thugs abducting people off the street and disappearing them into a secret detention system, people being deported to a foreign gulag with no due process, curtailing cancer and Alzheimer's research for no reason, shutting down dozens of vital government services, threatening social security and health care for millions of vulnerable citizens, targeting veterans, destroying foreign aid in ways that will literally result in the deaths of millions of people, using the Department of Justice to wreak revenge on the president's enemies and much, much more. It is overwhelming, which is exactly how they planned it in Project 2025. The reality is much worse than the abstract planning document foretold.
 

As he sized up a U.S. plan to strike Houthi militants in Yemen in March, Vice President JD Vance didn’t think such an aggressive move was a good idea — at least not now. The vice president’s initial comment in the Signal chat that has gotten so much attention this week was that such a strike would be “a mistake.”

Among other things, he didn’t think the American public would understand why we were doing it and worried that it might cause oil prices to spike. In that message, he wrote:

"3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message. I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc"
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Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth responded by arguing that the strike wouldn’t even be about the militants the U.S. sought to kill. Instead, it was about signaling American power to the world.

The scandal has also provided us an extraordinary window into Trump’s inner circle’s thinking about foreign policy strategy.

What it reveals is a cavalier attitude toward new open-ended bombardment campaigns. And it underscores how farcical Trump’s pledge to be president of “peace” and focus narrowly on American interests has already turned out to be. Trump didn’t need to drop bombs on scores of sites across the poorest country in the Middle East now or with such intensity — and his whole team admitted it.

Vance was not wholly opposed to the strikes, but saw them as a deviation from a strict focus on American interests. In some ways, he seemed to upholding the strictest interpretation of “America First" principles in the chat. His thinking was why attack Houthi militants if doing so wasn’t that important for the U.S. economically, but could hurt U.S. consumers and politically hurt Trump?

Multiple principals in the chat point pushed Vance to adopt an expansive vision of U.S. national interests.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth argued, “This [is] not about the Houthis. I see it as two things: 1) Restoring Freedom of Navigation, a core national interest; and 2) Reestablish deterrence, which Biden cratered. But, we can easily pause.” And National Security Adviser Michael Waltz contended that “Whether it’s now or several weeks from now, it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes.”

In a later exchange Vance says he defers to the group but that he hates the idea of “bailing Europe out again.” Hegseth replies, “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this.”

In the discussion, Hegseth and Waltz represent a more traditional view of America as the world’s police officer. They’re saying this isn’t about defending the U.S. against the militants who are being targeted, and it isn’t about the U.S.’s own economic interests. Rather, it’s an intervention on behalf of U.S. allies and a preemptive signal to the U.S.’s nemesis in the region, Iran. It functions as a way “to send a message” about American geopolitical supremacy. It is the kind of argument that could easily be advanced by a Democratic liberal internationalist or a Republican neoconservative — both factions that some MAGA types have correctly lambasted as war hungry.

The Houthis announced a pause when Israel and Hamas struck a ceasefire deal. Now, in light of Israel’s decision to torpedo the ceasefire and impose a starvation blockade on the entire population of Gaza — with Trump's blessing — the Houthis had warned that they would resume missile attacks. But they hadn’t yet. Multiple Pentagon officials told Military.com that the Houthis last launched an attack in December. In other words, Trump approved a preemptive strike, not a protective one. The U.S. has been carrying out such attacks on a daily basis since March 15th, and it’s unclear when they’ll stop.
These attacks have serious consequences for the civilian population of Yemen. Yemeni officials say the strikes hit residential areas. Indeed, in the chat discussion in the aftermath of the strikes, Waltz appears to admit that the U.S. targeted civilian infrastructure. “The first target — their top missile guy — we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed,” Waltz wrote on Signal.

“Excellent,” Vance replied.

The Yemen Data Project, an independent nonprofit that monitors attacks in the country, reports that it “recorded 53 civilian casualties in 38 U.S.-led strikes from 15 to 21 March.” And according to Military.com, citing two defense officials, the Trump administration is striking a broader range of targets than President Joe Biden did and harbors “less reluctance to hold off striking targets based on the casualties that may result.” All this is all happening in a war-torn, destitute country where most of the population is food insecure.

America First, as we’re coming to see in Trump’s second term, is not fundamentally about reducing conflict in the world; nor does it reflect a serious commitment to restraint. Since news of the Signal chat broke, Democrats and liberal commentators have slammed Trump’s national security team for discussing military plans on a chat that included a journalist. They’ve laughed at the misspelling of “principals” in the group chat, and derided those officials’ hokey use of prayer emojis in anticipation of the strikes. Granted, it was an idiotic and concerning lapse in security protocol. But an important part of the story isn’t just the lapse itself, but what it teaches us about how Trump’s inner circle sees the United States’ role in the world. That this seems to have largely gone unnoticed speaks to how numb Americans have become to dropping bombs in the Middle East.
 

Inflation climbed in February as consumers braced for the potential onslaught of higher prices from President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on U.S. trading partners.

The Commerce Department reported Friday that prices rose at a higher-than-expected annual rate of 2.8 percent last month, excluding food and energy items, a signal that prices could spike even further in the coming months.

That doesn’t augur well for price-sensitive businesses and consumers — or for Trump’s big plans for the U.S. economy. While administration officials like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent argue that tariff-related inflation will be transitory, most of Trump’s planned levies haven’t yet taken effect. Wall Street analysts are increasingly warning that the U.S. could fall into a period of at least some stagflation — a politically toxic combination of low growth and higher inflation that the country hasn't seen in more than four decades.

“Today’s data has the general pattern of what many observers will be looking for in the months ahead as new tariffs and other policy changes begin to bite: weaker-than-expected spending and stronger-than-expected inflation,” David Alcaly, the lead macroeconomic strategist at Lazard Asset Management, said in a research note. “Much remains uncertain, and it’s premature to be drawing judgments about impacts, but seeing this pattern in hard data and not just surveys could feed apprehension."

Barely two months after Inauguration Day, voters are sounding alarms over Trump’s lack of progress on cost-of-living issues. A Gallup poll released Thursday had him 18 points underwater on his handling of the economy. Future tariff-related sticker shocks are unlikely to improve those margins.

“It hurts corporate profits, it drives up inflation,” Wells Fargo Senior Economist Tim Quinlan said. “Neither of these are a winning strategy from a campaign standpoint or a political standpoint.”
 
fishonjazz said:

Inflation climbed in February as consumers braced for the potential onslaught of higher prices from President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on U.S. trading partners.

The Commerce Department reported Friday that prices rose at a higher-than-expected annual rate of 2.8 percent last month, excluding food and energy items, a signal that prices could spike even further in the coming months.

That doesn’t augur well for price-sensitive businesses and consumers — or for Trump’s big plans for the U.S. economy. While administration officials like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent argue that tariff-related inflation will be transitory, most of Trump’s planned levies haven’t yet taken effect. Wall Street analysts are increasingly warning that the U.S. could fall into a period of at least some stagflation — a politically toxic combination of low growth and higher inflation that the country hasn't seen in more than four decades.

“Today’s data has the general pattern of what many observers will be looking for in the months ahead as new tariffs and other policy changes begin to bite: weaker-than-expected spending and stronger-than-expected inflation,” David Alcaly, the lead macroeconomic strategist at Lazard Asset Management, said in a research note. “Much remains uncertain, and it’s premature to be drawing judgments about impacts, but seeing this pattern in hard data and not just surveys could feed apprehension."

Barely two months after Inauguration Day, voters are sounding alarms over Trump’s lack of progress on cost-of-living issues. A Gallup poll released Thursday had him 18 points underwater on his handling of the economy. Future tariff-related sticker shocks are unlikely to improve those margins.

“It hurts corporate profits, it drives up inflation,” Wells Fargo Senior Economist Tim Quinlan said. “Neither of these are a winning strategy from a campaign standpoint or a political standpoint.”
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Not only has Donald not helped the economy, he’s acted to exacerbate problems. Where are our “principled non maga” repubs to criticize Trump? After all, I was told they were concerned over economic issues.
 
trump just gets weirder and weirder.....


Donald Trump crowned himself the “fertilization president” as he gave a speech at a Women’s History Month event.

The US president participated in a special event to celebrate the achievements of women, held at the White House on Wednesday (26 March).

Addressing the audience, Trump said: “We’re going to have tremendous goodies in the bag for women too, between the fertizilation and all the other things we are talking about, its going to be great.”

Responding to laughter from the crowd, a smiling Trump said: “I am still very proud of it, I will be known as the fertilizaion president, that’s ok, that’s not bad.”

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https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/spring-statement-defence-rachel-reeves-b2721767.html
 
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