Donald J. Trump (For everyone else)

Best part of the long ass rambling bullshit from last night was big orange rattling off that age group social security shit for like 15 minutes and closing with ‘and 1 person between 300 and 325 years old still gets social security’

Ignoring what an obvious lie that is, if its a single person you don’t need an age range

That's what I thought for a while with the democratic party when it ran itself like the everyone else thread and everyone else ventured off.

damn you guys sure owned us by electing trump so he could tank the economy, weaken our geopolitical standing, and gut our government.

the right just memes better than the left, what can ya say

For the record I didn’t call SS a political ponzi. I just pointed out they are eerily similar and refuted claims that were said to prove it wasn’t a ponzi because the claims wouldn’t actually prove an actual ponzi is not a ponzi.

There are people/groups who are meant to make a profit off of it (see: people who get paid a benefit but have never paid into SS).

Cutting the size of govt will strength the economy long-term, but as I said before it is bad short term.

Depending on your definition of “gut our govt” I think this could be the best thing any president will do in my lifetime for the average American.

Exactly how big do you think the federal payroll was in 2023?

Here is a hint: we could fire the entire government and it would amount to 0.3% of the federal budget. Yes, that’s .0032.

You guys have been so thoroughly ran through the wringer I’m starting to feel bad

Edit: not as bad as the national parks workers who are now homeless that drive billions in revenues more per year than the entire federal payroll (about 2x revenues/payroll last I checked)

I can only dream of what your definition of the average American is. What did Steinbeck say about the average american seeing themselves as but a temporarily embarrassed millionaire.

2025 and the stupidity of Randian philosophies have reemerged.

What this will do is make a handful of extremely wealthy people even more wealthy at the cost of living standards and long-term viability of America.

By Thomas L. Friedman:

A Russian international affairs scholar, who can speak only privately, remarked to me from Moscow that Putin’s team sees Trump’s team as a clown car, full of amateurs — easy pickings for the savvy and cynical Putin’s ultimate goal: “MRGA — Make Russia Great Again (and Make America Less Great Again).” Putin’s long-term goal, he added, is to manage the decline of U.S. hegemony so that America is “just one of the peer great powers,” focused on the Western Hemisphere and withdrawn militarily from Europe and Asia. Putin sees Trump as his blunt instrument “to manage that inevitable decline.”
Will Trump and his G.O.P. bobbleheads ever wake up to that? Maybe — when it’s too late.

https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url...

And this one is kinda funny:
Elon Musk's AI chatbot says a 'Russian asset' delivered the State of the Union
The chatbot Grok scoured available public data and found a '75-85% likelihood' that Donald Trump more or less works for Vladimir Putin.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/o...

I'm curious what you think the chances are that someone from Putin's team badmouthed Trump to some Russian academic who then went on to talk to Thomas Freidman?

It doesn't really matter... it's very obvious to anyone not in the MAGA cult, what's going on.

The problem w/ cults are, you never know you're in one, until you're on the outside.

You can just listen to it straight from the horses mouth though, too:

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/03/02/kremlin-says-us-foreign-policy-shift-aligns-with-its-own-vision-a88217

The Moscow Times

Kremlin Says U.S. Foreign Policy Shift Aligns With Its Own Vision - The Moscow Times

by FreakDaddy k

It doesn't really matter... it's very obvious to anyone not in the MAGA cult, what's going on.

The problem w/ cults are, you never know you're in one, until you're on the outside.

You can just listen to it straight from the horses mouth though, too:

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/03/02/kremlin-says-us-foreign-policy-shift-aligns-with-its-own-vision-a88217

The Moscow Times

Kremlin Says U.S. Foreign Policy Shift Aligns With Its Own Vision - The Moscow Times

There is a Trump cult, and there is an anti-Trump cult.

What we have here is a case of two competing cults.

No... not letting you get away w/ that false equivalency.

Nobody was flying Biden flags, or wearing Biden hats. People on the left have always looked to compromise in congress.

The biggest issue w/ the left is getting in the same ideological wagon, because there are so many groups w/ different ideas and objectives. <--- that's the opposite of a cult.

MAGA is a cult because of the massive right-wing media infrastructure, including think tanks, dark money, media and advocacy groups. They are intentionally brainwashing people. I mean literally following textbook brainwashing methods.

They outspend the left, ~20:1 in their media infrastructure, because there's a clear goal and pay off. They want more money, at the expense of people and the environment. The only thing that matters.... is money. Just read the Republican budget being proposed. They are telling you where their priorities are.

Maybe ask yourself, why don't you want to believe what that are telling you?

Well they owned me too but I get it.

With a tidbit of serious talk, in politics people want to feel part of something, whether good or bad, and they also want to be motivated and excited about **** - basically, I think people are far more likely to vote for something than to vote against something. I think Obama, whether he was genuine or not, did that pretty well and his change we can believe in was a powerful message, at least in my eyes - although a recession definitely helped him quite a bit.

I think that it's going to be an uphill battle for the dems, even against a complete buffoon like trump when you focus more on attacking trump and the gop base than focusing on getting people excited with your own party. And that excitement shouldn't stem from saying that the other party will destroy the galaxy - that just lowers turnout. Also, attacking the other side absolutely motivated the gop base against the dems.

Like I said before, I think creating the perfect societal utopia in the eyes of the libs, and beating trump requires two different approaches. Because eventually, someone after trump is going to very easily be able to trim away most of the garbage that everyone rolled their eyes on and keep all of the same horseshit that motivates that base. And the dems can't even beat Glass Joe right now.

+100

anyone not seeing this bizarre cult of personality worship of an egocentric narcissist megalomaniac that only cares about "winning" and has no guiding compass other than self-interest and idol worship is frankly ****ing insane. There is no equivalency and any "BUT HER EMAILS" **** is indefencable.

Agreed. While most of Trumps campaigning is actually negative, he still creates that feeling of being a part of something (see above re: cult). Dems had their moment in 2016 when they could have leaned into the populist wave with Bernie and made an obvious strategic mistake. Nobody gives a **** about stewardship or policy making...learn to find momentum and ride it.

Did you ever consider that maybe Trump just sucks at being president?

I didn't say it was a Biden cult I said it was an anti-Trump cult.

Not sure anyone on the left is in congress fwiw but that's a different discussion.

Prove how it's an anti-Trump cult.

Because can't it just be calling out lies to save democracy?

Separate, but related question. Why would you continue to listen to anyone who is a pathological liar? How many pathological liars have you known that have been up to anything good?

Trump begins the grooming about social security yesterday, even though it's an easily provable lie:
https://www.axios.com/2025/03/05/trump-s...

So wouldn't the thinking person be asking... why lie about this? If you're up to good, you shouldn't have to lie at every step of the way to get to your objective.

And if you dismiss that... you're doing it for a reason. Because you desperately want to believe something else about what Trump represents.

I'm not talking about you specifically fyi.

You guys have been obsessed with Trump since 2016 and you want me to prove to you how it's an anti-Trump cult?

You know, growing up as a Canadian, the white liberal crowd that overwhelmingly pollutes/populates (depends on your perspective) western Canada would unanimously characterize Americans in derogatory ways, which I found denigrating, and I would often speak up against this, defending Americans and making fun of the pompous inferiority complex that I felt Canadians had.

These days, I can't help but feel they weren't too far off the mark in pretty much everything they said.

Anyways:

Who is "you guys"?

Is that cult rhetoric?

Were the American people in an "anti-trump cult"?

I ask again, have you ever just considered that hes not a good president?

edit: for the record, I was troll posting libs in 2019 and FreakDaddy has 2 posts in politics pre 2022 so "you guys" certainly isn't referencing either of us

Watching and hearing that response was shocking to me — a real "Twilight Zone" moment.

"You guys" is people like you, Bigger, Freak Daddy and a whole host of others in this forum that I mostly ignore.

Normal people are out living their lives working, playing sports, doing drugs, walking their dogs, and driving their kids to school-- they don't have to worry about "saving democracy" because they already saw the anti-Trump hysteria and doom and gloom of 2016/2017 and saw how their lives continued on as if who was the president was the least of their concerns.

As for whether I have ever considered that Trump is a uniquely bad president, then no I have not. I don't tend to view US presidents in that sort of way where I would rank them. They're more like PR for the empire and you really wouldn't blame the PR rep of some company if the cookies they sell went from 6oz each to 5-- they're just a spokesperson

Perhaps this is misguided some and it probably is-- certainly leaders of countries can have a major influence over the course of their country. I just don't think it works that way in the US. Someone like Bukele or Chavez sure....but they don't just let anyone become the president of the United States.