The Trump Presidency - Part 2

The Democrats sent billions of dollars of weapons to Israel and gave them political backing through ceasefire vetoes etc, but would make statements feigning sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians.

The republicans do all the same things as the democrats and back the Israelis to the hilt, but don’t feign any sort of sympathy or care for the Palestinians.

We are talking about white supremacists who pretend to care about those people of colour around the world and in their own country, vs white supremacists who don’t bother.
 
AfonsoAlves said:
Reports that CIA is getting gutted.

Jesus christ. National Intelligence and National Security being gutted for Trumpism's is insanity.

Serious end-times.
Click to expand...

But this is just what the US "taking off the kid gloves looks like".

AfonsoAlves said:
Reply to what, sorry?

Regarding Mogget's post.

If "This is the end times" is not a good indication of how I feel about Trump I seriously don't know what else could make my position more clear.
Click to expand...

My response to your earlier post with the silly and inaccurate analogy of 'taking the kids gloves off'. You can find it by checking your alerts. But sounds like you've updated your view fairly quickly.
 
RexHamilton said:
Oh absolutely get down of your high horse and do one.

You won’t find one comment from me on this forum defending the Biden Administration’s actions in Gaza.

Trump has been in the job 2 weeks and has publicly come out, with Netanyahu by his side and said he plans to remove the Palestinians from Gaza and turn the place into a resort.

Biden’s Administration oversaw and supported genocide. Trump has announced that he’ll finish the job.

So spare me the hysterics over a comment I made where my only suggestion was that Trump would be every bit as bad, if not worse than Biden.
Click to expand...

Apologies perhaps a bit blunt and snidey but I can't deal with the politics play of the Democrats messaging. They don't deserve any cover and they've certainly not earned the right to judge on hypotheticals.

As another poster says above its all just presentation from the Democrats. Democrat mouthpieces who mere months ago would have attacked those critical of US policy now want to join in with the criticism. Feck their gaslighting, they're all scum.
 
oneniltothearsenal said:
But this is just what the US "taking off the kid gloves looks like".



My response to your earlier post with the silly and inaccurate analogy of 'taking the kids gloves off'. You can find it by checking your alerts. But sounds like you've updated your view fairly quickly.
Click to expand...

It is "taking the kids gloves off", in that it's acting in the way of many historical dominant powers. No fecks given, no treading with niceties and no care about who you burn along the way.

Anyway, foreign policy and domestic policy are two completely different beasts. The gloves have come off in foreign policy, especially with Trump favouring threats over anything else and domestically it's gone full Orwellian.
 
thisisnottaken1 said:
To the people of Palestine, they might as well just be.

To be fair, I think the overthrown president of Bangladesh was a cnut.

Of course. Trump is pro climate change.

What’s the point in voting for a Labour Party that is further right than the Tories under David Cameron?

There literally was a nuclear deal and he ripped it up!
Click to expand...
Time and time again he creates problems only to "heroically" fix them and people continue to fall for it.
 
AfonsoAlves said:
It is "taking the kids gloves off", in that it's acting in the way of many historical dominant powers. No fecks given, no treading with niceties and no care about who you burn along the way.

Anyway, foreign policy and domestic policy are two completely different beasts. The gloves have come off in foreign policy, especially with Trump favouring threats over anything else and domestically it's gone full Orwellian.
Click to expand...
While you’re here. How much do you trust the military to follow the constitution instead of Trump‘s will, if it ever came to that?
 
HTG said:
While you’re here. How much do you trust the military to follow the constitution instead of Trump‘s will, if it ever came to that?
Click to expand...

Asked me in 2023 I would have given you a very different answer.

A lot of this stuff, I expected the establishment GOP to completely push back on but they've simply rolled over and allowed it to happen.

I would have said the same thing about the DoD 1 year ago, but I don't have any confidence in that anymore.

For example, 82nd Airbourne being deployed to the Mexican border is farcical and I've no idea how this ended up happening.
 
AfonsoAlves said:
Asked me in 2023 I would have given you a very different answer.

A lot of this stuff, I expected the establishment GOP to completely push back on but they've simply rolled over and allowed it to happen.

I would have said the same thing about the DoD 1 year ago, but I don't have any confidence in that anymore.

For example, 82nd Airbourne being deployed to the Mexican border is farcical and I've no idea how this ended up happening.
Click to expand...
That’s what I was afraid of. I have no trust in the police, as they are heavy supporters of Trump anyway. But I wasn’t so sure about the military. Historically speaking, if I don’t remember things the wrong way, police forces usually fall to fascists and likes before the military does and militaries might be more likely to oppose actors trying to destroy democracy.
 
Thought this was an interesting explanation for people like me who know very little....

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17r1xuAUFG/

"The best, most cogent and elegantly simple explanation into the inexplicably destructive negotiating processes of the president, by Prof. David Honig of Indiana University.

Everybody I know should read this accurate and enlightening piece...

“I’m going to get a little wonky and write about Donald Trump and negotiations. For those who don't know, I'm an adjunct professor at Indiana University - Robert H. McKinney School of Law and I teach negotiations. Okay, here goes.

Trump, as most of us know, is the credited author of "The Art of the Deal," a book that was actually ghost written by a man named Tony Schwartz, who was given access to Trump and wrote based upon his observations. If you've read The Art of the Deal, or if you've followed Trump lately, you'll know, even if you didn't know the label, that he sees all dealmaking as what we call "distributive bargaining."

Distributive bargaining always has a winner and a loser. It happens when there is a fixed quantity of something and two sides are fighting over how it gets distributed. Think of it as a pie and you're fighting over who gets how many pieces. In Trump's world, the bargaining was for a building, or for construction work, or subcontractors. He perceives a successful bargain as one in which there is a winner and a loser, so if he pays less than the seller wants, he wins. The more he saves the more he wins.

The other type of bargaining is called integrative bargaining. In integrative bargaining the two sides don't have a complete conflict of interest, and it is possible to reach mutually beneficial agreements. Think of it, not a single pie to be divided by two hungry people, but as a baker and a caterer negotiating over how many pies will be baked at what prices, and the nature of their ongoing relationship after this one gig is over.

The problem with Trump is that he sees only distributive bargaining in an international world that requires integrative bargaining. He can raise tariffs, but so can other countries. He can't demand they not respond. There is no defined end to the negotiation and there is no simple winner and loser. There are always more pies to be baked. Further, negotiations aren't binary. China's choices aren't (a) buy soybeans from US farmers, or (b) don't buy soybeans. They can also (c) buy soybeans from Russia, or Argentina, or Brazil, or Canada, etc. That completely strips the distributive bargainer of his power to win or lose, to control the negotiation.

One of the risks of distributive bargaining is bad will. In a one-time distributive bargain, e.g. negotiating with the cabinet maker in your casino about whether you're going to pay his whole bill or demand a discount, you don't have to worry about your ongoing credibility or the next deal. If you do that to the cabinet maker, you can bet he won't agree to do the cabinets in your next casino, and you're going to have to find another cabinet maker.

There isn't another Canada.

So when you approach international negotiation, in a world as complex as ours, with integrated economies and multiple buyers and sellers, you simply must approach them through integrative bargaining. If you attempt distributive bargaining, success is impossible. And we see that already.

Trump has raised tariffs on China. China responded, in addition to raising tariffs on US goods, by dropping all its soybean orders from the US and buying them from Russia. The effect is not only to cause tremendous harm to US farmers, but also to increase Russian revenue, making Russia less susceptible to sanctions and boycotts, increasing its economic and political power in the world, and reducing ours. Trump saw steel and aluminum and thought it would be an easy win, BECAUSE HE SAW ONLY STEEL AND ALUMINUM - HE SEES EVERY NEGOTIATION AS DISTRIBUTIVE. China saw it as integrative, and integrated Russia and its soybean purchase orders into a far more complex negotiation ecosystem.

Trump has the same weakness politically. For every winner there must be a loser. And that's just not how politics works, not over the long run.

For people who study negotiations, this is incredibly basic stuff, negotiations 101, definitions you learn before you even start talking about styles and tactics. And here's another huge problem for us.

Trump is utterly convinced that his experience in a closely held real estate company has prepared him to run a nation, and therefore he rejects the advice of people who spent entire careers studying the nuances of international negotiations and diplomacy. But the leaders on the other side of the table have not eschewed expertise, they have embraced it. And that means they look at Trump and, given his very limited tool chest and his blindly distributive understanding of negotiation, they know exactly what he is going to do and exactly how to respond to it.

From a professional negotiation point of view, Trump isn't even bringing checkers to a chess match. He's bringing a quarter that he insists of flipping for heads or tails, while everybody else is studying the chess board to decide whether its better to open with Najdorf or Grünfeld.”

— David Honig
 
Democracy and what it is and what it means, along with the Constitution are so warped twisted and misunderstood, misrepresented and misquoted yet followed by many you can't predict anything anymore.
 
Has there been a single statement from Biden, Harris, the Obamas or the Clintons on what Trump is doing?
 
RedDevil@84 said:
Has there been a single statement from Biden, Harris, the Obamas or the Clintons on what Trump is doing?
Click to expand...
As much as they’re all total cnuts you can’t say they never warned of what’s coming to be totally honest with them. They kept banging that democracy is at risk here but nobody really cared why should they now?
 
From NYT:

CIA sent White House an unclassified e-mail with some employee's names
The C.I.A. sent the White House an unclassified email listing all employees hired by the spy agency over the last two years to comply with an executive order to shrink the federal work force, in a move that former officials say risked the list leaking to adversaries.
Click to expand...
The list included first names and the first initial of the last name of the new hires, who are still on probation — and thus easy to dismiss. It included a large crop of young analysts and operatives who were hired specifically to focus on China, and whose identities are usually closely guarded because Chinese hackers are constantly seeking to identify them.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.