President Trump 2.0: The NEW one and only politics thread

[garrow]

America is being run (into the ground) by two of the most disturbed, mental freaks in US history.

Video Shows Elon Musk Acting Very Strange at Trump Dinner

At a White House dinner, unelected co-president Elon Musk showed off a bizarre structure he made of metal to a disinterested employee. In videos of the incident that appears to have originated with X user @DaoKwoDo, a blockchain bro who also goes by the name "Books," Musk appears both detached...

www.yahoo.com

 

[Neutral Corner]

This is one heck of an interview. Moss pulls zero punches here, and he gets asked good questions.

Transcript: Trump’s Angry Rant over Hegseth Fiasco Makes Scandal Worse

An interview with national security lawyer Bradley Moss, who explains why the stunning exposure of highly sensitive war-planning texts might have been unlawful—and reveals Trump as a disastrously failed leader.

newrepublic.com

Sargent: Brad, note that Trump's immediate instinct is to be angry at The Atlantic for reporting this, not to wonder whether it's actually true or why it happened, or to say that he's going to get to the bottom of it and fix any problems that led to this mess. Everything is always about whether something is embarrassing to him. This is not what he should be focused on. It's not ideal to have a megalomaniac like this in charge in such situations. What do you make of that, Brad?

Moss: Yeah, you have to feel bad for poor Donald Trump. He is the last person in this government to ever know anything. It's always the I know nothing about it, I didn't hear anything about it, you're all fake news, you're the enemy of the people response. And that's what you saw here. Just as you noted, his initial concern wasn't, This is really concerning to me as the commander in chief and the ultimate classification authority. I'm going to personally look into this to make sure that my appointees, my cabinet officials are complying with the law. And if they're not, I will take action because I am the ultimate decider of national security protocols. No. All he knew to do was to attack The Atlantic and say, I know nothing else, because that's who Donald Trump is. Accountability, laws, procedures—those only apply to other people. They don't ever apply to Donald Trump.
Sargent: Exactly right. We should note that a spokesperson for the administration actually confirmed that the exchange was real, so we know it happened. We know this happened and Donald Trump refused to address something that had actually been confirmed.

Moss: And I'm sure Donald Trump had no idea that statement had gone out. I'm sure Donald Trump knew nothing about the story. He was probably busy jumping between hitting the Coke button on his desk, chatting up some business deal from people at Mar-a-Lago, and discussing his next tee time. That's the entirety of what his presidency is. He is the puppet head. He sits there to ramble to the press, to show off his signature, and then to go play golf. He has no insight into what truly happens in this government. And he's left it to what I would politely describe as a bunch of unserious gaslighting trolls. Not qualified professionals but people whose entire ethos is premised on political gaslighting, from the attorney general to the director of national intelligence to the secretary of defense—all of them. Their entire background is political, not necessarily this area of expertise and professionalism.

 

[Neutral Corner]

If I was running any of the other Five Eyes intelligence agencies, I'd be appalled and shudder at the security implications that this reveals. We'll be lucky if MI6 shares the date with us till Trump is gone and probably long after.

Sargent: Let's go back to what you brought up earlier, which is the legality of this. It seems like it's cause for serious investigation. It looks as if Mike Waltz, the national security adviser, coordinated this communication, so it's possible some laws were violated, right? Can you walk us through that?
Moss: Sure. This would almost certainly violate the Espionage Act in that they were placing classified information or, more broadly, national defense information into an unauthorized location, namely the Signal chat, which is not authorized to contain classified discussions. They were disseminating it to other individuals. It's questionable whether or not everybody in that chat had the requisite need to know; but putting that aside, they're disseminating it to Jeffrey Goldberg. For whatever reason that these various individuals put him on, that is in and of itself a violation of the Espionage Act and a couple different statutory provisions that don't even require willful intent but simply have to do with you gave it to an unauthorized third party.

In any other world, in any other time in D.C. politics and governance, this would be a cause for immediate congressional investigations. It would be cause for immediate internal inquiries to determine why this was allowed to happen, to what extent this is a larger problem, and to what extent people involved on these chats cross the line into civil or criminal liability. In the world of Donald Trump and his presidency, it is unlikely that any of that will happen unless and until the Democratic Party finds a way to gather itself together and win the midterms to at least have some oversight authority. I have no reason to believe that'll happen for the next two years though.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

They just say shirt which can't be disproven and repeat it until it becomes gospel to their base.

Which again, the mainstream media needs to stop being stenographers and start actually asking questions even if it costs them access.

"You say there is criminal activity in that library. If you know there is criminal activity in that library, why haven't you made any arrests?"

 

[DanielSimpsonDay]

is this good is it bad who can say we're just seeing what happens

 

[Inky_Wretch]

Here's the Chinese equivalent to slapping tariffs on bourbon, only more powerful.

China is turning up pressure on Walmart. That could mean higher prices for US customers

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/24/business/walmart-china-tariffs/index.html

"Walmart thought it could use its immense power as America's biggest retailer to make Chinese suppliers eat the cost of President Donald Trump's tariffs. But Walmart got a response it's not accustomed to hearing: No.


Trump has slapped 20% tariffs — or taxes on imported goods — on all products coming from China. That's put the squeeze on retailers like Walmart, which imports a lot of merchandise from China and sells those goods at the lowest price possible to American consumers. Walmart, in turn, has tried to pressure its Chinese suppliers to lower prices. But the Chinese government is having none of it."

As somebody who deals with WM in my day job AND has a relative high in management over there, WM getting told "no" is about as rare at Halley's Comet.

But I'm sure WM will find a way to recoup some of the cost - probably by increasing fines to suppliers for shipments being late (or early!) or overweight or the pallet of case packs isn't stacked correctly.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

As somebody who deals with WM in my day job AND has a relative high in management over there, WM getting told "no" is about as rare at Halley's Comet.

But I'm sure WM will find a way to recoup some of the cost - probably by increasing fines to suppliers for shipments being late (or early!) or overweight or the pallet of case packs isn't stacked correctly.

Walmart care about pallets being stacked incorrectly? You jest, sir.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

Gosh, if only there had been some governmental warning about using Signal.

 

[Deskgrunt50]

All of them should be fired. But they won't be because people who know better won't do a gosh darn thing about it.

All of these chuckleforks are as clumsy as they are stupid, incompetent and hateful. And completely anti-American.

 

[Tarheel316]

This still kills me about newspaper editorial decisions.

It's not 1995 any more. Refusing to publish something isn't going to make the content go away. There's a whole outlet, called the Internet, that someone can publish the banned content.

Exactly. Just like the Ann Telnaes cartoon being rejected. It still got out.

 

[Brooklyn Bridge]

Which again, the mainstream media needs to stop being stenographers and start actually asking questions even if it costs them access.

"You say there is criminal activity in that library. If you know there is criminal activity in that library, why haven't you made any arrests?"

You want crime, just look at the junkies over there, feigning for their next hit of maple syrup. Sure, it starts out innocently enough, "we're just going to watch the leaves change," then you're taking trips to eat poutine and partake in the lower drinking age. Before you know it, you're speaking French and mainlining maple syrup.

 

[outofplace]

All of them should be fired. But they won't be because people who know better won't do a gosh darn thing about it.

All of these chuckleforks are as clumsy as they are stupid, incompetent and hateful. And completely anti-American.

Imagine how Vader would handle this mess.