A Perfectly Reasonable Amount of Schadenfreude about Things Happening to Trump & His Enablers (Part 3)

[SwissMan]

@iamatractorboy

I didn’t realise she was Robert’s daughter. What a lovely family.

It takes a lot of effort to be the black sheep of the Maxwell family; Ghislaine decided to go for the gold.

[Kimstu]

@Johnny_L.A

ETA: Either I never heard, or else I never paid attention to, the pronunciation of Ghislaine Maxwell’s name. I heard it several times on NPR on Tuesday, and they were pronouncing it ‘Gill-en’. I’ve always read it as ‘Jizz-lane’.

Wiktionary gives the IPA for the masculine form “Ghislain” as “/ɡi.lɛ̃/” or alternatively as “/ʒi.slɛ̃/”.

So you’re not far off from one of the accepted pronunciations, at least. Sounds as though Maxwell uses the first form, approximately “Gill-anne”, but the name could also be pronounced more or less “Zhih-slanne”.

[Johnny_L.A]

‘Jizz-lane’ is more appropriate for her profession.

[WOOKINPANUBv.2]

I wouldn’t normally post from work or my phone, but I saw mention that the A-hole in Charge may be wearing a catheter. The evidence is a photo of him with a large bulge in his pants ( pukey smiley) We all know it’s not his little mushroom like, so what is it? Is he pulling a Tom Jones or .ight it actually be a medical device? ( pls,pls,pls).

[EinsteinsHund]

@WOOKINPANUBv.2

We all know it’s not his little mushroom like, so what is it? Is he pulling a Tom Jones or .ight it actually be a medical device? ( pls,pls,pls).

Maybe something like this?

Spinal Tap - Derek Smalls Airport Security

[iamatractorboy]

‘Do you have any artificial plates or limbs?’

‘…not really, no…’

[Also… it’s always bothered me that he says ‘zipper’… it should be ‘zip’].

[Monty]

The Self-Deprogramming has begun!

Recently, on Reddit, ex-Trump supporters opened up about what made them change their minds about the President, and their responses were shockingly honest. Here are some of the most thought-provoking answers:

This is followed by 25 confessions answers. I’ll quote my favorite two and you can peruse the others at your leisure.

21.“I’m Canadian, and honestly, I did like Trump during the first half of his first term. There was something refreshing about how he called out corruption overall, especially when he said he knows there are big tax loopholes and corruption, and pointed out that Hillary said she is against corruption while just enriching herself and her inner circle. But the irony didn’t take long to hit. As time went on, it became clear he wasn’t draining the swamp — he was just redirecting the flow to himself and his own circle of elites. That hypocrisy was the first crack.”

"But the final straw? The tariff war, especially with Canada. It wasn’t that I suddenly became emotionally charged over a Canada vs USA rivalry; I looked at it objectively, and it was just… dumb. Economically dumb.

Canada and the U.S. are deeply integrated economically, especially in manufacturing — auto parts, machinery, raw materials, you name it. Slapping tariffs on imports from a major trade partner that your own industries depend on? That’s not tough negotiation, that’s shooting yourself in the foot while looking in the mirror and calling it a power move.

And ironically, Canada barely felt a thing. If anything, we just shifted slightly, stopped buying some U.S.-specific goods where we could, especially if there was only a minor price difference. Most of our day-to-day stuff — like beef, produce, even fast food supply chains like McDonald’s — are domestically sourced here anyway.

What baffled me most was how none of his so-called ‘pro-business’ party members seemed to get it. Not even a surface-level Google search economist would’ve greenlit that move. It was a lose-lose dressed up as a win.

So yeah, Trump went from being someone I thought was a refreshing player in politics to someone I disliked but respected for playing the game, to someone I just outright lost respect for. The tariff war made it clear: it wasn’t strategic, it wasn’t patriotic — it was just reckless, and even a kilometre away you could see the crash coming."

&

25.And finally, “Pretty much anything he did this whole year.”

[dtilque]

This one could go here or the Leopards-eating-faces thread. Construction contractors (Trump supporters) are in danger of missing deadlines and having to pay penalties due to immigrant workers staying away from work because of ICE raids:

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/this-construction-project-was-time-budget-then-came-ice-2025-07-28/

[Atamasama]

@dtilque

Construction contractors (Trump supporters) are in danger of missing deadlines and having to pay penalties due to immigrant workers staying away from work because of ICE raids:

Trump-supporting farmers in Eastern Washington blame the left on their workers being afraid to come in to work. They say that it’s fear-mongering about ICE raids that don’t happen.

NPR: It’s harvest season. Cherry farms are short of workers amidst an immigration crackdown

In Washington, cherry country is also Trump country. Everyone agrees that workers aren’t showing up, but a lot of growers don’t blame the Trump administration for that. They say it’s bad actors on the left creating panic unnecessarily.

Blame the people warning migrants about ICE raids rather than the people directing those ICE raids.

More about their “thinking”:

He acknowledges there may have been a handful of agricultural raids that did happen in other states. But he says for every one of those, there’s a hundred examples of a rumor here in Washington that doesn’t actually materialize.

“If only those damn illegals would bury their heads in the sand like we good white folks do, everything would be so much better!”

[crowmanyclouds]

‘There will be no ICE raids until after the crop is in . . . after the crop is in but before payday.’

[Spoons]

Thanks for that Reddit link, @Monty. Some fascinating stories there.

[Kimstu]

@Atamasama

Trump-supporting farmers in Eastern Washington blame the left on their workers being afraid to come in to work. They say that it’s fear-mongering about ICE raids that don’t happen.

NPR: It’s harvest season. Cherry farms are short of workers amidst an immigration crackdown

In Washington, cherry country is also Trump country. Everyone agrees that workers aren’t showing up, but a lot of growers don’t blame the Trump administration for that. They say it’s bad actors on the left creating panic unnecessarily.

Blame the people warning migrants about ICE raids rather than the people directing those ICE raids.

”Our country is being overrun by dangerous illegals!! Trump’s gonna round ‘em all up and deport ‘em! Screw those traitorous liberals and their ‘sanctuary cities’ and ‘due process’ bullshit! Go ICE! Jail the lot of them!”

…

”Why aren’t my undocumented migrant agricultural workers showing up for harvest time? Screw those liberals for creating needless panic about ICE crackdowns!”

[Atamasama]

You summed it up pretty well.

[solost]

@crowmanyclouds

‘There will be no ICE raids until after the crop is in . . . after the crop is in but before payday.’

I can actually imagine trump directing ICE to do just that.

[Der_Trihs]

@crowmanyclouds

‘There will be no ICE raids until after the crop is in . . . after the crop is in but before payday.’

That would just be ICE indulging in a common, longstanding practice. Get the crops in, have the government deport the harvesters before paying them.

But it’s the immigrants who are exploiting the US, you know,

[solost]

@Der_Trihs

That would just be ICE indulging in a common, longstanding practice.

Is it? It seems like it would backfire pretty quickly, as word gets through the undocumented community. That’s why I said can imagine trump directing ICE to do just that, since he has no ability to think actions through to their logical consequence.

[Love_Rhombus]

I hear the GOP is advising Republicans to avoid town halls, which is a cowardly but crafty tactic. However, Byron Steil of Wisconsin decided to take a chance, and it didn’t go well.

'You're not the right fit for us anymore': GOP lawmaker runs into buzzsaw at...

[dtilque]

Not sure how Schadenfreudy this is, but I didn’t want to start another thread.

Anyway, you remember Trump’s energy policy is “drill, baby, drill”. Well, it turns out that the number of active drilling rigs has actually decreased during the last six months. There’s no rush by oil companies to increase production.

A Promised U.S. Drilling Boom Has Yet to Materialize

One executive from an exploration and production company said, “It’s hard to imagine how much worse policies and D.C. rhetoric could have been for U.S. E&P companies.” Another executive said, “The Liberation Day chaos and tariff antics have harmed the domestic energy industry. Drill, baby, drill will not happen with this level of volatility.”

In particular, the very high tariff on steel is hurting. It turns out that oil wells need a lot of steel pipe. Who knew?

[Great_Antibob]

Also, in time of economic uncertainty and lower prices, oil companies don’t like to drill for more oil only so they can lose money on every gallon. Who knew?

[Red_Wiggler]

King DonOld will need to have the Department of Energy assume the role of providing the official oil rig count and provide more favorable numbers.