# The Trump Administration: The Clusterfuck Continues (Part 1) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Tags:** trump\ **Created:** [November 11, 2024, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068 "2024-11-11T06:19:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 29
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068/561 "2024-12-11T01:40:41Z")
But that’s what he wants, to be sued. And then it will reach the Supreme Court. This is the outfit that has made him immune. Even if they go against the dictator, we’ll just have another Jacksonian “Let him enforce it” moment. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068/562 "2024-12-11T01:50:02Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > But that’s what he wants, to be sued. And then it will reach the Supreme Court. By which time he will no longer be president. > [@Monty](#): > > Even if they go against the dictator, we’ll just have another Jacksonian “Let him enforce it” moment. The Supreme Court has considerably more power of enforcement than it did 200 years ago. A $10,000 fine per offense per day for any federal official defying court orders goes a long way towards ensuring compliance. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068/563 "2024-12-11T01:57:41Z")
And who’s going to enforce that? It’s not like Trump has ever left any bill unpaid. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068/564 "2024-12-11T02:06:51Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > It’s not like Trump has ever left any bill unpaid. Did you think Trump was going to personally be rounding up and deporting people? I’m talking about the tens of thousands of people in government, from Cabinet secretaries down to individual office clerks or LEOs who would be responsible for implementing such a policy. Do you think Brad in Accounts Payable wants to go to prison or pay his entire salary in fines out of loyalty to Donald Trump? Are you looking for serious answers here, or do you just want to indulge in more “Trump can do whatever he wants and the courts will take his side no matter what and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop him” doomerism? ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068/565 "2024-12-11T04:41:17Z")
This article makes a solid claim RFK is following in the footsteps of Graham (of cracker fame) and the Kellogg’s; that the appeal of “complimentary” medicine has not changed much in 200 years…. **Excerpt:** …_Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a wellness influencer who is also President-Elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of Health and Human Services, is similarly inconsistent. Kennedy has correctly identified an association between the ultra-processed American diet and high rates of [chronic disease](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/11/trump-fda-cdc/680784/), but he’s also an anti-vaccine advocate who has suggested that AIDS deaths are caused by [poppers](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/11/rfk-aids-hiv-hhs-donald-trump/) and that seed oils are [poison](https://theconversation.com/are-seed-oils-really-as-harmful-as-robert-f-kennedy-jr-claims-243655)._ _Over the past weeks, journalists, doctors, and scientists have rushed to correct Kennedy’s false statements. More than 75 Nobel Prize winners [signed a letter](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/12/09/health/rfkltr.html) this week asking senators to oppose Kennedy’s confirmation, given his “lack of credentials” in medicine, science, and public health. But a better way to understand his appeal is to situate him, with Graham, in a long lineage of American wellness figures waging a battle against conventional medicine. For more than a century, alternative health practices—what we now call wellness—have seduced Americans not because of the accuracy of their claims, but because of what else they offer: a sense of certainty, an outlet for mistrust, a pseudo-religious belief in the “natural,” and an affirmation of modernity’s limits. Because it satisfies those needs, wellness has a pattern of success in presenting itself as a replacement for the failures of medicine, even though the goals of wellness radically diverge from those of public health. The history of wellness suggests that the best way to defuse Kennedy’s power is not by litigating each one of his beliefs, some of which are irrefutable health truisms, but by understanding why the promise of being well has such lasting appeal._ _Our [Goop-ified world](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/08/what-goop-really-sells-women/596773/) may seem fundamentally modern, but there is a direct line between today’s wellness industry and the 1800s, when what was then called “irregular” medicine exploded in popularity. Through the early 20th century, people sought out homeopathy, osteopathy, naturopathy, [water cures](https://slate.com/technology/2014/02/hydropathy-water-healing-quack-medicine-empowered-the-womens-health-profession-in-the-19th-century.html), and chiropractors. Religious and spiritual movements such as New Thought and Christian Science promoted the idea that bodily health [came from](https://read.dukeupress.edu/jhppl/article/39/5/957/13664/What-Is-Wellness-Now) the right state of mind, not medicine._ _These health interventions were largely a response to disillusionment with 19th-century medicine, which was, by today’s standards, painful and ineffective. Doctors depended heavily on bloodletting, vomitive drugs, and other [“heroic” treatments](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1113570) that shocked the body into purging its contents. A commonly used drug, calomel, was made of a mercury compound and caused the gums to bleed, the mouth to swell, and teeth to fall out. Irregular medicine offered another option, with conspiratorial undertones: There was a gentler cure that conventional doctors weren’t telling you about. (And unlike calomel, irregular treatments wouldn’t cause your teeth to fall out.) A 1903 osteopathic text decreed, “The world is becoming too intelligent to be drugged and hacked in a search for health when more agreeable methods can be obtained at the same price.”_ _In response to the unregulated health products being distributed by irregular practitioners and conventional physicians alike, as well as uproar over the unsafe food-handling practices revealed in Upton Sinclair’s [The Jungle](https://bookshop.org/a/12476/9781680921915), the contemporary American public-health apparatus was born. The FDA was created to enforce the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which, among other things, required safe practices for manufacturing food, drugs, medications, and liquors as well as labels that included a product’s dangerous ingredients. Laws limiting the practice of medicine to those with proper licenses became more widespread and more consistently enforced…_ > **[America Can’t Break Its Wellness Habit](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/12/rfk-wellness-history-debunking/680948/)** > > Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fits into a long history of Americans who have waged battle against conventional medicine. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068/566 "2024-12-11T05:00:21Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Did you think Trump was going to personally be rounding up and deporting people? He’s already talking about the military doing it. Not that it matters, the Trumpites can just say no and dare the court to enforce it. In the unlikely event that they don’t just immediately rule in Trump’s favor in order to get the ethnic cleansing started as fast as possible. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068/567 "2024-12-11T05:13:39Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > You keep talking as if laws are magical spells of compulsion. And you think an executive order is?! It’s the same old bullshit that Trump can now ignore federal law because he’s POTUS that keeps coming up in countless threads, yet if you rub two braincells together you’d realize that ithe only power being given to a POTUS is via federal law. It’s actual Trump Derangement Syndrome in action. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068/568 "2024-12-11T05:16:28Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > And you think an executive order is?! No, but the people he’ll give the orders to will _want_ to do what he’s giving them permission to do. You don’t need _compulsion_ to unleash the lynch mobs; you just need to give them the all-clear. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068/569 "2024-12-11T05:30:10Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > No, but the people he’ll give the orders to will _want_ to do what he’s giving them permission to do. Not all of them. Being elected POTUS doesn’t mean you own the government. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068/570 "2024-12-11T05:33:05Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > Not all of them. Being elected POTUS doesn’t mean you own the government. The Republicans are getting all three branches. It’s not just about Trump. And the Republicans have had decades to stuff the government full of far righters, with minimal resistance from the Democrats since that would mean violating their precious “norms”. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068/571 "2024-12-11T05:36:25Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > And the Republicans have had decades to stuff the government full of far righters, with minimal resistance from the Democrats since that would mean violating their precious “norms”. Now you’re insisting that Democrats don’t hire and appoint people out of fear of criticism? Holy shit. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068/572 "2024-12-11T05:41:34Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > Now you’re insisting that Democrats don’t hire and appoint people out of fear of criticism? Not to the extent the Republicans do. Every time the Republicans take power huge numbers of government workers leave or are forced out, and the Democrats have never made the same kind of effort to reshape the government in their image. How do you think they’ve stacked the courts so hard in their direction? Years and years of consistent effort while the Democrats wrung their hands and panicked over the thought of being called “liberal”. It’s been monsters versus cowards and milquetoasts. And the monsters have won. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068/573 "2024-12-11T06:02:23Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > And the monsters have won. They’ve won the propaganda war at least. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068/574 "2024-12-11T06:07:50Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > The Republicans are getting all three branches. The Republicans had all three branches for the first half of Trump’s first term, and for six out of eight years of Dubya. In fact, you made most of the same claims in 2016 that you’re making now. > [@The Trump Administration: A Clusterfuck in the Making](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/343): > > I’m thinking a new Great Depression, the end of American democracy, theocracy, state mandated racism, sexism & other bigotry, and yes, probably the use of nuclear weapons. Not so much a “war”, as a one sided attack; probably on either Mecca or Tehran > [@The Trump Administration: A Clusterfuck in the Making](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/364): > > I expect the Republicans to go full Holocaust, eventually; except on a much larger scale and with nobody able to stop them. > > I think the future of America is a racist theocracy with a collapsed economy, and maybe half the population it has now because the rest were expelled or killed. And the future of Mexico, South America and Africa is being radioactive wastelands after the Republicans bombard them to “purify the Earth of lesser, Satanic races”. > [@When will the whining over Hillary's loss end?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-the-whining-over-hillarys-loss-end/774904/32): > > There are no checks and balances anymore; the Republicans control it all. Medicare is going away, Social Security is going away. So will the FDA, EPA, and every other constructive or protective function of the government. And no, they won’t be replaced with anything. > [@Ways to irritate Trump supporters?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-irritate-trump-supporters/773295/100): > > The voting public decided to say _“Kill anyone who isn’t white! Rape any woman you catch! Kill the unbelievers! Kill the gays! Kill the liberals! Burn the world for Jesus!”_ > [@Post your President Trump predictions here](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-president-trump-predictions-here/771661/73): > > Targets for persecution, oppression and exploitation. Anyone who isn’t a rich white American Christian male. Which means most of the population of the US, and the _entire_ population of the rest of the world. You were wrong about all those predictions. When 2029 rolls around and we’re not scrounging for cans of dog food in an irradiated wasteland and you’re proven wrong again, will you at least learn from it this time? ---
**Author:** ![bobsmom101](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobsmom101/32/2867_2.png) [@bobsmom101](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobsmom101)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068/575 "2024-12-11T17:04:56Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > He’s already talking about the military doing it. > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > to unleash the lynch mobs But this is the scarier issue, I think: he doesn’t need anyone in _government_ to enforce his orders. He already proved on Jan 6 2021 that all he has to do is tweet out some vague decree ("People with Hispanic names aren’t REAL citizens!) and encourage the greatly empowered, highly armed and angry goon squad to start shooting up “brown” neighborhoods. If a lot of them get arrested and end up in jail, that’s not the Criminal-In-Chief’s problem. If it sets off riots and pushback, even better: it proves the minorities are bloodthirsty and violent just like he always said. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Winston\_OBoogie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.winston_oboogie/32/2945_2.png) [@Dr.Winston\_OBoogie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Winston_OBoogie)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068/576 "2024-12-11T18:05:36Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > How do you think they’ve stacked the courts so hard in their direction? Years and years of consistent effort while the Democrats wrung their hands and panicked over the thought of being called “liberal”. I blame that one on Mitch McConnell. Dem President? Delay, delay, delay. We don’t mind if the courts are understaffed. Rep President? Fill those spots as quickly as possible! > [@bobsmom101](#): > > ("People with Hispanic names aren’t REAL citizens!) you mean kinda like Canadian-born Raphiel “Ted” Cruz? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068/577 "2024-12-11T19:26:57Z")
> [@bobsmom101](#): > > But this is the scarier issue, I think: he doesn’t need anyone in _government_ to enforce his orders. He already proved on Jan 6 2021 that all he has to do is tweet out some vague decree ("People with Hispanic names aren’t REAL citizens!) and encourage the greatly empowered, highly armed and angry goon squad to start shooting up “brown” neighborhoods. If a lot of them get arrested and end up in jail, that’s not the Criminal-In-Chief’s problem. If it sets off riots and pushback, even better: it proves the minorities are bloodthirsty and violent just like he always said. Yes, and it’s something that has a long history of happening in the US. Lynch mobs, race riots, gay bashing, stochastic terrorism; the Right _loves_ mob violence and thuggery. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068/578 "2024-12-11T20:05:02Z")
So you’re just going to ignore the fact that none of these things happened in 2017 like you said they would, then? ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068/579 "2024-12-11T20:45:34Z")
I mentioned … somewhere else: Hitler became Germany’s Chancellor in 1933. He became Der Führer in 1934. He didn’t invade Poland until 1939. Because reasons. _Past performance is no guarantee of future_ results. FWIW, I literally cannot count the number of times I’ve heard “He’s _never_ done _that_ before” at a dog park, after some inattentive owner’s dog viciously attacks/bites another dog. Things change. I also remember mentioning that the last major thing Trump did as POTUS – attempting the overthrow of the legitimately elected US government – merits exponential weighting. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068/580 "2024-12-11T20:49:22Z")
The Weimar constitution could be amended merely by a vote of the Reichstag. Changing US law to make Trump all-powerful would be significantly harder. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068.md?page=28) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-the-clusterfuck-continues-part-1/1010068.md?page=30)