Is that what the feeding tube is for?
I don’t really care how it happens. If we can make it happen in the optimal way to damage MAGA as a political force, then obviously that’s ideal. But otherwise let’s not be picky, let’s just have the fastest and most expedient end to the Trump presidency.
I don’t care if it’s death or incapacity or impeachment or resignation, whatever it is, I want it to happen this morning if possible. Justice for Trump can take a backseat, he has enough high-profile criminal lackeys to satisfy my thirst for retribution.
I think the key thing here is that he’s 79. That’s OLD. Not old like a retiree, more like he should have been a retiree 14 years ago type old. As in, he’s right at the age where men his age typically die.
The wheels are obviously coming off, but the question as I see it, is whether they’re going to pull a Reagan (or already are) and just do shit behind the scenes until he finally keels over or not.
If it was up to me, I would assign him Argentinian former dictator Jorge Videla’s death: Disgraced, in jail for his crimes, sitting on the “throne” trying (and failing) to shit his last shit.
So what, everything happily goes back to normal, the curse is broken?
No, we still have MAGA in charge and enacting policies to destroy the country and rig future elections. Trump just dying suddenly doesn’t fix things. It very well may weaken the movement because the MAGA base won’t be as happy with anyone but Trump, but we’d still live in a fascist dictatorship, just between dictators.
A slow Trump descent where everyone keeps having to decide between admitting he’s losing his marbles and pretending that everything is fine and this is all genius 4d chess would take a lot of wind out of MAGA’s sails. It might not be enough – in my estimation the country is already lost indefinitely – but it certainly has much better chance of weakening post-Trump MAGA than a quick and easy death that gives him martyrdom, that he was just on the verge of making everything all better when he was tragically killed by [insert 800 conspiracy theories]
He apparently held a 3-hour press conference yesterday featuring all of his cabinet members and staff, who spent the entire time seeing who could suck his dick the hardest while he rambled on about all sorts of meaningless bullshit. He must have been on some serious uppers to stay awake that long.
Since he’s worked so hard to form a he-man democracy-haters club, it would be wonderful if whatever he has is communicable and incurable
Ah, reminds me of El otoño del Patriarca! Great book. Not easy to read, but great. Time to re-read, I think.
I think this is mostly wishful thinking. We hate Trump and what he’s doing to the country, and we feel powerless to stop it (in the short run, at least). We want him gone, and some of us are putting their faith in his supposed imminent death.
He’s old. He has a lot of the problems of old age. He bruises easily, and appears to be retaining fluid. His gait is unsteady. He has always had a terrible diet. Yes, he could keel over tomorrow. Or he could keep on going for years. Trump will never tell the truth about his health (does he ever tell the truth about anything?), so we’re reduced to reading tea leaves.
I’d love to see Trump have to pay for everything he’s done, and for him to suffer. But it’s more important for the country to get what it needs than for him to get what he deserves. What we need is for him to be gone, and the sooner the better. That doesn’t mean it’s about to happen, though.
Vance is terrible. Ideologically he’s at least as bad as Trump. But he doesn’t have Trump’s cult following. I think Steven Miller is the power behind the golden throne, and he’s been using Trump to implement Project 2025. I doubt that Vance would be as effective as Miller’s mouthpiece.
If Trump does die in office, I expect there to be conspiracy theories about him being murdered. The MAGAs will turn him into a martyr.
I have posted a similar post before, but it bears repeating: the annual probability of death for a white male aged 80 in the USA is under 5% (cite: page 3). That includes all kinds of people, druggies, alcoholics, poor people, people with all kind of conditions. Never mind how bad he eats, he at least walks (he calls it golf) and has the best medical coverage money can buy.
The a priori chance of him dyeing in office the next four years is about 25%, 30% tops. Now, if he had pancreatic cancer, or an aneurisma of the aorta or in the brain, the chances would be higher. There is no sign of that.
You can get very old with dementia.
Dictators tend to die violently or to get really old.
In one of the other threads I predicted that it will be something stupid that breaks the Trump spell, like him pissing his pants on live television. But I also fear that if that happened, his supporters would simply say it’s cool to pee your pants, and start wetting themselves in public.
The sooner it happens, the sooner we have President Vance.
He’s also not an idiot. You can say that’s worse, because he’ll accomplish more. But part of the outrage I feel about trump is that he’s so fucking stupid, it’s an embarrassment. I think I would prefer a competent right winger. Maybe I’ll live to regret that feeling. Also, Vance probably believes in US democracy and perhaps has some respect for American values. We’ll see I guess. There was a time when he was quite a vocal critic of Trump. That may have been no more genuine than his more recent ass kissing. Again, I assume we’ll know in a few years.
In the Middle Ages, when someone prominent died unexpectedly, almost inevitably cries of POISON!!! and/or WITCHCRAFT!!! arose from every side. I fully expect the same from MAGA when the Orange Peril shuffles off, no matter how public and obvious the cause. Even if he were to be struck by lightning on the golf course, Empty Greene et.al. would blame it on Jewish Space Lasers.
(Hopefully the Middle Ages sequel — where anyone involved in preparing and serving the departed’s last meal, as well as anyone suspected of holding a grudge, was arrested, put to the torture, and hanged or burned at the stake — won’t happen. But you never know with this crowd.)
I would accept his natural death, I believe people like Trump may be the reason God limited human life from the early biblical standard of 100’s of years to it’s current level, because once evil gets in it stays till it dies, it does not step down, it can not step down. I don’t feel any need for human justice imposed on Trump. I don’t think anything humanity could impose on him would amount to anything. However even if he has such a condition, that can go on for years
JD Vance is Peter Thief’s pet hamster, and the notion that “…Vance probably believes in US democracy and perhaps has some respect for American values,” based upon his pre-MAGA cosplay lacks any real evidence given how quickly Vance went supine once the opportunity to step into power presented itself. All evidence indicates that he’s nihilistic vacillator who openly and unapologetically lies and changes his skin as circumstances dictate. And whether Vance can command the adoration of Trump devotees is essentially irrelevant at this point; the Heritage Foundation brain trust who has been behind Trump’s resurgence and the implementation of ‘unitary executive theory’ are already making great strides in dismantling elements of apolitical governance, removing career civil servants to be replaced by supplicants, and eroding all authority of both the court system and Congress, often by just ignoring judgements and threatening elected officials with being ‘primaried’ (or worse). Vance (or whomever gets advanced to the godhead position) doesn’t need to be popular; they just need to repeat the rhetoric and evoke the memory of their sainted leader should Donald Trump keel over a bucket of KFC, and keep pressing on while the opposition swirls around still trying to rely on the political and judicial processes which, it should be pointed out, failed to keep a twice-impeached felon who perniciously lies to the American public, threatens vengeance and encourages violence to political opponents, has literally described himself as being a dictator (“Only on Day One,” as if autocrats willingly give up authority once they’ve attained it), and has alienated every international ally and crucial trade partner in an effort to imposed an ill-conceived autarky without consideration for the necessary groundwork–not to mention the costs and sacrifice–that would require.
It is very telling that the corporate media has been almost completely silent upon Russ Vought, Christian Nationalist and current Director of the Office of Management and Budget, a position that essentially holds the actual purse strings on discretionary spending under executive purview. In essence, unless Congress has granted or directed an agency toward a particular mandate in a specific budget line item, Vought can proved or deny discretionary funding and direct its use by any agency or department in the federal government. All of the attention has been on Trump (oh, those “Epstein Files”, as if even if they had pictures of Trump literally fucking little girls that it would make a difference to his devoted supporters), or Stephen Miller screeching white nationalist rhetoric, or Pam Bondi for treating the Justice Department as a mob enforcement group. ‘Little Marco’ Rubio is sometimes caught sitting around in a corner with a sad visage and vacant eyes, and Kristi Noem doing performative photoshoots in front of stripped men in a Salvadorian prison, but the actual powerhouse of government is being completely ignored by mainstream media–even those still critical of Trump–because…it’s boring, I guess?
Trump isn’t going to be held to account for his actions, and he (probably) isn’t going to shuffle off this mortal coil tomorrow or in the immediate future, but even if he did it wouldn’t change the fact that 75M American voters opted for naked fascist ambition. All of the focus on Trump ignores the fact that he isn’t the cause of modern polarization, just an opportunist who saw that turning politics into even more of a reality television show than it already was gave him an edge over aptitude, empathy, or experience in government, and despite the downturn in polling (for whatever that is worth), that polarization has not changed, nor have the people who have reaped benefits from jumping into the MAGA parade suddenly going to experience a mass reflection on values and do an about face to hand control over to their political opponents.
All that being said, I’ll give a cheer when Donald Trump flitters off to his eternal rewards, which were I a spiritual person I would hope to consist of reincarnated into a dung beetle but with sufficient sapience to know his plight, but it isn’t going to magically fix all of our pernicious problems and may actually clear the dead weight from people who aspire to completely take over government and transform the nation into a theocratic totalitarian state, or just disintegrate the nation entirely so we can all be freely exploited by cryptobro anarchy-capitalists.
Stranger
I can hear you!
Yeah, as I remember, Putin was supposed to be dying any minute now a few years ago.
@kambuckta…maybe don’t be a jerk.
That’s a serious insult.
Why don’t you go chase some kangaroos and quit being so breathless about what goes on here in the USA.
AUS being so great and all, I wouldn’t want you to worry so…down-under.
But “what evs”
I thought you said this thread annoyed you and you were gonna fuck off. Maybe you should do that.