Uh huh.
No, he is pretend Jewish in fact. A three-day-a-year Jew, I believe. Three more days than me.
Our present circumstances prove me correct; Trump is President. He was voted for twice. If intelligence was a political advantage he wouldn’t be. America is an intensely anti-intellectual nation, and we prefer to be led by the stupid and the ignorant.
It’s worse than that. I live in Canada and the feeling here is that the US can never be trusted again because any “agreement” can be tossed out by the next president. The US constitution says that, among other things treaties are part of the supreme law of the land. Well, that has to be enforcrd by a court that increasingly defers to the president and, in any case, treaties have to be approved by 2/3 of the senate and the senate has stopped approving treaties. A presidential agreement by one president can be abolished by the next. And Trump agreed to the new NAFTA during his first presidency and is ignoring it this time. So the damage that has been done to US/Canadian relations cannot be undone in any forseeable future.
Even if a treaty were approved by the senate, it is not clear whether a president can unilaterally withdraw. I don’t think there are any court decisions on that. Obviously Trump believes he is not bound by the NATO treaty.
Or - alternative theory - the stupid people aren’t the ones running things. What we’re seeing is a large group of stupid people being used as a front by a small group of intelligent criminals.
My theory doesn’t require a conspiracy between right wingers and Democrats.
I didn’t say anything about a conspiracy; they are just spineless grovelers.
Now, the idea that this time, unlike all the other times the apparent stupidity of the Republicans is a cover for a secret cabal of clever puppet masters? That is a conspiracy theory. Literally.
No, I think it’s been a long standing practice among conservatives to win votes by appealing to idiots. But I don’t think that the people who gain power by doing this are themselves idiots. They’re smart people manipulating stupid people.
The same ones who didn’t want Trump to take over in the first place, but couldn’t put up any real resistance? They have no real power anymore, they just thought they did.
Along with the guyliner, I think Vance would look great in high heels.
I feel there isn’t much point in continuing this dialogue as we appear to have fundamentally different views on politics.
Except that the written statement of said cabal appears to actually exist.
I don’t think his endorsement success rate is all that spectacular, since he almost always endorses Republican politicians who are already leading in the polls.
And if there are two Republican politicians who are tied going into the primaries, he has been known to endorse both of them so he can tally up another endorsement victory.
I don’t dispute this statement, but my point still stands. Once you have the Trump seal of approval, your win, especially in a primary, is all but guaranteed.
The story is not that consistent; Trump’s endorsement of candidates in MAGA-heavy states certainly carries weight but not so much otherwise, not even in a highly conservative GOP-dominated state like Utah. The real danger there is how much Trump (and his backers) have taken utter control over the Republican National Committee which can drive narratives toward authoritarian-candidates over traditionally conservative ones like Mitt Romney (‘moderates’ having long been purged from the GOP entirely). At this point, the only reason the Republican party isn’t full-on MAGA cosplay is because the billionaires backing candidates are not in lockstep agreement with each other and are increasingly suspicious of Trump and doubtful of their own individual much less collective ability to influence him. The almost singular influence of Elon Musk in the early days of Trump’s second regime certainly played right into those fears, and the performative pseudo-purging of Musk from DOGE was likely as much about appeasing those elements as it was scapegoating Musk for doing exactly what Trump and the Heritage Foundation fucks wanted in terms of setting precedent of breaking the administrative state. (For that matter, Musk still has plenty of operatives within the government agencies that DOGE impacted, and doubtless copies of all data they were able to scrounge, so despite vocal proclamations of his political demise I doubt we’ve heard the last of him.)
Trump is not an all powerful autocrat, but then, neither was Hitler and the Nazi Party until they fully consolidated power and essentially dismissed the judiciary and set up their own independent courts. Trump is not an healthy man, but neither was Hitler throughout much of his reign. Trump is clearly not calling all the shots, but Hitler’s functionaries often worked around him to limit some of the worst decisions and organize the somewhat interpretive Nuremberg racial laws and disjointed efforts at the ‘removal’ of Jews, Roma, and. other ‘desirables’ into a cohesive framework of mass collection, transportation, and murder. There are not exact parallels between Hitler and Trump but there are may aspects that are close enough to be highly worrying to students of autocracy and fascism.
Stranger
That’s certainly what Trump would like everyone to believe, but agreeing with this is just buying into his bullshit, IMHO. Trump is solely interested in looking like a winner, so he almost always endorses candidates who have a good chance of winning. How much the candidate sucks up to him might be a factor in getting his endorsement, but their chance of winning matters far more. Of course, their actual qualifications and fitness for office are irrelevant.
Fred: No matter what, Donnie, don’t be a loser.
Don: but what if—
Fred:—DON’T BE A LOSER!!!
The media (duh, guys!) is really starting to take note of Da Don’s cognitive decline. Then again, he’s making it extremely easy for them to do so:
This guy is not going to make it six more months without extensive propping up by his staff. After that, they might just have to stick him in a bacta tank and forget about him.
I love a good Hitler/Trump compare/contrast exercise. More meat to it than the old Hitler/Nixon ones.
Much is made of the working-class thugs who terrorized the streets for the NSDAP, while the upper classes including Von Papen and Hindenburg gave Hitler his boost, deluding themselves that “we’ve hired him.”
But less (dis)credit is given to the vast support from the middle class. The ruined shopkeepers in the Great Depression, the hausfraus outraged at contemporary morals, and of course, anyone who’d like to see those Jews removed from among both their competitors or creditors.
In 2025 the bourgeoisie is long gone, replaced by a college-educated professional class (whose college education was stripped of those silly Humanities so as to focus on job-training for a modern world). Flow-chart crafters and meeting-takers beholden mainly to financial overlords who’d cut them out with a keystroke (and for whom, truth be told, those middle managers had compiled lists of names among themselves who could be eliminated).
This was a middle class who’d looked for grace above and beyond the heartless corporate CEO, for some strong person at the top who could set fleets sailing and armies marching, to enforce a true stability that would be reflected down at their own level as a semblance of “everything is going to be okay.”
One thing 1932 has in common with 2024 was a man calling out for the people to grant him their democratic power so that he could destroy it the instant they’d placed it in his hands. Two men who hated the law, who bleated on and on how he had been victimized by the law, and then demonstrated that without the law, we have only a savage wilderness for a world.
Well said!
So a couple more weeks have passed, and Trump is even deeper into “Failed Hitler” mode. I’d say my OP is panning out in spectacular fashion. To wit:
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Trump’s health continues to deteriorate, and the MSM is reporting on the situation a lot more. Contrary to its past habit of avoidance and obfuscation about Trump’s health, the White House actually had to comment on Trump’s swollen ankles, and elements of the press were calling bullshit on the “venous insufficiency” dodge. Trump looks sick, tired, and out of it–and that’s all before we get to his cognitive decline, which the sluggish and feckless media are beginning to notice as well.
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Remember the Marines in LA? Google AI reports, “Approximately 700 U.S. Marines who were deployed to Los Angeles in early June to protect federal property and personnel are now being withdrawn. The Pentagon announced the withdrawal on Monday, July 21, 2025, following a period of intense protests and federal immigration raids.” Trump makes nazi feints like this but can’t build on them.
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Oh, and the Epstein Affair. For the purposes of the OP, I think it’s less important whether Trump is guilty of something with Epstein* and more important that Trump has completely lost control of the narrative on this. Manipulating the media has been one of Trump’s core strengths, and he is losing his touch. Rapidly.
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There is simply a muddled directionlessness to everything Trump and his regime are doing. Sure, he continues to do lots of bad and dumb shit, but there is no strong vector to anything in particular.
Personally, I have a hard time imagining this shitshow–more like a diarrhea splash–going on much longer, much less achieving any further foot- or handholds on the mountain of autocracy.
*I’ve commented elsewhere, but, sure, Trump’s name is mentioned probably a zillion times in connection with Epstein, but whether any of it is prosecutable is dubious, as the Biden admin had the opportunity to do that or at least leak damaging material. Trump reaction to and handling of the Epstein mess has been irrational and erratic, most likely owing to his ill health and cognitive collapse.