Donald Trump the Megathread part II - mod warnings in OP, Updated 18/03/25

aloyisious

Trump has upped the level of his war against the US universities which are seen as universities of excellence by foreign fee-paying students. He's instructed, through the State Dept, all US embassy consular sections to halt all foreign student visa applications in preparation for an expansion of required social media screening and vetting. He wants to make sure free speech and thought, as practiced in line with the US constitution, contained in the electronic devices of the students complies with what he defines as proper speech.

The fact that two can play at this game doesn't seem to have entered his tiny brain, nor those of his minions. The lost income provided by those students and their families to the US in educational fees and board and lodging, along with day to day spending wont be coming back if Trump has his way. Reciprocation may be the only way to make Trump understand what he's done. Boycott all Trump enterprises operating outside the US would be a justifiable response to his wrecking the hopes and aspirations of the students, the colleges and all the US hosts proving board and lodging to the students.

Economics101

Another brace of Trump pardons: daughter a Trump campaigner and of course they are former reality TV hosts. Birds of a feather.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/27/politics/trump-pardon-chrisley-knows-best

And Alice Johnson, the Trump "pardon czar" (😁) is a beneficiary of a Trump fisrt-term pardon. You couldn't make it up!.

Bass Reeves

Learned a new acronym today. TACO, it refers to what is starting to happen in trading of stocks and shares after Trump majes an announcement. Traders trade away normally as

Trump Always Chicken's Out

trashcan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123487318#Comment_123487318

Don’t forget the $50m that USAID was giving for condom bombs to Gaza, which turned into $100m overnight ! And this is the same guy who is now complaining about foreign students getting into Harvard when they don’t know what 2 + 2 is.

Frank Bullitt

I would bet all of my savings, that Canada are not considering this. At all.

His is so dumb that he doesn't realize that this just strengthens Canadas hatred for him.

AbusesToilets

Pretty depressing article, as ever one is these days. The supposed America First crowd doing everything they can to impoverish the country, in every sense.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/05/trump-defund-schools-research-republicans/682742/?gift=9raHaW-OKg2bN8oaIFlCon2F0a9m7ntqKGubzL3xzvo&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

ronjo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123492198#Comment_123492198

The Art of the deal!!!!

Get Canada to pay 61 billion dollars or make them 51st state.

WIN WIN

Will at least thats what MAGA are saying on twitter…….

ronjo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123492258#Comment_123492258

Very interest and indeed very depressing.

I would love for one Trump fan here to comment on it

spacecoyote

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123492344#Comment_123492344

A Trump fan might struggle to have the attention span to read anything longer than a tweet though

machiavellianme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123492335#Comment_123492335

It'll be some dome if it stops perfectly at the border but somehow encapsulates Alaska. Or is he just giving that back to Putin?

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123492373#Comment_123492373

My money is on no dome.

everlast75

Levitt on Fox - "Electricians, plumbers -- we need more of those in our country, and less LGBTQ graduate majors from Harvard University. And that's what this administration's position is."

Note the use of LGBT, because she believes while the average Joe doesn't like Harvard, they don't dislike them quite enough.... so she uses that the acronym to make the idea even more unlikable.

She, along with the rest of this administration, are despicable bigots and petty bullies. I hope any members of her circle of friends or family completely disown her.

Disgusting remarks, passed off with a smile.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123492411#Comment_123492411

"I love the uneducated"

Trump likes 3 types of people.

People who are either too dumb to understand he's not acting in their best jnterests,

Those who ate complicit with him, and Those who are too scared to speak out

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123492411#Comment_123492411

I know it's cheap to say that it's like Nazi Germany but it really feckin' is. They've identified their enemies within (LGBT people, BLM, pro-Palestinians, liberals, socialists, etc) and their enemies without (Ukraine, the EU, China, various international institutions, etc…). Once they're done with these, they'll turn their hate on the American working classes.

It's been done before and we know how this ends. The irony is that anyone with some cop on who isn't desperate would be thinking very carefully before moving to this dystopian, cultureless cesspit of a country where a man with three dozen convictions is not just Head of State but worshipped by tens of millions of people like a god. No wonder they want to destroy education.

Rawr

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123492198#Comment_123492198

Futhermore, Donnie being Donnie he doesn't get that Defence spending is funded by the US Tax-payer. So if Canada became the 51st State, the people there would become….US Tax-payers.

I guess that's to be expected for a guy who spent his life doing his level best at not paying his taxes.

Bet you anything too that this "Golden Dome System" is going to end up being little more than a routine upgrade to the existing missle counter-measures with a "Golden Dome" sticker slapped onto it to placate Donnie.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123492427#Comment_123492427

Not just that, but their attacks on education are likely part of a greater plan; they need bodies to man the factories.

Trump wants to bring a lot of manufacturing back to the US, and as much as they want a lot of these things to be automated, they're still going to need a significant proportion of people to work in those factories in low-paying jobs.

What better way than to demolish the Department of Education to reduce education standards, reduce upwards mobility and access to further education, and have the factories be the main source of jobs in an area? Also helps when you remove benefits and healthcare from people to force them into having no other option.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123492411#Comment_123492411

I don't think the aim of this nasty screed is to target graduates of Harvard who are LGBTQ, but rather graduates of Harvard who have majored in LGBTQ studies. It's an article of faith with the MAGA crowd that LGBTQ studies are all that universities — especially elite universities — teach these days, and that's what she's leaning into.

yagan

It's also rather telling they assume that there's no LGBTQ plumbers and electricians.

Patrick2010

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123492366#Comment_123492366

I commented on X yesterday about a post from where he referred to Californians governor as Gavin Newscum, my reply was "how presidential, very classy". I got a number of likes and followers from MAGA posters.

dogbert27

It's already been admitted that the Golden Dome as planned will not cover all of the USA land mass so they will be cherry picking what States will be getting protected.

This will be a non-runner, just something that Trump can spout on about for the next 3.5 years.

And what attack brought America in to WW2? Pearl Harbour in Hawaii which won't have the Golden Dome protection. 🙄

Is anybody asking him how his conceptual plan to replace medicare is coming along?

kneemos

Trying to scare the wits out of immigrants by threatening to return them to South Sudan, Libya and other countries not their own.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/27/politics/south-sudan-deportations-trump-supreme-court

Igotadose

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123492473#Comment_123492473

I was amused to see a quote from a Harvard Divinity School graduate. I'd forgotten they still had one and I think it's pretty big. Along with all the doctors, lawyers, science grads…. CFTrump's assault on knowledge and education continues. And that press sec, makes me long for the days when Stephanie Grisham was the press secretary.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123492465#Comment_123492465

Good point but I don't think it's that. Education tends to make people ask questions. No authoritarian regime wants that.

thatsdaft

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123492522#Comment_123492522

Well Alaska can be given back to Russia in exchange for a trump tower in Moscow

So I presume he will give Hawaii to Chinese in a similar golden tower deal

See problem solved

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123492537#Comment_123492537

Oh that's definitely a big part of it too.

Patrick2010

Factory work is the future for Americans

https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-secretary-commerce-says-model-172111761.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAEvVD_8Xnnn0OkeEqpmwwiKXKA-wwlvdHMliOYbtgWNXz9UgtUreaHdKJpAElX-Su4W02Av8hAD5wMjHyUpSDc-UpeBrz8etXxKmRu7uoU_clEtRn2qDUpiTbuQGQlKyoVXY8pv9Qk7-4vs7f0K7b57_IZ9gfyLfcvXc27scb-Cg

• U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick says factory gigs are the “great jobs of the future” that Gen Z could work in for the "rest" of their life—and so could their grandkids. But the workforce’s youngest cohort probably won’t be running to fill the roles.

Some white-collar workers may be on the brink of layoffs thanks to AI, but the secretary of commerce says they will always have a place in America’s factories. As the U.S. puts up high tariffs and curbs immigration, the administration hopes to fuel an intergenerational manufacturing boom.

“It’s time to train people not to do the jobs of the past, but to do the great jobs of the future,” Howard Lutnick told CNBC this week.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123492473#Comment_123492473

Yeah, it's the idea that these are all just egg head liberals in their ivory towers lording themselves over the common man, the man who actually goes out and works all day to keep the country moving and 'make america great again'

Its to dehumanise the university educated, to turn 'liberals' into the same category of parasites and leeches' that they have already denigrated immigrants and the sick and disabled.

Of course, the billionaire elites are 'anti establishment' 'free thinkers' and the likes of Andrew Tate with a garage full of exotic sports cars and a pardon for sex crimes in his back pocket are the real voices of the people…

RickBlaine

It is trivial in the grand scheme of what this administration is doing, but the name One Big Beautiful Bill just demonstrates how deeply unserious these people are.

everlast75

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123492473#Comment_123492473

Even if that's what you interpret to mean, what she said was very clear.

spacecoyote

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123492575#Comment_123492575

So the jobs of the future are not the jobs of the recent past, they're the jobs of the industrial age past