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

And stop the fentanyl from going from Ireland to the US also. Or maybe just help him build his wall..... In Doonbeg.

I'm actually curious what justification he will use to tariff the EU and what he'll use to back down. Probably the trade surplus and then back down with a commitment that the EU purchase more LNG (which I'm fine with, as it makes Russia getting a foothold back into European supply harder and Trump would see Putin as competition)

He claims Israel will hand over Gaza to the US after the fighting ends and the world will pay for rebuilding it. Can't see that one working out, who would provide that sort of financial commitment on illegally occupied land.

The whole of our defence forces is … 7500 people

But the hysteria was no less then. I recall Mike Pence being referred to as "one of the most dangerous people in the world". I'm still offering chill pills and grass to touch

In probable good news, it seems, following agreement between Attorneys from the Department of Justice and the Trump administration motion filed on Wednesday night to limit access to payment systems nearly all staffers from the Elon Musk-headed Department of Government Efficiency are expected to be temporarily restricted from directly accessing the Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the U.S. government. On Friday, incoming Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent granted access to the payment systems, according to the Washington Post.

There are, however, exceptions for two special government employees at the Treasury affiliated with DOGE: Marko Elez, a young engineer previously working for two of Musk’s companies; and Tom Krause, the CEO of cloud software group. Part of the deal is that they will be allowed access to data BUT they will NOT be allowed write code for the Treasury systems.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Wednesday that DOGE is not allowed to write new code.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly must sign off on the DOJ's proposed order.

It seems, from the above, that the DOJ took a case took a case to federal court seeking to restrict the Doge team members from accessing Treasury Dept data and using the access granted by Scott Bessent to input new code into the Treasury Dept computer system.

Sounds like Musk is digging deep into all this funding going to various institutions and countries. Next up pharma, defense the whole lot.

It seems like half the media has been propped up by previous administrations. Just a tip of the iceburg up to now.

Given his history of him and Musk making claims, I'd say it's more a case of heavily misrepresenting.

Christ

https://www.yahoo.com/news/claims-politico-received-usaid-funds-195555202.html

"According to USAspending.gov, an official source for U.S. government expenditure data—and the resource used by Becker in his post—Politico received $8.2 million in total payments from government departments and agencies between fiscal year 2016 and fiscal year 2025. However, only $44,000 of this total came from USAID.

In September 2023, a staff assistant for the Center for Environment, Energy, and Infrastructure—part of USAID’s Bureau for Development, Democracy, and Innovation—purchased a subscription to E&E for $20,000. According to E&E, prices for its professional subscription packages typically start in the upper four-figure range and vary based on how many users have access to a subscription. Another subscription to E&E was purchased in September 2024 for $24,000 by the Center for Climate Positive Development—an office within USAID’s Bureau for Resilience and Food Security.

Funds received by Politico LLC from other government agencies also came mostly from subscriptions to E&E, or for the company’s policy intelligence platform, Politico Pro. The largest spenders have been the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Department of the Interior (DOI), and Department of Energy (DOE)."

Unsurprisingly friends of Russia are taking advantage of the Trump circus chaos and using it to spread misinformation

We know Musk has absolutely no qualms about lying to promote his own interests.

We know he has already incorrectly tied aid to Africa for contraception to fight the Aids pandemic, with 'buying condoms for Hamas' and this has been repeated many times by all levels of the Trump administration. Musk only needs to most tenuous link to the truth for his statements to be taken as fact and for the propaganda to be successful.

And has already been posted, the 8 million paid to Politico from USAID is already show to be complete nonsense

Trump's Gaza plan now proposing that countries like Ireland (and Spain and Norway) that oppose Israel's operations in Gaza should take in the Palestinians that are unable to live in peace with their neighbours.

Perhaps if Richard Boyd Barrett and the Irish anti-Israelis spent some time living with the Palestinians and seeing how they treat their own people, how they treat women who are unable to bear children, such as Wafa Idris, how they treat anyone with a different view, how they treat atheists and how they continuously start wars, even against the Jordanians who kindly took in Arafat and the Palestinians (this is why the Arab states do not want the Palestinian Arabs), they may see where they are going wrong and stop hating the only democracy with free speech in the region.

Speaking of corporations...

Tesla sales in Europe:

It'll probably hurt the Nazi scumbag's pride more than his pocket but still good to see decent people taking a stand in their own small way.

100%.

His supporters are only concerned with issues he tells them to be concerned about.

As a functioning as adult, as I said above, I could give you 20 solid issues that affect me and my family and friends. Whether an athlete is male or female doesn't even register.

Please see book burnings, and people eating dogs as examples.

Distractions to an easily led demographic.

Indeed, bigots don't like being called out on their bigotry. If only they were as passionate about issues that actually matter.