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

Your post reminds me of something geo-political analyst Peter Zeihan said on one of the Sam Harris podcasts. He said that Germany needs a lot of immigrants because at the rate that native Germans are giving birth, there won't be enough young people of working age to pay taxes that would support the burgeoning number of elderly people who are living well into their eighties or beyond.

And this would appear to be a problem across many European countries as more and more people opt not to have families, not just due to financial reasons, but for a whole host of reasons. There are many other things people can now do in life than the 2.4 children thing.

So, as long as the native birthrate falls, immigrants will be essential to work not just skilled jobs, but every kind of entry-level position as well.

Zeihan went on to say that the population statistics in the USA aren't as grim as those of Germany's, but they don't appear to be so good that the US can sustain a labour market based overwhelmingly upon natural born US citizens either.

https://san.com/commentary/bye-boomers-shifting-demographics-present-an-american-workforce-crisis/

Still no big answer from American conservatives on this problem other than perhaps to repeal child labour laws and gradually cancel the concept of retirement. Neither of those concepts can I imagine being hugely popular, but then again if Trump really does establish full dictatorial power for himself and successors, wtf are the American public going to do about it?

Interesting strategy, didn't work very well in November though

Even in the most alternate of realities, Trump is in no way at all working for the middle class.

it is one of the greatest optical tricks/slight of hand that he has repeatedly been able to do and say the things he does.

nearly everything he says is factually incorrect.

He must be off golfing this weekend as it has been relatively quiet.

CaPlOcKs stuck on …. Sausage fingers can’t cope

China and Russia are loving this. Make no mistake about it. There's good reason they wanted Trump in. He weakens the US and helps strengthen them. The Democrats should be loving this too.

Let Maga eat itself. A huge number of people that will lose their jobs will be people who voted for Trump. A genius way to keeping their vote for 2028…

I suppose we could do something to improve the standard of living in the countries from which people are emigrating. It won't happen.

You are presuming that these people would change their vote.

Thereis little evidence to suggest they will. Job cuts will be put down as being the fault of Biden or HC or woke something and that if reelected he can sort it out.

If there is an election. Trump told Christians he only needed their vote this time as then he would fix it that they wouldn't have to vote again. And he thanked Elon for knowing everything about election voting machines and now Elon has data on every single person in the US!

James Carville is predicting a detrimental collapse in public support for Trump and his admin within the next month. No idea if that will come to be and still think it's a tad too late TBH.

Even Trump supporters realising that voting for Trump did not provide them with immunity from Trump's actions (leopards… faces… etc)

He did say that there would be some pain (can’t remember the wording he used) for Americans as he made their country great again- funny how his wonderful followers didn’t probe that a bit more

Obviously these people are small collateral damage to him and don’t even register on his radar.

What I do wonder is whether he has a tipping point that he won’t cross- he has to know at this point what the absolute limit is, beyond which the American people will turn on him - he’s not stupid from that perspective . I also think the economy can do the talking for the people - his unpredictability will have its own consequences there, and he won’t be able to control that.

I'm sure his supporters probably took that as the price of some things might rise for a little bit, but once Trump's tariffs took effect and every company in the entire world moved their operations to the US that prices would drop dramatically so it'd all be okay.

They don't seem to have considered "I'm going to lose my job/farm/benefits even though I'm white"

A nice little article - the key thrust is that while Trump may be seen to be random and scatter gun, there’s an outline image emerging now - some patterns, some definable essence- in terms of how Trump is approaching the world.
It’s something I would agree with - even throughout the election, I often asked the question “why”- why did Trump say all of those outrageous things etc- the answer was simple- he knew his audience - he knew what they wanted to hear -and he knew what would get him to elected.

- and he knows where he wants to go now, is my view. Getting the measure of Trump, from a European perspective, or indeed world perspective, is the first step in us deciding where we go from here as a nation.

And responding is certainly not appeasement - but if we can determine areas of mutual gain, where Trump doesn’t hold all the cards, we might start to achieve some sort of equilibrium - but it’s not going to be easy.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/24/donald-trump-doctrine-usa-reshape-the-world

Anyone have thoughts on how Trump is going to interact with China? I thought he may have approached them as treated them as equals, keeping a respectful distance on certain issues and just look for opportunities to brag about some useless empty deal?

But looks like some sort of trade war has already commenced - dangerous territory I would imagine- as much as I hate Chinese interference with other countries, I would imagine this won’t end well for anyone

https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/global-trends/trump-targets-china-with-biggest-salvo-so-far-in-second-term/amp_articleshow/118518726.cms

Depends how detrimental the collapse is. Is it enough to cause an uprising for example and start a second civil war? As you correctly say a collapse in support directly after the inauguration is indeed too late. Just before polling day of either the presidential election or the mid-terms would have been much more effective timing

As for MAGA supporters losing their jobs, like renters who voted for FFG in this country, I can't be overly sympathetic