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

I take it as cover. He is being too openly pro Russian too quickly that it has become so transparent as to be plain as day. This is a weak effort at misdirection.

Americans absolutely deserve this government. I had some sympathy few years ago, but after January 6, 2021 they deserve anything that Trump and his cronies create.

Looks like Rubio had a bust up with Musk

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/mar/07/donald-trump-tariffs-china-canada-mexico-us-politics-live-news

It was a concrete sign of the president looking to rein in Musk in his unorthodox position, and the New York Times reports that the meeting was quite tense. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and Musk reportedly went at it for a while in front of Trump:

Mr Rubio had been privately furious with Mr Musk for weeks, ever since his team effectively shuttered an entire agency that was supposedly under Mr Rubio’s control: the United States Agency for International Development. But, in the extraordinary cabinet meeting in front of President Trump and around 20 others – details of which have not been reported before – Mr Rubio got his grievances off his chest.

Mr Musk was not being truthful, Mr Rubio said. What about the more than 1,500 State Department officials who took early retirement in buyouts? Didn’t they count as layoffs? He asked, sarcastically, whether Mr Musk wanted him to rehire all those people just so he could make a show of firing them again. Then he laid out his detailed plans for reorganizing the State Department.

The atmosphere also grew heated again when Musk turned to the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, whose department is dealing with the aftermath of the first major plane crash in 15 years:

Just moments before the blowup with Mr Rubio, Mr Musk and the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, went back and forth about the state of the Federal Aviation Administration’s equipment for tracking airplanes and what kind of fix was needed. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, jumped in to support Mr Musk.

Mr Duffy said the young staff of Mr Musk’s team was trying to lay off air traffic controllers. What am I supposed to do? Mr Duffy said. I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now, and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers?

I don't think Musk will last until the summer

It seems, according to available stats, that Canada has high tariffs, up to 300%, on Dairy imports from the US when the imported amount goes above a certain total. I cant find out [yet] from both sides cross-border stats what that TOTAL is or what its based on [density/weight/fat percentage etc]. Trump might be using his figure added to whatever the going US rate is to come to 250%. He is known for using other persons information to reach his conclusion without exploring & finding them for himself.

It's a thing called quotas. If you exceed a quota, you pay heavy tax/tariff or fine. Trump is a total idiot.

If Musk keeps doing full weeks he'll burn through the 130 days that special government employees are allowed work before the summer.

We're done here. Go away.

Well, my sympathies lie with the people that don't want Trump and voted against him. Not too sure that they deserve this government.

For those that voted for him and still support him after all we have learnt about what he is, enables and does, well they fully deserve any and all hardship that comes their way as a result. They really do not have any excuses left in their arsenal at all.

Some sort of fire in the engine bay of Starship. Was noticed after staging, that is separating from the booster. Booster made an uneventful return to launch site and was captured as planned. From video that I saw before the feed was cut off, a chunk from one of the engine nozzles on Starship was missing, and the spot was glowing red hot. Shortly after, all three centre engines and one of the three vacuum-rated engines cut out, throwing Starship into a spin. Not sure if the Flight Termination System kicked in or if the vehicle got ripped apart by the forces induced by the spin.

Apparently, this is the same issue that took out the previous Starship prototype. I recommend watching Scott Manley's video on the subject, I got a lot of my information from there.

Would you please go somewhere else to cry?

Your whining is distracting.

Mod - warned for uncivil post

There is nothing that can bring him down now. Even if definitive proof surfaced and every country outside of the U.S. knew it was real, Trump would denounce it as fake news and MAGA/Republicans would rally behind him. The Republicans are in so deep with Trump now that they have zero credibility left. They need him to survive in politics. They need him to rig the next elections, if there will be any in 4 years time.

If you watch the video Senator Chris Murphy's speech on Trumps corruption; all that evidence alone - forgetting all the confrontation with tariff and Ukraine - makes Nixon look like an Angel in comparison, hell even the Kremlin. He is the most blantantly corrupt politician in history. It's not even covert corruption. It is blantant, all out in the open. MAGA and the Republicans do not care.

Maybe. Maybe Musk will last to summer, and maybe even beyond.

I get the sense that the last Revolving Door White House under Donnie went through so many people for two key reasons:

1. Donnie got sick of the person and did his whole "You're Fired" TV show bit.
2. The person got sick of Donnie and resigned.

If Donnie get's sick of him, then yea he's out as soon as that happens. The question is when. Donnie doesn't actually care about efficiency or about any of the people losing jobs, so Donnie getting sick of him is going to be down to a clash of personalities. It'll happen eventually, but hard to predict when.

As for Musk resigning, well that has a lot to do with the fate of Elon's fortunes. If Tesla does actually implode in the near future, or gives the appearance that it might implode in the near future, then I suspect Elon will hold onto his cabinet role as long as humanly possible. Without the over-inflated market value of Tesla to make him look super wealthy, he will desperately need to glean as much leverage as he can from being in the White House. That'll of course then eventually end when Donnie gets sick of him.

I thought the speculation was that Musk had some things on Trump that allowed him this exalted position within the Trump administration in the first place. If that is the case, he's going to be fairly hard to shift out of it. There must be some sense that they cannot dump him without some serious repercussions landing on their heads. With his money, control of Twitter, and compromise of some of the US government's most sensitive information databases, he's not exactly without cards if a power play is made against him.

I mean, Trump is a famously narcissistic man and yet he sat there at his desk in the Oval Office, with little to say, while Musk stood over him giving a press conference. It was a quite bizarre spectacle, but it's not the kind of one Trump would allow out of charity. Musk seems to have a pretty strong hold on him.

It seems to me that in an administration staffed with raving loyalists, Rubio's the odd one out for being halfway normal. Why would he last 'til the Summer?

Bloomberg openly taking about a trump recession