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

By what metric are you judging the economy was terrible?

Oh yes. I have absolutely no doubt that a cozey deal has been worked up between the two of them to Ukraine's loss. I also have little doubt that it's well under deep cover so as few as possible know it exists.

Welcome to Boards. Have you been hibernating since November 5th?

A couple of things have happened since then.

I don't know if Trump will refuse to let Zelenskyy re-arm or restock his armouries with US products. He'll certainly have to replenish the stocks in US NATO forward based armouries if he intends the US to stay in NATO. He certainly won't be able to cage up the Europeans or bluff them into s false sense of security under Uncle Sam's umbrella again. Ukraine certainly wont rely on Uncle Sam again after the mauling it got from the peace-loving Trump. I think even Trump will know not to rely on Putin 100%, he'll keep a few eggs elsewhere, unless he's a total dumb ass.

I'll risk saying this: Zelenskyy's people know from the past century not to trust totally in Europeans and he's just had that lesson refreshed in his mind at a national level.

and presumably Putin can see a couple of moves ahead here and realises if he engages seriously with the peace process the ultimate outcome will be giving up any prospect of taking further bites out of Ukraine.

I seriously doubt his word or ability to change his spots also.

I think it’s worth repeating, not only for the sake of this point , but also as a renewed PSA for the thread, the following message:

• Donnie does not have a plan (of any kind)
• Donnie does not have any policies
• Donnie’s primary goal is personal aggrandisement
• Donnie’s secondary goal is maintaining the fiction of his wealth

Everything else is window dressing as part of his play acting as “President”.

He flip-flops damn near daily with Tariffs, because “Tariff” is a grownup Political-sounding word he likes to use without understanding what it actually is. Someone is somehow in the White House is sweet-talking him into being less thickheaded about this, but it only appears to last a couple of days before Donnie feels like he needs to say that word again and restart the cycle. That’s not a policy, that’s the sound of him smacking his head against a walls of the West Wing in the hopes that he’ll eventually break though into whatever secret room is in there that grants you actual universal respect of people who aren’t just hillbilly married cousins.

The same applies to Ukraine and Russia. There is no master peace plan from him, nor is there any real strategy. For whatever reason Donnie is not in the mood to shoot down Zelenski today, but that could change instantly. That’s why I believe Europe should operate on the assumption that the US cannot be relied upon. While Donnie is there, they simply cannot be.

I don't think the US can be relied on for the foreseeable future, full stop. Even if they booted Trump and his acolytes out of office and elected a centrist Democrat, there'd be the ever-looming spectre of voting in another fire-breathing demagogue in another four years. It's an unavoidable problem of their two-party system, and it makes long-term strategic cooperation such as we'd seen after WW2 impossible.

Trumps gonna be pìssed off as soon as someone gets the crayons outand explains this to him.

Reports that Canada files to sell USD bonds, size undisclosed.

Trump doesn't have all the cards. He isn't even playing with a full deck.

I say the same about the press secretary in the whitehouse who had a pop at the AP reporter when he called her out on how tariffs actually work.

It is scary that we are still at the stage where the understanding around tariffs is like a black art to some.

Let's see what happens when the most wooden, befuddling career politician meets the most charismatic, polarising business man in the world.

Will be like Mr bean meeting yank Napoleon

Mod Edit: No memes

I know this is supposed to be some terrible jab at Micheal Martin but it doesn't really work, Trump has been crashing his domestic economy for the last 3 weeks and he's already deeply unpopular there. The only comparable figure at this point in their presidency is Donald Trump.

But good job at getting the ai image or whatever.