Donald Trump the Megathread part II - Mod Warning added to OP 10/1/26

Oh, I know Trump has/had nothing to do with any of it.
However, that hasn't stopped him playing politics with it the last few months.
I was fully sure that he would probably have a big show at the WH, shouting about how he/LordElon saved them after Biden/Kamala abandoned them.

Coming back to Trump/Russia, is it perhaps high time that we play the Chamberlain card?

It would be absolutely spiffing if the Democrats actually did “something” - it would certainly be a start.

Trump is never named in the GOP/SCOTUS criticisms.

It allows them to pay lip service to the issue, and allows Trump to say they weren't talking about him.

It's been happening for ages.

Aside from the constitutional checks and balances influencing which way the military would go it's worth noting that during his first term he pretty much had a naval mutiny over a Covid outbreak.

If I remember rightly before the US civil war when a basic income tax was introduced the apparatus of the federal government and all its branches were paid for by duties on imports. As a resource rich continent it effectively had a trade surplus with every nation it traded with so it may have felt like to average denizen of those early decades that taxes didn't exist as only the importers were funding the federal government.

Edit to add an aside, in the early years attempts to issue a national currency failed as a lot of domestic trade was barter and import duties could be paid with circulating british and other european coin which merchants had a surplus of from their exports. It took decades for a USD to gain common usage domestically. The building up of a national reserve helped to eventually replace foreign coins with US silver coins.

It seems like the modern Tea Party mistook that ending tax to a faraway king meant the end of taxation entirely. They look at federal government being as much an imposition as tithes to a 18th century English monarch. In the early years of the new republic it may have felt like tax didn't exist as there wasn't a sales or income tax, but that non taxation nirvana was shielded by a navy and army paid for by import taxes and duties.

Trumpers are united in not believing in government, they think taxation is theft and DOGE is the purge. The army, navy and airforce could not exist without taxation so ultimately they'd have no choice but to protect the federal government against insurrectionists.

If Trump dropped dead tomorrow there'd still be an anti government radicalism that may become more assertive domestically.

Has the president not immunity as per the supreme court

And their supporters get upset when MAGA is called weird.

:/

Says the poster who decried judges as activists as they had the gall to strike down orders from Trum that are more than likely not legal

Trump has mentioned his call with Putin lasted “nearly two hours” - they spoke about Ukraine “and other things”

I can’t help but think Ukraine didn’t get much agenda time as I’d say the “other things” are much more pressing for Trump - he’s obviously cooking up something

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