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

Who else has lost? It's not just the richest people is it?

It is anyone with investment, pensions etc connected to those companies.
Next it will impact demand and jobs as the companies tighten belts.

It is total misrepresentation to paint this as just hurting the richest people so spare us nonsense about "no wonder the media is in melt down".

And the same Trump administration has been gutting programmes and staff that helped the poorest Americans.

So don't even try that angle either.

The media is in melt down because this economic repercussions for Americans of all income brackets, and not just Americans.

It's not just a question of whether you can produce it. You could produce cars in Ireland but they would be very expensive, we can produce pharma in large quantities. We can produce tomatoes but limited in greenhouses. You can't produce everything efficiently. Better off if Ireland produces butter and gets most of its tomatoes eg from the Mediterranean.

There is a place for specific tariffs (eg new industries, newly developing countries, to target unfair trade practices) but you won't find any credible competent economist that will justify Trump's across the board tariffs based on a supposed trade deficit.

500 richest people have lost some wealth. No wonder the media is in melt down.

We have one poster blaming the Dems for Trump being elected, and here we have another claiming that the outrage is caused by the media, and not the people suffering.

F**king hilarious to see throw blame around without laying it purely and simply where it belongs, at the ample lap of Donny...

I can't believe that this still has to be explained to some people.

If rich people keep losing money this one will be successful though.

This time probably with Wall street money behind it.

How would it rise if everyone was trading it for something else?

I can't see it short to medium term. Fair enough, you did say long term. But that would involve the US coming to it's senses.

Are the mid term elections not under the control of each state and not under the control at federal level.?

So two points if this is the case.
(1) will the Governers/ administration in the Blue/ democratic leaning states make sure what you are suggesting will not happen - so anyone who wants to vote can vote

(2) There is a REALPOSSIBILITY that SOME of the governers /administration in red states are not TOO ENAMOURED with Trumps behaviour and what it’s doing to the economy and might not be too happy to carry out trumps bidding re voter suppression, etc.

If Trump is dumb by any measurement, then what does that make Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, the Democratic party and the Republican party? Geniuses??

They've all been defeated by him and yet some people cling to this strange fiction that he is dumb, and rarely question the intellect of those other people, and they say this without qualification.

The problem with calling him dumb, despite him being the biggest political force in the USA today is that it's dismissive. It just says that "he'll shoot himself in the foot too bad to recover from sooner or later, so I don't really have to do anything". Now, THAT is dumb, because all evidence has been to the contrary. Not only has he not sabotaged himself to that point, but he looks poised to end US democracy entirely.

How much do I have to say that simply calling him 'dumb' plays entirely into his hands? Because it has.

And I'll tell you something else - you can go back and watch many interviews of him in the 90s and 80s where he sounds like a completely different man, speaking calmly and with decent articulation. Few these days seem to stop to think that maybe most of the stuff he's saying these days in public is strictly meant as red meat for the base. Why should we think this? Because he's said as much at rallies . He's said before something like, 'I talk about this trans thing and you people go crazy, so I just keep talking about it!' He knows what he's doing in that regard. He knows how to play the rubes. He knows how to stir up the lowest common denominator. He is a political PT Barnum.

Again, there is a difference between being dumb and being ignorant. Trump is deeply ignorant in many ways, but highly effective in manipulation when it comes to getting what he wants, which is power and admiration.

No matter what the rich lose, it's still the people on the lower ends of the ladder that will lose an awful lot more.

Based on Sanders recent utterings/statements re the state of the economy , the issues that US Senate/ Congress/ Trump should be addressing re the environment, education, health and other sectors with some basic issues to be addressed and that effect the American less well off such as housing , I cannot see why individuals have a problem with him .

I assume that he knows that what he is proposing cost money and he has plans as to how to source it.
The only problem that some Americans have with him is that his source of funds to finance the above is to increase taxes paid be the rich companies/individuals

I used to have to listen to him on the Howard Stern when I was with a landscaping crew back when he was lapping up the Martha Marples attention. The blue collared loved him, a silver spoon slob that's just like us!

He sounded dumb to me then, full of what is now known as "main player syndrome", but then a lot people I was surrounded by in the US were entirely self centred. There's nothing smart about Trump.

His tariff formula removes all doubt that there really isn't anything going on in his head other than me, me, me.