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

To the surprise of nobody, it is reported that Trumps chief fangirl MTG "bought between about $21,000 and $315,000 in stocks on April 8 and 9, the day before and the day of Trump’s tariff pause announcement". NYT.

If you consume a lot of RW social media, then "DEI" was THE BIGGEST issue, cruelly crushing America.

I haven’t studied the figures in detail, maybe you have, but how many actually switched their vote from 2020 ? Is it not equally possible (maybe even more so) that more Democrat voters simply stayed home in 2024.? Then there are the reports of voter suppression, which it has been claimed led to millions of votes being discounted. I wouldn’t be so sure that America actually swung back to Trump in significant numbers. Wasn’t his overall vote pretty similar to last time, whereas the Democrat vote was down ?

I know of a few that would be happy for the US to have no federal government at all. Effectively split into 50 separate countries!

"Trump's voters are all older and will die off, so there isn't much chance of him being elected again."

Another absolute doozy said on here before the 2024 election. He actually increased his vote in each subsequent election from 2016.

Seems to be 50/50 to switching and turnout to me

2020, turnout was 155m. Biden got 81m, Trump 74m

2024, turnout was 152m. Harris got 75m, Trump 77m

Turnout was down 3m, so 3m switched between Dem and Rep

I think the libertarian wouldn't even accept state tax. The neo tea party fashioned themselves as fiscal liberators, but the original 13 colonies while not having state taxes did fund a federal government by duty on imports.

Tax paid to the king across the ocean stopped, but that didn't mean funding administration did.

Tax derived almost entirely from duty on imports worked fine as long as there was a constant demand for raw materials from the old world. One of New Amsterdam's main exports was beaver pelts.

In a time when it was foreigners who funded the US federal government I could well imagine how those in the frontier felt that individual taxation was unnatural.

The 2020 vote for Biden was the highest vote count in US history. Setting that as the bar of victory is like saying that Chelsea would need to beat Man U 7 nil like last season. If that's the criteria of success, something has gone wrong for that to even be a necessity.

Yes, drip drip is the key. And that's what they are doing.

China, Japan, the UK. etc.

Even Ireland did some last month, Cashing in $40 billion.

Also if the USA defaults on bonds, it will never again be the World's reserve currency.

America did want Donald Trump, absolutely. He won two elections but also lost one. And he lost the popular vote 2 out of 3 times but to be fair he did win it last time out. His cumulative vote across the 3 elections is over 7.6M votes less than his Democratic opponents.

He won the last election, so obviously that is most relevant and I'm not for a second disputing his victory. But look at what has happened since then. Look at the videos we saw from town hall after town hall of Republican members of congress and the pushback demonstrated there for how he has started his administration.

To say that America want's Trump now in April 2025 when he won a close election and has clearly p*ssed off so many people in so many ways since he assumed the office this time round is using semantics. And I get it, Trump and his crew are still talking about a mandate from the American people, and that's how politics goes, but to ignore the impact of Trump's actions until there is another election with respect to public sentiment is being very selective to the point of nearly having your head stuck in the sand.

Nvidia exports to China being limited, the chips they had developed to meet the old regulations about selling to China.

The West are blowing their load so early. Biden was part of this as well limiting exports there, and it just forces China to become self-reliant.

I'd put any money I have on China being capable of solving these problems over the next decade, than them falling behind because they can't buy Western tech.

Now, they will just make their own way in semiconductor tech and then the west will have no cards. Isn't there something like more engineers graduating in China every year than rest of the world combined? Their hard skills and education are so good, it's wild than America who values MBAs over everything thinks they can win the science victory.

Maintaining the lead and selling to them to keep them in line was the only logical way forward. Trump has thrown that away because of ideas of what a trade deficit means. Of all things to try and get China in line over, it was a stupid trade deficit.

There’s a number of aspects to this though- there’s internal America DT and there’s world DT.

What he’s doing to the rest of the world right now - tariffs, threatening UK to repeal lgbtq legislation if they want to do business etc - is bad on the world certainly, but just right now, Americans won’t see much impact. And a lot of the “noise” is directed outwards not inwards towards America

It’s his internal dismantling of domestic checks and balances along with massive fraud on the stock market and the depletion of their 401k accounts and job losses and sackings - that’s what America needs to worry about - but they’re still asleep in the main so they don’t actually realise just how fcked up their country is about to become. And it will get worse - a lot worse.

Make no mistake -America asked for this- white Christian America especially asked for this. And many will remain happy and many more republican voters will just shut up and keep quiet. It’s the democrats that need to grow a pair- but as I’ve said, they’re still asleep

There is a hardcore MAGA crowd of perhaps 40m or something - these would be your hardcore conservatives, reactionaries, racists etc that you normally see at Trump rallies. But there are tens of millions of more moderate Republicans and conservatives with a small 'c' who are not on the 'Trump is the Messiah' train. He is by no means guaranteed support from this latter grouping.

A president saying he will be a dictator for one day is more egregious than someone online saying he said it would be for more than one day.

Interesting to see which one you are more upset about.