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

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.

if Trump is ‘removed’ for whatever reason and Vance takes over and follows the same strategies/policies/ behaviour will he BE THEN SUBJECT TO THESAME PrESSUREs and ‘ got rid of also’?

What is it with MAGA and capital letters? can you only type angry? or maybe you get off on copying the dear leader.

There is a tariff on braincells and caps lock keys

https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c33zr4n8pm3o

Unbelievable

I think there may well have been a big amount of 'Cambridge analytica' going on with Trump support.

The social media machine that promoted him, showed a different version of Trump to people depending on who they are.

They showed the racist trump to the racists, they showed the 'Drain the swamp' trump to the people sick of 'the establishment' and they showed the 'I'll bring back jobs' Trump to the people who were feeling economically marginalised

We assume that US voters are well informed about politics. A lot of them are ridiculously uninformed about even the most basic facts and are very easy to manipulate if you have the ability to control what news and disinformation pops up on their phones when they're scrolling through facebook for hours every night.

Loads of Trump voters actually believed that there were invasive hoards of immigrants banging on the border wall waiting to be let in, they actually believed that they are 'eating the cats, and eating the dogs' they actually believed that the democrats mismanage the economy and caused the massive debt and the loss of jobs to China, and they believed that Trump, whatever about his flaws, had a plan to fix all of these problems.

My experience of boards is that it would be viewed very liberal - so “far left” in American terms by Americans - yes you’re correct.
Challenge of course is, if you move too far back towards centre, your marginal voters just won’t vote - or as we’ve seen, will get swept up in some religious crap and vote according to their stance on abortion.

The turnout figure only includes votes that were certified and counted. Not the number of people who actually turned out to vote.

Millions of voters were disenfranchised in the last election, and the GOP spent years laying the framework so that the vast majority of disenfranchised voters, were likely democrat voters especially in swing states.

According to Greg Palast
https://hartmannreport.com/p/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won-c6f

— 

4,776,706 

voters were wrongly purged from voter rolls according to US Elections Assistance Commission data.

— By August of 2024, for the first time since 1946, self-proclaimed “vigilante” voter-fraud hunters 

challenged the rights of 317,886 voters. 

The NAACP of Georgia estimates that by Election Day, the challenges exceeded 200,000 in Georgia alone.

— No fewer 

than 2,121,000 mail

-

in ballots were disqualified

 for minor clerical errors (e.g. postage due).

— 

At least 585,000 ballots cast in-precinct were also disqualified.
—

1,216,000

 “provisional” ballots were rejected, not counted.

— 

3.24 million new registrations were rejected

 or not entered on the rolls in time to vote.