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

I certainly hope so 😋

It will be a great day when somebody says that to his face. Honestly, why are people so spineless ? I think if it was this country he’d get a lot more abuse. I was just watching the clip of him and Musk in the Oval Office, where he repeated the lie about transgender mice (honestly, how stupid would you have to be to give that credence for even a nano second) and I was just wishing someone would just shout out “that’s a lie, you big fat liar”. I know the person would lose their press pass, but damn it would be glorious, and worth it.) The questions the press ask him are so bloody useless. Not one journalist trying to hold him to account to his face.

And yet Christians think he's righteous and a certain amphibian thinks he's hilarious. A mean spirited, bitter husk of a person. I actually wish him good health and many more years in the hope that he might come to some realisation and feel some kind of remorse and shame. Unlikely I know...

Measles is spreading because rfk Jr will not recommend public vaccination of children and other people as he,s a weirdo anti vaxxer ..He,s going to be responsible for the deaths of 1000s of people He now recommends that only people over 60 get the covid vaccine He is going against all medical doctors and experts who say everyone should get the covid booster every year Children are especially vulnerable to long covid .It's not in the news but 100s of people get covid every month .This is serious in America as insurance companies will no longer have to pay the cost of vaccines .

Rfk Jr is a disaster for being the person in charge of public health policy . Doctors are leaving America and going to Canada as they feel America is now ruled by extreme conservatives

Does Ireland recommend the covid vaccine for healthy people under 65? As far as I was aware, most, if not all , European countries had already moved to similar recommendations years ago. Literally none of my young nieces and nephews in Ireland were ever advised to get the covid vaccine, and none of them did. None of my family or anyone I know have had boosters for years now and dont even think about it. But it's terrible when the US brings in similar guidelines ? Aren't you worked up about the situation in Ireland since it's the same?

Measles is spreading in Ireland too BTW, probably at a higher rate per capita than the US 😱 I don't think 5 months or less of the current health secretary makes much difference to the rates tbh considering the outbreaks in the US have originated and been spreading (very slowly) for years now

Long term, do you think it's good that the health secretary is effectively anti vaccine? Research into vaccine hesitancy has been cut and similar is expected to happen to mRNA vaccine research.

You're right that measles outbreaks have been a thing for years in Ireland, However the USA had effectively eliminated it by the year 2000. People who then worked against that were the likes of RFK who promoted the conspiracy theory that vaccines cause autism. He may not have been the health secretary then but he is now so I'd find it bizarre not to be concerned about public health.

Meanwhile he's promising to find the dreaded cause of autism while already caught out making up research, so pretty sure that'll jump back to blaming vaccines.

I think you're incredibly naive if you don't view RFK to be incredibly dangerous for public health in the US. Imagine if COVID had kicked off with him as health secretary and the CDC defunded...

In the last 24 hours hours, research into HIV vaccines has been cut... This is probably a mix of administration homophobia and vaccine conspiracy theories but all is fine.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-administration-ending-multiple-hiv-vaccine-studies/

It looks like that twerp Navarro is behind Trump's statement. The ideas don't originate in Trump's head, they're planted there in fertile soil, planned to leave him with the impression that he's the boss, the force to be reckoned with where it comes to trade deals while the "THEY" he never mentions get richer from the turmoil. He's so used to others doing his bidding that he's weakening the premise behind the US presidency and the US in the process.

His good friend Putin would never allow subordinates behave like that and live to enjoy the profits and that shows the difference between them.

I feel sorry for the ordinary Americans who are going to be affected by this sh1t show that’s the administration are pursuing but they did vote for him despite having 4 years previously.

It’s like police federations complaining about Trump pardoning all the J6 rioters when they all backed Trumps campaign.

I've gotten friendly with a few elderly neighbours. The topic of vaccines came up and they just kept saying how much there is to it. Pointless when people won't put the tiniest effort into their own health.

There has been an undercurrent of this in the US for a very long time. The likes of Rush Limbaugh (conservative US radio host) had been pioneers in demonising their opponents.

A few different things happened in the American right which allowed the current situation to happen. Social media allowed paranoid conspiracy theories to proliferate like never before. Post 2008 austerity and 2020 covid sucked many on the centre part of right into this howling vortex. Maybe even more crucially, the Gamergate thing showed there was a huge untapped market of angry young men out there, and their increasing presence in the American right (or alt-right) has turned the American right from being the main preserve of old white men into a sort of counter-cultural movement. It used to be that the American centre-left had the monopoly on what was perceived to be cool and funny, but that changed once all the 4Chan guys got on the right-wing train.

The difference with Ireland is that we're a small and relatively homogenous country. It's much harder to break the public consensus into pieces where you don't know what's up or down, allowing cynicism to run rampant and hucksters like Trump into power on utterly blatant lies. There are people in Ireland trying their hardest to make this happen, but they have not yet been successful.