Donald Trump the Megathread part II - Mod Warning updated in OP 12/2/26

The Republican Pedophile Protectors are as depraved as ever,

Trump has more money than he ever had, I think, because of an utterly shameless milking of his power in a way that makes Obama or Clinton doing after dinner speeches look like selling scout cookies door to door. Personal bankruptcy is not in his future.

And having been through several bankruptcies already, he knows well how to compartmentalise wealth. At worst, a business venture of his might end up with more debts than it can pay, but his personal fortune will remain in tact.

The doge caper, mass capitulation by big business and media all ran scared of an old dementia riden tug with a family engaged in all the scams

Conservatives wanted power at any cost giving trump a pass on any corruption

They'd want to be putting a check on the tyranny of the minority first, as this is all about the GOP attempting to wheedle a House majority even if they're lose by up to 7-8% nationally (and it's also news to me that Republican jurists concern themselves with the rights of minorities, in view of the recent SCOTUS decision on the Voting Rights Act and the recent spate of further redistrictings in Louisiana, Alabama and Florida).

As you know the California and Virginia redistrictings, both approved in referendums, were done in response to earlier GOP efforts in Texas and elsewhere, which were never put to referendums.

You've already answered the question yourself - it's a personality cult. You shouldn't go looking for, nor expect to find rational explanations where A logically follows from B in there. What you will find is a sufficient number of horrible people latching onto him and supporting him because he's given them an opportunity to be openly horrible in public, but that's as close as it gets to answering what you've asked.

He could easily be talking about himself. How he dishes out comments about peoples looks when he looks like a bag of melted candle wax is beyond me.

@looksee

The 25 group is what is going on. It suits them to manipulate and cover for him while allowing him to be the face of the administration. He does not have to be competent, he can just do what he wants and they make things happen (or not) in the background.

The Project 2025 people are the ones with something of a grand strategy, but they'd be going nowhere without Trump fronting the whole thing. They couldn't have plucked anyone off the street or even from the rest of America's political class to do the same job. Trump has a fairly singular effectiveness in creating the cult they can build their plans upon. This is his primary competency and all those who stand opposed to Trump still seem at a loss as to how to really neutralise him.

@Resplendent Moose

You've already answered the question yourself - it's a personality cult. You shouldn't go looking for, nor expect to find rational explanations where A logically follows from B in there. What you will find is a sufficient number of horrible people latching onto him and supporting him because he's given them an opportunity to be openly horrible in public, but that's as close as it gets to answering what you've asked.

And it's a personality cult Trump has ably created. Not necessarily an easy thing to do, or you can bet a lot more politicians would follow suit. I think the problem is that people are judging competence by the criteria of statecraft and generally working in the interest of the American people. This is not Trump's interest at all. Trump's whole thing is amassing personal wealth, getting attention and being adored. Well, by that measure, he's richer than he's ever been, is never out of the news cycle and has several million people who consider him a pseudo messiah. Not a bad day's work by his measure.

@astrofool

A really good con-man, he has failed upwards and moved to bigger cons.

And being more facetious about it, he has captured the zeitgeist of people being able to behave like an assh*le and think they won't face consequences from it. Winning an election is not a sign of competence as every electorate should really know by now.

He isn't even that good of a conman. He doesn't really make an effort to hide the fact that he's lying in most cases, but it doesn't matter when he has MAGA hanging on his every word, because that's really the audience he's speaking to and they don't scrutinise his words. He has, as you say, captured the zeitgeist. He stepped up to head the toxic counterculture that formed after the last recession and the creation of the Tea Party. As Obama said, you could tell those folks the sky was blue and they'd say it was yellow. Trump knew they were primed for his lies and bellicose ignorance.

As for winning an election not being a sign of competence, I agree if you're judging competence by an ability to subsequently lead and be an effective statesman, but again this has never been Trump's interest. His interest is wealth, adoration, fame and to add another one, I suppose, power and let's see - he has taken over the Republican party, nullified Congress, installed cronies around the Executive, stacked the Supreme Court and rules by edict. For his ends, yes he has been competent. In terms of America's future and the general good of the people? That's a different story.

You are correct he is not incompetent in a way, he is in essence stunningly competent at being a total miserable cnut that should never have been let near the levers of power ... he is competent when it comes to being bitter destabilising power grabbing and consolidating gangster grifter with less charm/charisma/class than a blobfish or a mole rat and less functionality/utility to any humans except the small numbers his own kind that are esentially parasites to their own species..... the blowfish does something and at least recycles nutrients....Trump appears to accumulate things that don't belong to him fraudulently and long tetm impoverish the lives of the citizens of the country he is supposed to be working for.....

When it comes to leading a country in the interests of the majority of its citizens and making sensible/boring decisions that are more likely to result in longbterm stability etc then he is wildly incompetent....

The courts in the US are following their lords and masters,

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