Donald Trump - news and discussion

[Yossarian]

Wide-ranging article from Ryan Grim at Dropsite on the early days of the Trump administration and what it all might mean, including a possible end to American hegemony:

Is Donald Trump actually trying to unwind and reorient the American empire?

The attack on USAID—led first by Elon Musk and belatedly blessed by Trump—fits into the frame of strategic retreat.

substack.com

He seems to be reading an awful lot into Musk's one-emoji response to a post from that Milo dickhead

 

[ID47]

Donald Trump Junior shooting protected species in Venice Lagoon accompanied by Italian fellow cnuts. Absolute bastard scum. Video: Donald Trump junior spara a specie protette nella laguna di Venezia: la denuncia di Avs

 

[a_chap]

More news which is both gob-smacking and yet entirely predictable.




Biggs was quoted as saying that H&S should be "more appropriately handled by state governments and private employers".

Jesus wept.


Also unsurprising is the massive conflict of interest that Apartheid Clive has here: Tesla (and SpaceX?) are being investigated for numbers H&S violations.




Abolishing the OHSA would be really convenient for him. The cunt.

 

[ID47]

Absolutely. I'm one of the newbies from AVF. From my fellow AVF defectors I understand you bastards give us cunts a hard time here. Hard talking and swearing seems to be the norm here. That isn't for me which is why I haven't posted here much. Surely we can all unite in the fact that Trump is a cunt of the highest order.

You left AVF? I got banned. Naturally.

 

[_Russ_]

Whats AVF?

 

[prunus]

Whats AVF?

 

[Crispy]

Whats AVF?

Audio Visual Forum. They had a Forum Drama explosion and we picked up some refugees

 

[chandlerp]

Not yet for Canada but this is just the beginning isn’t it. Next it will be trade. As far as Mexico is concerned he’s got them to deploy huge numbers of troops to guard the border. He might be a horrible cunt but he’s doing what he said he would.

I believe Mexico had 15000 troops at the border already so Trump has got them to commit to nothing but a reduction if they feel like. Only the bigliest deals.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

.

 

[Spymaster]

I believe Mexico had 15000 troops at the border already so Trump has got them to commit to nothing but a reduction if they feel like.

Don't kid yourself. There's no way that this little escapade will have resulted in Trump negotiating a reduction of the border strength. It'll either be an additional 10,000 or some other gains.

 

[bluescreen]

I bet Sheinbaum and Trudeau have been on the backchannel together. And Scholz.

 

[2hats]

I believe Mexico had 15000 troops at the border already so Trump has got them to commit to nothing but a reduction if they feel like. Only the bigliest deals.

Groundhog Day recently?

From Reuters, June 2019: Mexico says it has deployed 15,000 forces in the north to halt U.S.-bound migration.

 

[The39thStep]

Wide-ranging article from Ryan Grim at Dropsite on the early days of the Trump administration and what it all might mean, including a possible end to American hegemony:

Is Donald Trump actually trying to unwind and reorient the American empire?

The attack on USAID—led first by Elon Musk and belatedly blessed by Trump—fits into the frame of strategic retreat.

substack.com

Once the froth dissipates this issue regarding the future of American hegemony is worth exploring .

 

[littlebabyjesus]

In substantive terms, it's not much of a victory for Trump. But he has got the Canadian PM to talk about fentanyl as if this were a significant problem. That's weak from Trudeau.

 

[Storm Fox]

More censorship:

CDC Researchers Ordered to Retract Papers Submitted to All Journals
Banned terms must be scrubbed from CDC-authored manuscripts.

The terms being
Transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male and biologically female


It wouldn't surprise me if the next stage is: "Hey, why don't we print off all these papers and set fire to them so we can show we really disapprove of this"

It's really frightening, I keep thinking, come on, it's exaggerated, but it's not.

Opinion | CDC Researchers Ordered to Retract Papers Submitted to All Journals

Banned terms must be scrubbed from CDC-authored manuscripts

www.medpagetoday.com

 

[LakieLady]

Did anyone have the President of the US threatening to annex Canada and Greenland on their 2025 bingo card? Or Elon Musk and his little cult of a half dozen fanboys barely out of their teens illegally downloading the personal information and financial data of every tax paying American onto flash drives with no oversight whatsoever and accusing people of committing crimes for identifying the cultists involved in such an unprecedented breach of national security?

If all the above were events in a political thriller movie, I'd be muttering "That was a ridiculously far-fetched plot, it'd never happen" as I left the cinema.

 

[Chz]

How Trump is targeting wind and solar energy – and delighting big oil

Critics say Trump is using every presidential power possible against clean power in sharp turn after Biden investments created jobs

www.theguardian.com

Is this the thread for news items like this by the way, or should they go in the other one?

It doesn't really matter in 2025. Renewables are so much more profitable than oil and gas that energy companies will keep building them just to keep making money. It will delay retiring old infrastructure, but literally no-one is building new coal and oil plants.

 

[Flavour]

Fair points.

Though ford has always been a big player here and the Stellantis (stupid name? Marketing wonk?) company has bought out some US brands.
View attachment 462604
So technically they are represented, although not so much American anymore.
BMW and Mercedes all have big manufacturing plants in the USA, Bmws biggest company plant is in S Carolina and Mercedes is one of the US vs biggest car exporter. They are US built.

Trump likes to tie up entities in court if he doesn't get his way, EU's got to many targets with a bottomless legal funding pit, home turf advantage, and regulatory knowledge and application. Must be a bitch for him when it comes to his business as usual, which always seems to involve lawfare.
Some of that protectionism is genuine though ,maybe food additives,chloronation, GM, pesticides, crash tests, etc
Dunno

Slight tangent here on stellantis as it's quite close to home for me - - as one of its former hubs is Turin, though the city is largely deindustrialized now.

The beginnings of the Stellantis story begin in 2008 when Chrysler (including the Jeep, Dodge and Ram brands) was in existential crisis following the Lehman brothers associated crash. All the big automakers in the US were in big trouble. GM received a bailout much like the banks. Too big to fail. Chrysler on the other hand was bought by the Fiat group (already proprietor of Alfa Romeo, Maserati, lancia and abarth, the first 3 of which had all been independent automakers at some point but were eventually bought out and absorbed into the Fiat ecosystem). Fiat bought Chrysler to form the FCA group but the buyout was somewhat of a pyrrhic victory that they couldn't sustain.

This was very much a case of the Italians buying the American brands, and thereafter the jeep renegade in particular made a huge resurgence in Europe, thought it was only really a Jeep shell with a fiat 500L engine. Jeep also became the sponsor of Juventus FC, also owned by Fiat (or, to be more specific, the Agnelli family which had always controlled the group).

Fiat and its brands however, had a very rough time over the following 10 years, losing market share basically everywhere (though they are still very powerful in some markets, including Brazil) and all their efforts to cut costs by shifting production from Italy to Poland, Serbia, wherever, were not enough. They were late to the hybrid game and have lost customer loyalty in Italy itself precisely because they outsourced most of their production, leading to the impoverishment and depopulation of Turin (population was 2 million in the 60s when fiat was at its peak of employing 60,000 workers at their Mirafiori factory, one of the largest in Europe) to less than 850,000 today and falling.

Stellantis (read: Peugeot and Citroën) moved in and their merger with FCA is really a French takeover. The Agnelli family descendants (John elkann et al) retain important sounding positions and waffle on about bringing production back to turin but it's all a smokescreen. He couldn't if he wanted to. The real management of Stellantis is French and where 15 years ago Jeeps became shells with Fiat engines, now the Fiat brands themselves are becoming homogenized along the lines of Peugeot/Citroën's line up.

 

[Tankus]

Spymaster said:
Have you read that

But most of what they announced is stuff they were doing anyway and the extra stuff is pretty small beer. Might be enough for him to frame it as a win but it's hardly capitulation.

If anything it's trump who has capitulated, as he said that the tariffs would be enacted, and nothing could stop that.
Both Mexico and Canada have just reconfirmed what they were going to do as agreed with Biden last Dec.
One month extra time to look for alternate product sources if felon is still stupid enough to go through it, which seems likley, unless they both can give him anther fake win that he can brag about.

But I'll suspect there will be the tariff shit with the EU and Starmer bending over, getting in the way, interrupting his golfing, next month.

And there's the Elon Electronic coup fallout, that is if anyone one in oppo gets off their arses to start legal proceedings, but that seems pre borked anyway, as the legal system as gone full cold war soviet and is just an active arm of der leader ??

I wonder who would have done the electronic takeover of government before Elon turned up and bought his position.? As it seems like only yesterday he went full on seig heil and bought the mostache.? This has been planned for a long time.

Ironically that $1.3 bn agreed with Biden, that Canada is spending, will be included as an increased contribution to NATO as its coming out of the military budget. It's a twofer

 

[Coffeecup]

In the face of a trade war with America’s neighbours, Trump blinked.

Analysis by Stephen Collision CNN

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/04/politics/trump-blinks-trade-war-analysis/index.html

 

[Tankus]

Flavour yeah , the UK went through a similar process a few decades earlier,, lots of established automotive companies going to the wall, government buyout into an amalgamated mutiheaded, bipolar, and limbed leyland, with more marginally profitable arms eventually cut free and sold off to foreign buyers with the rest sloughed off and going to the wall.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Spymaster said:
Have you read that

If anything it's trump who has capitulated, as he said that the tariffs would be enacted, and nothing could stop that.
Both Mexico and Canada have just reconfirmed what they were going to do as agreed with Biden last Dec.
One month extra time to look for alternate product sources if felon is still stupid enough to go through it, which seems likley, unless they both can give him anther fake win that he brag about.
But I'll suspect there will be the tariff shit with the EU and Starmer bending over, getting in the way, interrupting his golfing.
And there's the Elon Electronic coup fallout,that is if anyone one in oppo gets off their arses to start legal proceedings, but that seems pre borked anyway, as the legal system as gone full cold war soviet and is just an active arm of der leader ??

I wonder who would have done the electronic takeover of government before Elon turned up and bought his position.? As it seems like only yesterday he went full on seig heil and bought the mostache.? This has been planned for a long time.

Ironically that $1.3 bn agreed with Biden, that Canada is spending, will be included as an increased contribution to NATO as its coming out of the military budget. It's a twofer

Yes, in reality they have ceded fuck all. But Trump has got them talking in his terms. Trudeau is now talking about fentanyl as if it were a genuine concern, instead of telling Trump that it's a load of nonsense.

 

[Serge Forward]

Yes, in reality they have ceded fuck all. But Trump has got them talking in his terms. Trudeau is now talking about fentanyl as if it were a genuine concern, instead of telling Trump that it's a load of nonsense.

To be fair, fentanyl is a big concern within Canada, but yes, somewhat less so in relation to it crossing the border from Canada to the US.

 

[Tankus]

He should get a like for like border increase due to gun running.

 

[Petcha]

Can someone please explain how a 'call' between Xi and Trump actually works in practise? Neither have a great command of English and Trump definitely doesn't speak Mandarin... how does that work.

 

[Skinny Ethel]

Mime

 

[MrsArcanum]

Can someone please explain how a 'call' between Xi and Trump actually works in practise? Neither have a great command of English and Trump definitely doesn't speak Mandarin... how does that work.

I suspect the respective translators are probably more diplomatic than the people they translate for.

 

[JimW]

Can someone please explain how a 'call' between Xi and Trump actually works in practise? Neither have a great command of English and Trump definitely doesn't speak Mandarin... how does that work.

"I'm putting you on speaker now."

 

[Monte]

Whats AVF?

Always Very Friendly.

 

[Sue]

Can someone please explain how a 'call' between Xi and Trump actually works in practise? Neither have a great command of English and Trump definitely doesn't speak Mandarin... how does that work.

Have you never heard of Google Translate...?