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  6. I no longer know how to react to Trump. It’s clearly self serving unhinged nonsense but I feel it is designed to make me cross which then enables his supporters to call me a communist or a snowflake. Or a communist snowflake.

    But it I ignore it, I’m giving him a free ride. He seems to have perfected his approach. It’s very unsettling.

    • If you react to everything he says you’re giving him exactly what he wants, which is everyone who disagrees with him running round with their hair on fire at his every utterance.

      It also doesn’t make a blind bit of difference what any of us post online about it – the last 8 years should show you that.

      Watch what he actually does, and try to discern signal from noise. Ask yourself where he doesn’t want you looking instead of just following the misdirection because he’s pushed your buttons.

      It’ll keep you saner and give you some vague hope of understanding what’s actually going on. Alternatively, ride the rollercoaster, but get ready for a truly exhausting four years.

      • As I mentioned on another thread, DT has adopted and evolved the “madman” school of policymaking that served Tricky Dicky so well in the late 60s and early 70s.

        The similarities don’t end there – Compare Trump’s promise to end the war in the Ukraine within 24 hours of his being elected with Nixon’s earlier promise of a “secret plan” to extricate the US from Vietnam”in the run up to the 1968 election)

        It’s ultimately the things Orangey and his people are doing but not talking about that are the real cause for concern.

      • All good advice – especially the focus on what he does rather than what he says.

        I’m pretty much doing most of the rest – I think this is only the third bit of internet posting I have done about him since he won his election. I’m off the rollercoaster and I have cut down on my politcal pods – a new Donald story is not something I need everyday.

        • In the run up to the election I lapped up most of the liberal leaning MSNBC coverage. Fair looking forward to him scowling in multiple courtrooms to face his comeuppances, I was.

          What a miffed little correspondent I was on November 6th. I washed my hands of it all straight away, just not willing to give the situation my interest anymore. The disbelief and disappointment in the USA almost made me wish for the worst to serve them right Which was a shitty thing to wish for so reversed that thought fairly pronto

          Like most of us I keep the massive ignoramus at arms length despite the blanket coverage. That 70 word vocabulary he has is getting smaller. It’s the creeps like Steven Miller, out of sight cackling and eating rats and maggots, that are the worry.

    • A wise woman told me eight years ago not to worry about him, because I can’t influence the US election, and to focus on what I can do.

      I know he has a global influence, but I try my best to ignore him. I also like to listen to the Radio 4 News, which makes things tricky.

      • Need to restrict yourself to just two news bulletins a day.
        One in the morning and one in the evening and that’s it. Any more and you’re in the realm of news analysis, which is actually just endless rehashing of what you’ve already been told.

    • Unbelievable. I’ve no sympathy for terrorists of any stripe but that pager attack killed dozens of innocent people in Lebanon, injured thousands. And here’s Netanyahu smugly gifting his ogre mate with a golden pager. Hope the damn thing blows up as he’s handing it over.

  8. Has he said anything you agree with? Personally I think a third gender is complete twaddle so I’m with him there … and … well that’s it.

    • You can think it is twaddle, but it’s a phenomenon, (albeit small percentage wise*, which may be why it seems more attention is drawn to it than necessary) that dates back to Greek myths – Tiresias.

      *reputedly 1%, which does suggest 80 million+ people worldwide.

        • Language is so complicated and controversial in things like this, isn’t it? Slippery, and easy to misunderstand, or in Trump’s case to deliberately misinterpret. I try to be generous and interpret ‘third gender’ as a way of challenging rigid boundaries of male and female, recognizing that the endocrine system feeds and flows through us in ways we are only just beginning to recognise at a cultural level.

          But like I said, it’s 1%, so too much seems to being made of this for political effect. To rise to the bait is best avoided, whilst always seeking to protect the vulnerable, on all sides.

              • The effect of the new regime’s policies is to make trans people unpersons. Where do you go from there? A national surgery/therapy ban? Extermination?
                I believe there are conversations to be had about formerly male people competing in women’s sports (after all, sport is full of arbitrary rules and is essentially a trivial thing) and at what age people should be able to make the decision for themselves, but I would hope you agree that you can’t just refuse to recognise trans people as equal citizens. How could you? After someone transitions, they are still the same person whose rights were protected before.
                And this attack on one of the smallest, most vulnerable groups is, of course, the thin end of the wedge. Project 2025, whose script Trump has been following with the same diligence with which a downhill skier hits all the flags, calls for the rolling back of gay marriage. That was a controversial subject not that long ago, with some predicting it would cause the sky to fall down, but it turned out that the only people profoundly affected by gay marriage were homosexuals who wanted to wed (alright, and a couple of cake decorators).
                The case for gay marriage was one of equality. I’d say the least you could do for trans people is to grant them personhood..

                • Hi SR – given where you leave the comment, I’m not sure if you’re addressing Clive or me.

                  “I would hope you agree that you can’t just refuse to recognise trans people as equal citizens.”

                  Yes, I would agree. For me, protecting the vulnerable means being alert to and standing up against any persecution because of people’s identity. Trump’s executive orders range from the trivial (renaming gulfs and mountains) to the desperately serious (on climate change). The signalling with the trans orders isn’t a dog whistle, it’s a vuvuzela, encouraging discrimination and persecution:

                  “When you have the nation’s commander-in-chief demonizing transgender people, it certainly sends a signal to all Americans,” said Sarah Warbelow, the legal director at Human Rights Campaign.

                  From an AP article
                  https://apnews.com/article/trump-transgender-order-passports-prisons-military-3c14ecbdd10f61618384e81624d090fb

  9. In pop news, Kendrick Lamar got the half time gig at the Super Bowl and the MAGA reaction has been to decry this as a “DEI pick”. Now, if DEI has any meaning from the mouths of MAGA, it is the idea that some black, female, gay or disabled person is getting a job for which some white guy is better qualified. Problem is the worst category imaginable to make this case is contemporary pop which, at its zenith, is dominated by women and black artists. Some, unironically, protested that Kendrick’s all black cast lacked “diversity”. You’d think they’d be on board with Lamar’s thang as his ongoing beef with Drake is like the cooler version of Trump’s calling the Canadian PM “Governor Trudeau”.
    Don the Con was in attendance and, by a remarkable coincidence, the – granted, half-arsed – message to “End Racism”, which has appeared in the end zones for the past couple of decades was suddenly absent.
    Might be an idea to avoid “the chat” altogether next week when the black Captain America film comes out!

    • The half time show was an interesting insight into the way Culture Wars moments now manufacture themselves.

      Kendrick delivered what was in the circumstances a fairly milquetoast performance, largely avoiding his more political material and deftly eschewing the opportunity to – ahem – speak truth to power.

      Nonetheless, one faction have responded as if he burned the flag onstage, because that’s what their expectations were. And because they’ve attacked him we’ve had the inevitable counter argument: witness the Guardian referring to Lamar as “one of the decade’s great public intellectuals” (come now), and even more amusingly the Independent giving us whatever the hell this is:

      https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/kendrick-lamar-review-super-bowl-halftime-show-2025-b2695117.html

      The performer himself didn’t even really need to actually do anything, because it had already been decided in advance that his performance would be a Culture Wars battleground, and because this sort of stuff doesn’t really need reality any more; it lives and breeds completely autonomously in the minds of its adherents. A magic eye painting for zealots. God help America and god help us all.

    • What’s frustrating is that the MAGA dullards in charge don’t get called to respond to the proven effects of micro plastics on health and the environment –

      “Back to plastic”
      “I don’t think that plastic is going to affect the shark very much as they’re … munching their way through the ocean,” said the blockhead-in-chief., sticking his fingers in his ears and singing “La-la-la I can’t hear you”

  13. Trump: “Like on tractors that can handle anything from hurricanes to lightning to anything. They use magnets. It’s a new theory — magnets. They’re gonna lift the planes up. And it doesn’t work.”

  16. Weird MAGA ads are appearing in states where immigrant agricultural labour is now in short supply. They want white American people to go work in agriculture.
    Haven’t really thought it through, have they. What was it they expected?

    An old friend who is a nurse in the US healthcare system, had this to say today:

    ” No one wants to do ANY sort of real labor anymore, and it’s partly our own fault. Our parents tried to instill in us the idea that we should do BETTER than they did, and in the societal hive mind, “better” means college educated, white collar, no dirty hands work. Honest physical labor has been devalued, because if you can’t find work where you can mostly sit on your backside, you must not be very smart, right? Not “good enough” to get a college education that will keep you away from getting dirty. So…nobody wants to actually WORK, and especially nobody wants to work for slave-like wages. Except people from outside of our own privileged culture. We seem to think we “deserve” better.
    We want to eat the cornucopia of foods, as long as someone else is working to get it to our table. So now we’re going to run all the folks willing to do this manual labor out of town and either the food is going to rot in the fields, or they’ll have to pay mega bucks to get anyone to pick it. Either way, the cost of fresh food is going to go up. I just can’t figure out why people really thought deporting people is going to make things get cheaper. “The immigrants are taking all our jobs!’ Right.
    Some of my co-workers have side jobs working extra shifts in local nursing homes and they tell me that half of the nursing aides barely speak English. So, privileged white people…who’s gonna take care of Grandma when you deport all those caregivers? You gonna bring her home and change her diapers yourself?”

    • If only there was some kind of recent history they could look at. Oh yes, there is – Br*x*t.

      No foreign pickers can/want to work in our fields any more, so we’re importing more veg than ever. Three cheers for progress!

  18. We have had appalling weather in Canada last few days and now, sadly, a plane crash in Toronto * I am sure Trump will find a way to make a statement to his political advantage

    * A miracle but no deaths reported until now

  19. I’m beginning to get genuinely worried now. It’s all very well laughing at the delusional people who have elected someone with the same delusional mindset. But you know who doesn’t share that delusional mindset? Putin. And I suspect that he cannot believe his fucking luck.

  20. Well said @lando-cakes

    I actually watched the Six o clock news for the first time in ages and wtf. The Russians and the Americans talking but no one else. Putin has already said he’s keeping all the land , wants more and Ukraine can’t join NATO. How is this going to end well?

    • You’d have thought with everything going on in the world right now the UN Security Council really would have better things to do with their time than sit and listen to this addled quarter-wit and his half baked nonsense.

      • As someone who has never been much of a Floyd fan or a Roger fan, I have followed a number of his views and interviews like this with some interest, including some on RT. I did not find in any of this evidence of an ‘addled quarter-wit’ or ‘half-baked nonsense’. As far as I can tell there was nothing in this instance that was factually incorrect or muddled in logic. What I saw here was a piece of well executed rhetoric, not in uncritical support of one side or the other, except on the side against war. And that was the problem, wasn’t it? He just refused to back sufficiently the “glory to Ukraine” crowd. War is not glorious.

        • As I said above, there are two problems here.

          The first is that Roger Waters is merely a famous person who clearly spends a lot of time online. He has no actual expertise in this subject area, hence the weak protestations at the very outset that his “credentials” are in place. He has opinions, but so does everyone else. It’s just that most people lack the means or immodesty to address the UN on their personal hobby horses.

          Given the gravity of the prevailing situation, it’s my view that the UN Security Council shouldn’t be wasting their time with this stuff – he’s been given an audience because he used to be in Pink Floyd, just another rich bloke who thinks his voice is more important. You can probably make an argument that what the UN think at this stage is largely redundant anyway, but even so I don’t like to see people having their time wasted.

          Beyond that, Roger Waters is also a clearly a fairly stupid individual. There are numerous previous threads where his stupidity has been essayed ad infinitum, but for me the statement “What the hell happened on 9/11, who knows? Clearly the official narrative has huge holes in it” pretty much gets us there. If you take a different view then fair play.

          Nothing to do with “glory to Ukraine” or war being glorious. I’m afraid that’s just projection.

            • Yep – that’s fair enough.

              It was more the bit at the end about the problem being his lack of support for Ukraine I was responding to. Seemed only fair to elucidate what the problem was in light of that.

              You’re right though, it wasn’t necessarily the content of the speech I was calling stupid here.

      • I agree. There is rather too much time spent, be it in the UN, Congress or even nowadays UK Select Committees listening to celebrities giving ‘evidence’. Russell Brand appearing before the Home Affairs Select Committee is one that springs to mind. At best it’s just one person’s anecdotal experience, at worst just their opinion. It’s certainly not ‘evidence’ in any meaningful sense.

        Indeed it’s not just celebs whose onions are conflated with facts. I was at an Parliamentary Committee meeting accompanying a Professor giving evidence. She was asked a question outside her field of research. Her answer was far better informed than any I might have given, but was still essentially a speculative personal opinion.

  25. This just in:

    The latest Executive Order from President Trump.
    EO 14215:
    “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies”
    Signed:
    February 18, 2025
    Published:
    February 24, 2025
    FR Citation:
    90 FR 10447
    FR Doc. Number:
    2025-03063

    “The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch.”
    “No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law”

    Bye bye Constitution.
    If Trump doesn’t like it, it’s not the law. If he feels like it, anything can become law.

  26. Where’s all the opposition? Why aren’t the Democrats mobilising themselves? Bernie Sanders and AOC making the occasional TikTok looking very serious ain’t it.

    I get that everything, all this administrative carnage and cash grabbing, is happening so fast that the political reactions haven’t really started yet. They fucking need to. This vile old turd and his accomplices will kill us all

    Wait until the mid-terms in two years and hamstring it all? Yeah. Ok. There will be blood before then.

  29. This has been doing the rounds. TL:DR – he’s a scumbag.

    “A real question from a Trump supporter: ‘Why do liberals think Trump supporters are stupid?’
    THE SERIOUS ANSWER: Here’s what the majority of anti-Trump voters honestly feel about Trump supporters en masse:
    That when you saw a man who had owned a fraudulent University, intent on scamming poor people, you thought “Fine.” (https://www.usatoday.com/…/trump-university…/502387002/)
    That when you saw a man who had made it his business practice to stiff his creditors, you said, “Okay.” (https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-hotel-paid-millions…)
    That when you heard him proudly brag about his own history of sexual abuse, you said, “No problem.” (https://abcnews.go.com/…/list-trumps-accusers…/story…)
    That when he made up stories about seeing Muslim-Americans in the thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, you said, “Not an issue.” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/donald-trumps…/)
    That when you saw him brag that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn’t care, you exclaimed, “He sure knows me.” (https://www.usatoday.com/…/president-donald…/4073405002/)
    That when you heard him relating a story of an elderly guest of his country club, an 80-year old man, who fell off a stage and hit his head, to Trump replied: “‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away. I couldn’t—you know, he was right in front of me, and I turned away. I didn’t want to touch him. He was bleeding all over the place. And I felt terrible, because it was a beautiful white marble floor, and now it had changed color. Became very red.” You said, “That’s cool!” (https://www.gq.com/story/donald-trump-howard-stern-story)
    That when you saw him mock the disabled, you thought it was the funniest thing you ever saw. (https://www.nbcnews.com/…/donald-trump-criticized-after…)
    That when you heard him brag that he doesn’t read books, you said, “Well, who has time?” (https://www.theatlantic.com/…/americas-first…/549794/)
    That when the Central Park Five were compensated as innocent men convicted of a crime they didn’t commit, and he angrily said that they should still be in prison, you said, “That makes sense.” (https://www.usatoday.com/…/what-trump-has…/1501321001/)
    That when you heard him tell his supporters to beat up protesters and that he would hire attorneys, you thought, “Yes!” (https://www.latimes.com/…/la-na-trump-campaign-protests…)
    That when you heard him tell one rally to confiscate a man’s coat before throwing him out into the freezing cold, you said, “What a great guy!” (https://www.independent.co.uk/…/donald-trump-orders…)
    That you have watched the parade of neo-Nazis and white supremacists with whom he curries favor, while refusing to condemn outright Nazis, and you have said, “Thumbs up!” (https://www.theatlantic.com/…/why-cant-trump…/567320/)
    That you hear him unable to talk to foreign dignitaries without insulting their countries and demanding that they praise his electoral win, you said, “That’s the way I want my President to be.” (https://www.huffpost.com/…/trump-insult-foreign…)
    That you have watched him remove expertise from all layers of government in favor of people who make money off of eliminating protections in the industries they’re supposed to be regulating and you have said, “What a genius!” (https://www.politico.com/…/138-trump-policy-changes…)
    That you have heard him continue to profit from his businesses, in part by leveraging his position as President, to the point of overcharging the Secret Service for space in the properties he owns, and you have said, “That’s smart!” (https://www.usnews.com/…/how-is-donald-trump-profiting…)
    That you have heard him say that it was difficult to help Puerto Rico because it was in the middle of water and you have said, “That makes sense.” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/the-very-big-ocean…/)
    That you have seen him start fights with every country from Canada to New Zealand while praising Russia and quote, “falling in love” with the dictator of North Korea, and you have said, “That’s statesmanship!” (https://www.cnn.com/…/donald-trump-dictators…/index.html)
    That Trump separated children from their families and put them in cages, managed to lose track of 1500 kids, has opened a tent city incarceration camp in the desert in Texas – he explains that they’re just “animals” – and you say, “Well, OK then.” (https://www.nbcnews.com/…/more-5-400-children-split…)
    That you have witnessed all the thousand and one other manifestations of corruption and low moral character and outright animalistic rudeness and contempt for you, the working American voter, and you still show up grinning and wearing your MAGA hats and threatening to beat up anybody who says otherwise. (https://www.americanprogress.org/…/confronting-cost…/)
    What you don’t get, Trump supporters, is that our succumbing to frustration and shaking our heads, thinking of you as stupid, may very well be wrong and unhelpful, but it’s also… hear me… charitable.
    Because if you’re NOT stupid, we must turn to other explanations, and most of them are less flattering.”
    – Adam-Troy Castro

    • I had heard about all those quotes or incidents except for the one about the bleeding 80-year-old. In a normal country or in a normal era, that alone might have been enough to cost Trump an election, or least an important number of votes.

      What is frightening is that despite all the awful things listed above (and the countless other things he has said and done), there still seems to be no bar for how low Trump can go. And unlike last time, there is seemingly nobody able or willing to rein him in.

    • I’m not sure Zelensky started well by turning up in his usual dress-down clothes – there are doubtless good, “we’re all in it together”/”man of the people” reasons for it, but for somebody as shallow as Trump it was easy ammunition. He was trolling VZ before he even got in the building.

      But the scenes in the Oval Office were extraordinary. Trump revealed himself to be just how I imagined he would be behind closed doors: bullying, repetitive, shouting down his guest, etc. I know VZ’s literally playing for life-and-death stakes, but part of me wanted him to just leave rather than be hectored by two bullies unwilling to let him finish a sentence.

      As CNN’s man in Kiev just said, more people are going to die tonight and over the days and weeks to come because of what went on in that room. He said Russia will see no reason at all to stop or even pause – and may well attack with extra force – now that the US has (apparently) left Ukraine’s long-term hopes in tatters. That puts Trump and Vance moaning about being disrepected into perspective.

      Really worrying times.

      • Disagree about the clothes. VZ is an actor, so doubtless there was considerable calculation involved. But it was a handy way of suggesting he wasn’t just going to roll over, as indeed he didn’t. When asked by a (no doubt top investigative) journalist why he wasn’t wearing a suit, he said he’d wear one when the war was over.

        Trumpistas are ranting about lack of respect for President and Oval Room, but were curiously silent when Musk similarly dressed down.

        • That reporter (who asked about the suit) turns out to be Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend. Without sounding conspiratorial, you have to wonder if the question was planted. When I rewatched I saw the smug grin on Vance’s face as the question was asked.

  32. I cannot apologise for the ugly rhetoric which was alarming however Zelensky played this completely wrong. For 3 years he has Bering doing the rounds of World cities with his begging bowl and with the expectation that the aid was bottomless without any attempt to even think about negotiation. Short of going to war with Russia the west was never going to win this battle and I can kind of see why Trump wants it to end rather than see more death and more money down the drain fighting a lost cause. Biden was equivocal when the war broke out that the US and its Nato allies would not put boots on the ground They should have left an element of doubt before the invasion and the early days afterwards. Instead we emboldened Putin. Too fucking late now.

    • Either alternative had it’s downside – if we had allowed Russia to walk all over Ukraine then that would have been a catastrophe, but we weren’t prepared to risk WW3 by supplying and allowing weapons to be used against Russia in their own territory, and only basically within their own borders, hence the virtual stalemate. All Russia had to do was just keep going and throw more poor young men into the meatgrinder.

      Trump actually does have a point, and I was hopeful that US contractors in Ukraine working would, in effect, provide a backstop and prevent further incursions by Russia. Now I think they will just carve the country up between them.

      • I saw an expert saying that when this minerals deal was first suggested during Biden’s presidency, not one US mining firm expressed any interest in working in Ukraine.

        Also, apparently Ukraine has relatively few of the more valuable minerals compared to several other (safer) countries. Finally, it seems that some of the best/biggest deposits are now beneath the frontline.

        Overall, according to this expert (on CNN IIRC), the deal was never really a brilliant one to start with. Maybe pro-Trump contractors will now come forward, and maybe their presence would calm things down, but given the current turmoil I don’t imagine many CEOs will soon be telling their surveyors to start preparing for a trip to what must be some very heavily mined and unexploded-bomb-filled territory.

        • Katty Kay and Scaramouchi said pretty much the same on The Rest Is Politics USA podcast although I think they said it was first raised under Obama.
          One interesting point they also made was that while the rest of the world thinks that Russia is gloating over the pile on Trump and Vance made, they are also realising how unpredictable and fucking nuts Trump and Vance are which will make them equally difficult to deal with.

  36. Given what has happened, the offer of a second state visit to the UK seems particularly unfortunate. As things stand, the US is in danger of effectively making itself a hostile country to most of Europe, albeit I daresay the Hungarian government would welcome Trump with open arms.

  37. 15% tarifs confirmed for Canada and Mexico starting tomorrow. Trump says fentanyl is flooding in from Canada. Last year 19.5kg was seized at the Canada border, compared to 9,570 kg at the Mexican one. What a f*cking orange moron.

  40. This clip from the Jimmy Kimmel Show brightened my week.

    Bernie Sanders was in fine form. Jimmy Kimmell commented – Bernie is like Kendrick Lamarr in orthopaedic shoes

    I was also delighted to discover Rep Jasmine Crockett from Texas. She has a feisty fighting spirit which we sorely need in these troubled times.

    After Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, Crockett, a Democrat representing Texas, was asked, “If you could tell Donald Trump anything tonight, what would you tell him?

    “I would tell him to grow a spine and stop being Putin’s ho,” Crockett responded.

    “Why are we fighting with Greenland? We fighting with Canada, we fighting with Mexico, yet we in love with Putin? What is happening? Like, this is not America. This is a terrible nightmare. Somebody slap me and wake me the fuck up because I’m ready to get on with it.”

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jasmine-crockett-donald-trump-congress-address_n_67c8b5bae4b0e50d686ac029

    Jasmine and Jimmy cheered me up no end.

  41. Canada/Mexico tariffs update.

    They are on, they are off, now they are on again, now they are (mostly) off again…

    Anyone might think he doesn’t have a clue what he is doing.

  42. On Tuesday, Claude Malhuret gave this magnificent speech in the French Senate.
    It’s well worth a few minutes of your time.

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/french-senator-speech-trump-ukraine-russia_n_67ca0a83e4b0404dff3019c7

    “Never in history has a President of the United States capitulated to the enemy,” said Malhuret, reflecting on Trump’s baffling subservience to Russian President Vladimir Putin and constant belittling of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “Never has anyone supported an aggressor against an ally.”

    He continued: “We were at war with a dictator, now we are fighting a dictator backed by a traitor.”

    He calls a spade a spade which is rather refreshing.

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