It’s a time of morning in America for the Washington air crash but Trump has weighed in. He has blamed the crash on diversity laws … laws that stood before during and after his first term.
Specifically he has blamed Biden Obama … and dwarfs … and employees with “complete paralysis”.
We are only a week or so in surely there’s much worse to come.
‘mourning’, presumably?
I don’t know what the mechanism is for removing a president who has gone rogue, but I hope someone does.
25th Amendment but requires a two thirds vote so that won’t happen.
There’s never a good man with a gun around when you need one.
We knew he would be worse than last time where he was restrained by incumbent staff but now he’s unfettered and appointing completely unsuitable people to important roles. Someone needs to take him out.
Sorry Neil but that’s absolutely not what is needed. It will just make him a martyr for all this bigoted wankery that he stands for and give it a vast shot in the arm that could last decades.
He’s America’s choice for President and now they have to live with it. Let’s see what he’s managed to achieve by the mid term elections.
President Trump is dead!
All hail President Vance!
Should Orangey during the first two years of his presidency, the 22nd allows for his successor to run for the Presidency twice more. In other words, we could be looking at 10 years of Trump the Younger
Be careful what you wish for, NJ…
Exactly, there is no shortage of people in the US and clearly further afield who, when the sad day arrives, would supercharge the current cult of MAGA into a demented toxic legacy under the assured guidance of Vance etc.
Should the Dems find a way to establish what their point is, regroup, reorganise and come up with some sort of miraculously inspiring figure for 2028, it would be the best outcome. The worst would be for DJT to expire while in office and assume eternal martyr.
This would certainly be a pretty foolish time to abandon the longstanding principle that we do not agitate for the murder of our political opponents after losing to them at the polls.
Which end of Donald Trump is the arse and which is the mouth?
So hard to tell.
The worst part of this is that there are tens of millions of cretins who will take what he says as gospel, even when there’s not a shred of evidence to support it.
There could be a point when there balance of public opinion gets sick of him and enough Republicans in Congress would get behind and impeachment process, but it’s unlikely to happen in the near future.
I did a silly thing and went back into Twitter for the first time in a good long while and foolishly clicked on ‘For you’. It was already flooded with mad conspiracy theories and wild accusations that, thanks to Twitter’s algorythms and the POTUS and his craven minions, are already the received narrative around this tragedy for those tens of millions of cretins. Things are getting more and more insane very very quickly.
I closed my account and got out of there a few weeks ago. It’s a shame in a way because there are some there who I like a lot but I can’t be involved with the Musk world.
Spiteful, ignorant and psychopathic. And yet, there he is standing behind the Presidential Seal for another 4 years.
He won’t be removed. Ever. Look at all that he has done and said since 2015. All of it. Most of it egregious and enough of it indictable. He’s back again to all intents untouched and free as a bird.
Thank you rich white privilege and an interminable American legal process.
It will only stop when his black heart does.
Re his black heart. In his latest appearances, the orange hobgoblin did seem (at least to me) a bit quieter and smaller than before, and a bit less of the overblown ranter that he normally is. Maybe his age and lifestyle are catching up with him.
The problem is that even if he died/quit or was replaced tomorrow, his coterie of cultists might just continue in the same vein under JD Vance. Watching some of them is truly alarming; e.g. Hegseth banging on after “warfighting” and “lethality” rather than, say, “keeping the peace” or “defending America”. They seem not only to agree with DJT’s “policies” but spout more extreme views of their own. If you look at Trump and think “He’s OK but I wish he’d go further”, you should never be allowed anywhere near a position of power.
Watching from the UK, I can’t see any sign of Trumpism coming to an end any time soon, with or without him. Given everything he’s already done and said, what else could he possibly do or say to make millions of voters think “No, I’m out” and swap sides to the Democrats?
I agree. My last sentence should have begun with ‘He’ rather than ‘it’
It seems that, along with the FAA, the White House equal opportunity employment policy allows those with “severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability” to go right to the top.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I don’t like that Trump fella.
“The more I learn about Trump, the more I dislike the man.”
I think Nancy Mitford would have liked him.
Was she the Hitler groupie? I get my Mitfords all mixed up
So do I, hang about… {hits Wikipedia}. Turns out I’m wrong – it was Unity and Diana (who married Mosley).
Nancy dobbed her sisters into MI5. Atta girl!
Unity, Nancy & Diana.. that’s The Supremes isn’t it? Or was it TLC ?
Ah, there was also Jessica, Deborah and Pamela. So, Girls Aloud then.
Jessica was One of Us. I once accompanied her on the guitar as she sang Blue Moon.
The clip below provided me with a few moments of mild amusement. It’s worth bearing in mind that (a) Dale has tried and failed a number of times to become a Tory MP and (b) Kurt Schlichter used to be a US Army colonel.
Meanwhile, Robbie Starbuck – failed Republican congressional candidate who once directed a video for Smashing Pumpkins – has generated enough noise to see companies such as Nissan, Molson-Coors, Harley Davidson, Ford and Walmart roll back some of their DEI policies. He also made a film (praised by Musk of course) that chemicals are causing children identify as LGBTQ+
That is some level of certainty given that he even admits to not actually knowing. Ian Dale proving that in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.
In US terms, Iain Dale is practically a communist. And he’s gay – so it was never going to be a meeting of minds
Ronnie Starbuck needs to wake up and smell the coffee
Kurt Schlichter is a complete raging c*** of a buffoon.
A friend of mine who was English, now an American citizen posted this about how Hitler took power. She’s worried.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/hitler-germany-constitution-authoritarianism/681233/?fbclid=IwY2xjawIHhihleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHWwcInGvvWjqkl1q-ZgWexhILj7Xfppfu3prvaz1HSr-JaNA58KlTY48bg_aem_ON8yfG8w8Wwqe0G3Se6WVw
That is an excellent article @davebigpicture. Very sobering.
There’s a quote from Göring at the end which says it all:
“The big joke on democracy,” he observed, “is that it gives its mortal enemies the means to its own destruction.”
So they’ve come for the disabled now? Fairly getting through the list quick.
There’s working with them out of expedience and then there’s appeasement when they cross that boundary. At some point it has to be called out rather than give the impression this is OK, this is normal. The media in the US has failed in this regard.
Then he made it worse when he said he wouldn’t go to the crash site. What would do there? It’s water . Did they expect him to swim. Zero compassion. Not even a pretence.
Anyone else fed up with Press Secretary Barbie yet? Her voice and constant North Korea style praising of Shitler is awful. Tonight’s debacle was heavy on mic feedback giving weight to my colleague’s claim that no one who is any good will work for Trump.
Todays comment on going swimming really made me sick
It is unremittingly awful.
Sharon and I are caught badly here. I’m not in a hurry now to end the tour and go back to the States. Her working life and environment is bad, and will only get worse.
I say this not lightly, not flippantly. I think democracy might be teetering on the edge right now.
I get the impression democracy might well have been tipped over the edge already. Trump and his awful crew seem able to do whatever they want with only the occasional court case or judge to even slow them down.
Each day brings another set of government workers being fired, another change that ignores the rights or needs of one sector or another… Anybody who had any part in opposing his previous administration or investigating him afterwards must be very worried right now, if they are not already out of work. And as far as I can tell, there seems to be no democratic way of stopping all this until elections in a couple of years. What will the US be like by then?
It is going to get worse. If he somehow manages to get through this term it will be Don Jr up next.
And then Barron, by all accounts.
The future is Barron sounds about right.
Is Don jnr the stupid one or the stupid one with a coke habit?
Excellent article on this issue of Trump’s first dumbing and then punching down in today’s Sunset Times
That’s the 2026 FIFA World Cup totally buggered, then. And the 2028 Olympic Games too.
This, copied and pasted from FaceBerk, is very good on the Orange Skid Mark’s negotiating style.
“I’m going to get a little wonky and write about Donald Trump and negotiations. For those who don’t know, I’m an adjunct professor at Indiana University – Robert H. McKinney School of Law and I teach negotiations. Okay, here goes.
Trump, as most of us know, is the credited author of “The Art of the Deal,” a book that was actually ghost written by a man named Tony Schwartz, who was given access to Trump and wrote based upon his observations. If you’ve read The Art of the Deal, or if you’ve followed Trump lately, you’ll know, even if you didn’t know the label, that he sees all dealmaking as what we call “distributive bargaining.”
Distributive bargaining always has a winner and a loser. It happens when there is a fixed quantity of something and two sides are fighting over how it gets distributed. Think of it as a pie and you’re fighting over who gets how many pieces. In Trump’s world, the bargaining was for a building, or for construction work, or subcontractors. He perceives a successful bargain as one in which there is a winner and a loser, so if he pays less than the seller wants, he wins. The more he saves the more he wins.
The other type of bargaining is called integrative bargaining. In integrative bargaining the two sides don’t have a complete conflict of interest, and it is possible to reach mutually beneficial agreements. Think of it, not a single pie to be divided by two hungry people, but as a baker and a caterer negotiating over how many pies will be baked at what prices, and the nature of their ongoing relationship after this one gig is over.
The problem with Trump is that he sees only distributive bargaining in an international world that requires integrative bargaining. He can raise tariffs, but so can other countries. He can’t demand they not respond. There is no defined end to the negotiation and there is no simple winner and loser. There are always more pies to be baked. Further, negotiations aren’t binary. China’s choices aren’t (a) buy soybeans from US farmers, or (b) don’t buy soybeans. They can also (c) buy soybeans from Russia, or Argentina, or Brazil, or Canada, etc. That completely strips the distributive bargainer of his power to win or lose, to control the negotiation.
One of the risks of distributive bargaining is bad will. In a one-time distributive bargain, e.g. negotiating with the cabinet maker in your casino about whether you’re going to pay his whole bill or demand a discount, you don’t have to worry about your ongoing credibility or the next deal. If you do that to the cabinet maker, you can bet he won’t agree to do the cabinets in your next casino, and you’re going to have to find another cabinet maker.
There isn’t another Canada.
So when you approach international negotiation, in a world as complex as ours, with integrated economies and multiple buyers and sellers, you simply must approach them through integrative bargaining. If you attempt distributive bargaining, success is impossible. And we see that already.
Trump has raised tariffs on China. China responded, in addition to raising tariffs on US goods, by dropping all its soybean orders from the US and buying them from Russia. The effect is not only to cause tremendous harm to US farmers, but also to increase Russian revenue, making Russia less susceptible to sanctions and boycotts, increasing its economic and political power in the world, and reducing ours. Trump saw steel and aluminum and thought it would be an easy win, BECAUSE HE SAW ONLY STEEL AND ALUMINUM – HE SEES EVERY NEGOTIATION AS DISTRIBUTIVE. China saw it as integrative, and integrated Russia and its soybean purchase orders into a far more complex negotiation ecosystem.
Trump has the same weakness politically. For every winner there must be a loser. And that’s just not how politics works, not over the long run.
For people who study negotiations, this is incredibly basic stuff, negotiations 101, definitions you learn before you even start talking about styles and tactics. And here’s another huge problem for us.
Trump is utterly convinced that his experience in a closely held real estate company has prepared him to run a nation, and therefore he rejects the advice of people who spent entire careers studying the nuances of international negotiations and diplomacy. But the leaders on the other side of the table have not eschewed expertise, they have embraced it. And that means they look at Trump and, given his very limited tool chest and his blindly distributive understanding of negotiation, they know exactly what he is going to do and exactly how to respond to it.
From a professional negotiation point of view, Trump isn’t even bringing checkers to a chess match. He’s bringing a quarter that he insists of flipping for heads or tails, while everybody else is studying the chess board to decide whether its better to open with Najdorf or Grünfeld.”
— David Honig
Thanks for sharing that. Very interesting, and it explains in more detail what I had read elsewhere about Trump’s simplistic win-lose approach to highly complex issues like international trade and diplomacy.
I wonder if/when his supporters will start thinking that they may have backed the wrong horse.
An adjunct professor of law should understand that there is very little point assessing a party’s negotiating strategy without first clearly understanding their goals.
The entire problem here is that, seemingly by design, no one really understands Trump’s goals, although I suspect that maximising soybean sales is not among them. The analogy to a simple commercial transaction breaks down because multi-factor negotiations have different and more complex drivers, and international relations are about as multi-factor as it gets.
Personally, I think we should stop comforting ourselves with the idea that he’s stupid and will therefore inevitably fail. Tariffs seem a terrible idea to me, but then I don’t want what Trump wants.
I imagine that Trump’s primary concern or goal involves his legacy: having people proclaim him as the best president ever.
I may well be wrong and there may be a more complex and less self-serving strategy behind his recent actions, and it’s also hard to know how much he is being influenced by those around him.
He does seem to be firing off orders in all directions, and you have to assume that there is some sort of agenda or long-term goal behind them. Whether there is or not, it’s alarming that he and his people can have such a global impact in such a short time.
At the moment the firing off of orders in all directions IS* the strategy. When your opponent is reeling from a deluge he can’t formulate a coherent response.
Which is exactly what we are seeing at the moment. Whether this remains as a medium- or long-strategy is hard to gauge but it is working in the short term.
Doesn’t he want to implement Project 2025?
Who knows.
I’ve read some of the Project 2025 manifesto thingy. It’s not, in general, a document that favours tariffs (in fact, it openly states: “The best way to
promote trade and development is to reduce tariff and non-tariff trade barriers”). It does, however, suggest that the President could use reciprocal tariffs as a lever to force trading partners to reassess their own arrangements.
If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say Trump is probably attempting to use tariffs/the threat of tariffs to renegotiate America’s trading relationships with some of its key partners.
Whether that will work and/or lead to positive outcomes, or even if that’s what he’s actually trying to accomplish, I don’t know. It’s still very early, and it remains very difficult to see through all the noise on both sides.
It seems that he is using tariffs to force other countries to do things not directly related to trade, such as reduce immigrants and fentanyl crossing the border.
That’s what he’s saying. The problem with all this stuff is where to go for reliable information. Trump himself? Project 2025 documents? Stuff online that tickles your confirmation bias?
The only completely reliable information right now in terms of his success or failure is what he actually does and then (if you’re lucky) what results from it. So let’s wait and see.
No that is not the reason. It is an excuse. 99% of illegal fentanyl comes from Mexico, Canadians are not clamouring to cross the border to illegally live in the US. But he hits Mexico and Canada with the same tariffs.
He already has some success in getting Colombia to accept returned criminal nationals by threatening high tariffs, at least according to what I read. Presumably that’s encouraging him to continue elsewhere. I mean it suggests that is the purpose, to bully or threaten tariffs to get what he wants. But different outcomes wished for in different countries.
I believe he has paused the tariffs on Canada because they have promised to do things they were already doing.
@bingo-little “The analogy to a simple commercial transaction breaks down because multi-factor negotiations have different and more complex drivers, and international relations are about as multi-factor as it gets.” Isn’t that precisely his point? The analogy only breaks down if you think that Trump doesn’t treat international negotiations as if he’s bullying his cabinet maker to lower his prices.
No, personally I think it breaks down either way because the field of international relations appears to me to be far more nuanced than even more complex commercial transactions, not least in that it can be a lot harder to see what’s a win and what’s a loss.
That doesn’t mean that Trump himself is nuanced. It doesn’t mean what he’s doing is right or will work. But it does mean that I don’t think this analysis has a great deal of value – it feels like someone trying to shoe-horn their own expertise in where it doesn’t necessarily fit.
Put another way, does it really feel right now like the people on the other side of the table to Trump “know exactly what he is going to do and exactly how to respond to it”? Because I’d say that’s the precise opposite of what we’re all witnessing.
I think Trump’s one-and-only goal is fairly obvious.
He wants the USA to be Top Kennel in a dog-eat-dog world.
Where he personally is Top Dog.
“You know, folks, a few years back I was in London when the Crufts dog show was on.
While I was there my good friend King Philip told me the organizers had to scrap the Best in Show award because clearly I was the Bestest Best in Show they had ever seen”
And now he’s going to own Gaza and move the Palestinians out….
Mrs F looked up from her boiled egg this morning and asked me “Shall we turn the radio off?”
I might retune the kitchen wireless to Radio 3 for the next four years.
Radio 3 is my go-to station these days. Played quietly.
No endless rehashes of whatever is in the news or unamusing “comedy” (Radio 4) or “somebody else’s favourite songs” (Radio 1 in all it’s variations and Radio 2. Often 6Music too).
Easily ignorable, if not to your taste, this Radio 3 Classical stuff.
Same here
In the case of Canada and Mexico he has put his tariffs on hold because they have agreed to increase the defences at their US borders, except these actions were already planned prior to Trump coming to power and therefore nothing has actually happened apart from some bluster and threats. This seems to be a pattern. Spurious claims of winning on the international stage that many are impressed by but amount to very little. We shall see if that changes.
Excellent piece about Trumpism – surely the only legacy Orangey is interested
in – by Danny Fi.nkelstein in today’s Times.
Let’s all hope and pray the three-letter suffix to Orangey’s name dies with
him rather than being carried forward by his various mini-mes.