Trump / Musk (other than DOGE) Omnibus Thread

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ZenMode said:
Chalk another one up to not even buying the straw man dinner before you force yourself on him.

The next time I say or believe Trump is a genius will be the first.
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Please feel free to enlighten us, then, on what you believe we're missing when it comes to Trump and how he "tends to operate" with respect to his repeated statements about tariffs
 
ZenMode said:
I'll say this.....

For as much time as people on this site spend obsessing about Trump, it's pretty amazing that you still have no idea how he tends to operate.

Equally amazing is that you will oppose basically anything that he supports and does, while protecting Democrats. I don't doubt for a second that you believe everything that you say. At this point it's just how your mind operates.

Tariffs are a useful tool that gun should be on the table and there is absolutely nothing wrong with letting people know that you are willing to use it. Portraying yourself as weak is the true danger.
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1. Step back a little and look at what you've written. Tariffs concern trade. Trade is voluntary. We trade because it improves everyone's welfare, because specialized production is most efficient. It isn't war. It isn't plunder. It is not a zero sum game.

So when you're talking about tariffs as a "gun," you're thinking about it wrong. When you talk about "portraying yourself as weak," you're thinking about it wrong. Tariff negotiations are not about strength. They aren't competitions.

2. In general, US tariffs are bad for the US. In the 1980s, conservative economists used to call for unilateral reductions in tariffs, because they do more harm than good. That was not the policy chosen; rather, the US pursued multilateral tariff reductions. But how are you going to get other countries to give you concessions when your "leverage" is shooting yourself in the foot?

And letting people know that you're willing to use the tariffs puts all discussions on a hostile, aggressive footing. It lets the other countries prepare for their own retaliatory tariffs, which will be considerably more effective because they know what they are doing. Trump just wants to keep out imports. The EU targets important US industries.

3. There's a reason why there is such a powerful overlap between "things that Trump wants to do that no prior presidents have done," and "stupid things to do." In general, when you see Obama, Bush, Clinton and Reagan administrations agreeing on a policy, that's probably because it's a good policy. When no president in history has done what Trump wants to do, that's not a sign of Trump's genius or out-of-the-box thinking. The reason those things weren't done is that they are stupid.
 
superrific said:
Right. That's the problem.

If you think Trump can strongarm other countries into doing his bidding, you are mistaken. He threatened the EU with stuff in 2018; they responded by giving him a deal to buy more US LNG. Problem: EU doesn't have anything to do with LNG purposes. So the US got nothing. Nothing. Trump got duped. Our allies got antagonized for no reason.
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Are you talking about this deal?

ec.europa.eu

EU-U.S. Joint Statement: Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) imports from the U.S. continue to rise, up by 181%

EU-U.S. Joint Statement: Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) imports from the U.S. continue to rise, up by 181%
ec.europa.eu ec.europa.eu
 
gizmodo.com

Why Won't Elon Musk Let Me Follow This Palestinian Journalist?

Musk admitted X is throttling links but this is a new level of weird.
gizmodo.com gizmodo.com

Elon Musk, the billionaire propagandist for Donald Trump and owner of X, admitted over the weekend that his social media platform restricts the spread of tweets that share links. But X users are starting to wonder how much more manipulation has been happening behind the scenes in recent weeks. Because one Palestinian journalist in particular appears to be experiencing a major issue with his account. Nobody can follow him for some unknown reason and it looks like many people who were already following him have been purged as followers.


Younis Tirawi has been covering the current war in Gaza ever since it started in late 2023, sending updates about the brutality that’s killed over 44,000 Palestinians and wounded at least 104,000. Tirawi has covered the war crimes being committed by the Israeli military in the occupied territories, which has obviously made him a target for hate among some in the Israeli media.

But something weird happened to Tirawi’s X account over the weekend. It appears his followers have largely been purged and anyone who tries to follow him won’t actually see his updates in their feed. Gizmodo tried multiple times to follow Tirawi’s account and after refreshing the page it was clear we weren’t able to make it stick. No matter what we did, it would always go back to showing we weren’t following him.
 
altmin said:
gizmodo.com

Why Won't Elon Musk Let Me Follow This Palestinian Journalist?

Musk admitted X is throttling links but this is a new level of weird.
gizmodo.com gizmodo.com

Elon Musk, the billionaire propagandist for Donald Trump and owner of X, admitted over the weekend that his social media platform restricts the spread of tweets that share links. But X users are starting to wonder how much more manipulation has been happening behind the scenes in recent weeks. Because one Palestinian journalist in particular appears to be experiencing a major issue with his account. Nobody can follow him for some unknown reason and it looks like many people who were already following him have been purged as followers.


Younis Tirawi has been covering the current war in Gaza ever since it started in late 2023, sending updates about the brutality that’s killed over 44,000 Palestinians and wounded at least 104,000. Tirawi has covered the war crimes being committed by the Israeli military in the occupied territories, which has obviously made him a target for hate among some in the Israeli media.

But something weird happened to Tirawi’s X account over the weekend. It appears his followers have largely been purged and anyone who tries to follow him won’t actually see his updates in their feed. Gizmodo tried multiple times to follow Tirawi’s account and after refreshing the page it was clear we weren’t able to make it stick. No matter what we did, it would always go back to showing we weren’t following him.
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I think it's at least as likely that Musk cutting 4/5 of his workforce and requiring the people that stayed to work 80-hour weeks is to blame for this incident versus Musk taking an interest in some random Palestinian journalist.

Whether it's nefarious or incompetent, preventing people from following the people they want to follow will simply speed users away from his platform.
 
I think it is interesting reading all the doom and gloom by people who have never, or have limited experience working in the private sector, or have been employed in jobs where policy is driven by theory. A 25% reduction in the fed workforce is certainly very doable. Change is never easy but this should be very doable and DOGE is something everyone should embrace on the whole. This is long, long overdue.
 
superrific said:
Musk called remote work "morally wrong"? WTF?

Vivek has never built a fucking business or anything in his life. So it's really fucking maddening to see this guy -- who is basically a computer game villain -- touting the all-time stupidest policies. Hey Vivek, do you think the 25% headcount reduction is going to be dead weight employees, or the best ones, you know, the ones who can get other jobs?

I read a book a while back called "Snakes in Suits" about psychopathic people in the workforce, especially in managerial tiers. Vivek checks every box.
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This is not really my specialty, but it seems to me that if Trump ends up actually trying this full "return to work" policy, they may face some legal challenges to that requirement that are based on the assertion that rather than being in the interests of the government it's clearly just a pretext to force people to quit - with the primary evidence being that Musk and Vivek described it exactly that way in advance.
 
Callatoroy said:
I think it is interesting reading all the doom and gloom by people who have never, or have limited experience working in the private sector, or have been employed in jobs where policy is driven by theory. A 25% reduction in the fed workforce is certainly very doable. Change is never easy but this should be very doable and DOGE is something everyone should embrace on the whole. This is long, long overdue.
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I think it is interesting that you espouse views like this without one shred of evidence that such a reduction is "doable" without a major disruption of essential services and/or the larger economy. Oh, and I have plenty of experience working in the private sector. Even as someone who owns my own business and beats much larger competitors at their game, I think such a pronouncement without details is a huge pile of horseshit.

And nobody should embrace anything that a madman and a business fraud espouse simply because they say so.
 
Callatoroy said:
I think it is interesting reading all the doom and gloom by people who have never, or have limited experience working in the private sector, or have been employed in jobs where policy is driven by theory. A 25% reduction in the fed workforce is certainly very doable. Change is never easy but this should be very doable and DOGE is something everyone should embrace on the whole. This is long, long overdue.
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It will never cease to amaze me how ill-informed people are. Long, long overdue? Like this hasn't been done many times before. Hoover Commission, Grace Commission, NPR. The reality is, like any large organization, there are ways to reduce costs. They should be pursued, but won't amount to any huge number (relatively speaking). The reality is, also, that our current debt/deficit has very little to do with 'waste'. It is due to the demand for services by the citizenry and the concurrent unwillingness of the citizenry to pay for them.
 
ZenMode said:
Are you talking about this deal?

ec.europa.eu

EU-U.S. Joint Statement: Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) imports from the U.S. continue to rise, up by 181%

EU-U.S. Joint Statement: Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) imports from the U.S. continue to rise, up by 181%
ec.europa.eu ec.europa.eu
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I am. And they snookered Trump and fools like you, because that's how much LNG would have been exported to EU anyway. Maybe a few countries bought a little more for a couple of years , but it was basically of zero effect.
 
Callatoroy said:
I think it is interesting reading all the doom and gloom by people who have never, or have limited experience working in the private sector, or have been employed in jobs where policy is driven by theory. A 25% reduction in the fed workforce is certainly very doable. Change is never easy but this should be very doable and DOGE is something everyone should embrace on the whole. This is long, long overdue.
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That unemployment won't have ANY negative economic impact

You ignorant troll
 


Lololol Lord have mercy.

“Trump didn’t say that he was going to implement across-the-board tariffs! And if he did say it, he didn’t mean that he was actually going to do it! And if he did mean that he was actually going to do it, it’s just a bluff because he is super duper master negotiator! And if it’s not a bluff and he isn’t a super duper master negotiator, then it’s just smart economic policy! And if it is actually not smart economic policy, all of the economic experts and Fortune 500 CEOs don’t know what the fuck they are talking about. And if they do know what the fuck they are talking about, then it won’t be so bad! And if it is bad, it’s the Democrats’ fault for not stopping Trump!”
 
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