Trump / Musk (other than DOGE) Omnibus Thread

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HandsonFire said:
Clear as day he is compromised. Pubs elected a traitor twice. And now they stand there like a toddler with their fingers in their ears screaming I can’t hear you when you say anything negative about dear leader. We are fucked they will never change, damn sure never compromise..
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Their girl Tulsi is selling our secrets to Putin and Chyna now.

...while bizarrely Trump is hurtling toward another M.E. conflict.

...then I remembered Trump is an orange, crazy, senile Manchurian Candidate.
 
heelinhell said:
China understands that soft power will enhance its quest to supplant the USA as the premier global superpower.

Trump and his minions have no clue.
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Trump is a nihilist. He doesn't care what shape the US is in, and even if it is a democracy (democratic republic) when he's gone.
 

Fact check: Musk, Trump deceive about a Trump-era Pentagon contract for ‘social deception’ defense​




“President Donald Trump and ally Elon Musk are misleadingly depicting a Pentagon defense contract that was awarded during Trump’s first presidency.

The $9.1 million contract was awarded to Thomson Reuters Special Services, a company that provides “data-driven solutions” to the federal government and other clients, to work on defenses against “social engineering” cyberattacks, which use “social deception” tactics to trick humans.

In a Wednesday social media post that didn’t explain what the contract was actually for, Musk insinuated that the Reuters news agency, which has the same parent company as Thomson Reuters Special Services, was paid by the government to engage in deception.

And neither Musk nor Trump, who made a Thursday post amplifying Musk’s claim, noted that the contract began under Trump in 2018.

Asked for comment, Thomson Reuters Special Services chief executive Steve Rubley said in a Thursday statement to CNN that “recent public discourse” has “inaccurately represented the nature of the business between TRSS and the Department of Defense,” and has incorrectly conflated Reuters News with TRSS, a separate legal entity that has its own board of directors and “operates independently from Reuters News.”

… Musk has previously criticized the Reuters news agency over its coverage of his business ventures. He wrote on his X social media platform on Wednesday night: “Reuters was paid millions of dollars by the US government for ‘large scale social deception’. That is literally what it says on the purchase order! They’re a total scam. Just wow.”

… detailed information about the contract has long been publicly available on the US government’s spending disclosure website.

… The nature of the contract was described, in the brief and vague manner typical of federal contract descriptions, as “ACTIVE SOCIAL ENGINEERING DEFENSE (ASED) LARGE SCALE SOCIAL DECEPTION (LSD).”

… DARPA explained on its website that it was seeking to develop technology to “automatically identify, disrupt, and investigate social engineering attacks” – attacks known as “social engineering” because they try to deceive or “engineer” humans into performing certain actions, like clicking on links to malicious software, divulging sensitive information or giving up money. …”
 


“… Judge Amir Ali issued the order in a lawsuit brought by two nonprofit organizations, the Global Health Council and the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition. He said they had provided evidence of “devastating effects” that the administration’s decision has had on businesses and organizations, including layoffs and closures.

He said the administration hadn’t “offered any explanation for why a blanket suspension of all congressionally appropriated foreign aid, which set off a shock wave and upended reliance interests for thousands of agreements with businesses, nonprofits, and organizations around the country, was a rational precursor to reviewing programs.”

Ali ordered administration officials to file a status report by Tuesday regarding compliance with the ruling. He stopped short of barring Trump’s executive order in its entirety, which included an internal review of government programs.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. …”
 
1moretimeagain said:
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VA Statement

“… Those dismissed today include non-bargaining unit probationary employees who have served less than a year in a competitive service appointment or who have served less than two years in an excepted service appointment.

The personnel moves will save the department more than $98 million per year, and VA will redirect all of those resources back toward health care, benefits and services for VA beneficiaries.

There are currently more than 43,000 probationary employees across the department, the vast majority of whom are exempt from today’s personnel actions because they serve in mission-critical positions – primarily those supporting benefits and services for VA beneficiaries – or are covered under a collective bargaining agreement. VA employees who elected to participate in the Office of Personnel Management’s deferred resignation program are also exempt from today’s personnel actions. …”
 

“… The Department of Energy plans to lay off most or all of its estimated 2,000 probationary employees Thursday. Over the past 48 hours, at least six other agencies — the Education Department, the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Small Business Administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the General Services Administration initiated layoffs.

Also on Thursday, Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency started to zero in on the Department of Housing and Urban Development, reviewing the agency’s budget and workforce structure for potential cuts, according to another person familiar with Musk’s involvement granted anonymity to speak freely.

…
The Small Business Administration terminated about 720 employees — roughly 20 percent of its permanent workforce, according to a person familiar with the agency, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters. The Department of Education on Wednesday fired at least 60 probationary employees and has begun distributing termination notices to workers in the offices for civil rights, federal student aid and communications, as well as its legal department.

Erie Meyer, former chief technologist at CFPB from 2021 until earlier this year, told POLITICO on Thursday that “they just fired every single technologist investigating Big Tech” at the agency. …”
 
nycfan said:

“… The Department of Energy plans to lay off most or all of its estimated 2,000 probationary employees Thursday. Over the past 48 hours, at least six other agencies — the Education Department, the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Small Business Administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the General Services Administration initiated layoffs.

Also on Thursday, Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency started to zero in on the Department of Housing and Urban Development, reviewing the agency’s budget and workforce structure for potential cuts, according to another person familiar with Musk’s involvement granted anonymity to speak freely.

…
The Small Business Administration terminated about 720 employees — roughly 20 percent of its permanent workforce, according to a person familiar with the agency, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters. The Department of Education on Wednesday fired at least 60 probationary employees and has begun distributing termination notices to workers in the offices for civil rights, federal student aid and communications, as well as its legal department.

Erie Meyer, former chief technologist at CFPB from 2021 until earlier this year, told POLITICO on Thursday that “they just fired every single technologist investigating Big Tech” at the agency. …”
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SBA is already a slow-moving entity but one that does valuable work helping get small businesses through the first step of moving out of someone’s garage and moving toward sustainable growth.

It was a sleepy backwater agency that had PPP thrust upon it/shoehorned into its existing mission in 2020 and honestly performed above and beyond under the extraordinary circumstances of suddenly having to administer way more than its usual annual budget on a few weeks notice to disburse what ended up being over $800B to businesses all over the country in short order. It was nuts and to be fair banks and FinTechs had to be forced to handle the application and direct processing (SBA never could have handled that alone) but SBA had to process it all.

That kind of layoff number will slow things further.
 


See, if DOGE would be targeted in cuts (like weapons systems the military doesn’t even want), it could be valuable.

But right now they are weed whacking everything they can reach without any apparent plan or motivation other than. destroying anything they can as fast as they can.
 
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