[Politics] Donald Trump, US President Elect 2025

[schmunk]

Maybe naïve, i don't think he took a wage first time around. He is the only president in 50 years to lose money. he's to old to be some kind of dictator and he hasn't even been accused of rigging laws to help his businesses while in the WH.

He got the US government and foreign officials to spend all of that money at his country club and golf courses and STILL lost money...? He really isn't a very good businessman, is he?

 

[Bodian]

He got the US government and foreign officials to spend all of that money at his country club and golf courses and STILL lost money...? He really isn't a very good businessman, is he?

Except for his Truth Social thing and a possible $5bn payout. What's all that actually about??!

 

[Thunder Bolt]

 

[Crawley Dingo]

Do you have a link to this please? I cannot find any reference to this anywhere - hopefully you can provide something?

I can find little without wading through hours of stuff. i remember reading that Smith wanted the Trial in Washington as it concerned national security papers but the Trial has been set for Fort Peirce in Florida by the judge, not giving a reason why.

Judge in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case sets May 20 as the start date for Trump’s trial

The date falls in the middle of the 2024 presidential campaign. A grand jury is currently investigating the former president for his role in the attack on the Capitol, which could lead to a third indictment

english.elpais.com

TBH if the Muller Inquiry didn't give you pause for thought then nothing else will. As I've stated before, I'm not spending hours jumping through hoops for people who are acting in bad faith(Which yours is towards Trump ), rude underhand and disingenuous . been 20 minutes looking through all these links. If I come across it i'll post and tag you other than that have a happy Easter.

 

[The Clamp]

I can find little without wading through hours of stuff. i remember reading that Smith wanted the Trial in Washington as it concerned national security papers but the Trial has been set for Fort Peirce in Florida by the judge, not giving a reason why.

Judge in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case sets May 20 as the start date for Trump’s trial

The date falls in the middle of the 2024 presidential campaign. A grand jury is currently investigating the former president for his role in the attack on the Capitol, which could lead to a third indictment

english.elpais.com

TBH if the Muller Inquiry didn't give you pause for thought then nothing else will. As I've stated before, I'm not spending hours jumping through hoops for people who are acting in bad faith(Which yours is towards Trump ), rude underhand and disingenuous . been 20 minutes looking through all these links. If I come across it i'll post and tag you other than that have a happy Easter.

Are you Donald Trump?

 

[nicko31]

If you think he's running for any other reason than for himself then you are naive.

The reason he is running is if he wins he knows it will keep him out of jail and will get immunity.

 

[Curious Orange]

I can find little without wading through hours of stuff. i remember reading that Smith wanted the Trial in Washington as it concerned national security papers but the Trial has been set for Fort Peirce in Florida by the judge, not giving a reason why.

Judge in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case sets May 20 as the start date for Trump’s trial

The date falls in the middle of the 2024 presidential campaign. A grand jury is currently investigating the former president for his role in the attack on the Capitol, which could lead to a third indictment

english.elpais.com

TBH if the Muller Inquiry didn't give you pause for thought then nothing else will. As I've stated before, I'm not spending hours jumping through hoops for people who are acting in bad faith(Which yours is towards Trump ), rude underhand and disingenuous . been 20 minutes looking through all these links. If I come across it i'll post and tag you other than that have a happy Easter.

The Muller Inquiry? The one that concluded that Russia did interfere with the 2016 election, but while it couldn't provide sufficient evidence that Mr Trump directly colluded with Russia in that interference, it could not exonerate him of obstructing the Inquiry itself.

Yes, that definitely gave me pause for thought.

 

[Is it PotG?]

I can see it now, Trump and Starmer in a year's time sorting out the world over a coffee.
Can't wait.

 

[Bodian]

I can find little without wading through hours of stuff. i remember reading that Smith wanted the Trial in Washington as it concerned national security papers but the Trial has been set for Fort Peirce in Florida by the judge, not giving a reason why.

Judge in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case sets May 20 as the start date for Trump’s trial

The date falls in the middle of the 2024 presidential campaign. A grand jury is currently investigating the former president for his role in the attack on the Capitol, which could lead to a third indictment

english.elpais.com

TBH if the Muller Inquiry didn't give you pause for thought then nothing else will. As I've stated before, I'm not spending hours jumping through hoops for people who are acting in bad faith(Which yours is towards Trump ), rude underhand and disingenuous . been 20 minutes looking through all these links. If I come across it i'll post and tag you other than that have a happy Easter.

Goodness me.

Please point out where I have been at all rude to you. Or underhand, or disingenuous.

I have been perfectly polite throughout all my exchanges with you.

As to this particular issue. You made the statement that "Smiths trying to get the document cases shifted to a more Democrat area from a Republican one" (note the current tense, not the past tense). I have asked you where this was said, as I couldn't find anything about it. You now say cannot find anything that says this either even after 20 minutes of looking through links. You have then posted a link to an article from July 2023 (note the past tense, not the current tense) - presumably inferring that it backs up your statement. But even in that article, which I have now read, I cannot see anything in it that says Smith was trying to move the trial location. Can you highlight/quote the relevant paragraph for me please.

You now say you "remember reading that Smith wanted the Trial in Washington as it concerned national security papers but the Trial has been set for Fort Peirce in Florida by the judge, not giving a reason why." Firstly - that is not Smith trying to 'move the trial at all - it was him asking initially for the trial to be in Washington (and he gave a reason for that request) - if true of course, as you haven't provided any evidence to say that he actually did this. Secondly, you say the trial has been set in Florida by the judge, but 'not giving a reason why'. Yet the article you link to states that it is because it the state where Trump resides.

So, given that I have simply asked you to back up your statement, and you have said you can't - but have posted a link to an article that doesn't say what you imply it says, and contradicts another of your statements - I am surprised by your nerve and gall in describing me as being the one who is 'underhand and disingenuous'.

I note you have not attempted to address the other question.

 

[BadFish]

Goodness me.

Please point out where I have been at all rude to you. Or underhand, or disingenuous.

I have been perfectly polite throughout all my exchanges with you.

As to this particular issue. You made the statement that "Smiths trying to get the document cases shifted to a more Democrat area from a Republican one" (note the current tense, not the past tense). I have asked you where this was said, as I couldn't find anything about it. You now say cannot find anything that says this either even after 20 minutes of looking through links. You have then posted a link to an article from July 2023 (note the past tense, not the current tense) - presumably inferring that it backs up your statement. But even in that article, which I have now read, I cannot see anything in it that says Smith was trying to move the trial location. Can you highlight/quote the relevant paragraph for me please.

You now say you "remember reading that Smith wanted the Trial in Washington as it concerned national security papers but the Trial has been set for Fort Peirce in Florida by the judge, not giving a reason why." Firstly - that is not Smith trying to 'move the trial at all - it was him asking initially for the trial to be in Washington (and he gave a reason for that request) - if true of course, as you haven't provided any evidence to say that he actually did this. Secondly, you say the trial has been set in Florida by the judge, but 'not giving a reason why'. Yet the article you link to states that it is because it the state where Trump resides.

So, given that I have simply asked you to back up your statement, and you have said you can't - but have posted a link to an article that doesn't say what you imply it says, and contradicts another of your statements - I am surprised by your nerve and gall in describing me as being the one who is 'underhand and disingenuous'.

I note you have not attempted to address the other question.

Your other question lies at the heart of the current discussion. For me failing to offer an answer to it is a prime example of acting in bad faith.

Still I think what CD offers in his exchanges is anotber prime example. This one is what it takes to be a Trump supporter.

 

[lasvegan]

Insults - excellent.




I'm interested in the truth and if people post biased lies against Trump I'm not interested in them, just as I'm not interested in biased lies supporting Trump and against Biden. I don't think the opinion piece you gave adds anything useful to the debate. I haven't asked for it to be removed or banned, so I'm not sure what your point is there.

From your posts here I don't get the impression that you are interesting in understanding different opinions, it just seems that your intention is to preach your side.

I apologize if my sarcasm was OTT, but I stand by the point I was making.

Also, if you’re not interested in biased opinions why would you ”like” the post by @One Love without first checking the source? No wonder he didn’t reveal it, I wouldn’t have either. Obviously a fake account, probably set up by democrat staffers with multiple authors, with the sole purpose of trashing republicans. Which is fine, I really don’t care. You did imply that such sites should be regulated, you used GB News as an example though, not CNN. Maybe you were just being sarcastic.

My intention isn’t to preach, just to present an opinion. You could also read the opinion piece I posted and tell me why you disagree, a proper debate.

 

[Zeberdi]

Fulton bit, Dont know what your on about it doesn't relate to what I posted.

Populist bit, even if true you need to explain why all these populist movements arrived globally in a decade or so turning systems on their head, Brexit, Trump, 5 Star etc. Did all these grifters get lucky at the same time?

Not sure why I’m (or any of us!) still replying to you tbh - given the way you have repeatedly responded to my posts with rudeness and name calling on this thread. You know full well my comment re,Trump being incarcerated at Fulton was a joke relating to your statement that he ‘left Fulton jail’ in your post above.

As for the second part of your post, I don’t need to explain why something occurred in order to attempt to define it but I will accept your question based as it was on the premise that my definition of populism in my earlier post was acceptable to you:

As for why populism has pervaded global politics in the last decade or so, that is another issue altogether but off the top of my head, I’ll give a response as such, and google a few links to back up my assertion - but this is with the proviso that the concept of ‘populism’ has many different tangents and is expressed in a number of different ways, so a single definition of what constitutes populist policies is impossible as each Country/region has it’s own set of political conditions. Having said that, the populist movements we have seen in the past few decades have some common underlying themes imo and are related to some specific factors:

• 9/11 - The global war on terror (9 post-9/11 wars) by the US and allies, has directly resulted in mass population displacements (possibly up to 59 million) and created up to 12 million global cross border refugees between 2011-2019. Those figures only include areas that the US/allied forces have directly been fighting in as the war on terror but there have been other conflicts too that have arisen as a knock on effect such as those caused by the Arab Spring uprisings; or refugees and asylum seekers resulting from the withdrawal/repositioning of US troops in places like Afghanistan and Syria . It doesn’t include the war in Ukraine. Sharp increases in the intake of refugees and asylum seekers into Countries already experiencing depleted resources and growing pressure on public services has triggered a backlash in those Countries accepting them. This combined with anti-Muslim sentiment arising from 9/11 itself and subsequent terror based organisations gaining strongholds in the ME and Africa, has provided one of the main policy ideas of populist movements, that of anti-immigration and Islamophobic sentiment.

• South American increase in violence and extreme poverty As far as the US is concerned, ironically, movement of economic migrants of Mexicans into the US decreased in the mid-2000s when the Great Recession of 2008 hit construction industry (which had a large Mexican workforce) deterring migrants and coinciding with better economic conditions in Mexico. However, growing violence, extreme poverty and racism in places like Equador, Columbia, Haiti and Venezuela have resulted the movement of millions of asylum seekers making the arduous journey into Mexico to cross the Mexican border into the US - public Anti-immigration sentiment in response to this rising migration in the US has been fuelled and scapegoated by the far right and found it’s way in to mainstream right wing populist politics.

• The rise of Eurosceptism - the combination of growing European integration (and its consequential bureaucracy and growing body of legislation/rules) and global economic crisis in 2008 gave rise to dissatisfaction that the EU was not helping to solve people’s problems, small businesses were going to the wall and interest rates and inflationary pressures were resulting in mortgage defaults as a result of negative equity. Far right political parties and at their core, nationalism, gained strength on scapegoating the EU - this was particularly true in France, Sweden and the Netherlands - Mainstream political parties began to see electoral milage in eurosceptic policy platforms.

• Globalisation of trade and cheap foreign labour (both imported and in situ at source) hit areas/regions that had struggled to adapt to internal levels of high unemployment (in part caused by technological/digitalisation of traditional industries in the past several decades) and as Western domestic manufacturing industries started to collapse. Free trade movement and labour movement within the EU and the flooding of Western markets with cheap imports from the growing industrial and productive strength of the tiger economies gave rise to isolationist economic policies and anti-imported labour (particularly into the NHS and Agriculture) - another foundational aspect of right wing populist ideology.

• Climate Change - Since the Kyoto Agreement on Climate Change in 1997, subsequent treaties have imposed more and more stringent targets on reducing the impact of fossil fuels - the cost and inconvenience of ‘being responsible guardians of the planet’ has resulted in a backlash against policies designed to combat climate change. Anti-pro Climate Change policies and even Climate Change deniers have become a common theme in the rise of populism in past decade, culminating in Trump withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and various mainstream parties rolling back on their ‘green‘ commitments. Anti-environmental sentiment, once espouse by conspiracy theorists and Climate Change deniers has been popularised by the rise of far right politics into the mainstream in the past decade. Huge protests against the rising cost of green taxes/levies on fossil fuel use have been compounded by the war in Ukraine and more recently the war in Gaza. Climate Change has become a highly politicised issue dividing the left and right spectrum of political thinking and has been weaponised by the right - ’a new poll by YouGov for The Economist found that whereas 87% of Biden voters believed that climate change was caused by human activity, only 21% of Trump voters agreed’.

• Covid Pandemic - ‘As populist parties in particular thrive, if not even depend, on crises, the link between populism and various aspects of the recent COVID-19 crisis is of great interest to social scientists’. Trump and Bolsonaro both populist, right wing leaders, played down the seriousness of the pandemic, as did some far left groups, yet there was a populist backlash against the severity of lockdown measures and social distancing regulations which provided perfect fodder for right wing conspiracy theorist and the anti-establishment sentiment, a central tenet of ‘populism’ to exploit. Populist parties globally boosted their position by politicising the pandemic for anti-establishment fervour and presenting themselves as the ‘only ones capable’ of ‘dealing with the crisis’.

There are more reasons why there has been a rise in global movements of populism but these are some of the main ones imo that I’ve pulled out - but your very broad and open question has necessitated a far too long answer as it is so I’ll leave it there.

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2020/Displacement_Vine%20et%20al_Costs%20of%20War%202020%2009%2008.pdf

Inforegio - The development trap: a cause of Euroscepticism?

EuropeanCommission – Regional Policy - Inforegio

ec.europa.eu

Inside the deteriorating conditions forcing South American migrants to flee north from country to country

ABC News Live followed a Venezuelan family who are among the millions of migrants that have been part of the largest forced displacement in history not caused by war.

abcnews.go.com

The global backlash against climate policies has begun

Cost, convenience and conspiracy-mongering undercut support for greenery

www.economist.com

Populism in Times of a Pandemic

Abstract This article provides an analysis of the COVID-19 discourse within six European populist parties from Spain, Germany, and France, with the aim of shedding light on the diverse interpretations and presentations of the pandemic by these parties. While most studies focus on right-wing or...

brill.com

 

[Zeberdi]

My intention isn’t to preach, just to present an opinion. You could also read the opinion piece I posted and tell me why you disagree, a proper debate.

Can I remind you where we are

I disagree with much of your policy stance but absolutely agree that there is no reason why we shouldn’t have a proper debate without trolling/abuse/rudeness/personal digs (that I’ve seen expressed by pro-Trump and a few anti-Trump posters too btw). As has been pointed out by a couple of posters, some 50% of the American polled electorate have what they think are good reasons for supporting Trump’s reelection, any Biden supporters dismissing them as just kooky and ignoring their concerns, do so at their peril. What does it matter if people who support Trump are considered lunatics by the left? It should only matter that they could end up running the asylum.

 

[lasvegan]

Who’s running the asylum though?

 

[lasvegan]

It isn’t Trump at the moment, is it…

 

[Zeberdi]

It isn’t Trump at the moment, is it…

He’s running the lunatics that are threatening to take over

 

[lasvegan]

One lunatic to another…

 

[BadFish]

Can I remind you where we are

I disagree with much of your policy stance but absolutely agree that there is no reason why we shouldn’t have a proper debate without trolling/abuse/rudeness/personal digs (that I’ve seen expressed by pro-Trump and a few anti-Trump posters too btw). As has been pointed out by a couple of posters, some 50% of the American polled electorate have what they think are good reasons for supporting Trump’s reelection, any Biden supporters dismissing them as just kooky and ignoring their concerns, do so at their peril. What it does matter if people who support Trump are considered lunatics by the left? It should only matter that they could end up running the asylum.

I totally agree, I just wish that this discussion would shed some light on what people actually see in Trump. I am still struggling to understand why people would vote for him.

I guess we have this idea that he is some kind of anti-authority figure. Which I get but really struggle to see him as anything other than part of the establishment he is supposed to be fighting.

Alongside this it appears to be mainly that he is not Biden, which I also get but there are 350 million people in the USA how has it come down to these two?

I guess you can add in the old faithful 'immigrants!' argument they seem to be relying on.

Can any of our pro trump types shed any more light on their support for him?

 

[Zeberdi]

I guess we have this idea that he is some kind of anti-authority figure. Which I get but really struggle to see him as anything other than part of the establishment he is supposed to be fighting.

Alongside this it appears to be mainly that he is not Biden, which I also get but there are 350 million people in the USA how has it come down to these two?

I certainly don’t think he is an anti-authority figure at all really - I think that is a facade and an expedient narrative he has manufactured - Trump loves the power of authority providing it’s his own and is basically anti anything that doesn’t line his own pocket or feeds his narcissistic appetite for adulation. He is just not a conviction politician.

Biden has had support as a politician for many years and his popularity continued as Obama’s VEEP. However, imo he has lost support of young voters because of his age and the dems failure to get across to the electorate his achievements while in his first term - I think it more a case of people supporting Biden because he is not Trump now rather than for positive reasons - As for why Trump has such a large following, I can’t really fathom the phenomenon of Trumpism other than, in similar ways to Margret Thatcher, he is a demagogue who has appealed to people’s darker angels ( such as their prejudices) and their focus toward ‘self’ rather than relying on rational argument in the pursuit of power.

 

[Triggaaar]

Also, if you’re not interested in biased opinions why would you ”like” the post by @One Love without first checking the source?

I think his was only posted in response to yours. I'm not convinced it wasn't written by someone living near the border.

No wonder he didn’t reveal it, I wouldn’t have either. Obviously a fake account, probably set up by democrat staffers with multiple authors, with the sole purpose of trashing republicans.

I don't know whether it is or not.

Which is fine, I really don’t care. You did imply that such sites should be regulated, you used GB News as an example though, not CNN.

When I said news sites should be regulated I wasn't talking about the likes of twitter, because that's not a news site. Although I think the news in the UK is better, I used GB News as an example of things not perfect here either - I don't see how I could use CNN as an example there, since it's American?

You could also read the opinion piece I posted and tell me why you disagree, a proper debate.

The article you linked to was picking some border stats to comment on. I don't have time to verify whether or not the stats were accurate, or find out what the stats were like under Trump, or look into the detail around the stats. If you wanted debated, I posted several things that would put me off voting Trump in post #2,628. You're welcome to say if you don't agree with any of those points.