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Thank you Mick and Hurlburt88. I know I’m not a model of “How to win friends and influence people” on this board sometimes, but I’m glad that people on whatever side can agree this is fucked up. I don’t see this as a left or right issue. We need to enforce our borders, but not at the cost of due process and sending people to these torture / death camps beyond our jurisdiction.
By the way, Mick, yes I am all for deportations when warranted. I am not some kind of “open borders” guy. I never have been. As David Frum accurately mused in 2019, “If Liberals Won’t Enforce Borders, Fascists Will“.
At the risk of sounding paranoid, Trump is now talking about sending US citizens to these death camps: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/homegrowns-trump-doubles-sending-convicted-us-citizens-foreign/story?id=120802863
I said homegrowns are next, the homegrowns. You gotta build about five more places.
“Bukele was heard responding “alright” and others in the room laughed.
“It’s not big enough,” Trump added.
If you think this is just an ad hoc “joke” or one-off statement, it’s not. The Trump administration floated this idea about a week ago, as well: https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/trump-leavitt-deporting-us-citizens-el-salvador-sotomayor-rcna200299
Here’s to hoping these US citizens at least get due process — and are not just rounded up because they are allegedly “bad people”. But Trump is refusing to follow the 9 – 0 ruling by the Supreme Court, so who knows. The rule of law seems to be optional now.
NO MALARKEY
Although none of you seem to care about due process and human rights (though I give GR credit for mild hesitation), at least the conservative Supreme Court seems to have some residual sense and ruled unanimously in favor of one of these kidnapping victims:
US top court instructs Trump to return man wrongly deported to El Salvador
We’ll see what happens with the other cases. I don’t think this case really addresses due process per se, and may just be a narrow victory.
As a side note to anyone that actually cares (I hope you do), a CBS News investigation showed that 75% of the 238 Venezuelan migrants deported had no known criminal history in the U.S. or abroad . Similarly, a Bloomberg review indicated that about 90% lacked U.S. criminal records. They were apparently identified by a guy who had been fired from his law enforcement job for lying. But got a job with I.C.E. And these victims were sent to this deathcamp on his “expert” opinion.
More to come, I’m sure, in one of the most despicable chapters of US history.
Am I really the only person who cares about this? Because now would be a great time to speak up if you think this is actually an insane thing for the US government to be doing. Are some of those guys bad? Yeah, probably. But we don’t deport people to death camps without a modicum of due process. I don’t understand how that is a controversial opinion by the educated people on this board. I’d love to hear from someone here who has second thoughts about this. It would restore a bit of my faith in the humanity here.
NO MALARKEY
Great. Russia is suffering. I hope you realize that’s just an unintended and very foreseen consequence. It’s like, hey, that rat poison my dog ate cured her ailments. She died, so she now no longer has arthritis. Why didn’t someone think of doing that earlier.
Second, who cares about trade deficits. It’s meaningless without any context. We had surpluses with most countries during the Great Depression. Because we couldn’t afford anything. We now have a trade deficit with Switzerland because we have 40x as many people as them. We will never have a surplus with everyone unless we turn into a third world country or worse and can’t afford to buy anything.
Even if you give Trump the benefit of the doubt (hypothetically), and say that mass tariffs are somehow actually good, Trump is doing it recklessly and irresponsibly. People are losing trust in the US markets. We are losing credibility. We are a bad faith partner who doesn’t honor the trade agreements we signed. We are pissing off friends and allies.
We are going to lose markets for a generation or more because countries will just find other trading partners. Look at what happened in Trump’s first term. The US used to have a major soy bean market. We lost that because China retaliated to U.S. tariffs and imposed a 25% tariff on American soybeans. By the end of 2018, U.S. soybean sales to China had plummeted by 94% . We ended up spending a fortune subsidizing farmers. The soybean business in the USA has never fully recovered and China still gets most of its soybeans from Brazil now.
Meanwhile, you can be sure Trump and his cronies are making a fortune off the chaos:
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NO MALARKEY
You all are missing the forest for the trees. The Trump strategy: wreck the economy. That will surely lead to prosperity (we were doing fine by the way).
Try to justify it how ever you please and rationalize it. But at the end of the day it is just monumentally retarded on an epic scale.
Trump is committing economic suicide and you all are sitting here trying to explain it like it makes perfect sense if you just look at xyz numbers and abc metrics.
I’ll try to comment more in a few days — after I finish a major project — with more specifics. In the meantime, I will simply say that conducting a grand experiment with the entire economy is completely irresponsible.
NO MALARKEY
Oops. ICE Admits to “administrative error”.
In its court filing on Monday, the Trump administration said ICE “was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador,” but still deported Abrego Garcia “because of an administrative error.”
Who could have seen this coming /s. I have an idea: maybe give someone some due process before sending to a gulag.
The administration said it can’t doing anything about it now since he’s in custody of a foreign country — and has no intention to do anything, regardless.
NO MALARKEY
Mick, the March numbers are more likely a tailwind from the prior administration. As you well know, the hiring process takes months. Whatever job numbers are reflecting in March were the result of job postings and hiring that took place over the prior months.
Trump just started his economic terrorism. Give it a few months or look at the stock market, which is a leading economic indicator. Economics 101, week 2.
NO MALARKEY
You have a curious definition of “not standing up to” and “continues bending over backwards for…”
Where do I begin? I will have to post more another time, but just look at the latest economic “plan”. He put tariffs on most of the world, but (surprise) he left off Russia and it’s pet — Belarus. But sure enough, he put tariffs on Ukraine. Because of course he did.
Of course, you could say he didn’t need to put tariffs on Russia or Belarus because we hardly trade with them. But that explanation flies out the window when you see that he put tariffs on Nauru — that tiny island of a few thousand poor people that have almost zero GDP and no trade. He even imposed tariffs on an island inhabited mostly by American soldiers.
NO MALARKEY
Trump is an economic arsonist and you’re just casually trying to explain it away as if he has some rational economic approach. I mean, I don’t even know how to respond. It’s like trying to debate with someone who is defending a terrorist and expecting to have a reasonable conversation. I simply cannot fathom how you and others on the right don’t see how absolutely fucking insane this administration’s policies are — economic and otherwise.
Sorry Mick. I guess I appreciate the attempt to explain it, but I really hope you get out of whatever weird information bubble you and the others here seem to be in. The world is wondering what the absolute fuck is happening to America and you all on the right seem to think it all makes some kind of sense.
You think we are reshoring jobs? Come on. Take a big picture view. Don’t just look at a few examples (which are usually bullshit, by the way; was it Toyota that announced a “new” plan, after speaking with Trump, to move a factory to the US? They were already planning to build it here, but just rewrote the press release to stroke Trump’s ego.). Take a broader view of the world. They are refusing to do business with us. They will reciprocate tariffs. They are refusing to come to America now (tourism is expected to be WAY down). Canadians are booing us at events. They are not stocking their shelves with American goods. Europe is looking at us like a pariah. Australians wonder what has happened to US. Etc., etc…. Do you live in a bubble? Do you not see this in your news media? Do you see it happening and just not care because all of our allies and partners are now “bad”? I just don’t understand what you guys are smoking.
We will re-shore 100 jobs and lose 10,000 others. What a great strategy.
Just 8 eight weeks ago we had a normal and well functioning economy. You all talked yourselves into some frenzy about how it was actually just terrible (“poison pilled” was the word).
I hope it’s *only* a recession. It will probably be much worse. But like January 6th, you all will quickly talk yourself into believing it’s the Dems fault.
NO MALARKEY
Liberation Day. Liberating us from our 401K’s ? Liberating us from the world economy? Liberating us from our friends, allies, and trading partners?
You’ll lose a million in your retirement funds and other assets, but hey — you will pay a few thousand less in taxes when Republicans pass that tax cut for the wealthy. What a bargain.
Of course, that tax cut will just get subsumed by inflation (can’t wait for the stagflation). But Trump is playing 4D chess, so I’m sure it will all be fine.
NO MALARKEY
I’m guessing Obama didn’t staff it with idiots who are taking a hatchet to important programs they knew little or nothing about.
Should there be some cuts? Probably. But not the way they are going about it.
NO MALARKEY
Also, your premise is wrong. CNN provided live coverage of multiple Trump rallies that year. For instance, it broadcasted rallies live on June 18, June 22, June 28, and July 9.
https://www.aol.com/fact-check-cnn-aired-several-142354369.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com
That claim seems to stem from misinformation or disinformation on Twitter (sorry, “X”) not surprisingly. Musk’s own Grok LLM recently determined that Musk himself is the largest spreader of misinformation:
i would suggest getting off that platform or take heavy dose of skepticism when reading crap from X.
NO MALARKEY
Obviously I’m speculating. But what else would explain Trump’s obsequious behavior and pro Russian politics. I suppose he’s just a willing Russian stooge, which is worse. At least he would have an excuse if Putin had some dirt on him.
Trump said he’s “pissed off”. I guess that’s not obsequious. But it’s about the least threatening choice of words I can imagine. Let’s see if Trump actually stands up to Putin or if he continues bending over backwards for him.
NO MALARKEY
This is a nothing burger. And Putin knows it. Trump is pro Russian / anti-Ukraine. Trump will forget about it in 5 minutes. Putin knows that he is the dominant figure in the relationship. He was asserting his dominance and reminding Trump that he has dirt on him — just as he did when he released naked pictures of Melania after a phone call with Trump didn’t go as well as he liked.
Give it a couple days and Trump will be back to gargling Putin’s balls. He’ll probably lift the sanctions on Russia soon and make up some BS excuse to blame it on Ukraine.
Just take a wider view of the relationship. And when you view things through the lens of Trump being pro Russian / anti-Europe, you will realize this is just a bit of temporary theater.
I really hope I turn out to be wrong about this. You’re welcome to bookmark this and remind me that I was wrong about this. I will gladly admit I was wrong if that turns out to be the case. But it’s highly unlikely Trump will do anything but support Russia in the long run (or even the near term).
This is like if Mussolini got irritated by Hitler. At the end of the day they are on the same side, so it will blow over. I’d even go so far as to say that in Trump will eventually try to sanction the EU or European countries rather than Russia. Bookmark that too. Again, I hope I turn out to be wrong. But I can see that happening with this adminstration.
NO MALARKEY
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