As things get worse, I’m sure we’ll see plenty of people suffering the consequences of electing Trump and blaming it on the people around Trump. They may be losing the farm and their home and livelihood, but rather than shifting ideologically, they’ll be talking about warning Trump that the government is doing this stuff behind his back.

A plurality, not a majority.

He may only have been short of the majority by a fraction of a percent, but no sense in giving him any more credit than is due or contributing to the myth of a mandate.

The problem is that on certain specific issues he was occasionally the voice of something resembling reason among Republicans. I highly doubt that his replacement will be anything but a pure MAGA nut job.

Hurting the wrong people again?

And on the flip side, Russia’s nukes are the reason that aid for Ukraine was only gradually ramped up and came with strings attached, for fear of provoking them. It makes it pretty clear that the world can be divided into those who have nukes and those who don’t.

And that was before Trump started talking with Putin about how best to slice up Ukraine. Oh and also threatening to annex his neighbors. The world looks that much more unstable, and anyone relying on norms, allies or international law for their security will probably want to reconsider that position.

79 million people lose healthcare so that a handful of billionaires don’t have to go from paying virtually no taxes to paying very low taxes.

This would be a disaster. It would cause immense suffering and would ultimately kill a lot of people. Every last member of congress that votes to kill medicaid should be thinking of just how they might have to answer to the people, both at the ballot box and on the street.

It will also make some portion of the would be customers choose to drive by.

Don’t worry, I’m sure his replacement will be even worse.

I’m glad they’re publicly contradicting Trump. Too bad they won’t actually do anything about him.

To all those in Wisconsin, reminder there’s an election coming up that will determine which side controls the state supreme court. If you like policies like this one and also having fair elections, don’t let the Republicans win.

Honestly, Trump bitching about someone and insulting them is more likely than not to be a positive indicator.

Microsoft said Windows 10 would be the last version I’d ever use. They didn’t know how right they were. I’ve been gradually switching to Linux, and will absolutely never use Windows 11 or any other version they put out.

They are claiming to obey courts but are dragging their feet on actually complying with court orders. I don’t think they are going to publicly acknowledge the fact that they are breaking the law and violating the constitution, they’re just going to keep doing whatever they want and keep lying about it being legal.

This executive order exists for that reason, to tell the rest of the executive branch to shut the fuck up about any concerns they have about the legality of what they are being told to do. The president and AG decide what is legal, and if you don’t like it, you can quit. Even if the don’t explicitly state it, functionally, interpretation of and compliance with court orders would fall into that same category of legal questions.

to this day are still alive and thriving as avians who aren’t ancestors of dinosaurs but are straight up mini dinosaurs.

I think the word you’re looking for is descendants. Ancestors are the ones that come before.

He’s an absolutist. Unfortunately, he means absolutely not.

What happened to “The American Way” that Superman was fighting for?

The same thing that happened to truth and justice.

While I support this, I am fairly certain that Elon doesn’t care. The value of Tesla stock has very little relationship to their ability to sell cars to consumers. He killed the attempts at making a more affordable car that could get much wider adoption by the public in favor of big ugly toys for the wealthy and pivoting towards fleet sales. And that was before he was in a position to basically just tell the government to throw money at all of his various businesses.

In fact, I don’t think Tesla dissolving as a company would be enough to slow Musk down at this point. Not when his shitty AI company will be getting paid to replace federal workers, and he has blank checks from NASA and the DOD to prop up Space X. And just wait until Xitter becomes the preferred payment system of the federal government.

And far less than the amount of money that either Trump or Musk will have funneled to themselves and their businesses over the next few years.

Trump doesn’t give a fuck if his poll numbers plummet. He doesn’t need to run for office again.

Sure, midterms could let the Democrats retake the house and senate, but it’s not like Trump is using the legislature right now anyway. So long as the current administration can get away with completely ignoring the law, the other branches of government don’t really matter that much.

Sure, it’s possible they could impeach him and actually remove his ass from office. But that will require either Republican support which will not happen, or for Democrats to win every senate race, including the safely Republican districts.

At this point, the most realistic exit from this nightmare would be for the house to change hands so we have a new speaker, then for both Trump and Vance to cease to be available for the job. Trump’s old and in terrible shape, so we could get lucky there (though luck hasn’t been kind for quite a while), but Vance is unlikely to go away on his own.

At this point, I’m not sure if trump would bother trying to defend the US from an actual Russian invasion, especially if they invaded an area he doesn’t like.