Trump Thread

**Montmorency** · 03-16-2025, 05:27

Nice Godwin blog post on discursive and political pscyhology trends in Nazi Germany and their implicit analogy in present times (themselves an enhanced version of much from the first Trump era):

Here, then, are things to watch for, all warnings from the well-known story of the Third Reich.

Daily life will take on a surreal quality and, if we do not take some action or join an organized resistance, our discussions will consist of merely repeating the latest horror.

Sebastian Haffner, writing in 1939, noted that “life went on as before, though it had now become ghostly and unreal, and was daily mocked by the events that served as its background…. We were not equal to the situation, even as victims.” Then as now, “many adapt to living with clenched teeth. Unfortunately they form a majority of a visible 'opposition' in Germany. So it is no wonder that this opposition has never developed any goals, plans, or expectations. Most of its members spend their time bemoaning the atrocities. The dreadful things that are happening have become essential to their spiritual well-being. Their only remaining dark pleasure is to luxuriate in the description of gruesome deeds, and it is impossible to have a discussion with them on any other topic.”

People around you will forget that they once were anti-Trump.
Christopher Isherwood wrote of his Berlin landlady in 1933: “Already she is adapting herself, as she will adapt herself to every new regime. This morning I even heard her talking reverently about Der Furher to the porter’s wife. If anyone was to remind her that at the elections last November she voted Communist she would probably deny it hotly and in perfect good faith. She is merely acclimatizing herself in accordance with a natural law, like an animal which changes its coat for the winter.”

[...]

MAGA will continue to believe what the leader says up until the very brink of disaster.

In the summer of 1939, three months after Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, Robert Jamieson, a British English teacher living in Essen, wrote to Lord Londonderry, who had recently acted as a go-between British and Nazi leaders: “[The Germans] really believe that the Czech government had voluntarily sought Hitler’s protection and that they would all starve if they do not get this lebensraum and colonies.

**spmetla** · 03-26-2025, 01:20

This "signal chat" controversy is certainly an interesting one. If this were normal times it would probably result in a cabinet official or two being forced to resign.

1. They should not have been using signal chat for this conversation at all, this is something belongs in a SCIF.

2. It seems likely that some if not all were using personal phones, so this would be more spillage.

3. The entire conversation being set to auto-delete is completely against all norms for retaining government records.

4. It seems that Witcoff was in Russia during this conversation, possibly even in the Kremlin. Makes it very likely that his device and the conversation may have been intercepted by the Russians.

5. That this was the 'small group' and the list of attendees wasn't scrutinized is sheer incompetence. We can just be happy the Journalist did the responsible thing and not immediately publish or leak the whole thing as that could get ships sunk and pilots shot down.

This is already been spun as a 'nothing burger' by Fox and the rest of the MAGA information universe when in fact it is a serious and egregious violation of OPSEC, records keeping, etc...

As a guy in the National Guard, I know that the Army in general loves WhatsApp and Signal chats for quickly coordinating day to day things. Makes it super easy for following up on admin tasks, putting out information to a group, and coordinating little things.

It does not surprise me at all that this admin has so many that were using Signal Chat for secret/ top secret things against all norms. I think this is a telling sign that they do not trust the rank and file, especially within the security/intelligence community that would normally facilitate this type of conversation over secure means. They want deniability, they want as few 'professionals' in the room as possible, and they do not trust the 'deep state' even for routine inter agency coordination for something as sensitive as military strikes.

I can only hope that this is the end of Sec Def and DNI and they are forced to resign but it looks as Mike Waltz will be the fall guy and the rest will just deny, minimize and skate away as there's so much damn news this administration creates that this story will go away in a few weeks as the ones that need to check these violations are the same ones that committed them.
The Dems will hold more hearings, the Atlantic will probably publish red-acted images of the rest of the conversation to show that there was indeed secret information, Trump will tell one guy to resign to make this problem go away and then we as a nation will just go on to the next scandal/travesty that's currently happening.

**Montmorency** · 03-26-2025, 20:23

1. Every MAGA appointee deeply believes the rules don't apply to them, at all. (Rules are for abusing your lessers.)
1.a. This is a fundamental principle of the MAGA appeal in general.

https://x.com/urtropicalgal/status/1884737281757528135 [VIDEO]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

2. Everyone in that conversation seemed to defer to Miller, even (especially) Hegseth.
3. Miller used phrasing like "as I heard" and other uncertain language to communicate Trump's orders, or at least Trump's intent. On policy of the highest international import. It may be the case more than before that Trump is being treated as a mad king by more energetic underlings. I don't think he even does rallies anymore, a regular feature during Trump I and one of his lifetime favorite activities.
4. Vance doesn't understand the inner circle operation of Trumpism and never will. NEVER suggest that the big man may not understand something or may have got something mixed up.
5. Vance and the others still don't understand the basics of world trade.
6.

Originally Posted by John Ganz

My high-level takeaway is “what you see is what you get. These guys might look like idiots, and talk like idiots, but don’t let that fool you: they really are idiots.

As for Signal, there are reasonable circumstances in which to use it, securely, such as when dealing with quick, simple procedural updates. And who knows, by the way, how many people other than these in the Trump admins and beyond have been setting their communications to autodelete.

Even during the first Trump era it was so poetic that Trump was essentially delivered to office by the manufactured moral panic (with Russian assist) over Hillary Clinton's secure and otherwise-regulated handling of a private email server for non-classified materials. Remember something as petty as how they tried to censor Trump's White House schedule and visitor lists years ago (he was occupied with TV, Twitter, golf, and general leisure), after Obama took the unusual steps of making as much info public as possible?

**spmetla** · 03-27-2025, 02:14

Vance doesn't understand the inner circle operation of Trumpism and never will. NEVER suggest that the big man may not understand something or may have got something mixed up.
Vance and the others still don't understand the basics of world trade.

They seem to absolutely loath our Allies for needing US help. The British used to have an Empire, used to control Yemen, but gave up even those up in the 60s Withdrawal East of the Suez after the US betrayal during the Suez Crisis in the late 50s. The Brits had Aden and the French, Djibouti, for exactly these reasons of securing a key choke point for trade.
Like did they not see the fallout of the Suez being blocked by a single container ship for a few weeks. It took months for the flow of containers to unclog and get the backlog in the European and American ports sorted.

All this also points to how disconnected Trump really is. He's not of this 'digital' generation, he doesn't even like to use email, I'm sure ppt briefings and working on computers bore him so he likely just gets executive summaries without any personal deep dives from people he likes. The VP is usually not in the Chain of Command of the military and is just a spare leader, that Trump isn't involved in any of this and just his handlers are involved is truly embarrassing.

As for Signal, there are reasonable circumstances in which to use it, securely, such as when dealing with quick, simple procedural updates. And who knows, by the way, how many people other than these in the Trump admins and beyond have been setting their communications to autodelete.

Yup, for routine admin, coordinating regular training, state side etc... Not for classified conversations at all.

Even during the first Trump era it was so poetic that Trump was essentially delivered to office by the manufactured moral panic (with Russian assist) over Hillary Clinton's secure and otherwise-regulated handling of a private email server for non-classified materials. Remember something as petty as how they tried to censor Trump's White House schedule and visitor lists years ago (he was occupied with TV, Twitter, golf, and general leisure), after Obama took the unusual steps of making as much info public as possible?

Part of it is a generational convenience problem. The Cold War military had people joining up and finding satcomm, radios and so on as extremely advanced and impressive. The current generation of leaders have grown up in a digital world and find the means for secure information as too slow and restrictive as it usually means secure locations, hard lines or well encrypted direct communications.

There really needs to be some sort of digital OPSEC starter course that people need to take when they go into government. For Gabbard and Hegseth, there's no excuse. They as service members (even if on IRR or MDay status) have to still do their annual cyber security awareness quizes and so on. They absolutely should know that what they posted on Signal is at least Secret if not TS.

I really wish that the Dems in their hearings would subpoena for the transcripts for this signal chat from each member involved in the chat. They need to push the issue that these meetings have no records and that is an egregious crime that is happening and will continue to happen.
Hillary should have gotten in more trouble but as the R's found out, the W. Bush admin have private email servers as well. This habit just needs to stop completely. They are issued government phones and computers and need to be held to only using those items.
The conveniences we are so used to in civilian life is destroying our national security when people cannot give it up when working in government. It's a systematic issue that makes us such easy targets for our enemies and appointed/elected officials that keep doing this need to finally be held to accountability.
Not gonna happen from this administration though

**Montmorency** · 03-31-2025, 04:23

Heh, there aren't many ways Clinton could have been through more trouble!

As I saw it, while there are good reasons for the protocols in place, all the evidence that came out proved Clinton personally handled her office's communications about as diligently as one could. And if the Russians were able to hack Republicans and Democrats left and right, then not her. Of course, many found it a little perverse to scapegoat her for a basically universal form of corner-cutting (not even corruption).

But even if one personally determined that this was all disqualifying for her as a political candidate, it was always plain to see that Trump was much worse - on discretion, on information security, on law/rule-abidingness, and on other relevant axes. It's why the media always worked so hard, successfully, to invent bizarre conspiracies about the Clintons to try to catastrophize their flaws and negate their positive qualities, whether for "balance" or as part of the "scream machine" itself.

I recall commenting late in the election season that the Hillary Clinton pneumonia story was the most noteworthy development about her all campaign. I hope the irony was plain.

In a way, this even happened with Biden in the form of his relentless age 'controversy'. The man was demonstrably not as energetic and engaged as he was in his 70s, but he was also demonstrably managing to engage with his job daily in ways that Trump literally never could in his prime (never mind that in his own old age Trump reserved all his energy for bellowing at rallies and being angry on social media, i.e. the pro wrestling projection of virility). But the mainstream media narratives only hammered the point for the one and not the other, making the point in a vacuum that one would prefer POTUS not to have those limitations, or even that gerontocracy was problematic in principle. Coverage of the age issue, somehow, totally disappeared at approximately the end of last July, though someone was still the oldest presidential nominee in history... That's working out predictably now.

Hell, look at Mitch McConnell. The guy has been barely holding it together in public for a few years now, but I doubt Trump has even 20% of the mental capacity McConnell has left.

**Montmorency** · 04-09-2025, 00:58

Senior tax officials are bracing for a sharp drop in revenue collected this spring, as an increasing number of individuals and businesses spurn filing their taxes or attempt to skip paying balances owed to the Internal Revenue Service, according to three people with knowledge of tax projections.

Treasury Department and IRS officials are predicting a decrease of more than 10 percent in tax receipts by the April 15 deadline compared with 2024, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share nonpublic data. That would amount to more than $500 billion in lost federal revenue; the IRS collected $5.1 trillion last year.

Musk is reportedly also seeking the end of tax enforcement at the Justice Department, on top of his other corrupt activities and self-dealing. The United States is in progress of the greatest class-level theft in its history as a country, basically on the scale of the Nazis looting France or Poland, but without a fight. 'And everything that's nailed down...' We may have opportunity to test the full extent of the sovereign privileges of the US dollar before long. I wonder which goes first, your military benefits or your Social Security.

Maybe after you present for the Maximum Leader's promenade this year, you and the other lucky candidates from the ReserveArmy can be transitioned to realizing the 5-Year Concepts-of-a-Plan for reshoring American sweatshops.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Never forget that the Republicans bore all this through as a generational project, and could still stop it at any time.

Tangentially, this comment echoes my impressions for the past month on the tariff 'strategy.'

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

I literally even predicted 100% tariffs on China, though I believe Trump has personally made that threat in some speeches, so it's not a tremendous bet (still displaying far more skill and comprehension than most professional macroeconomic analysts here...).

Trump, above any other epithet, is a madman in the traditional sense, which is to say that he harbors the irrational conviction that he can and must defy the most basic facts of nature. Now that he has unlimited power within grasp, we are seeing the ramifications of that ever-present and often-communicated madness. There is really no psychological difference between this and Chairman Mao demanding that the Chinese peasantry industrialize China by their own backyard efforts, or that "man must conquer nature" and therefore every citizen must participate in the designated extermination of certain species of wildlife, albeit Trump is profoundly less rational across the board than even Mao... But I don't expect that quite as many people will die from this one tyrant's madness, not directly.

**spmetla** · 04-18-2025, 01:05

I wonder which goes first, your military benefits or your Social Security.

I'm sure social security will go first. For the military benefits, that'll be useful for them to threaten non-loyalists. If you voice disagreement then in future they could dishonorably or other than honorably discharge service members and they'd be denied any benefits no matter how many years of service they had. Similar to what he did to FBI Director McCabe.

At least it looks like Musk may go soon for annoying too many inner circle Trumpers but the damage he's done to this country will take decades to fix if we're even given that opportunity.

Never forget that the Republicans bore all this through as a generational project and could still stop it at any time.

Tangentially, this comment echoes my impressions for the past month on the tariff 'strategy.'

Ass seen with Murkowski's comments today, the traditional republicans are scared of losing their seats or scared of actual violence against them and will stay inline.

I literally even predicted 100% tariffs on China, though I believe Trump has personally made that threat in some speeches, so it's not a tremendous bet (still displaying far more skill and comprehension than most professional macroeconomic analysts here...).

Trump, above any other epithet, is a madman in the traditional sense, which is to say that he harbors the irrational conviction that he can and must defy the most basic facts of nature. Now that he has unlimited power within grasp, we are seeing the ramifications of that ever-present and often-communicated madness. There is really no psychological difference between this and Chairman Mao demanding that the Chinese peasantry industrialize China by their own backyard efforts, or that "man must conquer nature" and therefore every citizen must participate in the designated extermination of certain species of wildlife, albeit Trump is profoundly less rational across the board than even Mao... But I don't expect that quite as many people will die from this one tyrant's madness, not directly.

He is absolutely as bad as so many of us has predicated. It's certainly frustrating when hearing 'surprised' Trump voters that liked the first administration and don't like this second run of hist. As so many of us have said, the 'deep state' and 'RINOS' around Trump the first time are what kept the slightest semblance of normality going. That what they liked weren't Trump's policies but traditional Republican policies.

Trump's hold on the base of Republican voters despite working against their interest are keeping him safe from the old guard Republicans that hate Trump.

It's shocking though to see that 2/3s of Republicans are totally okay with denying non-citizens due process. They honestly can't see how being denied their time in court before deporting is so absolutely vital to protect regular citizens too.

Wonder if this is what Romans must have felt like as Augustus dismembered what remained of the Republic following his Civil War with Marc Antony. No return to 'norms' it seems