It will go down in history as the “Bah! Humbug!” address.
But this was not an address by a self-confident man dishing out Christmas presents to the nation. It smacked of desperation from one who can feel the December windchill of opinion polls – a Reuters/ Ipsos poll on Tuesday showed just 33% of US adults approve of how Trump has handled the economy – dissent in his own Republican ranks and the Jeffrey Epstein files looming on Friday.
The speech also revealed Trump’s need for a reliable foil. Over the years Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been useful nemeses for a man and movement defined less by what they are for than what they are against.
Excellent analysis by Jim Stewartson here:
Trump’s Colonized Mind: The Cognitive Dysfunction Destabilizing the Planet
The neurological, psychological, and political breakdown of the American president—and the people taking full advantage of it.
“Trump is experiencing a rapid decline in cognitive function. – He is alone and angry on a deserted mental island. – It’s impossible to watch him at this point and ignore his dysfunction. – It’s as if his shrinking mind has been colonized by his advisors and donors. – Donald Trump is less the leader of a nation and more of a glitchy, reprogrammable weapon of mass destruction—being wielded by a constellation of America’s enemies, foreign and domestic.”
https://www.mind-war.com/p/trumps-colonized-mind-the-cognitive
The author of the piece would have been better served leaving out the attempts to portray drinking Diet Coke as bad or weird behaviour. Lots of people drink Diet Coke without forming fascist governments. Mentioning it multiple times in one article makes it sound like you’re desperately reaching, which isn’t necessary.
“Eleven months ago, I inherited a mess, and I’m fixing it,” Trump said, starting as he meant to go on by telling a lie: he claimed that inflation was the worst in 48 years when he took office, when in fact it had come back down to 3%.
He went on to place blame at the feet of Biden, previous trade deals, immigrants and what he described as a corrupt system.
Fascists can’t actually solve problems, even though they will tell you they’re the only ones who can. They don’t have problem solving skills, that’s why they’re fascists. They blame, deflect and scapegoat, and do it very aggressively and forcefully. Unfortunately, many people mistake that for strength. But fascists are not strong, they’re weak, and they try to compensate for their weakness by acting very strong, in very superficial ways. That’s why they are so focused on hyper masculine performance.
REAL strength is not an over inflated ego, it’s not threats and cruelty, it’s not being ignorant and proud of it, it’s not unnecessary aggression and violence. Real strength is accountability. Weak people think it shows strength to never admit when you’re wrong, but that’s completely false. Real strength is owning up to your mistakes, but not so you can crumble into self loathing, it’s so you can learn from them and become better. Real strength is learning, it’s knowledge and understanding.
You can’t fix a problem that you don’t understand, and you can’t understand a problem if you are unwilling to look at it honestly and critically, without bias. But that takes humility and weak people think humility is weakness, and they think arrogance is strength. The opposite is true. Humility is STRENGTH. That’s why fascists can never lead, because leadership takes real strength and they don’t have it.
He doesn’t know the difference between a strongman and a strong man.
You just described the problem with rampant toxic masculinity and poor expectation setting. A country of angry young self imagined cuks projecting fear and anxiety.
Freaking bingo! Well said!!
That’s a great comment.
Gone is the age of the gentleman - literally a gentle man. The best definition I’ve heard of that is that ‘a gentleman puts the needs of others above his own.’
He’s not feeling shit. He’s just successfully distracting idiots with short attention spans.
As usual. Left and right alike are completely wrapped up in his tone and his “eyebrow raising” performances, bickering with each other about what he “means” about this and that.
Meanwhile, they’re extorting other countries for oil at gunpoint, completely gutting all of our social programs for every last penny, deploying more grifts and cons, taking over the fed, and withdrawing healthcare protections for marginalized people.
They are literally just robbing the whole country. We will never see a fat fucking DIME of what they’re pouring directly into the pockets of investors and donors, and that’s what they don’t want us unified and focused on. Because then we might all start comparing notes and realizing we want the same thing and like… go fix shit.
No one has forgotten any of those things just because they’re briefly talking about this.
Venezuela, health care and Epstein are all more prominent in the media.
33% approval rating is more than the amount of votes he received. It looks like a win to me.
All these “news” about him going down, any moment now, are super annoying. All just for the clicks and people, even here on Lemmy, gobble it up.
That’s not really what the article says
There have been so many such articles in the past few weeks, who cares? Nobody knows what he is feeling or how well he is really doing, this is all make pretend to feel good on the consumer(!) side and money making headlines for the media.
There have been so many such articles in the past few weeks, who cares?
Stop assuming what articles say and read them.
Oh yeah, media organizations need money to exist, what a conspiracy.
So, 33% of Americans are terminally stupid.
The sad thing is I’m fine with the 33% who are slack-jawed morons. It’s inevitable that any segment of a population is going to fall somewhere on the bell-curve.
We can fix stupid. That’s where the term comes from “I rather be lucky than smart.” You can actually correct stupidity in yourself or in your population with effort and management. Or at least keep them directed at the right targets.
Our real ire here, the people we need to be making their lives absolute hell night and day are the grifters, the pundits, the streamers and youtube influencers and right-wing radio hosts, the science-deniers and “just asking questions” nazis and of course, the tens of thousands of paid propaganda-spreaders on twitter, people who live in other countries and have no stake in our future and just work every day at getting their talking points shared and clipped for a few dollars. Enough to live on in places like India.
If it wasn’t for those people, that 33% would still be stupid, but they would be less afraid, less reactionary, less focused on new, invented targets.
We’ll never fix it entirely, we’re a primitive and unevolved species broadly, but we could do a LOT better at managing our own living space if we unified and targeted the right problems.
Pettysburg address
This made me LOL IRL so I made you a picture.
Come on massive stroke…
God this would be ideal for this dumb fuck. That way he doesn’t die, but he lives as an idiotic vegetable for the rest of his life suffering. Also coincidentally did you know that Donald j Trump who is best friends with Jeffrey r Epstein is a child rapist? We’ve seen pictures and evidence in the releases so far and this is a well-known fact.
The best/worst case scenario is he has a massive stroke live on TV but somehow survives but is wheelchair bound and has to use a Stephen Hawking style speaker in order to talk. It would be hilarious to have him wheel out on stage and with his robot voice say “the deep state did this to me!”
Don’t be ridiculous, you know he’d blame ANTIFA. Or Joe Biden. Or Obama. Or Hillary. Or Bill. Or Crockett.
If by deep state you mean McDonald’s than yes.
Deep Fryer State
Thanks for making me snort coffee out through my nostrils !
Show him the video of himself mocking the disabled reporter on a loop.
My friend had a large stroke. He can barely talk, he’s confined to a wheel chair, his hands are mostly useless, and he slumps over and drools on himself. The kicker is his brain it like he was before the stroke. Hes a prisoner in broken skin suit.
That’s the life I want for Trump.
How about a head in a bottle like on Futurama?
And this illustrates why calling someone who had a stroke an “idiotic vegetable” is atrocious.
i feel like it’d be better if he died in some embarrassing accident due to his own incompetence, tripping down the stairs of AF1 for example.
I’m good with anything, but would prefer if he goes out in immense pain. So long as he’s gone, and we get that massive new public urinal, then I’m happy !
I’m not sure this isn’t his current condition based on his statements.
There isn’t one Claus von Stauffenberg in the whole secret service?
It would be something seeing the republicans having to remove him. I’m sure they’d make it into a giant show about how great he’s been.
It would be hilarious to see the GOP and his family constantly saying he is in perfect healthy condition while he is drooling and unable to form full words while shitting this pants in a wheelchair on life support.
They’d hide him. “He’s still in the bathroom.”
Maybe a wizard of oz moment?…
Blows my mind that even a third of people still support this putz - I knew the human race had plenty of assholes, but that’s absurd. Wonder just how many die-hards will be left at the peak of the massive recession Trump has set up to happen next year.
Well, he was President before, did a terrible job and was then reelected…so.
The emotional equivalent of the “sunken cost fallacy” where they’ve invested so much of their identity in him they can’t back out now.
Crazy that people think that 1/3 supporting a fascist pedophile is ‘nort that bad’.
it’s a death cult. that much has been clear for ~5 years now
Most people aren’t watching.
The only people who even tune into these speeches or watch them in their entirety are people who have direct stake in the political “tone” in our country, IE: grifters and pundits and twitter clip-farmers. And of course, a small segment of people who actually care about our future and understand how important politics are.
But if you want to see just how bad it is, make a political comment in a large gaming subreddit or forum.
This is all by design too, it’s a ploy from the KGB handbook from 50 years ago, that you can destabilize a nation by making both sides of every issue so contentious, stupid and pointless that average people stop caring. This is where we’re at.
the peak of the massive recession Trump has set up to happen next year.
The recession is already happening, Trump just cancelled the reports to hide it. It will become more obvious once corporations report less profits than anticipated over the holiday season.
As usual in America, nothing will done until it starts hurting the Corpos.
Trump also announced that he would send a “warrior dividend” of $1,776 to 1.45 million US service members in the coming week. He said it had been made possible by revenue from tariffs, failing to mention those same tariffs have driven prices up.
First, it won’t happen because he talks out his ass by default. A more important second though, how insulting is it that he thinks a token payment is going to buy him the loyalty of the military? I’m strikingly reminded of Caligula in the movie promising ‘10 gold pieces to every man’.
Weren’t tariff dividends meant to be sent to every American below certain income? So now he’s just trying to bribe the military, because fuck those civilians protesting against him.
So now we’re up to:
- $5,000 from DOGE
- $2,000 from Tariffs
- $1,776 from Tariffs to service members
And of course the true amount of the $8,776 people will see…. $0
Maybe someone explained to him that there wasn’t enough money for the previous plan. Or maybe he doesn’t remember there was a previous plan.
Or it’s even more simple than that, and he was just straight lying about the previous plan.
Why not both?
Keep the ones happy who will enforce national gestapo and an at-home war on dissenters. That’s what this is. A bribe.
deleted by creator
Last I understood as of like a week ago, they are no longer sending a straight check for $2k but instead the money will be given to you in the form of a tax refund. Which sounds to me like just a perfect way to do nothing and then say you sent it to everyone. Then when no one sees any difference just tell them they owed more taxes than they thought or filed wrong or whatever. But call me a negative Nancy I guess 🤷
Sadly a token payment works on an alarming percentage of people.
It will happen, just like it has for years except this is Demented Donnie’s con/grift/lie.
Cute, so claiming credit for other’s work as usual. The way it’s phrased is made to sound like some novel thing he specifically is doing.
100% of all jobs created since I took office have been in the private sector.
Even Trump has forgotten all about DOGE.
That was some strange deranged rant. WTF even was that?
Tantrum. This is called a tantrum.
apparently this was a sugar high: just before the remarks started, according to a White House pool report, an usher brought in three Diet Cokes and ice.
But… that’s the sugar free one… he must have been on something else.
I mean, 3 diet cokes is a lot of caffeine.
Edit: I’ve been corrected that 3 diet cokes is, in fact, not a lot of caffeine. Guess he’s micro-dosing amphetamines. My bad, y’all.
A 12oz Diet Coke is 46mg caffeine. A cup of coffee is about 150mg.
Yeah, came here to say this. Soda generally doesn’t have a lot of caffeine compared to coffee.
From someone who has been on the caffeine pony - caffeine withdrawal is no joke. If he’s been deprived of his diet cokes for medical reasons, it makes total sense that they’d give him some right before a televised address read from a teleprompter that he wasn’t supposed to deviate from.
As a regular consumer of caffeine, let me assure you it is not. As someone else said, he had the equivalent of a cup of coffee. I personally don’t start suffering any significant withdrawal symptoms until I have more than 100 mg per day, and fairly significant withdrawal symptoms if I regularly have over 400 mg per day. But even as a single dose of caffeine, 150 mg is pretty typical. That said, caffeine can give a temporary boost to cognitive function, even for dementia patients.
They must have meant diet cocaine. As in not cut with sugar.
Hint: He was sniffing a lot during that drooling speech…
There’s no such thing as a “sugar high”. This is just Trump being Trump. He’s been an idiot for ever.
Remember his speech to the boy scouts in his first term?
I don’t remember the speech, but I’m guessing he was complimenting how hot their younger sisters were.
He deviated into a story about a rich guy he knows with a boat, and what sort of parties happened on that boat… I think hookers were mentioned. To children…!
So… he was trying to recruit their sisters, then.
only 3? With the way he consumes those things, he was probably actually going through a withdrawal
TIL that “Humbug” is also used in English (I thought only Germans used that word)
We really only use it with a story called A Christmas Carol. It’s the main remark the protagonist uses whenever he sees something related to Christmas of which he abhors, such as kids playing and families enjoying each other’s company during Christmas time.
MTG is smarter than we’ve given her credit for.
She was the first rat off the ship, and she’ll be playing off her ‘independent’ stance up until 2028.
“MAGA listened to Trump, and we paid the price for supporting the wrong man! He wasn’t true to the cause but I am!”
MTG got approached by a group of consultants promising her the presidency
Have you listened to her lately? She sounds like Kamala during the second half of her mini-campaign
I hope she runs for president, the only thing this country hates more than people of color is women, insta win for the Dems, or hopefully a different party altogether
Before you get too excited, there’s a non-zero chance its her vs Kamala…
So MTG is saying the president did a great job and that she wouldn’t change any of his policies if she was elected president?
Yep. Well, adjusted for inflation. She suddenly has not a single negative thing to say about Trump. She does her damnedest to not talk about him at all
It’s all we have to focus on “the issues” and “the things people really want”
No policy, obviously
Huh, fair enough I guess, I thought she was still going after Trump and just trying to take his place as the QAnon set’s champion, but I guess that what I get for assuming a known liar would be consistent in her positions for more than a couple of weeks
Yeah, she’s totally sane washing herself, she even explicitly said she no longer believes in q anon
It’s really uncanny. She doesn’t even have the manic energy anymore, she sits there calm and proper at an angle with her hands still… You know what I’m talking about, the consultant pilled body language
I’d recommend looking up a clip, it’s an incredible case study of what consultants do to the human body
Don’t give her that credit. She stopped getting what she wanted so she bailed. She was not the first rat off the ship either. She didn’t come to her senses or anything.
That said, I support her efforts to splinter the party. Not because I agree with her but because it benefits me
It’s hard to give people you hate credit for good ideas, but learning from everyone is part of politics.
George Patton was the general the Germans feared the most; he was also the one who studied their tactics the most.
I give her credit for sticking to the Epstein files and I give her credit for being vocally angry about the delays. I will not give her credit for being “smart”
And again, not at all the first rat off the ship. She bailed when Trump snubbed her.
Nothing you cited disproves my point.
In fact, you getting upset proves my point.
You’d rather get angry about a man who has been dead for almost a century than consider the idea of learning from the enemy.
America was a pretty racist country in 1945.
Patton was no exception.
Yeah yeah, I’m sure all those super smart fascists have all sorts of great things to teach us (/s), but as long as you’re so hopped up on learning shit how about you read something for once in this misbegotten thread and recognize the fact that Patton got removed from his post for being so antisemitic, so, no, he wasn’t just a man of his times or whatever the excuse is
Fascists are not smart, period. If they were smart they wouldn’t be fascists. If they occasionally luck into effective behaviors and strategies, fine learn from those, but calling fascists themselves smart or strong or good or any crap like that is a harmful and misinformed thing to do because it builds their bullshit mystique and makes them more influential, and it is just not true under any circumstances. Their regimes always implode eventually and leave whatever society that was unlucky enough to have them in a worse place than before fascists came on the scene.
I am probably more pissed off by this exchange than you deserve, but like, damn, there’s a dril tweet for this
. If they occasionally luck into effective behaviors and strategies, fine learn from those,
Which is literally my point.
And watching you get all upset and then agreeing with me is some of the funniest stuff I’ve seen all day.
Still stupid enough to have gotten on to the ship in the first place
Pretty sure she perspnally benefitted from being on the ship and hasn’t had any negative repercussions.
She’s made a little money but not enough to live the kind of lifestyle she wants if she ever really pisses off her rich friends and gets cut off, anytime she goes out in a crowd she has to deal with the fact that probably 30-40% of it hates her guts, and in 80-100 years she’s going to be dead and everything she’s done will have crumbled away to nothing because she’s way too stupid to build anything that would last.
Oh, and while she was making an ass of herself in public her husband dumped her. Don’t care how much money you have and how many sex workers you hire after that, that’s gonna sting.
Is it stupid? Jumping on board got her a political career, she made some serious cash, she jumped off at the earliest opportunity to still come out smelling of roses for certain people and won herself some points from her more credulous detractors. She’s many things, few if any of them good, but one thing she isn’t is stupid
She’s done very well for herself. National name, life time pension, and plenty of other benefits we can only guess at.
Don’t mistake morality for intelligence.
I found out that her pension is only $8k a year and she can’t start collecting it for another decade. When she resigned, everyone was talking about how it was planned since she’d now receive a pension, but the payment amount is peanuts.
On the QAA podcast, they outlined that they think she quit because Trump was going to fund her primary challenger in 2026, Republicans are going to lose big in 2026, and if she won her seat, that’d put her in a position where she has to defend Trump as the minority party just after he paid millions of dollars trying to have her defeated.
