The Donald Trump thread

[Rjk]

Re: The Donald Trump thread

I'll start off by saying that neither Biden, Trump, Sunak or Starmer will win any points from me regarding their actions, influence or simply their stance on what is happening in Gaza. Without exception. They are all complicit in genocide. I didn't vote for Starmer btw, and I could continue to criticise him on many things, but I would still take him over the current Tories any day of the week.

But out of all of them, Trump is or will be by far the worst given that he also wants to clear out all the Palestinians, rebuild Gaza for his own and Israel's gain. You really think that he would let all the Palestinians back in after he has finished rebuilding it?

Bottom line, Trump is not just complicit in genocide, but given the opportunity, he will be complicit in ethnic cleansing too. Yes, all those things may have started under previous administrations, but please explain why it's Obama's and Biden's fault that Russia invaded Ukraine. Furthermore, Trump has come in and made all those situations a lot more worse and not for the better. But you can't see that can you?

The fact that you continue to support him I find truly baffling. I intend to create a list of all the things Trump has done and hasn't done since taking office for the second time and then ask you to say if you still think he's the better option over Biden.

I will also state for the record that pulling out of Afghanistan in the way they did was VERY bad. All I ask is that you criticise Trump or any other right wing loony just once. It could be anything of your choice. Go for it. Because I've never heard you criticise any of them. Your statement above about Trump's behaviour towards Biden being unprofessional is about as close as you have got.

the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a disaster, and an example of the way Trump conducts foreign policy.

Biden got a lot of the flack for the Afhanistan withdrawl, but the negotiations were conducted by the trump administration - between the US and the Taliban, without involving the Afghan government

[Canton Kev]

Re: The Donald Trump thread

Just a reminder, the slaughter in Gaza, the war in Ukraine and the botched exit from Afghanistan that saw the return of the Taliban all happened under the last guy.

Trump is a crude operator but it is worth keeping that in mind.

The Palestine/Israel conflict has gone on for far longer than 18 months. They've been fighting and killing each other for decades. The October attacks killed 1,200. The ensuing Israeli attack on Palestine has killed ~50,000. In Trump's first month, he has approved $12Bn of weapons sales to Israel. His plans for Gaza involve building casinos, hotels and golden statues of himself on the rubble and bodies left behind.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine began in 2014, a conflict that has lasted 4 presidential terms. From what we know of Trump's peace plan, it kicked the can down the road and didn't offer any real reasons to dissuade Russia from starting another war in a few years.

The plan to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan was agreed to and 80% completed during the Trump administration. 13,000 troops while Trump was in office, 2,500 when Biden came into office. The Trump administration was advised against a full withdrawal by senior military advisors under the fears it would bring instability to the region.

If we're playing this game, Trump killed 1,200,000 Americans during Covid. However, I'm sure you've got a "but actually..." up your sleeve for that one.

[JamesWales]

Re: The Donald Trump thread

The Palestine/Israel conflict has gone on for far longer than 18 months. They've been fighting and killing each other for decades. The October attacks killed 1,200. The ensuing Israeli attack on Palestine has killed ~50,000. In Trump's first month, he has approved $12Bn of weapons sales to Israel. His plans for Gaza involve building casinos, hotels and golden statues of himself on the rubble and bodies left behind.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine began in 2014, a conflict that has lasted 4 presidential terms. From what we know of Trump's peace plan, it kicked the can down the road and didn't offer any real reasons to dissuade Russia from starting another war in a few years.

The plan to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan was agreed to and 80% completed during the Trump administration. 13,000 troops while Trump was in office, 2,500 when Biden came into office. The Trump administration was advised against a full withdrawal by senior military advisors under the fears it would bring instability to the region.

If we're playing this game, Trump killed 1,200,000 Americans during Covid. However, I'm sure you've got a "but actually..." up your sleeve for that one.

Yes, the point is lots of shit happen under lots of leaders. People on here wishing for the last guy should be careful what they wish for. Your last comment also undermines the wider points you make. Politicians didn't "kill" people during COVID.

The whole topic has a complete absence of any rational thinking. It's just "good and evil" Disney politics and the reality is very different

[Canton Kev]

Re: The Donald Trump thread

Yes, the point is lots of shit happen under lots of leaders. People on here wishing for the last guy should be careful what they wish for. Your last comment also undermines the wider points you make. Politicians didn't "kill" people during COVID.

The whole topic has a complete absence of any rational thinking. It's just "good and evil" Disney politics and the reality is very different

And Joe Biden didn't paraglide into Israel draped a Palestinian flag and drag hostages back to Gaza. Nor did he wave Russian troops and tanks into Ukraine holding a big "Go Get em Boys!" sign.

So I'm a bit confused. Trump didn't kill 1.2m Americans on but Biden is at fault for the slaughter in Israel 6,000 miles away?

[JamesWales]

Re: The Donald Trump thread

And Joe Biden didn't paraglide into Israel draped a Palestinian flag and drag hostages back to Gaza. Nor did he wave Russian troops and tanks into Ukraine holding a big "Go Get em Boys!" sign.

So I'm a bit confused. Trump didn't kill 1.2m Americans on but Biden is at fault for the slaughter in Israel 6,000 miles away?

I never said he did. It's an illustration for people who think the world is a disaster, Trump is a disaster, everything is awful etc that it isn't the case.

But if people are going to talk about how Russia/Ukraine is such a disaster under Trump (who is trying to end it) then by extension they should review what happened under the last guy.

Doing so comes to a far more rational conclusion than what we normally see written about Trump

[stevo]

Re: The Donald Trump thread

Hope that list is okay? I can probably expand it if necessary

Yes, thank you for your comprehensive reply. I could and will (when I get the chance) add many other negatives that you haven't mentioned. I'm still struggling to think of anything that's good about him though. What would those be from your perspective?

[the other bob wilson]

Re: The Donald Trump thread

Yes, the point is lots of shit happen under lots of leaders. People on here wishing for the last guy should be careful what they wish for. Your last comment also undermines the wider points you make. Politicians didn't "kill" people during COVID.

The whole topic has a complete absence of any rational thinking. It's just "good and evil" Disney politics and the reality is very different

Good to see you admitting that you’re not thinking rationally.

[JamesWales]

Re: The Donald Trump thread

Yes, thank you for your comprehensive reply. I could and will (when I get the chance) add many other negatives that you haven't mentioned. I'm still struggling to think of anything that's good about him though. What would those be from your perspective?

Hmm, well part of my frustration is just the general pointlessness of the criticism. The guy won the election and is president so all the best to him. I feel the same in this respect about people who have nothing to say but moaning about Starmer / Brexit /Tories etc. it's just not reality. Things are never as black and white as people make out and it does frustrate me when that happens and I just think it's a total waste of time too...

That said..I think he is right on illegal immigration and firm borders. Especially with a porous border in a region as dangerous and volatile as Central America. I think he is right to talk about the Fentanyl crisis more (time will tell if it works..I doubt it, sadly).

I think he is right on some aspects of government waste and on the DEI stuff which I think is generally regressive and divisive in the long run. I think hes a great public speaker and showman when he wants to be (he can also be awful). I admire how he talks about things that working class families are often concerned about and he doesn't apologize for talking positively about family or country or patriotisim and things that others get uppity about. I think he can be charming and irreverent. I found that awarding the FBI officer status to that young kid quite heartwarming for example.

I think on a global scale he is absolutely 100% right about European countries trying to get a free ride in NATO and not paying their dues, and I think most of us probably agree on that now. I think he is right to move the conversation onto one of peace not war. Moreover I think the West needs more of a strong man and I think we are all very naive about Chinas growing power and role in the world.

Basically, there are good and bad things about him and good and bad things about him being president.

[JamesWales]

Re: The Donald Trump thread

Good to see you admitting that you’re not thinking rationally.

You are right! THE WORLD IS ENDING!!! EVERYTHING IS AWFUL!!!! EVERYTHING IS WORSE THAN IT WAS!!!

Better?!

[jon1959]

Re: The Donald Trump thread

Interesting from Jonathan Cook, as always:

https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/trump-is-telling-us-straight-the-us-has-always-sought-global-domination/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_source_platform=mailpoet&utm_campaign=today-on-the-jvl-blog-newsletter-total-articles-for-you_1

If there is one thing we can thank US President Donald Trump for, it is this: he has decisively stripped away the ridiculous notion, long cultivated by western media, that the United States is a benign global policeman enforcing a “rules-based order”.

Washington is better understood as the head of a gangster empire, embracing 800 military bases around the world. Since the end of the Cold War, it has been aggressively seeking “global full-spectrum domination”, as the Pentagon doctrine politely terms it.

You either pay fealty to the Don or you get dumped in the river. Last Friday Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was presented with a pair of designer concrete boots at the White House.

-

Pundits have been quick to reassure us that the shouting match was some kind of weird Trumpian thing. As though being inhospitable to state leaders, and disrespectful to the countries they head, is unique to this administration.

Take just the example of Iraq. The administration of Bill Clinton thought it “worth it” – as his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, infamously put it – to kill an estimated half a million Iraqi children by imposing draconian sanctions through the 1990s.

Under Clinton’s successor, George W Bush, the US then waged an illegal war in 2003, on entirely phoney grounds, that killed around half a million Iraqis, according to post-war estimates, and made four million homeless.

-

Now the old Don in Washington is gone. The new Don has decided Zelensky has been an expensive failure. Russia isn’t lethally wounded. It’s stronger than ever. Time for a new strategy.

Zelensky, still imagining he was Washington’s favourite henchman, arrived at the Oval Office only to be taught a harsh lesson in mafia etiquette.

Trump is spinning his stab in the back as a “peace agreement”. And in some sense, it is. Rightly, Trump has concluded that Russia has won – unless the West is ready to fight World War III and risk a potential nuclear war.

Trump has faced up to the reality of the situation, even if Zelensky and Europe are still struggling to.

But his plan for Ukraine is actually just a variation of his other peace plan – the one for Gaza. There he wants to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population and, on the bodies of the enclave’s many thousands of dead children, build the “Riviera of the Middle East” – or “Trump Gaza” as it is being called in a surreal video he shared on social media.

Similarly, Trump now sees Ukraine not as a military battlefield but as an economic one where, through clever deal-making, he can leverage riches for himself and his billionaire pals.

[jon1959]

Re: The Donald Trump thread

Also worth a read (of the whole article) I think:

https://newpol.org/the-trump-putin-axis-and-its-impact-on-global-politics/

Donald Trump’s forging of a political alliance with Russia’s Vladimir Putin at the expense of Ukraine’s struggle for self-determination may not be totally unexpected, but its speed and extent represent a dramatic transformation of world politics.

Nothing more sharply—and crudely—signals this transformation than Trump and J.D. Vance’s public browbeating of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on February 28 at what was supposed to be a brief session to take questions from the press prior to a private meeting to discuss conditions for ending the war. In a breathtaking display of imperial arrogance, Trump and Vance turned the session into a shouting match as they insulted and threatened Zelensky for stating the obvious—that Putin cannot be trusted, and that any peace deal requires security guarantees for Ukraine. Trump then cancelled further talks with Zelensky and ordered him to immediately leave the country. This brazen take-down and humiliation of a democratically elected head of state for not totally submitting to U.S. dictates is unprecedented. It is as ominous as Trump’s inauguration five weeks earlier. Ukraine will be left to feel the full wrath of Putin’s murderous war machine just as Palestine is being left to face Netanyahu’s fascistic effort to annihilate its very existence.

-

The Trump-Putin alliance was forged with the convening of direct talks on February 18 between representatives of U.S. and Russian imperialism in Saudi Arabia, a meeting that excluded both the Ukrainians and the U.S.’s European allies, some of whom were not even informed of it beforehand. These were not negotiations: Trump simply adopted virtually all of the Kremlin’s talking points without so much as suggesting a single concession from Putin. The Russian delegates could hardly conceal their shock and glee at what Trump gave away at zero cost to themselves.

On February 24, following the talks in Saudi Arabia, the Trump administration voted against a Resolution of the UN General Assembly condemning Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine—the first time it did so, joining Russia, China, Belarus, North Korea, and Israel, as well as 12 other Moscow-friendly countries (93 other countries voted yes, 65 abstained). Brandishing the lie that Ukraine, not Russia, started the war, Trump clearly allied the U.S. with Putin.

Not a peep of opposition to this was heard from a single Republican member of Congress—even though many of them spent years bashing Russia and voting aid to Ukraine. Many Democrats expressed outrage but seem lost as to what to do next. So much for the claim that the U.S. ruling class has a vested interest in helping Ukraine!

Trump insists that Ukraine cannot recover twenty percent of the country that Russia occupied since 2014 and 2022, and that no U.S. troops will be used to patrol a ceasefire which is to be imposed largely on Russian terms. Nor can it join NATO, until now the inter-imperialist alliance of the U.S. and Western Europe.

Most revealing, Trump demanded that the Ukrainian government repay $500 billion to the U.S. (at least four times as much as the value of all the military and economic aid it received under Biden) by surrendering 50% of the proceeds from its sale of national resources, such as minerals, oil and gas, and port fees. Ukraine was moreover expected to repay the U.S. twice the value of any future U.S. aid (it does not indicate whether this would include any military assistance). This amounts to paying $100 percent interest on top of the total principle of a “loan.” Taken as a whole, this would entail that a higher percentage of Ukraine’s GDP become turned over to the U.S. than the allies demanded in the form of reparations from defeated Germany after World War I.

[Rjk]

Re: The Donald Trump thread

Interesting from Jonathan Cook, as always:

https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/trump-is-telling-us-straight-the-us-has-always-sought-global-domination/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_source_platform=mailpoet&utm_campaign=today-on-the-jvl-blog-newsletter-total-articles-for-you_1

If there is one thing we can thank US President Donald Trump for, it is this: he has decisively stripped away the ridiculous notion, long cultivated by western media, that the United States is a benign global policeman enforcing a “rules-based order”.

Washington is better understood as the head of a gangster empire, embracing 800 military bases around the world. Since the end of the Cold War, it has been aggressively seeking “global full-spectrum domination”, as the Pentagon doctrine politely terms it.

You either pay fealty to the Don or you get dumped in the river. Last Friday Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was presented with a pair of designer concrete boots at the White House.

-

Pundits have been quick to reassure us that the shouting match was some kind of weird Trumpian thing. As though being inhospitable to state leaders, and disrespectful to the countries they head, is unique to this administration.

Take just the example of Iraq. The administration of Bill Clinton thought it “worth it” – as his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, infamously put it – to kill an estimated half a million Iraqi children by imposing draconian sanctions through the 1990s.

Under Clinton’s successor, George W Bush, the US then waged an illegal war in 2003, on entirely phoney grounds, that killed around half a million Iraqis, according to post-war estimates, and made four million homeless.

-

Now the old Don in Washington is gone. The new Don has decided Zelensky has been an expensive failure. Russia isn’t lethally wounded. It’s stronger than ever. Time for a new strategy.

Zelensky, still imagining he was Washington’s favourite henchman, arrived at the Oval Office only to be taught a harsh lesson in mafia etiquette.

Trump is spinning his stab in the back as a “peace agreement”. And in some sense, it is. Rightly, Trump has concluded that Russia has won – unless the West is ready to fight World War III and risk a potential nuclear war.

Trump has faced up to the reality of the situation, even if Zelensky and Europe are still struggling to.

But his plan for Ukraine is actually just a variation of his other peace plan – the one for Gaza. There he wants to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population and, on the bodies of the enclave’s many thousands of dead children, build the “Riviera of the Middle East” – or “Trump Gaza” as it is being called in a surreal video he shared on social media.

Similarly, Trump now sees Ukraine not as a military battlefield but as an economic one where, through clever deal-making, he can leverage riches for himself and his billionaire pals.

I would disagree with one point - that Russia is stronger than ever.

I was reading some analysis that showed that Russia's ability to commit troops to Ukraine has been in decline for some time, and the suggestion that this was as much a reason for the USA's current switch in policy as Trump being buddies with Putin.

The USA never wanted Russia to lose so badly that it would bring down the Kremlin, but it was happy to see their military resources depleted for a while at a relatively miniscule cost to them.

[Dorcus]

Re: The Donald Trump thread

The latest news is that the US/Russia axis want to take over the Isle of Wight principally for it's huge beef industry.

Donald Trump has said publicly "The Isle of Wight has Cowes, and they're all coming to the USA.

[jon1959]

Re: The Donald Trump thread

I would disagree with one point - that Russia is stronger than ever.

I was reading some analysis that showed that Russia's ability to commit troops to Ukraine has been in decline for some time, and the suggestion that this was as much a reason for the USA's current switch in policy as Trump being buddies with Putin.

The USA never wanted Russia to lose so badly that it would bring down the Kremlin, but it was happy to see their military resources depleted for a while at a relatively miniscule cost to them.

I am sure you are right if you measure strength militarily.

But politically (and despite sanctions) economically, Russia may have hit the jackpot!

[the other bob wilson]

Re: The Donald Trump thread

I would disagree with one point - that Russia is stronger than ever.

I was reading some analysis that showed that Russia's ability to commit troops to Ukraine has been in decline for some time, and the suggestion that this was as much a reason for the USA's current switch in policy as Trump being buddies with Putin.

The USA never wanted Russia to lose so badly that it would bring down the Kremlin, but it was happy to see their military resources depleted for a while at a relatively miniscule cost to them.

That’s a very good article which tells things how they are in clear and simple terms, but I agree with your first sentence.