The Donald Trump thread

Nearly a million people have been scammed by way of a rug pull from Trump’s crypto currency.

https://fortune.com/2025/02/11/trump...-million-fees/

800,000+ people have lost more than $2Bn after the value has fallen from ~$75 to ~$15 in just a few weeks. An average of $2,500 each.

Crypto scams with meme coins are ridiculously commonplace these days, there’s no shortage of influencers and celebrities trying to cash in. Rug pulls, pump and dumps (technical terms, not sexual ones I promise) see millions of people losing money… but see a very small few gain lots and lots of it.

For example, the Trump coin has generated about $100 million in trading fees owed to the entities behind the coin, including the Trump Organization.

As a sympathetic man who cares about his base, Trump must be aghast at the thought that hundreds and thousands of his voters are losing up to a month’s salary, if not more, on his coin.

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Originally Posted by Canton Kev

Nearly a million people have been scammed by way of a rug pull from Trump’s crypto currency.

https://fortune.com/2025/02/11/trump...-million-fees/

800,000+ people have lost more than $2Bn after the value has fallen from ~$75 to ~$15 in just a few weeks. An average of $2,500 each.

Crypto scams with meme coins are ridiculously commonplace these days, there’s no shortage of influencers and celebrities trying to cash in. Rug pulls, pump and dumps (technical terms, not sexual ones I promise) see millions of people losing money… but see a very small few gain lots and lots of it.

For example, the Trump coin has generated about $100 million in trading fees owed to the entities behind the coin, including the Trump Organization.

As a sympathetic man who cares about his base, Trump must be aghast at the thought that hundreds and thousands of his voters are losing up to a month’s salary, if not more, on his coin.

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Hawk Tuah girl went quiet after shafting people via crypto. It would be nice if Trump decides to do the same.

Maybe that silly dolt from Newport can give them some tips on how to deal with losing a crypto fortune.

Why wasn't this press conference more widely reported over here? However, if the Trump Administration's answer to the drone situation is anything to go by, I won't hold out much hope for this.

https://youtu.be/UJ28qfIR_8M?si=vGQPZ9yhxufAprqU

Attachment 6441

It is King Donald now.

I wonder which King he is modelling himself on?

Plenty of bad, mad or sad options to choose from!

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Originally Posted by jon1959

It is King Donald now.

I wonder which King he is modelling himself on?

Plenty of bad, mad or sad options to choose from!

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Only a matter of time before someone says it, so I may as well claim the lols myself and say King Cnut.

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Originally Posted by jon1959

It is King Donald now.

I wonder which King he is modelling himself on?

Plenty of bad, mad or sad options to choose from!

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In the vein of 'Ivan The Terrible' he should perhaps be known as 'Trump The Badly'.

Donald of Orange

'The Madness of King Donald (George)'?

Donald (William) The Bastard?

Bad King Donald (John)?

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Originally Posted by stevo

Donald of Orange

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Nice one! He was another very big on whigs!

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Originally Posted by stevo

Donald of Orange

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added bonus is it is also the name of 2 former take that members

According to some republican on Radio 4’s PM earlier, half of the republicans are opposed to Trump’s position on Ukraine, which is reassuring to some extent. But it also means the other 50% are with him on this.

According to some republican on Radio 4’s PM earlier, half of the republicans are opposed to Trump’s position on Ukraine, which is reassuring to some extent. But it also means the other 50% are with him on this.

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Originally Posted by Rjk

added bonus is it is also the name of 2 former take that members

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I never had you down as being a Take That fan!

Just watching Newsnight and they are doing a piece on....

Trump's first MONTH in power!

It's only been a month. Incredible

And not in a good way obvs

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Originally Posted by stevo

According to some republican on Radio 4’s PM earlier, half of the republicans are opposed to Trump’s position on Ukraine, which is reassuring to some extent. But it also means the other 50% are with him on this.

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So I suppose those who are Republican Congressmen and Women were only giving Zelensky a standing ovation when he addressed Congress three years ago out of politeness because, obviously, they believed his country started the War earlier that year.

The spineless Republicans who have enabled Trump’s second term despite their misgivings about him should be absolutely ashamed of themselves.

Yes. Absolutely.

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Originally Posted by the other bob wilson

So I suppose those who are Republican Congressmen and Women were only giving Zelensky a standing ovation when he addressed Congress three years ago out of politeness because, obviously, they believed his country started the War earlier that year.

The spineless Republicans who have enabled Trump’s second term despite their misgivings about him should be absolutely ashamed of themselves.

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It’s called Democracy :hehe:

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Originally Posted by TWGL1

It’s called Democracy :hehe:

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No Democracy is something else.

What is being described here is opportunism and political cowardice by people who disagree with Trump but will prostitute themselves and deceive their electors for the sake of personal advantage.

Sinn Fein to boycott St Patrick's Day celebrations at the White House over the Israel-Gaza conflict.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy870w30q6qo

Since November 5, there seems to have been a narrative developing that Donald Trump is some sort of political mastermind, I even saw something on You Tube a few weeks ago describing him as the most significant figure in American politics since the Second World War :facepalm:

I’ve seen this redefining of Trump, often by people on the left, and wondered what I was missing. Having seen the last President, rightly, stood down because age had caught up with him, we now have someone in charge who reminds me of the Grandfather in the Simpsons who spouts nonsense all of the time, he’s like some old drunk in a bar who everybody nods at sympathetically as he comes out with his, often unpleasant, ravings.

Credit to him, he’s a showman and a practiced media performer which goes some way towards explaining how he managed to win last year, but it’s gratifying to come across this article written by someone who I understand is considered to be a conservative (he certainly writes like one) because he definitely gets Trump’s second term in charge - or he got it a week into Trump mark 2 at least.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/o...ve-orders.html

Quote:

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Originally Posted by the other bob wilson

Since November 5, there seems to have been a narrative developing that Donald Trump is some sort of political mastermind, I even saw something on You Tube a few weeks ago describing him as the most significant figure in American politics since the Second World War :facepalm:

I’ve seen this redefining of Trump, often by people on the left, and wondered what I was missing. Having seen the last President, rightly, stood down because age had caught up with him, we now have someone in charge who reminds me of the Grandfather in the Simpsons who spouts nonsense all of the time, he’s like some old drunk in a bar who everybody nods at sympathetically as he comes out with his, often unpleasant, ravings.

Credit to him, he’s a showman and a practiced media performer which goes some way towards explaining how he managed to win last year, but it’s gratifying to come across this article written by someone who I understand is considered to be a conservative (he certainly writes like one) because he definitely gets Trump’s second term in charge - or he got it a week into Trump mark 2 at least.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/o...ve-orders.html

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is there a way around the paywall?

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Originally Posted by Rjk

is there a way around the paywall?

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Never mind - managed to find one

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Originally Posted by Rjk

is there a way around the paywall?

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I thought there'd be a paywall on it, but I've managed to get the full article on my tablet and my laptop



"967
David Brooks
By David Brooks
Opinion Columnist
Leer en español
This was the week in which the Chinese made incredible gains in artificial intelligence and the Americans made incredible gains in human stupidity. I’m sorry, but I look at the Trump administration’s behavior over the last week and the only word that accurately describes it is: stupid.

I am not saying the members of the Trump administration are not intelligent. We all know high-I.Q. people who behave in a way that’s as dumb as rocks. I don’t believe that there are stupid people, just stupid behaviors. As the Italian historian Carlo Cipolla once put it, “The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.”

And I am certainly not saying Donald Trump’s supporters are less intelligent than others. I’ve learned over the years that many upscale Democrats detest intellectual diversity. When they have power over a system — whether it’s academia, the mainstream media, the nonprofits or the Civil Service — they tend to impose a stifling orthodoxy that makes everybody within it duller, more conformist and insular. If Republicans want to upend that, I say: Go for it.

I define stupidity as behaving in a way that ignores the question: What would happen next? If somebody comes up to you and says, “I think I’m going to take a hike in a lightning storm with a copper antenna on my head,” stupidity replies, “That sounds like a really great idea!” Stupidity is the tendency to take actions that hurt you and the people around you.
The administration produced volleys of stupidity this week. It renewed threats to impose ruinous tariffs on Canada and Mexico that would drive up inflation in America. It attempted a broad and general purge of the federal work force, apparently without asking how that purge would affect government operations. But I’d like to focus on one other episode: the attempt to freeze federal spending on assistance programs, and Trump’s subsequent decision to reverse course and undo the freeze.

When announcing the freeze, the administration stated its clear goal — to defund things like the diversity, equity and inclusion programs that Trump disapproves of. A prudent administration would have picked the programs it opposed and focused on cutting those, through a well-established process known as rescission authority. But the Trump administration decided to impose a vague, half-baked freeze on what it claimed amounted to more than $3 trillion in federal spending. Suddenly, patients in cancer trials at the National Institutes of Health didn’t know if they could continue their treatments, Head Start administrators didn’t know if they could draw federal funds, cities and states across America didn’t know if they would have money for police forces, schools, nutrition programs, highway repair and other basic services.

This Trump policy was like trying to cure acne with decapitation. Nobody seems to have asked the question: If we freeze all grant spending, what will happen next? Once the ramifications of that stupidity became obvious, Trump reversed course. And this is my big prediction for this administration: It will churn out a steady stream of stupid policies, and when the consequences of those policies begin to hit Trump’s approval rating, he will flip-flop, diminish or abandon those policies. He loves popularity more than any idea.

But it is still true that we’re going to have to learn a lot about stupidity over the next four years. I’ve distilled what I’ve learned so far into six main principles:

Principle 1: Ideology produces disagreement, but stupidity produces befuddlement. This week, people in institutions across America spent a couple of days trying to figure out what the hell was going on. This is what happens when a government freezes roughly $3 trillion in spending with a two-page memo that reads like it was written by an intern. When stupidity is in control, the literature professor Patrick Moreau argues, words become unscrewed “from their relation to reality.”

Principle 2: Stupidity often inheres in organizations, not individuals. When you create an organization in which one man has all the power and everybody else has to flatter his preconceptions, then stupidity will surely result. As the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it: “This is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other.”
Principle 3: People who behave stupidly are more dangerous than people who behave maliciously. Evil people at least have some accurate sense of their own self-interest, which might restrain them. Stupidity dares greatly! Stupidity already has all the answers!

Principle 4: People who behave stupidly are unaware of the stupidity of their actions. You may have heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is that incompetent people don’t have the skills to recognize their own incompetence. Let’s introduce the Hegseth-Gabbard corollary: The Trump administration is attempting to remove civil servants who may or may not be progressive but who have tremendous knowledge in their field of expertise and hire MAGA loyalists who often lack domain knowledge or expertise. The results may not be what the MAGA folks hoped for.

Principle 5: Stupidity is nearly impossible to oppose. Bonhoeffer notes, “Against stupidity we are defenseless.” Because stupid actions do not make sense, they invariably come as a surprise. Reasonable arguments fall on deaf ears. Counter-evidence is brushed aside. Facts are deemed irrelevant. Bonhoeffer continues, “In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.”

Principle 6: The opposite of stupidity is not intelligence, it’s rationality. The psychologist Keith Stanovich defines rationality as the capacity to make decisions that help people achieve their objectives. People in the grip of the populist mind-set tend to be contemptuous of experience, prudence and expertise, helpful components of rationality. It turns out that this can make some populists willing to believe anything — conspiracy theories, folk tales and internet legends; that vaccines are harmful to children. They don’t live within a structured body of thought but within a rave party chaos of prejudices.

As time has gone by, I’ve developed more and more sympathy for the goals the populists are trying to achieve. America’s leadership class has spent the last few generations excluding, ignoring, rejecting and insulting a large swath of this country. It’s terrible to be assaulted in this way. It’s worse when you finally seize power and start assaulting yourself — and everyone around you. In fact, it’s stupid.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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David Brooks is an Opinion columnist for The Times, writing about political, social and cultural trends. @nytdavidbrooks"

A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 2, 2025, Section SR, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: The Six Principles Of Stupidity.