OFFICIAL LRC President Donald Trump SECOND TERM Thread

Precious Roy wrote:

nnonequals wrote:

I imagine that there might be explanations out there that I haven't run across, but it remains interesting to me that on the one hand, Trump can be as vicious as can be to people who he believes have crossed him - to include, I think, cases where the "cross" doesn't seem terribly bad.

BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, there are a small number of people like Rubio and Vance who HAVE said VERY bad things about him in the past, but he put that aside. Not only didn't go after them, but elevated them to the highest positions in the land.

Now, prior to Trump 2.0, the most obvious explanation would be that he can't flush everyone who's ever said anything bad about him, because then there would be no one defensibly competent enough to appoint.

But we now know that that CAN'T be the reason - see Hegseth, RFK Jr., Patel, Bondi, Bangino, Gabbard, Noem, Bove, McMahon, FEMA guy, etc., etc., etc.

A mystery to me.

Rubio has effectively been shut out of the Trump inner circle. Steve Witkoff is pretty much Trump's de facto secretary of state and has been the point on Israel and Russia. Rubio was banished back to the state department where he has just been in charge of firing everyone and not much else.

What is really notable in the current schism in M#GAworld is how the Epstein issue was somewhat organically woven into the M#GA narrative of Trump draining the swamp by going after the pedophiles. This exposes what is essentially Trump's Achilles heel in his 2.0 administration. Trump has surrounded himself with yes men. Bessent, Witkoff, and Lutnick are just Trump's billionaire buddies who just spend all their time telling Trump he is brilliant and doing whatever Trump says. Like Hegseth, McMahon, RFK, Jr. and Sean Duffy, they have no idea what they are doing and bring no relevant experience. They are all just there to kiss Trump's ring and be loyal.

So, no one in M#GAworld has been tasked with keeping his movement on message. Trump just says what he wants and has his press secretary and others parrot what he says. That allowed the Epstein issue to work its way into the M#GA narrative through various M#GA surrogates. When previously asked about it, Trump went along with it because he had no idea that Epstein had become part of the M#GA narrative. Now that push has come to shove, Trump is having to do cartwheels to try and get M#GA to drop the Epstein scandal because the last thing Trump wants is a data dump of FBI files where he is probably mentioned prominently due to his many years of being close with Epstein (and maybe Netanyahu has a very damaging appearance in the files).

Thus, Trump 2.0 administration and the greater M#GA movement is long on loyalists and very short on competency. Loyalty has been effective so far in getting the OBBBA passed. But that loyalty also put a lot in the bill that is going to have a lot of ballot blowback when rural hospitals close and states buckle under medicaid costs. But the lack of competency is really going to be front and center when Trump is unable to get any trade deals done and crashes the economy with crippling sanctions.

Nnonequals wrote:

Precious Roy wrote:

Rubio has effectively been shut out of the Trump inner circle. Steve Witkoff is pretty much Trump's de facto secretary of state and has been the point on Israel and Russia. Rubio was banished back to the state department where he has just been in charge of firing everyone and not much else.

What is really notable in the current schism in M#GAworld is how the Epstein issue was somewhat organically woven into the M#GA narrative of Trump draining the swamp by going after the pedophiles. This exposes what is essentially Trump's Achilles heel in his 2.0 administration. Trump has surrounded himself with yes men. Bessent, Witkoff, and Lutnick are just Trump's billionaire buddies who just spend all their time telling Trump he is brilliant and doing whatever Trump says. Like Hegseth, McMahon, RFK, Jr. and Sean Duffy, they have no idea what they are doing and bring no relevant experience. They are all just there to kiss Trump's ring and be loyal.

So, no one in M#GAworld has been tasked with keeping his movement on message. Trump just says what he wants and has his press secretary and others parrot what he says. That allowed the Epstein issue to work its way into the M#GA narrative through various M#GA surrogates. When previously asked about it, Trump went along with it because he had no idea that Epstein had become part of the M#GA narrative. Now that push has come to shove, Trump is having to do cartwheels to try and get M#GA to drop the Epstein scandal because the last thing Trump wants is a data dump of FBI files where he is probably mentioned prominently due to his many years of being close with Epstein (and maybe Netanyahu has a very damaging appearance in the files).

Thus, Trump 2.0 administration and the greater M#GA movement is long on loyalists and very short on competency. Loyalty has been effective so far in getting the OBBBA passed. But that loyalty also put a lot in the bill that is going to have a lot of ballot blowback when rural hospitals close and states buckle under medicaid costs. But the lack of competency is really going to be front and center when Trump is unable to get any trade deals done and crashes the economy with crippling sanctions.

We probably don't fundamentally disagree about much or anything above, but my view of "notable" is different. I think that pretty much everyone expected Trump to surround himself with (ardent) Yes Men in 2.0.

However, I don't think that anyone would have guessed that he'd appoint someone (and perhaps notably, a past strong critic) to BOTH SecState AND National Security Advisor, but NOT have them in his inner circle (if what you say is accurate). What the f*** kind of sense does that make? Well, yeah, Trump sense. "I'm going to make you TWO of the very most important positions in (adult, competent) government, but.....I don't really care about your opinion." To me, that's notable, even by Trump standards.

AND THEN, I'll make a real estate guy de facto SecState.

My lord.

Oldrunningguy wrote:

Oldrunningguy wrote:

Navarro is Back!!

BARTIROMO: How many more deals on trade would you expect in the coming month?

NAVARRO: We've got a bunch of deals right now, but a lot of them are unilateral because we had to send letters to people ... trust in Trump

Take a moment to fully digest the gaslighting that Trump is performing here with his trade deals.

Imagine that you work in the field of corporate sales. You have promised your sales manager that you have tons of deals coming in. You even go so far as saying you expect to close 90 deals in 90 days!

Then you sit down with your sales manager at 120 days. He asks you where your contracts are. You tell him that you have no signed contracts. Instead you sent out some letters demanding that businesses go with your terms. And they did not agree nor respond to them

Yeah. That’s what Trump is doing because he believes Americans are stupid.