this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2025
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Schmoozing the super-rich to fund a $300m ballroom while cutting food aid for those on low incomes threw the president’s architectural folly into sharp relief

It was a feast fit for a king – and any billionaire willing to be his subject. From gold-rimmed plates on gold-patterned tablecloths decorated with gold candlestick holders, they gorged on heirloom tomato panzanella salad, beef wellington and a dessert of roasted Anjou pears, cinnamon crumble and butterscotch ice-cream.

On 15 October, Donald Trump welcomed nearly 130 deep-pocketed donors, allies and representatives of major companies for a dinner at the White House to reward them for their pledged contributions to a vast new ballroom now expected to cost $300m. That the federal government had shut down two weeks earlier scarcely seemed to matter.

But two weeks later, the shutdown is starting to bite – and throw Trump’s architectural folly into sharp relief. On Saturday, with Congress still locked in a legislative stalemate, a potential benefit freeze could leave tens of millions of low-income Americans without food aid. Democrats accuse Trump’s Republican party of “weaponising hunger” to pursue an extreme rightwing agenda.

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[–] NewSocialWhoDis@lemmy.zip 3 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

I think you are misreading my tone. I'm not proud or excited about the changes in the US; I'm just stating a fact about the size and capacity of our existing military.

I don't know if you're Canadian or Mexican, but the two countries combined only have a little over a quarter of the number of military personnel of the US. Population-wise, the two countries have about half the population of the US, which, while it's more competitive than current enlisted numbers, still limits your total military size and more importantly, your industrial production of military equipment (presuming the war drags on long enough for all sides to have time to ramp up).

China has more bodies to throw at us and a vastly deeper reserve of production capacity. They also are one of the few countries to already have their own military industry (equipment wholly divorced from the US supply chain and manufacturers). Demographically, all of Europe acting together might have a chance, but they consistently fail to act as a unit and they are aging faster than the US.

Anyway, all of this is justification for a quip which was not my main point. My main point is that the US will have to get itself out of this. Though, I did issue a plea somewhere else for certain countries to perform extrajudicial renditions of their malevolent billionaires that got exported here. That would help us.

[–] TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca 1 points 1 hour ago

I think k you are missing the pointy guy. The Germans though they couldn't be defeated either.