And so now we just wait and see what excuse Musk will trot out next.
Stewart is a smart, insightful, quick-witted and tenacious debater and Musk is a cowardly, thin-skinned blowhard who's never had an original thought in his life.
So it's not a matter of if Musk will weasel out of it, but just of when and how.
That's what the voters have been trying to tell the DNC since 2016.
But the DNC's ears are plugged with corporate cash.
The Toddler-in-chief throwing another tantrum.
At least.
I quite sincerely believe that it's not even a question of if the US gets to the concentration camps and mass graves stage, but merely of when.
I wish I was exaggerating.
Ah. So reporting "Trump is a lying sack of shit who claims to be dismantling agencies in order to cut spending but is actually methodically eliminating every part of the government that serves to limit the abuses the 1% can heap on the rest of the country" is somehow "normalizing" his actions and reporting "Trump's spending cuts are failing to accomplish as much actual reduction in spending as he promised" somehow is not.
Got it.
Questions and accusations are more for the audience than trying to get Trump to reconsider why he's doing something
I'm fully aware of that (and the notion tgat Trump would ever reconsider anything is foolish on its face). And it's for the audience that the politicians and analysts and commentators need to change the context of their analyses.
and at least currently that bias toward "how things were supposed to work" still exists in the general public.
And that's a lot of the problem. The people need to be smacked upside the head with the two-by-four of truth.
Yes, yes, a billion times yes.
To me, the fundamental problem - the primary reason that it seems so difficult to deal with Trump - is that so many politicians and analysts and commentators are still spproaching issues as if the old rules are still in place, and they quite simply aren't.
Every time that another analysis or editorial appears that discusses the "failures" of the Trump administration, since their policies will undermine the original goals of the agency/programs in question, it's ultimately just meaningless noise, since it starts with the patently false presumption that the original goals still count. They don't.
The Trump administration isn't failing to achieve traditional goals - it's succeeding in achieving an entirely new and different set of goals. And there isn't going to be any meaningful commentary until it focuses on those new goals.
That's certainly possible, but it's by no means necessary, and not even particularly likely.
Trump is a spoiled, petulant, childish narcissist. He wouldn't react well to blackmail – his ego would lead him to be at least situationally passive/aggressive about it.
And in fact, that's why I do think he's being blackmailed by Israel (and specifically via information, evidence, video clips and so on that they got from Epstein). His sort of lukewarm, on-again/off-again support for them is just what I'd expect in that situation - he'll go along, but he's at least going to drag his feet.
With Russia though, I really think the primary motivator is that he idolizes Putin. You can see it in his face in any images from any of their meetings - he lights up like a schoolgirl with a crush. And that would explain why he's so enthusiastic and even reckless about allying with Russia - because he thinks he can only gain from it, since he'll get to be a trusted ally to his idol.
Which also illustrates the fact that he's sort of stupid and short-sighted, because if he was smarter and more circumspect, he'd know that, given the chance, Putin is going to play him like a fiddle.
It's simple really - Vance was the point man because Trump wants to be able to throw somebody under the bus if need be.
As I've noted before, if you think of dialogue like a roleplaying video game in which you have labeled options - you can choose the "friendly" response or the "neutral" response or the "antagonistic" response or whatever - it's as if, in every situation, Vance chooses the "asshole" response.
I think the right might have a point, and that Trump and his cronies and patrons aren't instituting fascism
They're instituting feudalism.
Ron Mael would beg to differ.