Trump Presidency #2

[Charles Hunter]

Cmon... it's a really old out of date document...

Well, not all of it. The MAGAts love the parts about only white male property-owners having rights.

[jaxlongtimer]

Whether you are a fan of Harvard or not, this action below against a private university is over-the-top and indicative of authoritarian steps to control thought and education and constrain opposition to the administration. 

They are, at best, taking the actions of a very few, and using that to indict an entire institution and its constituents.  No sorting out the wheat from the chaff.  Just building an excuse to execute their agenda and steamroll anyone in their way.

Exporting our educational assets helps with our trade balance, enriches our society, supports our advancements with the added "brainpower", and helps promote American values and interests in other countries when these students return as their future leaders. (Ironically, Elon Musk came to the U.S., allegedly, as a student.)

The explanation offered by Noem for this action is clearly greatly exaggerated rhetoric with little or no support.  Pure vengeance and retribution, as already demonstrated by Trump in so many other arenas.

Harvard blocked by Trump administration from enrolling international students

The Trump administration blocked Harvard University on Thursday from enrolling future international students and retaining currently enrolled foreign students.

The Department of Homeland Security said it revoked Harvard's Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification because the private school's leadership "has created an unsafe campus environment by permitting anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals, including many Jewish students, and otherwise obstruct its once-venerable learning environment."

"Many of these agitators are foreign students," DHS said.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who ordered the revocation, said, "Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country."

Harvard called the revocation "unlawful."

"We are fully committed to maintaining Harvard's ability to host our international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the University – and this nation – immeasurably," the university said in a statement.....

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/22/trump-harvard-students-international.html

[BridgeTroll]

Watching the Trump/Musk divorce happen is simply hilarious... two idiotic teenagers having a public spat. Utterly predictable... I can't take my eyes off...   

[BridgeTroll]

It's literally embarrassing... that this insecure, self absorbed, idiot is our president. My prediction is that in three years you won't be able to find ANYONE who voted for him...

[Charles Hunter]

It's literally embarrassing... that this insecure, self absorbed, idiot is our president. My prediction is that in three years you won't be able to find ANYONE who voted for him...

I think you underestimate the fealty of his cult. They will blame Democrats, Musk, Epstein (for faking the DJT entries in his log), any Republicans who don't toe the MAGA line ... anyone BUT the Orange Ogre and themselves. Sure, some will come out of their coma, but there will still be a core group that will worship him.

[jaxlongtimer]

It's literally embarrassing... that this insecure, self absorbed, idiot is our president. My prediction is that in three years you won't be able to find ANYONE who voted for him...

I think you underestimate the fealty of his cult. They will blame Democrats, Musk, Epstein (for faking the DJT entries in his log), any Republicans who don't toe the MAGA line ... anyone BUT the Orange Ogre and themselves. Sure, some will come out of their coma, but there will still be a core group that will worship him.

Yep.  Includes the conspiracy lovers that can't be convinced by black and white facts, ones too lazy to question the BS they are fed by Fox, Trump, DeSantis, etc., are simpletons looking for scapegoats rather than thoughtful solutions to complex problems, or people who don't bother to be well informed about the world around them and how interdependent they are with it.   

Amazing how many "sheep" walk on two legs!

[Jason]

Wow, this has been a wild couple of weeks.  The wins just keep on coming!


Here are some two-legged sheep conspiracies from a Trump cultist still in a coma:

- Iran's nuclear program is obliterated.  Those bunker busters are no joke
- Peace is pending for Iran & Israel.  Potential expansion of the Abraham Accords could truly bring peace in the middle east.
- Peace deal signed between the Congo & Rawanda
- All NATO members to pay 5% GDP for defense
- Looks like Harvard IS ran by antisemites
- Supreme court rulings on lower court nationwide injunctions.  No more
- Supreme court rulings on Birthright Citizenship
- Supreme court ruling in favor of parental rights
- Trade deals galore.
- Inflation still slowing.  Tariffs work!
- Stock market hitting all time highs
- Gas prices are down and still dropping
- The democratic party continues to implode
- The mainstream media continues to implode
- The Big Beautiful Bill is moments away


That's just the last couple of weeks and isn't everything. 

This guy is going to get the Nobel Peace prize.

[BridgeTroll]

Lol

[jaxlongtimer]

Here is another list to consider, in no particular order, one not so funny, unfortunately.

* Destroying education, K to graduate school, by killing grants and pressuring universities (see resignation of UVa president, Harvard, Columbia, etc.)
* Treating immigrants like animals (see plans for Alligator Alcatraz) unless they are whites from South Africa
* Taking revenge on those who don't fall in line (see Elon Musk and Senator Tillis, firing prosecutors of the Jan. 6th riots, etc.)
* Taking money from the poor by killing Medicaid and SNAP programs (see big beautiful bill)
* Giving money to the rich by giving them more tax breaks (see big beautiful bill)
* Enriching himself as he exploits the office of the president (see Trump phone, crypto, Boeing 747 "gift", etc.)
* Using Federal agencies to investigate anyone who gets in his way (too many to list.  See Pam Bondi)
* Burning bridges with our allies including Canada (again), Denmark-Greenland, and Spain
* Running up the deficit with a big beautiful bill (trillions of dollars more)
* Destroying the environment (see putting roads through protected wilderness and selling off preservation lands for development)
* Destroying green energy and innovation putting many out of business and out of jobs while raising future electric costs (see big beautiful bill removing tax credits and proposing taxes instead)
* Wasting money on a military parade to celebrate his birthday (modeled on Russia, China and North Korea)
* Creating chaos in the business world with ever changing tariffs
* Undermining US credibility by bombing Iran while simultaneously negotiating with them (plus, not consulting with Congress, per the Constitution)
* Dismantling the intelligence community or simply ignoring them.
* Killing people by undermining the health sciences (see new fake vaccine committee, cuts to NIH, CDC, FDA and medical research, etc.)
* Ignoring the Constitution (see pursuing denial of birthrights even though its clearly spelled out in the constitution)
* Going after public television and radio (see defunding bill)
* Putting farmers out of business by cutting USDA, removing their migrant harvesters, raising their equipment costs with tariffs and eliminating their export customers with trade wars.
* Pardoning corrupt and violent criminals while going after "criminal" migrants that have no criminal records outside of their immigrant status.
* Allowing an incompetent secretary of defense to diminish our military with political priorities over military ones (see renaming ships and military bases as a top priority and firing generals that supported DEI or questioned Trump's decisions)
* Diminishing foreign tourism to the US and one of our biggest exports, education of foreign students, with intimidation tactics.
* Forfeiting US influence around the world to Russia and China (see elimination of USAID)
* Supporting our enemies (see Vladimir Putin)
* Going after minorities and LGBTQ (see elimination of DEI and anything that remotely celebrates these groups)
* Supporting censorship and ensuring closed minds (schools will now have a full time job sanitizing education so no parent objects to anything)
* Further corrupting politicians with more political campaign dollars (see case for unlimited contributions)
* Endangering the public (see cuts to the FAA and National Weather Service.  Just this week, Defense Dept. cut off sharing invaluable satellite data on hurricanes with the NWS.  No reason given.)
* Leaving disaster victims in the cold (see FEMA dismantling)
* Denying climate change and killing off any programs to deal with it.
* Flouting the legal system (ignoring judicial orders, threatening judges, indicting judges, etc.)
* Reallocating resources and personnel to deporting migrants while draining same resources that were supposed to pursue organized crime, terrorists, foreign threats, etc.

No doubt we could add many more "accomplishments" to the list.  And, to think we have 3.5 years more of this (if the Country survives that long).

[jaxlongtimer]

Crybaby Trump doesn't like the economic statistics so he fires the statisticians at BLS and data collectors who input into the CPI rather than addressing the underlying issue:  his policies and edicts. 

Acting more like a dictator everyday.  I was criticized before on this board for making that analogy, but it is becoming clearer everyday that is the only way to describe his childish, impetuous mercurial and authoritarian behavior... unless one considers that his temper is an indication at his age of early stage dementia.  Shades of what he accused Biden of?  Either way, this country is in big trouble.

Trump news at a glance: 'credibility' of US economics data at risk, say experts, as president fires labor official
Trump's own former statistics chief denounces move as 'groundless' and 'dangerous'.

After Donald Trump ordered the firing of a federal government official in charge of labor statistics, experts and opposition politicians have expressed alarm that the "credibility" of US economic data was at risk.

The US president claimed without evidence that Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of labor statistics, had "rigged" job numbers "in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad", after data showed jobs growth stalled this summer, prompting accusations that the president was "firing the messenger".

Bill Beach, a former Heritage Foundation economist who was picked by Trump in 2018 to oversee labor statistics, denounced what he called the "totally groundless firing".

"Politicizing economic statistics is a self-defeating act," said Michael Madowitz, the principal economist at the Roosevelt Institute's Roosevelt Forward, who added that "credibility is far easier to lose than rebuild, and the credibility of America's economic data is the foundation on which we've built the strongest economy in the world".

Senate Democrat Ron Wyden said "this is the act of somebody who is soft, weak and afraid to own up to the reality of the damage his chaos is inflicting on our economy".
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trump orders firing of jobs report official after hiring slows

Donald Trump ordered the firing of the federal government official in charge of labor statistics, hours after data revealed jobs growth stalled this summer, prompting accusations that he was "firing the messenger".

The US president claimed that Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of labor statistics, had "faked" employment figures in the run-up to last year's election in an effort to boost Kamala Harris's chances of victory.

Trump later claimed: "Today's Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad."

He produced no evidence for these allegations and insisted that the US economy was, in fact, "BOOMING" on his watch.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/02/trump-news-at-a-glance-credibility-of-us-economics-data-at-risk-say-experts-as-president-fires-labor-dept-official

[jaxlongtimer]

^ Below from Trump's own appointee... No one will believe anything his administration does... it will all just be dangerous propaganda.  Good luck to investors trying to read the economy. 

Professional, nonpartisan, competent-based positions in government - all being replaced by self-serving incompetent political hacks that unquestionably bow to the feet of Trump and kiss his a** vs. serving the public interests.

Running off cutting edge researchers, scientists, doctors, educators... Summarily firing government workers that are checks and balances... Viciously attacking the media, universities, judges, critics... Undermining election laws and creditability of officials...  Demonizing minorities, immigrants, political opponents.... Stoking fervent nationalism... Spewing lying propaganda 24/7... Banning books... Promoting Christian nationalism by putting religion at the center of everything... Abridging due process for those arrested by ICE... Summarily arresting citizens without cause... Using the military for civilian law enforcement... Rolling back laws, regulations and precedents to exert more power... Tolerating white nationalists... Having a compliant party apparatus... all pages from the Nazi playbook.

To add, destroying international alliances and cooperation... supporting foreign dictators... implementing over-the-top tariffs and a regressive tax bill... eliminating social safety nets... reducing important portions of the labor force due to immigration over-enforcement... increasing economic inefficiencies with chaotic polices.... 

Destroying our 250 year old country with a thousand knife cuts in months.

Former Trump statistics chief slams Friday firing of Erika McEntarfer
Bill Beach said the president's suggestions that the jobs report was rigged betrayed a misunderstanding in how those numbers are assembled.

The head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics from President Donald Trump's first term is panning his Friday firing of Erika McEntarfer, who oversaw a July jobs report that rankled the president and suggested a slowdown in the economy.

Bill Beach, who Trump tapped for the top job at BLS in 2017, said Sunday that the president's suggestions that McEntarfer had rigged the jobs report betrayed a misunderstanding in the data collection and reporting standards at the bureau, which compiles statistics on critical economic factors including inflation and employment.

"There's no way for that to happen," Beach told CNN's Kasie Hunt on "State of the Union." "The commissioner doesn't do anything to collect the numbers. The commissioner doesn't see the numbers for until Wednesday before they're published. By the time the commissioner sees the numbers, they're all prepared."

Trump fired McEntarfer after BLS' monthly jobs report for July showed that the economy had added just 73,000 jobs, coming in under expectations. He also took issue with the agency's major revisions to job numbers from May and June. Employment only increased by 33,000 jobs in those two months, the government said Friday, down by 258,000 from previous estimates. Revisions to preceding job reports are routinely issued when a new one comes out.

The president also suggested McEntarfer had led an effort to inflate job statistics to aid former Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 election.

McEntarfer, Trump wrote Friday on Truth Social, would "be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified."

But Beach told Hunt on Sunday that the bureau's estimates are far better now than in previous decades. And the president's firing of McEntarfer "undermines credibility" in the statistical system, he said.

"Suppose that they get a new commissioner and this person, male or female are just the best people possible. And they do a bad number. Well, everybody's going to think, well, it's not as bad as it probably really is because they're going to suspect political influence."

Larry Summers, who led the Treasury Department under former President Bill Clinton, told ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday that the firing "is the stuff of democracies giving way to authoritarianism."

"I mean, this is way beyond anything that Richard Nixon ever did, Summers said on "This Week." "I'm surprised that other officials have not responded by resigning themselves as took place when Richard Nixon fired people lawlessly."

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/03/trump-labor-statistics-chief-fired-unemployment-00490988

[BridgeTroll]

[Jason]

We have PEACE in the Middle East!?   

I can't believe its really happening.  Could anyone else on planet Earth have pulled this off?

[jaxlongtimer]

^ All good for now, or so it appears.  Definitely remain some unaddressed issues that make the peace fragile.

Although clearly no Trump fan, Trump gets some deserved credit.

I do wonder if his loyalty to Netanyahu for the 2 years of this war might also have helped prolong it.  In the beginning, unqualified support of Netanyahu made sense as Hamas committed terrible atrocities. Supposedly, Israel's bombing in Qatar crossed a line in their relationship and kicked off the signaling that Netanyahu's unfettered U.S. support was no longer.  This forced Netanyahu to seriously negotiate.  Hamas was clearly losing on the field of battle with no good outcome in site forcing their hand.  Enter the U.S. and Arab nations to step in and deliver this peace.

[Jason]

It will definitely take the entire region to jump in and help to maintain this agreement.  Seeing all of the world leaders piled up on the stage during the signing really shows that there is a solid coalition of countries that want to help.  Or at least give the impression of helping (more likely cashing in on the rebuilding of Gaza).     Peace is very good for business.

The war itself was also a major player.  Without Israel destroying Hamas, and greatly debilitating the Houthis, Hezbolla, Iran and other Iran proxies, this wouldn't be able to happen.  The middle east responds to strength only, which Israel (and Trump) fully understand.  And with a weakened and isolated Iran, the money flow to Hamas and the likes is snuffed out.

I think the middle east in general is tired of the never ending conflicts and is ready to fully enter the world economy.  Iran and its proxies have been a thorn poking holes in every chance for peace the region has had.  Regardless of their religious beliefs and fervent hatred for the Jews, its time for them each to focus inward on the Jihadis in their own countries and squash them before they cause more problems.

Fingers crossed for a future deal with Iran to bring them to the modern age and really solidify peace in the region.