who are the ones who always have to protect them every time they almost go extinct? Can’t they contribute to their own defense effort?

And ex co-workers. And most of his family. DOGE is making the person Musk more known and (judging by these precedents) knowing Musk better doesn’t seem to be conducive to liking him more

Hahaha I hadn’t laughed so hard since the beginning of this hour!

trying hard to see the glass half full: it’s good that he implies that there will still be elections

The historian Zeev Sternhell has traced the ideological roots of fascism back to the 1880s and in particular to the fin de siècle theme of that time

(Wikipedia

So if you could timetravel back a bit more and see if rebooting fixes this whole thing…

And this makes like… 10 of them now who changed their minds? Seriously, what the heck?

Trump’s polls are still pretty high: https://news.gallup.com/poll/658661/republicans-men-push-trump-approval-higher-second-term.aspx Better than his first term overall and 92% among Republicans. 92%!

but this IS the end

One of the few areas where representation is fair is assholery. There are real assholes from all genders, ethnicity and religious backgrounds.

You can be non-white, non-binary, non-wasp and still be an asshole. And other assholes will accept you, if it helps shield their evil agenda from the most obvious accusations.

And guess what political side has learned to leverage that fact? I’ll give you a few hints. Neonazi AfD in Germany has a lesbian leader with a Sri Lankan partner, the italian far right party (staunch defender of family values) has a leader who’s a never married single mom (and now she’s Italy’s prime minister), then you already mentioned Trump and Vance.

Don’t get me wrong, Usha Vance, Melania Trump, Giorgia Meloni, Alice Weidel aren’t being exploited. They are all formidable persons who got to the top by out-assholing everyone else on their side and by actively banking on their “non traditional” status to emerge in ultra-conservative environments.

So they don’t need to rationalize anything. It’s all already quite rational and by design.

“Nasty, failing Norway, they should just hand over Greenland. That Helsinki is a horrible place, we have so many cleaner and better looking places here in the US!”

Trump’s thing are 1:1 negotiations, like with Putin. He’s all about making a deal personally and people gushing over how great of a deal he made. Unfortunately he’s not nearly as good as he thinks he is.

Tariffs are meant as his opening power move, like the used car salesman’s firm handshake. Same (I hope…) as the fuckery on Canada or Greenland. They are the “I am strong and I want something, let’s sit and negotiate”.

Problem is that the used car salesman only has two outcomes: customer buys the clunker or customer walks away. But it rarely happens that “customer is strong-armed into buying the clunker but customer is fire-fighter and next time will let the car dealership burn down”.

Only one way to settle the debate: let’s build that Large Fascist Collider

maybe he studies fascism in the way at CERN they study particles: once they found experimental evidence that one exists, they start looking for the next. Now given the abundant evidence that the US fascist exists and multiple collisions have been observed with everyone’s balls, he’s started searching for the more elusive Canadian Fascist

At this point, it looks like Trump is trying really hard to mess with his voters and lose them. But unluckily he is failing hard even at that.

yes, so typical and yet so effective so far.

Phase 1: eat a baby in plain view at a crowded event

Phase 2: get really angry and personally attack anybody who mentions it and their employer

Phase 3: after a few days just roll your eyes and dismiss with “again with that baby thing?”

If nothing serious happens right after phase 1, holding onto this as future political ammo seems to be worthless. I really hope I’m wrong and that the accumulation of these things is enough to turn enough of Trump’s base against him but they accumulated a whole fricking lot by now and there is still room for more…

• Looks like shit, remove this portrait immediately!

• The portrait is on the other wall, Mister President, that one is a mirror.

Was Steven Seagal ever relevant? I mean besides the “so trashy that it’s occasionally fun”, guilty-pleasure type of relevance he briefly enjoyed in the 1980s?

Looking forward to that “Failing Disney and nasty, perverted Mickey Mouse, going around in shorts” post on Truth Social. If there’s one corporation that might even take Donnie down it’s Disney. Kinda like Kong vs Dumbzilla