The Orange Man and the State of his Union - Trump thread #139

[Spandauer]

Thanks to @JoshLymanSwagger for the thread title.

Trump, Vance and Musk are building a bigly bridge across the Bering Strait...
...and creating a gaping chasm in the Atlantic.

Kind hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith than Norman blood.
Alfred Lord Tennyson

Previous thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/chat/5275361-an-unholy-trinity-or-just-a-seedy-threesome-trump-musk-and-putin-trump-thread-138

Has the Mango Man ever worn a Yellow tie before?

Have we waited an hour for car jobs!

NAFTA is heading down the 🚽 next.

And trees

Trump is literally just wittering. Apparently big news is coming on Iran soon, they’re in their last strokes…..

He just can't stand not having the camera focused on him, can he? Whenever he needs a hit of his personal heroin (namely an audience) he'll suddenly announce 'I have big news' and schedule a TV appearance.

I'm with a PP above. I'm getting numb to his 'big announcements' because 50% are just verbal diarrhoea about how great he is and the other 50% are shit that gets backtracked. I'll wait and hear it from Rachel when she can tell me to take it seriously or not.

I heard his wittering (dh is taking an interest which is so not like him) from my office and heard a few minutes before I got bored. It sounded as though he was threatening the entire world country be country with one thing or another. It sounded deranged so I went back to work.

Did I miss anything important, or just more bollocks?

Oh wait. Today is the day that jobs numbers for the prior month are released.

It'll be interesting to see how he spins that. The numbers are going to be horrific with all the Fed firings.

Of course, he and the Secty of Commerce are saying that Fed jobs shouldn't be included in those numbers. Right. Let's not count Federal workers as 'employees' for statistical purposes. Asshole.

If they need any help on massaging (un)employment figures, I am sure the UK national archives can help. The Tories tried about 36 different methods of calculating them 1980-1985

It's Biden's recession has been touted earlier today

@JoshLymanSwagger the NAFTA (it has a new set of letters) was due to be renegotiated in 2026.

Tee hee

What's that please?

North American Free Trade Agreement.

Apparently the CDC are going to be investigating the link between vaccines and autism, wonder whose antivax mitts are all over that? 🤔 What’s the betting the data gets bodged and they find a link.!

North American Free Trade Agreement. it’s a trilateral trade agreement between Canada, the US and Mexico.

Thanks to whoever it was who recommended last night's "Today" podcast. Well worth a listen.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0028jwg

NAFTA is the older abbreviation for CUSMA
https://www.international.gc.ca/trade-commerce/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/agr-acc/cusma-aceum/index.aspx?lang=eng
CUSMA is the trade deal Trump negotiated during his last term in office, one of those “best deals ever”

Susie Dent on TwiX

Word of the day is ‘whiffling’ (17th century): fickle, inconstant, and making it up as you go along.

https://bsky.app/profile/adamjschwarz.bsky.social/post/3ljswy4v4ss27

Hundreds of law enforcement officials cheer for James Dennehy as he leaves the FBI New York HQ for the final time.

Dennehy was forced to retire as head of the FBI NY division by the Trump Administration after he told colleagues to refuse to disclose the names of agents who worked on J6 cases.

Thank you. Have heard of it just didn't click re abbreviation

As if this hasn't already been done
And they complain about use of taxpayers money! I am tempted to refer to natural selection bit you know there would be so many innocent casualties

It’s absolutely been done and put to bed. And doing it now in the middle of a measles outbreak in which one child has already died is hugely irresponsible.

I believe there's been another death from measles. 2nd one an unvaccinated adult from New Mexico.

I also think that any new investigation that finds a link between vaccines and autism will be very suspicious but of course no one will be allowed to examine the evidence because... national security or some other such BS.

That photo in a bookshop of a display of books like 1984, with the title something like they're not instruction manuals, really wasn't a joke, was it?

Another group of (mostly young) people arbitrarily dumped without any notice or advice on what to do next.

Fulbright Association funding has been cut off to 12,500 US citizens currently abroad and and more than 7,400 foreigner scholars and students in the United States with immediate effect.

woub.org/2025/03/07/fulbright-scholars-feel-stranded-trump-administration-suspends-funding/