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

Oh, no, I didn't take it that way at all! No worries. I just meant that I used to argue my side in good faith, but recently feel like there's less point in that approach because the 'opposition' has a different feel to it. I don't mean posters that I routinely disagree with, but what feels like an influx of new posters with an agenda.

I realise its a fine line when needing to respect differing opinions, but I think Mumsnet has been pretty lax about allowing blatant disinformation to stay on the site of late.

The thing is, there is no international way to enforce trade spats if one side says "no thanks". So you'll end up back at tariffs and the like.

😂

That's a meme I'd like to save and re-use if I may @user9876543211

@biscuitandcake I really do think there are a lot of Russian troll farm employees out there. Observing over the last three years, there seems to be distinct phases of their posts. They seem to have certain lines to push. With the US having gone the way it has, the post-Prigozin troll factories must be working very hard atm.

Has he gone golfing for the weekend again?

@SerendipityJane yes i figured so. I just don't see how his actions will generate the money needed and based of the economist richard wolff nothing will for generations.
and regarding the trust the administration has broken with multiple countries i don't think that will be fixed next term either.

on a more positive front today canada has signed a contract with nova scotia irving shipyards for 3 new navy frigates. good news i'm sure for ns (it does mention some concerns regarding the us components).

Breaking WaPo:

HHS has granted DOGE access to a sensitive child support database with troves of income data — overriding the objections of career employees.

The database contains substantial amounts of personal income data linked to nearly all U.S. workers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/03/08/hhs-doge-child-support/

Scary stuff that could have repercussions for everyone in the world. Irresponsible imbeciles.

How Foreign Aid Cuts Are Setting the Stage for Disease Outbreaks
Organizations funded by the United States helped keep dangerous pathogens in check around the world. Now many safeguards are gone, and Americans may pay the price.

Share token:
www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/health/usaid-funding-disease-outbreaks.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2U4.5hH_.E6Cj6eJAnjLA&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Germany has really dodgy self ID - linked to UK court cases to protect women's rights
so that is one where I'll side with the USA

I disagree, it really isn't a positive thing that the US is now considered unsafe for transgender people.

Agree. I have lots of issues with the trans rights vs women’s rights debate but the fact the US is no longer considered safe for trans people to visit is awful.

Don't think he has a chance of getting that Nobel prize now, blown it big time.They don't give it to bullies and turnpikes.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/dhs-begun-performing-polygraph-tests-employees-find-leakers-rcna195485

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and border czar Tom Homan have blamed lower-than-expected ICE arrest numbers on recent leaks about planned operations.

The Department of Homeland Security has begun performing polygraph tests on employees to determine who might be leaking information to the media about immigration operations, according to four sources familiar with the practice.

Quite. I want women to be safe and feel safe but that doesn't mean that I want people who identity as trans to be actively persecuted.

Totally

This is more detail from Elliot Higgins from Bellingcat about disordered discourse, and how it's actually a self sustaining system that now neither Trump nor Musk can dissent from, let alone the Republican Senators who are now too frightened to dissent.

https://bsky.app/profile/eliothiggins.bsky.social/post/3ljwk3ybhq224

It's a bit of their own cancel culture

That's a perceptive and worrying thread, @Lalgarh .
https://bsky.app/profile/eliothiggins.bsky.social/post/3ljwk3ybhq224
[...]
Disordered discourse isn’t controlled by Trump or Musk, it dictates their actions too.
They can’t just abandon narratives their base demands.
They can’t admit mistakes without consequences.
They are as trapped by the system as anyone else.
This isn’t strategy, it’s capture.

False narratives aren’t just circulating online, they now dictate reality in power structures.
Disordered discourse doesn’t just distort truth, it creates an alternative reality that enforces itself.
Not through control. Not through strategy. But because it’s self-sustaining.

[edited to fix formatting error]

Eventually it will run out of other people to blame for reality and turn inwards. It always does.

The terror in France being the prime example. Once you've run out of aristocrats to sacrifice (so presumably in this case woke trans DEI federal employees) you start to think maybe God needs a bigger sacrifice. Who would we have play Robespierre ?

Eliot Higgins' thread has an excellent summary diagram
https://bsky.app/profile/eliothiggins.bsky.social/post/3ljwlhjsai22l

There's multiple agents, state disinformation would come from the top two agents, but agents interact constantly. It's not a top down system of information, but a peer-to-peer system, that's what the crucial shift has been in how we receive and interact with information.
9 March 2025 at 08:08

That’s worth saving for the next ‘why would Russia want to infiltrate a bunch of housewives’ thread.

Another thread from Eliot Higgins, on what to do about it.
(I haven't read all of this yet.)

https://bsky.app/profile/eliothiggins.bsky.social/post/3ljd6zljnts2z

[edited as he seems to have multiple threads on this]

bsky.app/profile/eliothiggins.bsky.social/post/3ljd6zljnts2z
🧵 Yesterday I shared my views on how disordered discourse has captured the US state and the risk of that happening elsewhere, but I don’t want to leave you hanging without proposing a solution.

[quoted post] What we’re witnessing in America is what happens when disordered discourse captures a political party, then the state itself. The Republican Party was the first to fall - abandoning truth for conspiracy, ideology for grievance, and policy for performative outrage.
1 March 2025 at 15:04

We can’t fact-check our way out of this crisis. Disordered discourse isn’t just about false claims - it reshapes power, identity, and how people engage with reality itself. There’s no single fix, but one crucial pillar of the response is education.

The OECD released a report last year, Facts not Fakes: Tackling Disinformation, Strengthening Information Integrity, detailing some of the education responses to this issue, which helps give us some guidance on a way forward www.oecd.org/en/publicati...

I think this is what von der Leyen was talking about the other week.

I was thinking that if he dies soon (if only) - more than likely a heart attack or stroke - then the MAGAs would riot violently as they would not accept it was natural causes.

In the same way the election result was immaterial.

Chaos was the aim, no matter how it was achieved.