Trump+Musk; the DOGE and Pony show continues -Trump thread #140

[Spandauer]

Trump, as out of control as a faulty Tesla, takes an ICE pick to the Constitution.

Thanks to @AcrossthePond55 and @Jaichangecentfoisdenom for the thread title and sub-title 😊

Photocollage: Cold War Steve
Map illustration: Barry Blitt

Previous thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5286872-the-orange-man-and-the-state-of-his-union-trump-thread-139

In amusing news,
The USA is so deranged that Andrew and Tristan Tate have decided to fly back to Romania

The problem with shiny and meaningless is that's kinda Greenland (sorry).

Maybe Italy that's the one shaped like a boot? would give him Sicily

Personally the new map of Canada looked pretty good to me!

The Commonwealth?

So has Scrotus given up on the Nobel and has decided that a KG, GCB, or a GBE will do just as nicely?

What a maroon.

I thought you were joking, but it's true! I don't know what these 'legal obligations' are they have to deal with but hopefully one of them will be completing a period of incarceration.

The fire at the substation that caused a shutdown of Heathrow Airport is thought to be non-suspicious, the London Fire Brigade has said.

phew!

That’s good news (sort of) about Heathrow shut-down.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/us/politics/trump-civil-rights-homeland-security-deportations.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Trump has fired anyone to do with civil rights at the Department of Homeland Security.

He is just a piece of shit. He should not be allowed.

Thorugh my Twitter feed I see the true believers
am tired
but some of their granular arguments are utterly solid
and
are not being challenged in any way

Hand wringing for judicial decisions
is pissing in the wind right now

ENFORCE the constitution
or admit its gone

there is no "them" ... there is only "us"

America will be OK. I'm sure the NRA are on it. It's their raison d'etre after all.

Relentless...So basically is it that they want to become like North Korea - shut off from the rest of the world? Who will want to work, visit, share information or anything else with the USA whilst this administration in charge?

Trump team ‘survey’ sent to overseas researchers prompts foreign interference fears. The document asks US-funded scientists in Australia, the UK and the EU to declare links to China or projects on diversity, equity and inclusion.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00850-5

Good god. Here we are watching democracy crumble. I didn’t think it would be so easy.

More of this, please.

Tesla Trade-Ins Are At An All-Time High, Edmunds Says
JPMorgan analysts said this week they struggled to think of another time “a [car] brand has lost so much value so quickly."
www.huffpost.com/entry/tesla-trade-in-all-time-high-stock-not_n_67dd7f05e4b09b090813ece6

He really doesn't understand. And he really doesn't care.

Trump wants states to handle disasters. States aren't prepared.
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/21/nx-s1-5327595/trump-order-fema-states-disaster-response

When a major hurricane, flood or wildfire hits, FEMA starts working on a disaster only when requested by the state government. The agency organizes thousands of federal workers who help in disaster response and process claims for millions of dollars in aid. Even then, states and local governments still remain in charge.

Without FEMA, states would need to find thousands of additional personnel to inspect damage, distribute disaster aid and plan the rebuilding of public infrastructure. Without federal funding, states would face billions of dollars in recovery costs. After Hurricane Irma in 2017, Florida relied on more than $5.5 billion dollars from the federal government.

From that Huffpost article.

In what would appear to be a massive conflict of interest, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick went on Fox News and told people to buy stock in Tesla.
“Buy Tesla,” Lutnick told viewers of “Jesse Watters Primetime” on Wednesday night. “It’s unbelievable that this guy’s stock is this cheap. It’ll never be this cheap again.”

Shares fell on the news.
😂😂😂

🤬

Nasa drops plan to land first woman and first person of color on the moon.
Promise was central plank to space agency’s Artemis program, which is scheduled to return humans to the lunar surface in 2027.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/21/nasa-drops-plan-first-woman-moon

But who has the ability to enforce it?

The bottom line is that only elected Republican representatives have that power right now.

Trump has revoked security clearance for a few people including - the Biden family, Kamala, Hillary Clinton.
I keep saying this but it's a daily OMG still where the orange one is concerned. But also worryingly on my social feed there are posters that think it's absolutely a good thing to do 🙈 - I'm taking it as this being a personal thing for Trump, as well as outrageous.

Of course it’s personal, everything is for Trump. Biden revoked Trump’s security clearance after he was elected so now the 🍊one wants revenge. He’s petty and vindictive and driven by 3 things - fame, money and revenge.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c33706jy774o

Now revoking protections for over half a million Cubans, Haitians and other migrants. I wonder how many of them voted for him?

He's not going to stop is he.

As predicted, tourism to US drops

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/22/tourism-trump-immigration-arrests

Even before the most recent spate of detentions, forecast visits to the country this year had been revised downward from a projected 5% rise to a 9% decrease by Tourism Economics, an industry monitoring group, which cited “polarising Trump Administration policies and rhetoric”, particularly around tariffs.

It predicted that the drop-off would lead to a $64bn shortfall in the US tourist trade.

Maybe the Democrats should run on a "Make America friendlier again" tagline

"The recent episodes are all the more striking because they involve countries long allied to the US, although students and academics from India and the Middle East have also been detained in recent days despite holding valid visas. While visitors from many regions have long had difficulty entering the US, immigration officials have traditionally taken a more lenient stance towards travellers from allied nations.
Pedro Rios, the director of the American Friends Service Committee, a non-profit group that aids migrants, told AP that it was unprecedented in the 22 years he had worked at the southern border for travellers from western Europe and Canada to be detained with such regularity.
“It’s definitely unusual with these cases so close together, and the rationale for detaining these people doesn’t make sense,” he said. “The only reason I see is there is a much more fervent anti-immigrant atmosphere.”

Friends don't treat other friends like this.

And the USA is going to find itself with only a few friends soon

They're so foul. They're going to go after Georgetown because the dean of the law school politely told them to eff off.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-dei-georgetown-ed-martin-9bff842ed5ca3e4600de52ca6967fe9d

They're also short-sighted.

Vance also criticised the high number of foreign students at elite U.S. universities, claiming they take up spots that could have gone to American students.
“A lot of these foreign students, most of them, pay full freight. So sometimes what you have at elite universities like Columbia or Harvard is a well-qualified middle-class American kid from the heartland who doesn’t get a spot because some Chinese oligarch, who is paying $100,000 a year, takes up that spot,” he argued.

I think JD Vance does not understand what funds well-qualified middle-class American kids from the heartland at elite universities. I also like that it's only 'middle-class' kids he's concerned about.