To be really glad I don't live in America right now

[AnonymousBleep]

I really feel for ordinary Americans. It's bad enough on this side of the Channel, hearing daily about Trump's latest petty, spiteful, idiotic bullshit - that rant against the Bishop who asked him to have mercy on immigrants, the ridiculous and insulting attempt to blame 'diversity' for the plane crash - but living under it must be so much worse. And heaven help you if you're LGBT or a woman. Or an immigrant. Or not white. Or poor. Or anyone else Trump and his freakshow of a government despises. I moan about the UK all the time, like everyone else who lives here, because god knows it's far from perfect, but at least we don't have a government in charge who is trying to strip huge swathes of the population of their rights and citizenship.

+1.

It is a power shift at the global level, and it's scary but also a natural consequence. As someone mentioned before, civilisations rise and fall. Personally I wish the EU would unite a little more and fill that vacuum but it seems unlikely.

China and India more likely to do that, but whether they have sufficiently mature leaders to fill that power vacuum sensibly remains to be seen.

Of course life begins at conception!!!

The 30% of Americans who voted for him are racists who don’t care if a rapist and felon is President, as long as a black woman didn’t become President.

@MumoftwoGirls11 I think it was more complex than this for many voters, some of her policies and the Democratic Party's coverup regarding Biden put some people off. But we've certainly ended up with a mess.

I really don't think it's worth discussing with someone who can make sweeping unfounded statements (that actually say more about the person posting them than the issue itself)

Like - 30% of voters. That's very precise, where does it come from?

With all due respects, that's just making excuses for what is essentially a decision fuelled by racism. People make all sorts of excuses not to vote for a black woman, and to vote for a rapist and felon.

There simply wasn't a strong enough reason not to vote for the Democratic candidate, other than the voters' own racism. The fact that she isn't a rapist and felon should have been enough for people to vote for her.

So her policy, experience, campaign, etc. don’t count for anything. If you didn’t vote for her any reason, it was racism.

Is that what you’re saying?

Her policy, experience, campaign, etc don't count for anything when she was running against a rapist and felon. That's what I'm saying.

If you voted for a white man who is a rapist and a felon in spite of having an ex-prosecutor as his opponent who happens to be a black woman, then yes, you are racist.

Alrighty… just making sure I understood your opinion

They are just finding excuses so they don't have to accept that they're racist.

Also make sure you understand what I said previously - People often wrongly perceive white men to be more capable than they are, due to their own inherent biases.

This isn't just my opinion. Look up peer-reviewed current research on gender and race stereotypes and intelligence/intellectual ability.

@MumoftwoGirls11

Did you watch the presidential debates? If you didn't, it might be worth watching the June one and you'll see why some voters lost faith in the Democratic Party last year.

Before you accuse me of being racist, I didn't vote for Trump.

Did Kamala Harris confess to raping someone? Or was she found guilty of a felony?

Or are you just helping people make excuses for their decision that was fuelled by racism and sexism?

It's not hard.
Option 1: Rapist and felon, multiple affairs, bribes, fraud (Trump University), etc.
Option 2: Ex-prosecutor, never been officially charged for anything.

Never has it been more clear that black women are held to a higher standard than white men.

Plus, kinda weird @BruFord to bring up the first debate and leave out the second. You know, the one soundly won by the actual candidate, an intelligent competent woman, versus a wild-eyed babbling lying (they're eating the pets) loon.

Can't for the life of me see why voters shouldn't have lost faith in the Republican Party after that.

Lol. And on that note, of (black) women being held to a higher standard...

Donald Trump’s new State Department appointee.

https://bsky.app/profile/ronfilipkowski.bsky.social/post/3lhc2rp3zok2k

Could you outline which policies of Trumps you particular liked which got you to vote for him?

Primary is obviously immigration. There’s way too many illegal aliens and deportations were not going ahead as they should have been. Also very pleased about rescinding birthright citizenship—should never have happened as it did. Hope it sticks.

I am also pro fossil fuel and quite resistant towards green energy in most cases (nuclear would be better but still no political will on this.

You actually think the US is "quitting the role of ‘world police’ on our own terms". Is that what the, erm, suggestions of taking over other countries is

You mistake my meaning. Any action should be for our national interest. Not for the ‘international order’ or to ‘spread democracy’. That should be over.

He wants to rename geographical areas

Idc, please have the mass media go into hysterics about dumb shit like this so they have no headspace to worry about other actions we want to take.

“take back" the Panama canal

it was absolute horseshit to give away what we had built. We supported independence for Panama in their civil war with what is now Colombia and this was part of the agreement.

Carter was truly our worst president.

His plans have caused one of my closest friends to have to close down her linkedin, and her company remove her details from their website as she started receiving death threats as she works around getting disabled people into work

Is she closing it down because of harassment or because she thinks she won’t get work anymore?

But because of his comments around people with "hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism

Wasnt this specific for the FAA?

It is inevitable.

China will have its sphere of influence.
Just like America. I do feel for Taiwan/Aus/NZ but it was always going to be difficult for them in this new world.

Real question is, will Europe take this chance to renew itself?

There are none so blind as those who don’t want to see.

@snugsnug1 My point about the June debate is that's when we realized that the Democratic Party, including Kamala Harris, must've been covering up Biden's frailties for a very long time. It was horrifying to watch. Imagine if Keir Starmer was senile and Angela Rayner et al were denying it for months? I imagine that the British public would be furious and if an election were held a few months later, Labour would lose votes.

It doesn't mean that Republicans and Trump are any better, but I honestly think it's part of the reason Harris didn't win, not just racism. It could've been different if she'd been able to run a proper campaign. That's my two cents anyway.

Well I'm American, so I followed it closely, including the June debate, which was horrific. I'm a pretty avid consumer of long-form news, and I heard several speeches and some interviews and clips with Biden leading up to the debate. It's pretty clear that he was having some on days and some off days, but he was mostly surrounded by competent people. He actually did apparently do quite a lot of complex negotiations in the later days, but I was never in favour of him running for a second term.

That said, it takes a lot of complex mental juggling to think that a loss of faith in the Democratic political machine in any way justifies choosing an addled, lying, bankrupted six times, adjudicated felon and fraudster who's banned from running charities, with multiple sexual assault allegations, who spent the last part of the campaign lying about people eating pets, swaying onstage to music for 45 minutes, fellating a microphone and bragging about Arnold Palmer's dick over an imperfect but perfectly competent woman.

@snugsnug1 This discussion is about the reasons WHY people chose Trump rather than Harris. The poster who started the discussion stated that racism was the main reason, but some of us think that other factors played major roles. Surely, it's better to understand why something happened if you don't want a repeat of it.

I know that I went to the polls thinking that I had to choose the least awful candidate, which is pretty depressing.

72 million Americans voted for Trump out of the 245 million Americans eligible to vote in 2024. 29%
How Many People Didn’t Vote?
Close to 90 million.

If you voted for a white man who is a rapist and a felon in spite of having an ex-prosecutor as his opponent who happens to be a black woman, then yes, you are racist.
It might be racism but from my POV it's just as likely to be that American exceptionalism - you know, laws don't apply. From a rule-of-law culture, Trump's blatant thumbing of nose at the law is appalling but a lot of Americans seem to admire that.

@MeTooOverHere It’s so frustrating how many people don’t vote.

Aus and NZ aren't worried. We will do just fine. We already have diplomatic and trading ties.