US 2024 Presidential Election
- Thread starter gorfias
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Dunno. But reportatly he had a full plane just for supplies for him and his entourage for a their workation. It is probably not only food but also cosmetics and stuff, but still.
Well, I think it's very gracious of you to confirm my suggestion that you have a confidence problem if you don't believe you're the smartest guy in the room. However, many other people are better at handling disagreement and cognitive uncertainty without needing to delude themselves. Although I also appreciate you're not much good at understanding other people to realise that, though.
This argument doesn't work as well as you think. Firstly, because there are other sources (below) that suggest this media report is okay. Mostly, I watched a little bit more of that video around the bit you directed us to. And Laffer exposes himself to be wittering low-grade, partisan hackery (as Silvanus already addressed): you supplied evidence that discredited your own source. And then tried to conceal the point by cutting to the bit that selected out what he said - oh wait, again, that's just what you say the press does!
They weren't reciprocal tariffs, though, were they? The concept of "reciprocal" is something dealt back equally in return, but the tariffs as set were not even remotely proportionate to be "reciprocal". (In fact, the only reciprocal tariffs were retaliatory tariffs many countries placed on US exports!) It's a nonsense in the context of Trump slinging extra tariffs at Canada because the premier of Ontario said mean things about him, or tariffs against NATO allies because Denmark wouldn't hand over Greenland.
And again, when we talk about Laffer, your source is recent. It's very clear he thought at the time the Trump tariffs were dangerous. Like when he wrote this op-ed, wanting an "exit strategy", and he's plain about the damage that Trump's tariffs risked, and the need to "regain the moral high ground". Because Laffer might recognise some element of his proposals, he did not think these tariffs made sense. It's only later after Trump has repeatedly chickened out and most of the damage luckily avoided, where he fabricates an amended narrative to explain it all away.
And so Laffer's pathetic brown-nosing, and your equally pathetic search for justification. There was never a clever economic plan behind Trump's tariffs: it was just mugging other countries in broad daylight. Like many muggings, it may reap some dividents short term. In the long term, it just means people will move to defend themselves from the mugger.
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Another perspective to a certain type of person is that it makes him look powerful, rich and important.
Many politicians have long grumbled under the frustration of their meagre salaries (compared to private sector) and relatively limited perks (that's part of why plenty of them are on the take.) So this sort of thing is their compensation. They can't turn up in their own 400-ft yacht like Bezos, but they can get government expenses to pay for a massive, fuck-off, showy convoy that will disrupt the traffic. It's a crass powerplay, but you can hardly miss the symbolism that even the US second-string gets a far bigger entourage than other countries' presidents and PMs.
And deep down, you know that for at least some, it works: there are a load of other politicians who are envious. They just get a seat in first class (some of their team are probably in business or cattle class) and a Merc or BMW.
I said that before the Pretti shooting and the entire homes without warrants memo was public.
You don't understand due process and you didn't understand that immigration judges aren't in the judicial branch.
Its why I don't entirely agree with the common idea that politicians are just in it for the money. If money was your goal then there are far faster ways to get it with far less stress and far more generous hours. Had it been just about the money then they would have gone to the private sector.
Of course there is also the situation where already rich people go into, or influence politics to protect the wealth they achieved, or to expand it not due to the sallery but with plots to abuse their office. Trump being the most glaringly obvious example.
And after they'd deported over a hundred people, many of whom were innocent and in the country legally, to a foreign torture facility.
I understand it better than you; you opined endlessly that certain people weren't entitled to fairly basic protections, until even tstorm corrected you.
Yes, a fairly understandable mistake from the point of view of a non-American, and one that I immediately acknowledged.
No they weren't. Due process just means you are due the process you are due. Depending on what law is being referenced depends on the process you are due.
Not so in American jurisprudence.
This is a unique new variation of the classic "Republicans are all evil, but they fail at doing the evil things too much because they are also incompetent." It's fun, cause you take two ways of looking down on your opposition and combine them, and it averages out to explaining why it might look like neither is true!
So your belief is that Trump planned enormous tariffs to mug other countries (even though I guarantee you'd be saying that it's really Americans paying them out of the other side of your mouth) which you believe would ultimately be stupid and ruinous for the US, but he was simultaneously too much of a coward to follow through, and it just so happens that those two separate personal failings, stupidity and cowardice, average out to roughly the same situation as neither being the case, allowing you to cleverly mock him for both even if everything works out fine in the end. Forgive me if I see that as a bit contrived.
The alternative here:
Famed economist advises him to use tariffs as leverage to bring countries to the table and lower trade barriers.
Trump shortly after speaking with said economist, says in his 2016 that he "will use every lawful presidential power to remedy trade disputes, including the application of tariffs."
Then he pitched very large sweeping tariffs.
Then pretty much the entire globe showed up at the negotiating table.
Then he pulled back on a ton of the tariffs.
Then Art Laffer wrote an op-ed about how the tariffs could create an end result with more free trade.
Do you see how each step is perfectly consistent with the previous? Hey look, the man who said he would use tariffs to solve trade disputes before he was even president put on tariffs that he is taking down as trade agreements are reached. And the guy who advised him to do so is writing about how he wants the tariffs to end with fewer trade barriers globally. It's all entirely consistent. I don't have to invent one wild theory to justify why the other wild theory didn't play out as expected.
I sincerely hope Phoenix counterpoints the dozens if not hundreds of posts I have explaining how wrong you are about this general topic.
No sane person would use you as a source for anything... so yeah, Phoenixmgs probably would.
First President to ever shit himself on live television Donald Trump warns Canada that China would cancel hockey... somehow.
Trump threatens to block opening of US-Canada bridge
The White House has reiterated its demands, even after a 'positive' call between Trump and Mark Carney.
www.bbc.com
He's big mad that Canada paid for and built a bridge across the border without
Reminder: The NHL is based in the United States, and therefore the Stanley Cup cannot be terminated by anything done by or to Canada. But why let facts get in the way of an incompetent, incontinent moron spewing shit from both ends?
Huh, I thought that was satire at first. So hard to tell these days.First President to ever shit himself on live television Donald Trump warns Canada that China would cancel hockey... somehow.
Trump threatens to block opening of US-Canada bridge
The White House has reiterated its demands, even after a 'positive' call between Trump and Mark Carney.
He's big mad that Canada paid for and built a bridge across the border withoutgiving him a payoffusing enough US materials and threatened to block its opening, and then went off on a rant about how "The first thing China will do is terminate ALL Ice Hockey being played in Canada, and permanently eliminate The Stanley Cup".
Reminder: The NHL is based in the United States, and therefore the Stanley Cup cannot be terminated by anything done by or to Canada. But why let facts get in the way of an incompetent, incontinent moron spewing shit from both ends?
Do you mean to say 'Sartre - "God is dead"'?
(Sorry, terrible nerdy joke was irresistible)
Obviously. Yet federal court found that these people had been denied the process they were due. And you argued at the time that they weren't entitled to 'due process' at all.
One of the hundreds of posts in which you argue this general topic, before resorting to petty snipes when you inevitably face a point to which you have no substantial reply.
Its hardly notable if you disagree with me on it. You'd be expected to adopt whatever position absolves the Republican Party. But if you disagree with someone else who also supports what they're doing, it probably indicates their position is untenable even within their own political stripe. As was the case with the idea that these people aren't entitled to due process at all.
I think Republicans are perfectly capable of being both evil and competent enough to succeed, and they're not even always evil. It's Trump where things more go astray.
Sure, a lot of things look consistent when you miss out the inconsistencies.
Laffer has a plan to drive more free trade via tariffs. The idea of reciprocal tariffs would be carefully targetted long-term tariffs that persuade a country to reconsider their tariffs and conclude a freer trade treaty. This makes sense.
But what Trump enacted isn't really what Laffer put forward, and nor the way he talked about it. Massively disproportionate, clumsy tariffs that threaten to derail your own economy such that you'll be forced to drop them in a few weeks anyway? No wonder Laffer's response at the time amounts to "WTF???" Sure, Trump might have made some foreign leaders pick up the phone, but where's the actual result - the trade treaty at the end?
Laffer thinks like an economist, but Trump thinks like a mob boss. When Trump heard Laffer's plan, what his mob boss brain took from it is that the USA could just threaten other countries into giving him goodies, and so that's what he tried. That is after all consistent with what Trump does.
And we can see where this going already. Countries are moving towards trade deals... just they're rushing to everyone else but the USA because who wants exposure to a major trade partner that behaves like that? Trump is playing a major role in tipping the UK back towards the EU, the EU has signed a major deal with India, and pretty much everyone (Canada, EU, UK) is reappraising China with a view to more openness. One can credit Trump with decisively refreshing the global order. It's just he was supposed to do it in the USA's best interest.
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