Schmoozing the super-rich to fund a $300m ballroom while cutting food aid for those on low incomes threw the president’s architectural folly into sharp relief
It was a feast fit for a king – and any billionaire willing to be his subject. From gold-rimmed plates on gold-patterned tablecloths decorated with gold candlestick holders, they gorged on heirloom tomato panzanella salad, beef wellington and a dessert of roasted Anjou pears, cinnamon crumble and butterscotch ice-cream.
On 15 October, Donald Trump welcomed nearly 130 deep-pocketed donors, allies and representatives of major companies for a dinner at the White House to reward them for their pledged contributions to a vast new ballroom now expected to cost $300m. That the federal government had shut down two weeks earlier scarcely seemed to matter.
But two weeks later, the shutdown is starting to bite – and throw Trump’s architectural folly into sharp relief. On Saturday, with Congress still locked in a legislative stalemate, a potential benefit freeze could leave tens of millions of low-income Americans without food aid. Democrats accuse Trump’s Republican party of “weaponising hunger” to pursue an extreme rightwing agenda.
I hope that garbage PoS is still alive to see all of it torn down. Preferably from a view behind bars with the rest of the Nazi Party, I mean, the GOP.
he’s going to pay a lot of money to be one of the first digital-immortal AIs and there will be debates about the ethics of torturing his AI model
What a way to make money! “Download a copy of Trump’s consciousness today and do whatever you want with it!”
(I will be opposed but it’ll be a hard sell)
organize mass strikes and strike funds for those in need, connect with your neighbors, stop this gestapo poop
It’s his boyhood fantasy to pretend to be a king. It’s too bad no one told him that coward kings like him never ended well.
His sons absolutely seem the type to hire assassins on each other over succession. Fortunately he doesn’t seem to care that much about any of them
Does anyone have a link to the complete guest list of this recent schmooze a palooza?
Someone should forward a copy of that list to Luigi…
The American people are allowing themselves to be embarrassed daily by this man. This can all end as soon as the American people decide to end it.
Hi, American here. I decided to end it. It doesn’t seem to be ending. Now what?
Please enlighten me to this silver bullet action item that I can take to end this. I’m showing up to protests, I’m calling my representatives. It’s not working.
You are a single person within the US. They are saying “the American people” which is to say that the collection of people made up of the general population of the US must decide to stop this nonsense.
That means that all of you need to finally stop chasing centrists, stop voting for fascists, etc. We aren’t stupid, we know that there are people trying, but “the American people” is a group still that includes tens of millions of nazis and tens of millions of people who don’t even vote because they’re ignorant of what’s going on.
That means that all of you need to finally stop chasing centrists, stop voting for fascists, etc.
And start working cooperatively together towards that common goal, rather than stubbornly insisting in being a bunch of “rugged individuals”.
The bullets don’t have to be silver. The GOP aren’t werewolves.
What have you done?
Its called revolt. By the point Americans have reached, many countries would be in full revolt. By the time Americans realize that revolt is their only option the army will be setup in their cities and bought and paid for by the oligarchy. The good soldiers will be removed from the army and they will have no protectors to stand with them.
Ah yes the classic 'why don’t you just go die in a war" argument.
And as always the one suggesting it either doesn’t live in the country or they have some reason they can’t start it themselves. It’s always easier to tell others to go die
Were telling you that because if you don’t do it, we will be the ones dying in ww3 bailing your asses out
No one is coming to bail us out of fascism. The only country with enough military power to oppose us on our own soil is China, and that is diametrically opposed to their historical stance on foreign policy.
You’ll do well to shore up your own Democracies against the tide of foreign-backed propaganda and billionaire oligarchs.
I share a border with you, so no
Yes of course, and the 3rd Reich will reign for 1000 years. The USA is unbeatable!
I think you are misreading my tone. I’m not proud or excited about the changes in the US; I’m just stating a fact about the size and capacity of our existing military.
I don’t know if you’re Canadian or Mexican, but the two countries combined only have a little over a quarter of the number of military personnel of the US. Population-wise, the two countries have about half the population of the US, which, while it’s more competitive than current enlisted numbers, still limits your total military size and more importantly, your industrial production of military equipment (presuming the war drags on long enough for all sides to have time to ramp up).
China has more bodies to throw at us and a vastly deeper reserve of production capacity. They also are one of the few countries to already have their own military industry (equipment wholly divorced from the US supply chain and manufacturers). Demographically, all of Europe acting together might have a chance, but they consistently fail to act as a unit and they are aging faster than the US.
Anyway, all of this is justification for a quip which was not my main point. My main point is that the US will have to get itself out of this. Though, I did issue a plea somewhere else for certain countries to perform extrajudicial renditions of their malevolent billionaires that got exported here. That would help us.
Even then I’m pretty sure China would probably stall out at the West Coast at best. Fact of the matter is most of their shit is purely on paper, they haven’t fought in a war since like Vietnam so they have effectively no institutions when it comes to hands on shit.
If ww3 happens to the tune of the US collapsing, there’s good odds it ends in a nuclear wasteland. There are too many religious nut jobs in power that probably believe nuking new York City means Jesus will come back or something.
Ok, and?
Many countries are smaller than most of our states. Many countries’ governments are not as well physically insulted from their populace. There are multiple bunkers with secret locations for them to hide in. We also have the small problem of the fascists actually having a fairly large following still. They are about to get hungry at the time of year they are accustomed to enjoying a little excess while the man they worship is wallowing in opulence. Maybe it will anger them enough to work with the rest of us, but I don’t know, because their king appeals to their hatefulness, pettiness and greediness.
We have no leaders. Plenty of us are ready to fight. Armed, practiced and willing, but brother I am not a tactician and I certainly don’t have the charisma to rally up the resistance. We are also nearly all less than a paycheck away from joining the people about to lose their welfare in destitution. Mighty hard to start the revolution when work starts at 6:30 and you gotta provide for your family. So for now we wait.
Ah well. That solves it then
The only bottom-up revolts ever in history have been when the masses were literally starving. Anything else was elite driven.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circulation_of_elites?wprov=sfti1
Revolt looks different these days… we’ve had one example… other examples could look like that or different. What they will all have in common is that the grossly unequal will begin to fear that their lifestyle is not so sustainable or tolerable as everyone else suffers.
Meaning, what? The GOP controls Congress, the courts and the WH.
ThEy JuSt LeT hIm GeT aWaY wItH iT.
I’m so tired of this short-sighted take.
You are actively letting them get away with it.
Ignorant comment. Fuck America, but not from your perspective. It is deplorable, but the people have been cultivated to be ignorant and malleable. It’s deeply flawed, but it’s system is rigged to beat everyone down and break their collective will.
Those of us who stand up are divided constantly. We’re undermined at every turn. We are marginalized for speaking the truth. Our spirits are broken by the weight of ineffectiveness sold to us as Democracy.
American Exceptionalism is taught from birth and is fully unfounded. There was a time decades ago when the national anthem would give me goosebumps, but now I know that was not excitement. It was subconscious fear of something yet to emerge.
You obviously don’t live here. This is my personal resounding “fuck you” while completely mirroring your words. You have no inkling of which you speak. What you would have us do is nigh impossible.
Our only hope is that a unifying event will de-polarize our population and unify our resolve.
While we stand divided we shall fall united.
I guess I have a bit more faith in the American people than you.
It’s probably easier to have faith in the American people when you aren’t surrounded by American people. Those of us who live here know better than to expect much from the brainwashed.
They’re not even get grifted by the Monorail guy from the Simpsons, they get grifted by a fat, stupid pedophile that shits his pants. Crayy
Au contraire
It doesn’t take “people”
Just one person who loves beautiful WWII Italian music
Bella ciao, baby.
I want to have so much hope and optimism going into the mid-terms next year. But, even those hopes and dreams have been dashed simply because of how unwilling and defeatist a lot of Americans are to doing anything that’s happening infront of them.
We just sit there and take the rape.
I get second hand embarrassment from the lack of spine in the everyday American. I thought they’d care about democracy. I was very much wrong.
I didn’t think the people propping up this administration ever cared about democracy but I didn’t think they’d cheer for themselves being cuked multiple times a day by the wealthy elite who are spitting down at them from the literal palace trump is building on top of the corpose of the home of the American people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_embarrassment
Finally! I had no idea we did have this term in the English language!
We should upgrade it… I feel Entromped! Or she makes me Tromparrased!
People are successfully resisting armored gunmen with sheer numbers and their bare hands. Perhaps it is you who is uninformed.
Some folks don’t even know they’re just mirroring mainstream u.s. media lies. Folks think they’re too smart to gaslight or can’t think outside a stereotype or empathize with a different logistics set.
But also did anyone get sniped on Jan 6? But also is a non whitenationalist crowd going to get the same treatment?
A prayer for the bailfunds and the civil rights lawyers.
Democracy is when we’re allowed to own guns.
So to them it’s all in the green.
Til you tell them why they’re allowed to have guns. Then they put them back in the safe again, no one wants to actually use their guns for that reason, even if that reason is very much in play, at this very moment. I’m very disappointed in the American people.
Maybe he should say, “let them eat cake”
Let them eat big macs.
I hope Trump’s “Let them eat bread” moment comes soon
Just out of curiosity, in this fantasy scenario does the military:
a) unanimously decides to join the “anty-Trump” movement and overseas peaceful transition of power
b) watches idly while ICE and secret service massacres protesters
c) splits into pro and anti Trump factions and starts civil war
?
I know a lot of people in the military. If you were on the inside, you’d see a lot of sudden, mostly innocuous incompetence, because the last thing most people in the military want to hear is someone telling them how to do their job. Couple that with most people in the military being relatively sane, and I’d bet you’ll start to see operations get canceled or failed or reschedule due to all sorts of “oopsies”.
The modern military has never had to deal with an insurrectionist in the oval office though, so who knows, but I don’t think you’d see open rebellion from the armed forces, just epic sandbagging.
Caveat: This doesn’t count any private armies the assholes in charge raise up, like how they’re trying to turn ICE into their own Einsatzgruppen. those won’t be staffed with military or ex military, they’ll primarily be disaffected, uneducated young men they can control almost exclusively via propaganda.
If ICE ever started a shooting skirmish with a deployment of the National Guard, they’d have difficulty identifying the ICE member’s bodies afterwards. Military units have discipline, but if they get fired on, all bets are off.
That’s an interesting idea. 54-58% of military voted for Trump. So you think that half of the army would just sit there while the other half blocked their deployment or do you think that by the time people rise against Trump most of the military will stop supporting him?
They won’t stop supporting him, but most of those trumpers are enlisted. The officers overwhelmingly don’t support him, and we don’t generally tell the enlisted why we are telling them to do something.
Edit: also those same officers have been sandbagging him all year. The fact that no one is noticing just tells me how few of y’all have military experience.
Great, so they will keep sandbagging him while ICE and police massacre protesters.
BTW, I did noticed that when Trump ordered the navy to bomb fishing boats one officer resigned and the bombings continued.
I left the officers cadre over a decade ago, so I don’t know what the current discussions are. The military doesn’t like to move without the people as a general rule, we know that y’all outnumber us by more than enough to make us stop.
I suspect that many of the officers are just waiting for Trump to invite the people, at which point things star moving fast. We don’t like fast. Marines tend to break shit when they’re going fast.
I’m sure if you break that down by branch you’ll see it line up mostly by education. The Air Force has a lot less maga in it than the Marines, for example.
Same goes for the Officers vs Enlisted in every branch
I’m still convinced that “The Ball Room” is actually the name of the strip club he’s buidling there in the East Wing rather than anything else.
It clearly satisfies his gold toilet fetish
NORMALLY this would get me to Maybe Note Possibly vote Republican NEXT election BUT he’s ALSO Kidnapping Children AND defending Child Sex Traffickers so REPUBLICAN TIL I DIE! Which might be Soon because I have no SNAP and no Healthcare anymore!
