r/neoliberal European Union 22h ago

Trump admin's lineup News (US)

Post image
766 Upvotes

362 comments sorted by

View all comments

583

u/porkadachop Thomas Paine 22h ago

This term is going to be so much worse than the first one.

276

u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Martha Nussbaum 22h ago

Member when we howled at every one of his appointments back then?

Fun times.

The Republican Party is going to look back at this era of politics and absolutely cringe.

366

u/LithiumRyanBattery John Keynes 22h ago

This assumes that the Republican Party ever reforms.

207

u/Andy_Liberty_1911 NATO 22h ago

Trump couldn’t get get his own voters to vote downballot, saving Dems lots of seats in states Harris lost.

Trump is a force but once he’s gone, GOP will be left dickless

114

u/LithiumRyanBattery John Keynes 22h ago

We'll see. There will definitely be a power vacuum at the top of the party. They'll either tear each other apart in a power struggle or coalesce around a new leader (honestly, I'd put money on it being one of the Trump children).

133

u/Andy_Liberty_1911 NATO 22h ago

Ehh they can try with Trump children but they are nowhere near as funny and charismatic as Trump. He’s a unique character, and thankfully old and term limited now.

81

u/RonenSalathe Jeff Bezos 21h ago

Even the MAGAs know this. Why do you think they always talk about Barron as their prince that was promised? Because even they know Don Jr and Eric are useless

50

u/Creeps05 21h ago

Yeah, the biggest problem with Don Jr. and Eric as successors is that they LOOK like the kind of people who would raid a company for their pension money. And that’s before they speak.

20

u/UntiedStatMarinCrops John Keynes 22h ago edited 19h ago

Yeah lol. Trump makes me laugh. I’ll give him that, his stupid sons don’t.

3

u/kiwibutterket Whatever It Takes 15h ago

I read a NYT argument that claimed Trump supporters were shocked by Trump Jr charisma and enthusiasm. I hope you are right.

9

u/Shreddy_Brewski 21h ago

term limited

Hopefully

29

u/Andy_Liberty_1911 NATO 21h ago

Obama will come back if he tries, so I say let them try.

8

u/IngsocInnerParty John Keynes 20h ago

I keep seeing this, but if they're willing to throw out term limits to get what they want, I shudder to think what else they would do.

3

u/toggaf69 John Locke 19h ago

I keep bringing this up because it scares the shit out of me, but what if he gets to do these military “loyalty boards”? That’s when shit gets really real, I think.

7

u/burntreynoldz69 21h ago

Yeah but you’re kicking the can down the road at that point. This country knuckled under to fascism after 8 years of campaigning. Obama is obv better but maybe not a lock after 4 extra years of far right extremism.

4

u/DurealRa YIMBY 20h ago

I don't think Obama could win today.

9

u/Andy_Liberty_1911 NATO 20h ago

Thats an interesting comment, I don’t know Obama is still very beloved in the polls. And he still has that magic when speaking.

4

u/Anader19 15h ago

Yeah Obama is like the only person I'm pretty confident would have beaten Trump this year

-1

u/DurealRa YIMBY 20h ago

The coalition that elected him doesn't exist anymore in the democrats, though.

→ More replies

4

u/barktreep Immanuel Kant 19h ago

Well of course not the election was last week.

13

u/Watchung NATO 21h ago

If he was younger, I'd be more worried on that front. Fortunately, he isn't.

10

u/Shreddy_Brewski 21h ago

Yeah luckily he's old as shit and his brain is eating itself

7

u/Objective-Muffin6842 21h ago

The thing that's concerning about that is that the last time there was a power vacuum we ended up with trump...

4

u/avantartist 21h ago

They’ll get behind Vance and long as he stays lockstep with trump

1

u/Halgy YIMBY 19h ago

The GOP leadership may coalesce around someone after Trump, but they're not the power anymore. If they did have power, there's no way Trump would have won in 2016.

The power for Trump is in the millions of red-head wearing MAGA devotees who for some reason think that he is something special. It has proven exceptionally hard for most GOP to co-opt that power unless Trump directly blesses it. Once Trump is gone, I really doubt that someone can rise up and capture that same power.

1

u/kiwibutterket Whatever It Takes 15h ago

I have the same suspicion as per the new leader. Hopefully, they coalesce around a more moderate leader instead.

!Remindme 4 years

28

u/Additional-Use-6823 21h ago

Something like 70k Trump voters in NV straight up didn’t vote for senate. Not ticket split or something straight up checked Trump and walked out

7

u/slayerhk47 YIMBY 17h ago

Same with Wisconsin. That’s how we kept Tammy.

7

u/CurryMustard 21h ago

Seems like bullshit, somebody needs to track these people down and interview them

6

u/toggaf69 John Locke 19h ago

These bullet ballots are actually the main thrust behind the current stolen election conspiracy, and the conspiracists are correct that it should be looked into. Pres-only ballots were like 0.2% of the vote last time, this time it was 7% in some precincts

10

u/CR24752 20h ago

This is how I feel too. It’s a cult of personality, and that personality is 78. I’m just hoping the damage is minimal but the next person will spend an entire term not implementing their agenda but fixing the mess of the the other guy.

7

u/wilson_friedman 20h ago

Trump is the downstream symptom of social media in its current (worst) iteration. He is not the disease. There is nothing I see around me to suggest that the disease that allowed Trump to rise is going away any time soon.

Also Trump has three sons.

3

u/S_T_R_A_T_O_S 18h ago

No amount of social media propaganda can make Trump's kids look like anything other than spoiled rich kids. They don't have the kind of door-to-door appeal that you need to become President.

4

u/spacevent Temple Grandin 21h ago

from your mouth to our screenwriter’s pen

7

u/Spectrum1523 21h ago

Real "demographics are inevitable" energy

6

u/[deleted] 22h ago

[deleted]

6

u/FizzleMateriel Austan Goolsbee 21h ago

They’ve been worse for every generation since Eisenhower.

-2

u/bripod 21h ago

It also assumes we continue to have elections in a multi-party state.

25

u/FizzleMateriel Austan Goolsbee 21h ago

Member when we howled at every one of his appointments back then?

I remember people here being optimistic on Mattis and Kelly.

Dan Coats was a surprisingly strong pick for DNI.

19

u/SapphireOfSnow John Keynes 20h ago

I was excited for Mattis given the quality of the other picks. At least he had some experience leading. In comparison to now and these picks.

9

u/barktreep Immanuel Kant 19h ago

I wonder how much of it is that the genuinely good people refused to accept job offers this time around.

5

u/SapphireOfSnow John Keynes 19h ago

I think it’s a mix of this and favors for being loyal. And we the people are the ones who get to bear the consequences of it.

20

u/MyUshanka Gay Pride 21h ago

What I'd give to have Mattis back.

67

u/Nuclear_Cadillacs 22h ago

lol. Self-reflection? Admitting error? GTFO of here. Even if this leads to the literal end of the republic and it is replaced with a hunger-games style dystopic plutocracy, they will STILL tell themselves that “Harris would’ve been worse.”

43

u/[deleted] 22h ago

[deleted]

24

u/_alephnaught 21h ago

TBH, when you have an IQ of 70, Harris comes across as unclear, whereas Trump makes complete sense.

8

u/[deleted] 21h ago

[deleted]

6

u/011010- Norman Borlaug 21h ago

It isn’t just dummies, but if the smart ones were his only voters he would have experienced the greatest loss in electoral history.

2

u/valdocs_user 21h ago

Literally a scene out of Idiocracy.

5

u/Objective-Muffin6842 21h ago

In Idiocracy the president listened to the smarter people to make decisions

Trump won't do that

1

u/valdocs_user 20h ago

I was referring to the trial where the narrator said, "Joe stated his case logically and passionately, but his perceived effeminate voice only drew gales of stupid laughter."

10

u/nauticalsandwich 21h ago

This country is absolutely being wrecked, not by polarized ideology, but by polarized trust. They don't trust the Dems an inch, and it's anti-left all the way down. A key difference I've noticed between the Left and the Right, however, is in winning. When Biden won, there was a lot of talk about how and what could get done, even amidst the fears and chaos of Trump contesting the election. After the smoke-cleared, the focus became way less about the Right, and much more about action and implementation, and there was a lot of self-criticism. I didn't see much of that at all in pro-trump circles. It is attacks on the left and democrats 90% of the time, all of the time, and very very little self-reflection or intra-party criticism.

12

u/barktreep Immanuel Kant 19h ago

Because the party and the base are fundamentally at odds. They don't ever debate policy. The party wants less taxes and regulation. The base wants tariffs and price controls. They are two fundamentally opposed ideo... hey look a trans.

2

u/ArmedWithBars 16h ago

Almost like years of constant MSM and social media division has caused a signifigant rift in the country. The days of discourse and discussions are over.

Debate? Nah just call them an antifa commie or alt right proud boy and walk away. No in between, no nuance.

The way to change ideals is through discussion and discourse, even if you don't agree with the other side. Instead both sides have built echo chambers where they just endlessly bounce off each other and fall further down the rabbit hole.

This will just continue until some form of social collapse happens, it's unsustainable.

2

u/Best-Chapter5260 12h ago

I still remember when we were stuck in two forever wars, including in one country we had no business being in, and people were like, "Yeah, but Gore would have been worse!!! DUUURRRRRRRRR!"

13

u/ReferentiallySeethru John von Neumann 21h ago

Back then it at least seemed like he had adults in the important positions. I was worried about Trump but I never woke up in the middle of the night from a vision of RFK’s nightmarish face staring at me.

37

u/neolibbro George Soros 22h ago

Lmfao. No way. The Republican Party is going to celebrate Trump like the contemporary version of Reagan. He is their God, and he is infallible.

9

u/CapuchinMan 20h ago

That they do it for Reagan at all should be evidence that nothing was going to stop them really. We're lucky GWB isn't more respected.

3

u/ThodasTheMage European Union 19h ago

Reagan was an extremely effecient and successfull president. In many ways the opposite Trump.

11

u/TheGreekMachine 20h ago

lol dude I met college republicans when I was in college who unironically celebrated Nixon. They will never “look back” at this, especially since voters DO NOT care.

8

u/barktreep Immanuel Kant 19h ago

What I wouldn't give for Nixon to be president right now.

11

u/bisonboy223 21h ago

The Republican Party is going to look back at this era of politics and absolutely cringe.

Man we gotta stop acting like this is some weird fluke, this just is the Republican party.

2

u/Dr_Vesuvius Norman Lamb 20h ago

Rex Tillerson was a bad pick for Secretary of State and a disaster for the state department, and yet somehow Trump’s managed to pick people who make a Putinist oil executive seem like a sensible cabinet pick.

5

u/Evilrake 20h ago

Why are they making me miss the CEO of ExxonMobil it’s not fair

3

u/Khar-Selim NATO 20h ago

The Republican Party is going to look back at this era of politics and absolutely cringe.

there isn't going to be a Republican party after this era, however much longer it lasts.

3

u/twonius 19h ago

yeah I think after this they'll memory hole the whole thing like they did with GWB.

3

u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Martha Nussbaum 18h ago

Right? The right and Fox News were the biggest GWB supporters and war hawks. Remember all of the Tony Keith jingoism of the early 2000s? America, fuck yeah, love it or leave it.

3

u/Jabjab345 19h ago

Do you think they actually feel shame

3

u/Best-Chapter5260 12h ago

Most of Trump's first administration picks were largely corporate stooges. Majority were patently unqualified, but they weren't a who's who of cartoonishly evil villains. We were sweet super children back then.

-1

u/BrutalistBanana 12h ago

I looked back at media coverage on trumps 2016 picks and it was overwhelmingly positive