I think it's fairly straightforward, and has to do with Trump being who he is, rather than with any vision of strategy that would benefit the USA.
- Trump likes to think of himself as a King. He has no fundamental interest in the future of the USA.
- He is a bully, so he likes to bully those he can.
- He is a coward, so he sucks up to those he considers to be 'strong man' dictators e.g. Putin, Xi.
- He would like to be a 'strong man' dictator: he admires what he imagines those two leaders have constructed in their own countries and has no principled objection to their dictatorships.
- Being an authoritarian populist, he actively - if erratically - hopes to undermine democratic states which, oddly enough, have generally tended to be US allies.
- He is weak, and believes he and the US are not able to stand up to China.
- He is incredibly lazy, and so is not interested in trying to stand up to China.
- He is stupid and incurious and so surrounds himself with people who tell him what he wants to hear, and sidelines those who tell him uncomfortable truths or suggest courses of action which are hard and require effort and diplomacy.
- He is insatiably greedy, and so is always on the lookout to make money for himself and his family, even at the expense of his country.
what is the bafflement? There are 2 likely rationales.
1. He is nuts and is destroying the American Empire. I used to say the GB 2 going into Iraq was the worst policy decision in 50 years. Well Trump 2 is like those videos of controlled explosions that bring tall buildings down only this time its the USA and its post WW II order
or
2. He is the Manchurian Candidate working for some combo of Putin and Xi
please give me an alternative. He is a little like Gollum in LOTR, who went mad also over the ring of power. He seems to have an increasing feed back loop of narcissism and greed that is Epic. epic like the great tales of Greek, Roman, Norse gods. Nero while Rome burns?
The alternative is in plain sight. It's written in Project 2025 and has been publicly named by the neofascist tech billionaires financing the GOP today: to destroy all democracies and transform the world into a handful of big, neofascist empires.
yes, there are puppets and puppet masters. though a puppet can come to life and exercise agency in rare occasions. yes, he has implemented Project 2025 and we were warned before the election and chose to not believe something so outrageous would actually be implemented. There are movies and books about AI ish robots etc that either act out evilly under control or breakout from control and act evilly. Not sure what we have here. Maybe a hybrid.
No, just a convicted criminal who's also an insurrectionist and who knows that as soon as he doesn't obey the GOP leadership and its neofascist billionaires anymore, he may be sent to jail. If he does obey, however, he gets all the money and fame he wants. And that's all he ever wanted in the first place.
Half of the senior staff in the WH are coming from the Heritage Foundation (= architect of Project 2025, which itself was created in collaboration with Viktor Orban's Danube Institute, a Hungarian organization that helps foreign governments with installing fascism). Peter Thiel, who bankrolls Vance's career as a venture capitalist and politician, has been holding public lectures rejecting democracy for almost two decades now.
These are the people writing the executive orders and explaining their content to Trump before he sits there signing them all.
Then a neofascist SC declares it all "constitutional", while Mike Johnson in the House publicly declared that the GOP now sees it as the task of the House to "codify the executive orders signed by the president" - which goes directly against their oath to the Constitution and its separation of the three branches of power, which are supposed to be co-equal, and legislation is supposed to come from negotiations in Congress.
What people still don't seem to get is that the GOP has become a NEOFASCIST PARTY. It's employing Trump as its clown-in-chief, whose sole job is to tweet outrageous stuff to keep us all distracted.
The problem with that statement is that you continue to ignore what the GOP itself has become.
This is NOT the result of some secret cabal, a handful of powerful men pulling the strings behind the scenes. As Kamala Harris repeated, this has been decades in the making. It's the last step in a long transformation of the GOP into a neofascist party.
We urgently need people to understand this rather than imagining that we have to do with a powerless party that became the "victim" of a few bad guys...
Something in my morning reads explains Trump policy on almost any level.
The person he put in charge of the Ebola response has a medical expertise in penis implants and had his own podcast called "The Erection Connection". I assume his foreign policy advisors are equally qualified.
In furtherance of what you wrote, Trump just named Bill Pulte as the acting Director of National Intelligence. His qualifications? He has a degree in broadcast journalism and founded a hedge fund. What more do you need for such a sensitive position?
Based on everything else Trump has done, I think it might be as simple as he is doing what he thinks will get him the most personal bang for his buck. At this point, going soft on China might net the Trump family some investment opportunities or naming rights that could be worth a pretty penny.
trump is repositioning his foreign policy round Latin and Central America, where he can bomb and kill people at will, blowing fishing boats out of the water, deposing heads of government of countries too weak to retaliate, and ultimately to proclaim himself "boss" of all he surveys, in a rewrite of the Monroe Doctrine. Schoolyard bullyism writ large.
The GOP has become a neofascist party. So it supports all fascists out there, from small (Venezuela) to big (Putin and China), and it tries to weaken all democracies out there (starting with NATO and Ukraine). That's how all of this makes perfect sense.
Next step: replacing the UN with a totalitarian "Board of Peace", installed in Gaza once all buildings and its people have been wiped out by Netanyahu.
I could not explain the details, but the situation fairly clearly illustrates how little Trump knows about how the real world functions, and that he doesn't care how studying the available centuries of knowledge for any of the world's cultures gives valuable insight. He seems to believe that bluster alone is enough to run anything, from a casino to a country.
I am no chess master, although I certainly understand how to move the pieces and some basic theory - in Trump's case, I somehow doubt he has any of the skills or knowledge to make even the most basic of chess moves.
You really still believe that Trump is interested in politics and makes his own decisions in the WH... ?
Kamala Harris already showed how false that idea was, during the presidential debate. And even when he was doing his acting for The Apprentice rather than for a neofascist GOP, it's the producers of the show who told him who to fire...
If there is to be a policy putting limits on China, economically and militarily, then the US needs allies. Mr. tDrumpf has been shedding them right and left. That China project can only be restarted with his removal. Can the rest of the world that is affected by China come together to build hand cuffs? The World Wonders.
Trump’s narcissism is his driving force. Everything he does is aimed at ensuring his name will be remembered, whether it is accumulating wealth, putting his name on buildings or trying to rewrite history.
This has been obvious from the early days, with his ghost written hagiography and appearance in “Home Alone”, through his TV show, at the same time he was bankrupting casinos and businesses. “Trump University”?
Everything is an opportunity for grifting and he finds it hard to understand people who do not share this view. 🤡
Great observations about China and how the administration is shockingly realistic this time…. I think it’s good but I really worry that he is going to abandon Taiwan like he is abandoning Europe and NATO. He is not getting anything from his Taiwan bargaining chip is he??
Its simple ,China has the US by economic balls (even though it required a magnifying glass to find them). It has too much stuff the US military needs to build its over priced rubbish and without that the place is a Netflix dystopian disaster series.
Trump, with his assorted billionaire chums traipsing off to Beijing to grovel proves it. As does the fact that grovelling got them nothing at all.
Americans are so dumb they can’t see this , being force fed from the cradle they on B grade propaganda…. as the cretinous commentary from them here, one and all illustrates.
US is coming to grips with the loss of its exalted self-image and going through the multiple stages of grief: denial, anger, panic, …, and finally acceptance. Just be patient.
There's a broader retreat from, well, everywhere. The news today that they're cutting back to only 20 sites issuing visas in Africa (prob Sub-Saharan, but maybe not?), appears to be them conceding that we're no longer competing with China in Africa.
I thought irony had been murdered, buried, dug up, set on fire, pissed on, and buried by this administration. But Pete Hegseth railing about geopolitical drama renewed my faith that no, irony is remarkably robust.
I think it's fairly straightforward, and has to do with Trump being who he is, rather than with any vision of strategy that would benefit the USA.
- Trump likes to think of himself as a King. He has no fundamental interest in the future of the USA.
- He is a bully, so he likes to bully those he can.
- He is a coward, so he sucks up to those he considers to be 'strong man' dictators e.g. Putin, Xi.
- He would like to be a 'strong man' dictator: he admires what he imagines those two leaders have constructed in their own countries and has no principled objection to their dictatorships.
- Being an authoritarian populist, he actively - if erratically - hopes to undermine democratic states which, oddly enough, have generally tended to be US allies.
- He is weak, and believes he and the US are not able to stand up to China.
- He is incredibly lazy, and so is not interested in trying to stand up to China.
- He is stupid and incurious and so surrounds himself with people who tell him what he wants to hear, and sidelines those who tell him uncomfortable truths or suggest courses of action which are hard and require effort and diplomacy.
- He is insatiably greedy, and so is always on the lookout to make money for himself and his family, even at the expense of his country.
what is the bafflement? There are 2 likely rationales.
1. He is nuts and is destroying the American Empire. I used to say the GB 2 going into Iraq was the worst policy decision in 50 years. Well Trump 2 is like those videos of controlled explosions that bring tall buildings down only this time its the USA and its post WW II order
or
2. He is the Manchurian Candidate working for some combo of Putin and Xi
please give me an alternative. He is a little like Gollum in LOTR, who went mad also over the ring of power. He seems to have an increasing feed back loop of narcissism and greed that is Epic. epic like the great tales of Greek, Roman, Norse gods. Nero while Rome burns?
The alternative is in plain sight. It's written in Project 2025 and has been publicly named by the neofascist tech billionaires financing the GOP today: to destroy all democracies and transform the world into a handful of big, neofascist empires.
yes, there are puppets and puppet masters. though a puppet can come to life and exercise agency in rare occasions. yes, he has implemented Project 2025 and we were warned before the election and chose to not believe something so outrageous would actually be implemented. There are movies and books about AI ish robots etc that either act out evilly under control or breakout from control and act evilly. Not sure what we have here. Maybe a hybrid.
No, just a convicted criminal who's also an insurrectionist and who knows that as soon as he doesn't obey the GOP leadership and its neofascist billionaires anymore, he may be sent to jail. If he does obey, however, he gets all the money and fame he wants. And that's all he ever wanted in the first place.
Half of the senior staff in the WH are coming from the Heritage Foundation (= architect of Project 2025, which itself was created in collaboration with Viktor Orban's Danube Institute, a Hungarian organization that helps foreign governments with installing fascism). Peter Thiel, who bankrolls Vance's career as a venture capitalist and politician, has been holding public lectures rejecting democracy for almost two decades now.
These are the people writing the executive orders and explaining their content to Trump before he sits there signing them all.
Then a neofascist SC declares it all "constitutional", while Mike Johnson in the House publicly declared that the GOP now sees it as the task of the House to "codify the executive orders signed by the president" - which goes directly against their oath to the Constitution and its separation of the three branches of power, which are supposed to be co-equal, and legislation is supposed to come from negotiations in Congress.
What people still don't seem to get is that the GOP has become a NEOFASCIST PARTY. It's employing Trump as its clown-in-chief, whose sole job is to tweet outrageous stuff to keep us all distracted.
Yup 🤔
close enough not to bicker. Do not think there is such a thing as GOP leadership; they are puppets too.
puppets of.......??????
not a conspiracy guy but most all politicians are bought and sold. Think PT and his ilk. both sides of the aisle
The problem with that statement is that you continue to ignore what the GOP itself has become.
This is NOT the result of some secret cabal, a handful of powerful men pulling the strings behind the scenes. As Kamala Harris repeated, this has been decades in the making. It's the last step in a long transformation of the GOP into a neofascist party.
We urgently need people to understand this rather than imagining that we have to do with a powerless party that became the "victim" of a few bad guys...
I am done. have a good day
Not him. Peter T
Something in my morning reads explains Trump policy on almost any level.
The person he put in charge of the Ebola response has a medical expertise in penis implants and had his own podcast called "The Erection Connection". I assume his foreign policy advisors are equally qualified.
In furtherance of what you wrote, Trump just named Bill Pulte as the acting Director of National Intelligence. His qualifications? He has a degree in broadcast journalism and founded a hedge fund. What more do you need for such a sensitive position?
Based on everything else Trump has done, I think it might be as simple as he is doing what he thinks will get him the most personal bang for his buck. At this point, going soft on China might net the Trump family some investment opportunities or naming rights that could be worth a pretty penny.
trump is repositioning his foreign policy round Latin and Central America, where he can bomb and kill people at will, blowing fishing boats out of the water, deposing heads of government of countries too weak to retaliate, and ultimately to proclaim himself "boss" of all he surveys, in a rewrite of the Monroe Doctrine. Schoolyard bullyism writ large.
yhe taco guy and his fellow grifters will get nothing soft, if anything from china
The GOP has become a neofascist party. So it supports all fascists out there, from small (Venezuela) to big (Putin and China), and it tries to weaken all democracies out there (starting with NATO and Ukraine). That's how all of this makes perfect sense.
Next step: replacing the UN with a totalitarian "Board of Peace", installed in Gaza once all buildings and its people have been wiped out by Netanyahu.
Trump's actions tell us plenty. He has no serious interest in countering Beijing. Whether that's down to ineptitude or treason is another question.
Thus, countries that the Americans should be allying with to counter the autocratic PRC leadership have to look elsewhere.
https://thediplomat.com/2026/06/philippines-vietnam-upgrade-diplomatic-partnership-amid-maritime-tensions-with-china/
I could not explain the details, but the situation fairly clearly illustrates how little Trump knows about how the real world functions, and that he doesn't care how studying the available centuries of knowledge for any of the world's cultures gives valuable insight. He seems to believe that bluster alone is enough to run anything, from a casino to a country.
I am no chess master, although I certainly understand how to move the pieces and some basic theory - in Trump's case, I somehow doubt he has any of the skills or knowledge to make even the most basic of chess moves.
You really still believe that Trump is interested in politics and makes his own decisions in the WH... ?
Kamala Harris already showed how false that idea was, during the presidential debate. And even when he was doing his acting for The Apprentice rather than for a neofascist GOP, it's the producers of the show who told him who to fire...
If there is to be a policy putting limits on China, economically and militarily, then the US needs allies. Mr. tDrumpf has been shedding them right and left. That China project can only be restarted with his removal. Can the rest of the world that is affected by China come together to build hand cuffs? The World Wonders.
Thank You For Your Attention To This Matter.
Trump’s narcissism is his driving force. Everything he does is aimed at ensuring his name will be remembered, whether it is accumulating wealth, putting his name on buildings or trying to rewrite history.
This has been obvious from the early days, with his ghost written hagiography and appearance in “Home Alone”, through his TV show, at the same time he was bankrupting casinos and businesses. “Trump University”?
Everything is an opportunity for grifting and he finds it hard to understand people who do not share this view. 🤡
Great observations about China and how the administration is shockingly realistic this time…. I think it’s good but I really worry that he is going to abandon Taiwan like he is abandoning Europe and NATO. He is not getting anything from his Taiwan bargaining chip is he??
Its simple ,China has the US by economic balls (even though it required a magnifying glass to find them). It has too much stuff the US military needs to build its over priced rubbish and without that the place is a Netflix dystopian disaster series.
Trump, with his assorted billionaire chums traipsing off to Beijing to grovel proves it. As does the fact that grovelling got them nothing at all.
Americans are so dumb they can’t see this , being force fed from the cradle they on B grade propaganda…. as the cretinous commentary from them here, one and all illustrates.
US is coming to grips with the loss of its exalted self-image and going through the multiple stages of grief: denial, anger, panic, …, and finally acceptance. Just be patient.
Why does the USA need military bases in east Asia?
Consider: if the USA did not now have military bases all across east Asia would it be in the interests of the USA to build them?
There's a broader retreat from, well, everywhere. The news today that they're cutting back to only 20 sites issuing visas in Africa (prob Sub-Saharan, but maybe not?), appears to be them conceding that we're no longer competing with China in Africa.
https://expatriarch.substack.com/p/the-us-has-stopped-competing-with
I thought irony had been murdered, buried, dug up, set on fire, pissed on, and buried by this administration. But Pete Hegseth railing about geopolitical drama renewed my faith that no, irony is remarkably robust.
hegseth is delusioned