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Comment by cozzyd | Hacker News Reader

It's a power he has, of course he's going to exercise it, just like a toddler presses all the buttons on the elevator.

What if you're wrong? What if the apparently irrational behaviour hides a well planned policy that has desirable outcomes for someone?

It’s not like we haven’t already had experience with his actions. We went through that discovery process from 2016-2020 already

So the argument is that there may be some secret super compelling justification that for some reason can't be articulated, and, against all odds, hasn't been leaked, despite being telegraphed for months? Yeah, that's not plausible at all.

IMO the tariff on Canada is purely because they are in free trade with Mexico and without Canada imposing the same tariff on mex, the US must impose the same on Canada or they become trivially an import proxy to bypass our tariffs on Mexico.

What the US really wants imo is for Canada to tariff Mexico so we can remove the Canada tariff without undermining the Mexican one. Pretty much guarantee we'll see Trump pushing Canada to do that in the upcoming negotiations.

Yet, rather than saying that, Trump is implying that he wants Canada to be a US state. Whether or not he means that, US-Canada relations will be irreparably harmed for a long time.

Pretty sure Trump doesn't actually want that. If Canada became a US state, it would add two US Senators, and several US Representatives. Those new members of the US Congress would be likely to not be Republicans.

Mind you, I don't know if Trump has thought that far. But "own Canada, but good bye ruling majority"? I'm not sure he really wants that.

Which of course, is the opposite of what just happened - Trump just delayed the Mexican tariff implementation. Sounds like he's more interested in punishing Canada than punishing Mexico.

I suppose it's possible that Trump is playing 4D chess and somehow this is going to all work out great, but it sure doesn't seem that way.

Obviously I don't have access to Donald Trump's brain, so I am only able to judge things from how they are. How they are, at least right now, seems to indicate a completely economically illiterate person.

I didn't write that the goal is for this to work out great for you or for anyone you know. It is just that ways and means are clearly being applied, with literacy, towards goals.

Yeah, especially the ones colored red, which are also usually on the bottom row.

I mean, sure, but it's still completely frustrating to me.

It's especially frustrating that these people are always looking for secret "codes" being spelled out by politicians, instead of actually listening to anything they actually say. I saw a meme recently that said Trump was wearing a purple tie to signify unity between Republicans and Democrats, despite the fact that Trump spent the entire talk complaining about Democrats.

It's infuriating, and it's worse than "stupid", it's outright dishonesty on their end.

the point behind the "firehose" disformation strategy is to keep a constant, unceasing stream of that BS going all the time.

often it doesn't even involve making stuff up -- just let the rubes spew dumb ideas via social media and run some mild repost bots.

the point is that there is so much dumb stuff any real, valuable speculation gets lost in the noise, and correct (if only semi-credible) discussion gets drowned out by other bits.

Maybe it’s me, but I’ve seen a general uptick in people trying to discern meaning from meaningless drivel over the years. Not to make light of the current situation, but I recall people reading tea leaves trying to divine that Rockstar would make some significant GTA6 announcement on December 27th.

> I recall people reading tea leaves trying to divine that Rockstar would make some significant GTA6 announcement on December 27th

Good ol' "U R MR GAY" strikes again.

"The bear is sticky"

Oh I hear you, and it drives me crazy for that stuff too.

It's not exclusive to conservatives, I know plenty of left-leaning people who do dumb stuff like this too, but it does seem to have become the identity of the party after Trump took over.

Toddlers?

Not all the buttons, famously (in many puzzles) just the ones they can reach.

> It's a power he has, I̶'̶d̶ [of] course he's going to exercise it,

Dang? Surely not!

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