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Comment by breadwinner | Hacker News Reader

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He also sued The Des Moines Register because they released a poll that he did not like [1]. It is sad that people defend this.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/17/us/politics/trump-sues-de...

Colbert was almost certainly on track to be cancelled anyways. The program was tremendously expensive and was losing boatloads of money. I don't know if Trump accelerated the cancellation or not, but the writing was on the wall.

Indeed, it was just a smart move by Viacom/whatever to curry some favor with Trump by doing it now instead of waiting for another time, figuring that favor would be more valuable than the bad PR they earned. Probably a good bet since with the mergers (including the one they themselves were supposedly trying to push across the finish line) it's impractical to hold grudges for long. With only a few oligarchic firms in each industry you can't practically boycott more than maybe one at a time, and they all do shady stuff.

It's exactly the problem that currying favor with the President is a smart move for businesses.

Turns out Ajit Pai was actually a visionary who saw the political writing on the wall. He attempted to dismantle the agency to a point where it couldn't do anything and by not being able to do anything it couldn't be used for evil and wasn't worth corrupting. It was a long con to get the FCC to survive the 2020s. If only we had listened to him. (This is satire)

Sure it is. But he was elected with everyone fully knowing that's what he does. Including the popular vote, remember that. Including improving his margins with Hispanic voters and Black voters compared to 2016. [1]

I don't like Trump and I think 80% of his policies seem like those of an immature child. But also, this is what the public wanted when presented with the two choices of this, and Harris, who was the weakest major-party candidate in history. The DNC couldn't literally couldn't beat this guy.

Anyone complaining that Trump should be impeached or should never have been elected should, in my opinion, admit to not believing in democracy. (Which IMHO is fine, but I don't think people are admitting that to themselves.)

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patte...

You're saying that believing in democracy means believing in electoral dictatorship: whoever is elected president can do whatever they want. But that isn't supposed to be the U.S. form of government. In fact such a form of government would obviously be self-defeating: the first dictator elected would use his unlimited power to prevent anyone else from being elected.

Today's AstralCodexTen is very relevant: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/defining-defending-democrac....

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