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Their goal is to stay in power at all costs. Again, they themselves have stated this plainly enough.
If there is collateral damage to the American people as a consequence of their ambition, well, that's a sacrifice they are willing to make.
How, then, do you explain their frequent retreat, e.g. on ICE, on tariffs, etc.?
I think they are pushing very very hard on many fronts, but even they are limited by what Americans will allow and we see it as they fret and adjust when there’s strong pushback.
But that doesn't change their goal. They have openly stated what they want, the fact that courts have sometimes intervened or that fig leaves have been given doesn't change the long-term goal.
Were they retreating on ICE when they said they want them at polling stations? It seems like an escalation to me.
OK, let's assume that.
Goal is one thing. How far they're willing and able to go (and hence be effective in getting that goal) is a different matter. That's my argument.
The current adminitration has shown that their ego (adoration) is a limiting factor in what they're willing to do for power.
To wit, top Republicans warn GOP will face midterm election ‘bloodbath’. Why bother caring? Is it just political theater?
“He boasted that he had accomplished so much that ‘when you think of it, we shouldn't even have an election.‘“
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/five-takeaways-reuters-inte...
The president expressed frustration that his Republican Party could lose control of the U.S. House of Representatives or the Senate in this year’s midterm elections, citing historical trends that have seen the party in power lose seats in the second year of a presidency.
“It's some deep psychological thing, but when you win the presidency, you don't win the midterms,” Trump said. He boasted that he had accomplished so much that “when you think of it, we shouldn't even have an election.”
There's a difference between what he believes or wishes for and what you know the reality. He is self-aware enough to know that Americans will only put up with so much. When you look at his rhetoric in totality and actions, you quickly realize he is paying attention to where the voter is and knows that he cannot do just whatever he wants, no matter what he might wish for.
We're debating two different things. I'm arguing that the adminstration's goal is not to get absolute power no matter the cost. The thread started because I pushed back agains the assertion that the administration is willing to inflict unlimited pain on Americans (no electricity, no water) to get and maintain power. The evidence points in the other direction.
You, and others, have latched narrowly on "goal".
The assertion was that the administration is ok with collateral damage that might further their stated goals. Did anyone use the term "unlimited pain on Americans" or just you?
You latched narrowly on "American who depends on running water, electricity" and turned it into them doing things "no matter the cost." Nobody was making that argument. The entire country doesn't even run on the same water or electricity services. It's a made up scenario you created to paint the people using the President's own words as overreacting.
You haven't done anything to cast doubt on this premise. The administration has already taken drastic action that inflicts pain on Americans (unconstitutional searches and detentions, tariffs, disabling or dismantling important agencies) in the name of the keeping power. It's not hard to imagine that they are willing to continue to inflict pain on Americans. If you're quibbling about whether that pain can be "unlimited," I would argue that yes, it can be, insofar as that pain doesn't stop them from getting power.
I can hedge this by saying that Trump still needs some support from the American people, as I described in another comment. In particular, he needs support of wealthy donors and local officials, and especially in purple states. But he has proven he will hurt people in solidly blue states [1] [2] because he's already decided he doesn't need them.
Concrete example: would Trump turn off the entire electrical grid? Yes, if he thought it would help him. Whether it helps him depends on weighing the pain that it causes his supporters against its benefits.
In other words: yes, he is willing to inflict unlimited pain, including for utterly petty reasons, but not if he thinks it will stop him from holding power.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/climate/wind-solar-projec... [2] https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/gateway-tunnel-project-...
You mean, they know they need to be voted in! I.e. elections.
They know that they don't need to legitimately win elections to stay in power. All they need to do is keep the support of their base sufficiently to prevent any investigation into their election manipulation. They've already lost the good will of the majority, so they have to find a way to win with a minority.
That means placating their wealthy supporters with giveaways, i.e. the recent NLRB decision that conveniently solves Elon Musk's union problem. [1]
That means helping pliant local officials stay in power, by gerrymandering among other methods.
That means maintaining the support of ICE, who have proven themselves able to use violence against critics of the administration.
[1] https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/nlrb-dismisses-spacex-c...
No need to assume, they have explicitly stated it!
> To wit, top Republicans warn GOP will face midterm election ‘bloodbath’. Why bother caring?
This isn't about "Top Republicans," it is about the administration. The same administration that is actively trying to nationalize elections to prevent that bloodbath.
Secondly, is it conceivable that Republicans fearing an electoral bloodbath would make them more likely to support aggressive election interference (ICE a polling stations, new election laws, Federal takeover of elections, re-litigating 2020 Georgia results)?
> No need to assume, they have explicitly stated it!
Really honest question... can you point us to that explicit statement?
The Trump administration's official executive orders and fact sheets repeatedly state their goal is to have "free, fair, and honest elections".
They have specific policy proposals around voter ID, citizenship verification, and election integrity measures.
I will concede that what they think is free and fair, others might not, like legal ID requirement, so that's a requirement reasonable people can disagree on.
But I do think, but am very open to be proven wrong, that they explicitly state that they want to do away with free elections.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/pres...
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-pr...
Yes, right here:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/five-takeaways-reuters-inte...
> “I won’t say cancel the election, they should cancel the election...”
> "You Won't Have to Vote Anymore"
> "The Republicans should say: 'We want to take over. We should take over the voting in at least 15 places.' The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,"
To argue against myself, one could take it at face value. If you do, then you are saying you are near 100% confident that's the goal in which case you ought to do something about it. The lack of more urgency or extreme counter action suggests to me that not enough people truly think that that is fact the goal.
You could maybe accuse me of being naïvely hopeful.
I'm not sure what you're looking for here. Would you like a White House memorandum on official letterhead saying "How We'll Steal the Election"?
A fish rots from the head. The president has made his position clear, and his enablers will work to realize his vision.
If you're looking for concrete steps they've taken to undermine elections, you can see the recent blatantly unconstitutional seizing of Fulton County's voter records [1]. Or any of the illegal and coercive actions taken by the president and his minions between Nov 6, 2019 and Jan 20, 2020. As well as the blanker pardoning of many criminals who helped him in that endeavor.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2026/02/10/nx-s1-5710649/fulton-county-2...
One the other side, we have many historical examples of authoritarians claiming elections to be free and fair in order to cement power. The rest of the world knows Putin isn't receiving 88.5% of the vote in a free and fair election. Stalin and Mussolini also held elections. None were free, fair, or honest and that is the entire point.
> Politicians say lots of things to get elected, or to troll, or symptoms of senility, etc.
Why ask for the statements in the first place if they don't matter and can be waved away?
> The lack of more urgency or extreme counter action suggests to me that not enough people truly think that that is fact the goal.
This isn't about whether "enough people truly think it is the goal." It is about the stated claims and goals of the administration, which have been shared with you multiple times in this thread. Please stop with the red herrings.
Sure. The current administration is more message-focused than policy-focused. That's because most voters have no idea about policies, and know only how it's spun on Fox News.
This fact makes it all the more frustrating that so many business and influential people are failing to push back when their voice could make a difference.
The GP post literally said that the goal was not to have free elections, and that the other things you mention were collateral damage, or at worst something that could be exploited to further the main goal. You took their two examples of collateral damage, implied the GP thought those were the goal, and ignored his actual claim that the goal was to end fair elections.
It's dangerous to pattern match what you read to something in your head, rather than paying attention to the claims someone actually made.
OK, let's assume that.
Goal is one thing. How far they're willing and able to go (and hence be effective in getting that goal) is a different matter. That's my argument.
The current adminitration has shown that their ego (adoration) is a limiting factor in what they're willing to do for power.
To wit, top Republicans warn GOP will face midterm election ‘bloodbath’. Why bother caring? Is it just political theater?
At the same time, I actually think that characterization lacks usefulness. For instance, in some cases there’s clearly breaking norms (most poeple would porobably mostly for the worse, and in some limited cases for better).
In other cases it is just more overt (or in some cases, more extreme) expression of typical American policy.
It is utter chaos, both internal and external. Your calibration point should not be Trump 1 but the Obama or Clinton administrations which were if not super popular at least competent.
To get a little personal, I will just say that you don't know what's in my heart or on my mind.
To get back on point:
> None of this is 'typical American policy'.
Mabye you will say I'm being pedantic, but I think that's a categorically false statement.
> Your calibration point should not be Trump 1 but the Obama or Clinton administrations which were if not super popular at least competent.
Why cherry pick those two? What about more recent (Biden) or further back? I think you will find that there's a lot of things that are persistent over the last 250 years, including political violence, xenophobia, detaining people without due process, invading other countries, tarriffs, rhetoric that Europe should pay for its own defense, etc.
To be clear, I'm not saying any of these are OK. There are also other positive dynamics that persist, like Americans pushing back and the administration needing to retreat and adjust.
No but you are making statements here and those are indicative.
> Mabye you will say I'm being pedantic, but I think that's a categorically false statement.
That's your privilege.
> Why cherry pick those two?
Because the US economy and the US status in the world under those two sets of administrations was doing well compared to many of the alternatives.
Lots of people are just incompentent, not malicious. This made Hanlon's razor, "assume incompentence not malice," memetically fit in many walks of life, so it spread till millions of Americans followed it when processing news.
As a result, incompetent politicians got more leeway to do malicious things. It turned out that in electoral politics, if you are already an a-hole, leeway to be evil without being called on it is more useful than compentence. Incompetence is hard to fake, so our electoral system now demands that you be both incompetent and an asshole to get elected. The only fix is to change the incentives, which means calling out malice in our politicians when it looks like malice, even if we can't prove that it's malice and not just incompetence, and ESPECIALLY even if the person is incompetent too.
All of this pussyfooting is only making matters (much) worse.
Hard disagree.
The term serves a legitimate purpose: distinguishing between evidence-based claims about actual conspiracies (which do happen) and unfounded or poorly-supported theories. Watergate was a real conspiracy. The tobacco industry really did conspire to hide health risks. But not every claim of hidden coordination is equally credible.
Legitimate uses include describing theories that rely on unfalsifiable reasoning ("any evidence against it is planted"), highlighting lack of credible evidence for extraordinary claims, distinguishing speculation from established facts.
Bad faith uses includ dismissing inconvenient questions without engaging the evidence, shutting down legitimate skepticism of official narratives, or using it as a thought-terminating cliche to avoid debate.
Now, reasonable people can disagree on whether my characterization is in bad faith or legitimate. I think we could agree on that.
For reference, I wish you were right, it would be great if indeed the word still served that purpose - but it doesn't.
Politicians and their lackeys prioritize what makes them popular with the electorate. "Institutions" are not exactly something the electorate holds in high (relative to the recent past decades) esteem these days. And it's only gonna get worse as the boomers croak and are replaced by younger people who've seen institutions do a lot less good in their lifetimes.