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Comment by hrldcpr | Hacker News Reader

Arguably people who voted for Trump are somewhat responsible, and include a lot of car drivers.

(Not to imply that many Democrat politicians aren't also owned by AIPAC and big business.)

I didn’t vote for Trump but I don’t blame the voters. I don’t think many people foresaw him doing this on either side of the political aisle. Other stuff we disapprove of, yes. But not this.

I say that because he had famously resisted to enter extended conflict in his first term. Maybe he wanted to but now has the chance since he’s in his final years. (At least, I hope it’s his final years.) But I didn’t hear anyone predicting this before his second term.

It was pretty obvious he was wanting to enter a conflict with someone, and was mostly held back in his first term by the actual professionals in his cabinet at that time. But the guy wanted a military parade with tanks rolling through DC on his birthday, wanted to nuke a hurricane, and forcibly annex Greenland. It isn't really surprising that once he replaced the sane people with sycophants, he would start something.

Or, more specifically, by 2020 he was sending military boats to attack Iranian targets and trying to force Russia to respond.

He only stopped because of COVID.

If it were that obvious we would have specifically heard it it predicted. Maybe someone did but I didn’t hear it, and I listen to politics daily.

Expressing a desire to take Greenland but not actually doing so was a move out of his book Art of the Deal.

You knew airstrikes and Maduro ops were on the table from his first term (e.g. Soleimani).

You knew his idea of negotiating vehicle lease terms starts with "I will burn this dealership to the ground if I don't get my way!" (Art of the Deal).

What did you think was going to happen when he actually encountered serious people?

it was patently obvious. people were just blinded by xenophobia as the primary issue facing the nation and they bought it, peripheral consequences be damned

> If it were that obvious we would have specifically heard it it predicted

People absolutely predicted Trump military adventurism in the 2024 election cycle! It failed to break through in the media because of a deliberate reflection attack that leveraged a bunch of leftie memes about Biden/AIPAC/Israel to pretend that it was really the democrats who wanted endless war.

So that's what low info voters heard on their televisions. But the smart people in print were 100% warning about this kind of thing.

What exactly do you want people (who exactly?) to have predicted that they didn't?

https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/255784560904773633

https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/379717298296086529

https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/399731975432728576

These were 13 and 14 years ago. His patterns became obvious in his first term and reaffirmed during his second and third time running.

Even more specifically, these examples were all before the 2024 election:

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-could-try-buy-greenlan...

https://www.wired.com/story/trump-cia-venezuela-maduro-regim...

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-trumps-wish-for-more-f...

https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/mrcbg/publications/end-f...

What politics do you listen to daily?

The million dollar question is how america occupies Greenland.

As always Europe does nothing

America attacks Greenland? Europe liberating bases on their soil would be the obvious response

You make a good point. At the same time, when he broke his electoral promise to stop foreign interfefence and kidnapped Maduro, his voter base did not turn against him. That seems to have emboldened him to pursue more military actions abroad.

Now let's see how long until he invades Cuba, and how his voters will react.

God, they're going to love that - provided it's a swift victory, of course. They've wanted that since the Bay of Pigs.

I wonder what Cuba would look like now if Batista had never been overthrown. That's probably on par with how it would have worked if US meddling were more successful. I can't say I know it would be worse.

Difficult to separate "Cuba is bad because it is badly governed" from "Cuba is bad because it has been heavily sanctioned and no longer gets help from the Soviet Union", really. Too many different variables. Hard to imagine it being worse than Haiti or El Salvador, but also hard to imagine it having free elections (because that would immediately elect an anti-US socialist who would be overthrown again).

On the other hand, Cuba could have turned out like the Bahamas or Trinidad & Tobago.

Unlike Venezuela and Iran, Cuba doesn't really fuel China, so I assume it's not such a priority.

I mean, in that case why rattle about Greenland?

Somebody, in a conversation of which there will be no record, told him it was a good idea, telling him it would be quick, he would be lauded as a hero, there would be vast mineral riches, etc. This person wanted to break up NATO, but this wasn't part of the sales pitch, I imagine.

Reportedly, Rare earth minerals.

America also has those; and it’s not like we’ve had a bad trading relationship with the EU until fairly recently.

I think that was just silly. Nothing actually happened in Greenland. His whole thing is about slowing China down. That explains Venezuela, Iran, and a lot of the price-rising tariffs are explained by wanting to choke Russia's oil and gas revenues, which also has the secondary effect of hitting China.

Almost everyone's asking the same question regardless of what they think's going on inside Trump's head. The two most coherent answers I've seen are "to soothe his narcissistic injury from being told he can't" and "feels entitled to it because NATO", you will note neither of these was his stated reason, and all of this is still catastrophically poor judgment on his part.

At what point people will realize "his first term" isn't a good bar and its certainly not because "he resisted" rather he at least had some better advisors and GOP had some control over him.

This time around GOP has been flattened into his mouthpiece and the government is fully of sycophants. Its not that he's in his final years more like his yes-men are afraid of being booted out and replaced with another power hungry nincompoop sycophant.

If people fell for this "but this didn't happen in the first term" even then they are to blame for this mess, they voted for this person in the first place. Just like being ignorant doesn't let you escape from legal consequences, it should let people escape from outcome of their actions.

Trump's statements on these issues have always been self contradictory.

On the one hand he says Russia would never have dared invade Ukraine if he was President, yet he was also against military support for Ukraine before the full scale invasion, and says that Ukraine's plight is basically their and Europe's problem.

He was adamantly against bombing Syria in response to Assad using chemical weapons while Obama was president, then when they used chemical weapons as soon as he became President he bombed them for it.

He's advocated for the USA not getting involved in military conflicts, while also advocating for massive increases in military spending and capability.

This has always been his approach, say one thing while very often actively doing the other. Promote domestic manufacturing, while putting massive tariffs on the inputs on which American manufacturing depends, many of which are only available in the required quantities abroad even for current production.

Trump voters have been scammed by a self-professed scammer that's been successfully prosecuted for scamming, and they know it. They were quite happy for him to betray, backstab, double-deal and scam whoever he liked on whatever issue he liked, as long as it was people they didn't like or care about.

He's notoriously unpredictable. I would agree that it's more obvious now, but I think it was still quite obvious in his first term, especially after inciting a riot at the Capitol.

Given the rashness that he displayed prior to his second term, I don't see why it's at all surprising that he would start a war. To think otherwise just seems like wishful thinking.

Yeah, Trump showed the world exactly who he is even before his first term. He has absolutely no principles other than feeding his own wealth and ego. Anybody who is surprised by what has happened is either an incredibly bad judge of character or hasn't been paying attention.

I absolutely blame the voters. Vote for a clown and you get a circus.

The man is a pathological liar and nothing he says can be trusted, although it's pretty reliable to consider every accusation is an admission.

Last term he had grown ups in the room to contain him -- this term he's surrounded himself by enablers and acts as if he is now god emperor for life.

"We didn't see it coming" is not very believable. Trump campaigned on a general theme of chaos and griefing, and he is delivering on exactly what he promised.

The inauguration alone was ominous enough to expect all the current and future shitshow.

Ordo ab chao in full swing.

People voting for a convicted felon should definitely be held partially responsible for the looting of the country. Also, considering the various rape accusations, his constant lies and his obvious narcissism makes it absolutely insane to vote for him and expect any kind of predictable good to come from it.

There were plenty of warnings about electing Trump and people chose to ignore them.

It was obvious that Trump is unstable and has extreme and volatile views on foreign policy. So yes, I think it is entirely fair to blame anyone that voted for Trump in the last election.

Anyone with half a brain knows Trump is an actual idiotic person. So yes, we could foresee him doing this, because it was a dumb fucking plan and Trump is the dumbest person who has ever been president.

He can absolutely counted on to do stupid, corrupt shit. We saw plenty of it when he had 4 years in office and was somewhat held in check by having hired some more or less 'normal' Republicans.

It was entirely predictable that he would fuck things up in some way. He's demented (although the press stopped caring about that sort of thing when Biden dropped out), deeply corrupt, narcissistic, and was never particularly intelligent to begin with.

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