The administration seems to be pro-crime, which is very problematic.
Governing doesn't even appear to be an afterthought.
I still haven't figured out how he's profiting from Trump Accounts yet. Kick backs I suppose.
I would guess that he could have been paid in many various ways (TrumpCoins anyone) by financial institution(s) that were set to benefit from the accounts. Have the trump crypto companies followed all of the KYC laws?
https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/05/europe/putin-trump-call-indep...
or that time multiple US congressmen were forced to spend the 4th in Moscow
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/395719-gop-senators-visi...
JFK met with Khrushchev. Bush Senior and Reagan had regular contact with Gorbachev. It's not weird for heads of state to talk to each other.
What's weird is for Trump to be paying tax dollars to cancel energy projects because he doesn't like windmills or using the FCC to investigate media outlets who criticize him.
There are plenty of good examples to use that it makes no sense to resort to evidence-free innuendo.
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/russia/russia-ukraine-war-trum...
> President Donald Trump’s special envoy broke with long-standing protocol by not employing his own interpreter during three high-level meetings with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, opting instead to rely on translators from the Kremlin, a U.S. official and two Western officials with knowledge of the talks told NBC News.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/427505-trump-put...
> President Trump reportedly met late last year with Russian President Vladimir Putin without a translator or aide from his administration present.
> Only Mr. Trump, who has alternately contradicted his own narrative of what was said and complained about a lack of fair coverage from a meeting only four people witnessed, could permit Ms. Gross to tell anyone about what she heard. The White House has not said whether Mr. Trump has asked her to do that.
Translators are civil servants with security clearances, not reporters. When the leaders of Germany and Brazil have a meeting, they may say things they don't intend for China and everyone else to know about, and it isn't the translator's job to report what was said to the media. Unless they've witnessed something on the scale of criminality that they need to act as a whistleblower (in which case they wouldn't need anyone's permission), they should never be telling anyone what happened in the room since their job is to keep those secrets.
The media are fully aware of that, but they're being disingenuous and pretending that allowing a diplomatic translator to act as a media witness is a request anyone is likely to grant. Then Trump predictably responds to that by removing the translator from the room, so now they're complaining about that instead.
The fact that he can't keep his own story straight?
In either instance?
This is kind of the point. Trump is such a polarizing jackass that people default to attacking him even in cases when there is nothing there, and then end up eroding their own credibility by making too many accusations they can't actually substantiate instead of sticking to the ones they can.
You don't have to reflexively defend claims so silly that you can only try to escape by moving the goalposts.
Why not? The only other person in the room doesn't speak Russian.
Yes, I absolutely expect that sort of security at such a meeting.
House of Cards used this same setup just to highlight how untrustworthy the president was acting.
For example, if Russia met the definition of an enemy, and if the President compromised the interests on the country in favor of Russian interests (presumably for his own personal benefit), that would probably count. The compromise would have to be knowing, though, mere incompetence is not enough. So if the issue ever arose, Trump has a pretty good defense.
- A privileged state - for the rich and powerful to get away with crimes
- A normative state - for ordinary people whom experience more prosecutions
- A prerogative state - for poor and enemies whom experience arbitrary injustice and persecution for infractions or made-up crimes
Was Alex Pretti a victim of your prerogative state, and his executioners were merely government agents executing a state imperative? Or was he a victim of gang violence and his executioners were part of the privileged state? In the dual state framework, the answer is wu.
But don't let me discourage you from expanding upon your framework! It may be more effective at explaining some things. It just needs to be more substantial than trying to do a simple tweak in an HN comment.
When you're poor, you can't help but be immersed in rebellion and discontent. Every song on the radio, every free TV show, every buddy at the dive bar is talking trash about your leadership and the powers that be. There was never any way for me to avoid the voices that hated everything I stood for, from the beginning, and basically being immersed in rebellion led me to intense self-hatred and a losing/denial of my own identity, as if I ever had it.
And that's really problematic for the poor of today, who can get really immersed in global geopolitics, and exposed to all sorts of social media glurge, and being poor, they cannot really find escape from the "free to consume" media at every turn, and so the poor tend to be couch-potatoes who are fed by the television sets and YouTube and Facebook feeds, and eventually most of us drown in lies, and fake news, and bitter rebellion against every authority.
Plenty of those pardoned for their acts on Jan 6.
Some presumably lived near and didn’t have jobs.
BTW you know those classified records he took to Mar-a-lago that almost put him in prison?
They were all the records about his family businesses, it's documented, they were unique investigation records and he was trying to end all investigations
Now, if the democrats had more big donors than republicans, maybe they wouldn't? But that's a counterfactual that we can't know. But we do know that Bush 1 vetoed a soft money limit passed mostly by democrats, and that Clinton pushed for one, but didn't get it done.
McCain-Feingold passed the Senate with 48 out of 50 D votes (96%), and 11 of 38 R votes (29%) (and one I (100%)), the House with 198 of 210 D (94%), and house, 41 out of 217 R (19%), 1 out of 2 I (50%). Then it was a mostly R appointed Supreme Court that gutted it. Then a _more_ R appointed court that has continued to whittle it down.
For all that the Democrats don't go far enough, there is a _huge_ difference between the parties on this.