“The way the Trump administration has handled this, I've been thinking, what the heck is in there? It doesn't make any sense to me. There's a million other ways they handle this. Instead, they've said, nothing to see here, which makes everyone suspicious that there is something to see there.”

“It sounds like Ghislaine Maxwell is dangling something out there that she has over somebody. I'm not saying it's Trump. I don't know who it is. It could be just a lot of important people. I think that that's why she's able to get this favoritism in prison.”

The AI on Trump’s own Temu Twitter knows he didn’t win the 2020 election, that tariffs are a tax on Americans and he has no legal right to impose them, and it’s very rare for casinos to become bankrupt.

“I just think we're a country that kind of goes through these sort of slam-bang alternations and ructions. And, you know, they take us in all kinds of different directions. This is not a place marked by political continuity on the whole. And so maybe I'm more sanguine than I should be.”

“I find it incredibly ironic that a movement which has in part ridden to power critiquing both conservative and liberal internationalism for pursuing wars of regime change abroad, who very explicitly have as their domestic political program regime change at home.”

In the Feb 2022 blitzkrieg Russia quickly occupied 120,000 km² of Ukraine in just one month at a cost of 17,500 casualties. Since March 2022, Russia lost 48,000 km² and suffered over 1,100,000 casualties. Russia will be defeated so long as the West arms & funds Ukraine.

“I know that people wish that the Republicans would have folded because of the pain that a lot of people were suffering because of the shutdown. But the sad truth is that the Republican Party doesn't care as much about the pain as the Democratic Party does. Doesn't care at all, I think we can say.”

“All conversations have rules. We respect each other, wait till the end of sentences. Social media also, but the rules are not designed to create civilised debate or better conversation. They’re designed to make money for the social media companies. And to keep you online as much as possible.”

“The only way the war ends, really ends, meaning it's over and it doesn't start again next year, is if the russians decide that it's not worth fighting anymore. That's the conclusion they came to in Afghanistan.” This is WHY democratic nations need to arm and fund Ukraine to MAKE russia give up.

“The world's autocrats have been supporting russia in this effort to destroy Ukraine. And at the same time, the world's Democrats have been helping Ukraine.”

“The war in Ukraine is very important in this war of ideas, which is what it is. One of the reasons why Putin launched the war was to show us that he doesn't care about our rules, he doesn't care about the sanctity of borders in Europe, he doesn't care about the Geneva Conventions.”

“Back to your question about hypocrisy and diplomacy. I mean, maybe somebody has to deal with Sergei Lavrov at a meeting and so they don't want to say, we think you're a criminal. But it's nevertheless useful to remember that they're criminals.”

“What FBI and DOJ personnel saw in the Epstein files was so devastating that some broke down while reviewing them, many having young children the same age as the victims, many being survivors of sexual assault themselves, forced to sift through mountains of evidence testimony, photos and videos.”

“Multiple Republican House members have heard from their contacts at the DOJ and FBI that the Epstein files are FAR WORSE than the alleged photos of Trump with nude girls that Pam Bondi refused to deny the existence of during her Congressional testimony. Far worse than that.”

“I'm in favor of the European Union starting to have some defense capability of our own so that we don't have to call on the U.S. in every emergency. We should be capable of sorting out some warlord in Libya or the Balkans next time around.” —Radek Sikorski, Deputy PM and Foreign Minister, Poland

“We will eat grass rather than become a Russian colony again.” —Radek Sikorski, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Poland

Why I Am Resigning A federal judge explains his reasoning for leaving the bench. “What Nixon did episodically and covertly, knowing it was illegal or improper, Trump now does routinely and overtly” www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

3 responsibilities every government has towards its citizens: protect, provide for, and invest in its people. The Trump regime is failing in at least two of these.

Governments have a fiduciary duty to citizens. Public officials must act in the best interests of the public, not their own personal interests. It is a foundational principle of public office, which involves acting honestly and exercising power for the proper public purpose.

“Do you move towards something more like the social democratic European system?” Americans are so strange to hold doubt about something almost universal in peer economies. Especially when *the fundamental root of the current situation is income and wealth inequality*.

“We now live in a world where a guy like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos exist at the level of non-state actors. Their ability to influence is global in ways that they might as well be their own country. And just as a matter of national security, I don't think you can allow people to get that rich.”

“Even if a great Democrat wins in 2028, even if that Democrat is able to be seated, even if there's a Democratic majority and they have the ability to make some structural reforms—you can't have a system in which Democrats have to win every time.”

“The reality is that nothing really changes until the main body of the Republican Party decides to abandon the authoritarian project. And a reasonably substantial portion of Republican voters—maybe 20%, maybe 45%, but it's not 2%—have decided that they, they don't want liberal democracy.”

“Is there a catalytic moment that finally convinces people? We're enough Americans. [No Kings needs] 3.5% of the population, 12 million Americans, which is enough according to studies done around the world to drive political change. And demand governmental changes, removal of people in office.”

“I struggle with the, how did you people not know that it was going to be like this?”

“They were fooled into thinking that when Trump said, I'm going to deport 20 or 25 million people, but don't worry, it will only be criminals. There are not 25 million criminals. Again, I just don't know how these people are so stupid.”

“These same people who want prices down now, wanted prices down a year ago, and they're never going to get it because we get deflation, it's bad. So there's like basic economic illiteracy here.”

Just look at this photo.

“What Nixon did episodically and covertly, knowing it was illegal or improper, Trump now does routinely and overtly.” — recently retired federal judge www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

Well done Roberts, Kavanaugh, Thomas, Gorsuch, Alito and Coney Barrett, you’ve really played your part in creating a monster.

And just as importantly *this isn’t stopping fentanyl* and it is a distraction from the fact that Trump *is doing nothing and has no plan to stop fentanyl*

A lesson learnt from RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA, an organised crime state with which Trump has decades-long connections. A state that has in Putin likely the richest man in the world, having robbed the wealth of russia from its own people ever since gaining power, whom Trump respects and admires.

Trump is just taking the piss at this point.

❗️☢️ Russian missiles now target Ukraine's nuclear facilities, - Financial Times. In a massive attack on the night of November 8, the Russians attacked substations that support the Khmelnytskyi and Rivne nuclear power plants.

“Whatever principles are being applied to a Republican president and whatever powers bestowed also transfer to whoever succeeds him. If Congress is giving up their constitutional power of the purse and ability to declare war, what does that bestow upon his successor?”

“Historically the IRS has had this impermeable firewall between the political people and the people who actually do tax audits. There was reporting in Trump's first administration that he ordered people to go audit his enemies and they refused. I don't know what's going on this time.”

“When your profit centre becomes the people at the company who are trying to figure out how to most please or least piss off this president, that's not a good thing. That's not how capitalism is supposed to work. It's not capitalism. That's a kleptocracy.”

They’re starting to crack.

Voter suppression isn’t ICE at polling places: it’s each of the thousand ways of making it just that little bit harder. The fewer people who vote, the less it is a democracy.

There’s a young southern woman on tt doing an experiment: calling churches & asking if they can help her get baby formula, saying she can’t afford it. Of the 30+ she’s called, nearly every church has said no. The ones who said yes were: Black Baptist Churches A Mosque A small Appalachian church

“I think there is a path where some standards around SNAP benefits could be in the best interests of taxpayers and of the public. You can only do that, however, if you are meaningfully increasing the benefit. Because right now, it's simply nowhere near enough money to buy healthy food.”

“We're seeing whole collapses of different crops regions have depended on. A couple of years ago, we lost 90% of the Georgia peach crop because of extreme weather. By the next 20, 30 years, there's probably not going to be any peaches growing in Georgia. I could give you hundreds of those examples.”

It seems that the US Supreme Court is at last starting to consider that their decisions will equally apply to the president *after* Trump—who may well be a Democrat.

“Sauer said that, in the president's ideal state of the world, there is no revenue collected because every business has moved to the US and is sourcing everything domestically. That is autarky. That is the logical conclusion, and no American would vote for that.”

Declining in every possible way.

I don’t have a clue. Dems offered the GOP a 1 year ACA subsidy compromise and the GOP told them to kick rocks. Longest shutdown continues, I guess.

Obama was always like that - a reporter fainted in the briefing room during his second term and he paused the briefing and had someone go get his personal doctor to help them. Makes you miss having a decent human in the Oval.

How a human with a heart and a soul responds when other humans are in medical distress.

“What bothers me about this administration is the completely blithe way everybody takes their cues from the boss. He said, I'm very concerned about the nuclear. But then he does things like, Medvedev, he pissed me off, so I'm moving submarines closer to russia. This isn't a game of battleship.”

“I would hope that people would watch A House of Dynamite and say, ‘The most important thing I can do as a voter is to put sane, responsible, sober-minded people in office and not to be satisfied with government by shitposting.’”