The Second Term of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States of America

Shiftless2 said:
"tariffs" "Trumpsters - this is what you voted for ....." #1,660
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"... trade wars are good, and easy to win." Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump 18/03/02 02:50
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Live updates: Senate Republicans gathering at White House as shutdown effects worsen​

Oct. 21, 2025 Edited By LUENA RODRIGUEZ-FEO VILEIRA and MICHAEL WARREN
Updated 10:14 AM GMT-5, October 21, 2025
As the government shutdown enters its fourth week, Senate Republicans are headed to the White House on Tuesday — not for urgent talks on how to end it, but for a display of unity with President Donald Trump as they refuse to negotiate on any Democratic demands.
apnews.com

Live updates: Senate Republicans gathering at White House as shutdown effects worsen

As the government shutdown enters its fourth week, Senate Republicans are headed to the White House Tuesday for a display of unity with President Donald Trump.
apnews.com apnews.com
 
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Good morning! Donald Trump has spent the past week proving that when he promised to “rebuild America,” he meant it literally, starting by tearing it down first. He’s far better at demolition than construction, and nowhere is that more obvious than in the wreckage he’s gaslighting as progress. The East Wing is being bulldozed to make room for his “Golden Ballroom,” the Justice Department now functions as an arm of his personal grievance fund, and on the world stage he’s redefined diplomacy as performance art with yelling.

In the span of days, he’s managed to alienate allies, humiliate envoys, weaponize prosecutors, and declare peace in Gaza while the bombs are still falling. The man who once bragged about “building the greatest economy ever” now seems determined to prove that anything, a government, a constitution, a ceasefire, can be reduced to rubble if you bumble hard enough.

Trump’s latest meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky was supposed to symbolize American leadership in a fragile moment. According to reports from Financial Times and European broadcasters, Trump screamed at the Ukrainian president to “stop at the battle lines” and cede the Donbas to Russia. Zelensky, who has buried half his cabinet’s worth of soldiers defending that land, shouted back.

For a few brief moments, the West Wing resembled a geopolitical cage match: one man trying to save his country, the other trying to remember which one it was. Trump reportedly warned that Putin would “destroy Ukraine” if Zelensky refused his “peace plan,” which was essentially a demand for surrender.

What Trump either doesn’t know or doesn’t care to understand is that Ukraine’s own constitution makes territorial surrender impossible. Article 17 explicitly forbids ceding any portion of the state’s territory by force or treaty. Even if Zelensky were inclined to humor ....

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Shiftless2 said:
BREAKING: WOW!

“A quarter of children in Alabama live with food insecurity. 15% of Alabama citizens use snap and wig. That's almost 900,000 people,” begins the man.

“Alabama has a higher poverty rate than the national average. A third of Alabama counties are maternity care deserts. A third of Alabama counties don't have a pediatrician. Over a million people in Alabama rely on Medicaid. At least 300,000 people, maybe more, could gain access to health care if the state expanded Medicaid. That would also create and save jobs and ward off the closures of rural hospitals and health care services.”

But ... #1,657
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acknowledged

The message is as alarming and familiar as this year's reliably alarming newspaper headlines.

President Trump has mastered the 24 hour news cycle.
We can expect the alarm to continue through the end of Trump's tenure, and possibly beyond.

What's to be done about it?

Many successful politicians have what's called "fire in the belly", a metaphor for passion about opportunities for reasonable gain, benefit to the constituency.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren demonstrate this fire, but neither could get their party's nomination for president.
Their future has sunset, in the same age range as the president.

AOC's within -next gen- age range, old enough to get a driver's license, but lacks experience.

And so the sleeping Democrat party juggernaut languishes, dormant, headless, waiting.
 
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The air smelled of diesel and delusion. Excavators gnawed at the East Wing like hungry rats while, twenty feet away, Donald Trump stood at a temporary podium declaring victory over mud. “Hello everyone,” he began, scanning the crowd with mock suspicion. “What a friendly group this is. No Democrats are here, right?”

The laughter was nervous, the kind that dies before it reaches the eyes. Trump smiled, satisfied. “I want to thank everyone. This has been a labor of love. We took over a building that was not properly taken care of. It just wasn’t. A very special building. We’re taking care of it.”

Behind him, a crane swung a wrecking ball into a wall that had survived the War of 1812 but not the Second Term. Dust billowed across the lawn as workers in hardhats yelled over the machinery. The press, officially banned but clustered behind chain-link fencing, filmed from the shadows as history groaned beneath the sound of diesel engines.

“It was grass,” Trump reminisced, “but people were .....

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Worth a reminder - it's okay to feel bad for his family but don't pretend he was a good person. He was a vehicle for hate, and being assassinated doesn't erase that.

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Economy|International Trade

China overtakes the US as Germany’s largest trading partner​

Economists credit US President Donald Trump’s tariff campaign with reducing trade between Germany and the US, its top trading partner last year.

Because of tariff pressures and a stronger euro, economists believe the United States is unlikely to resume its spot as Germany's top trading partner anytime soon [File: Fabian Bimmer/Reuters]
By Reuters / Published On 22 Oct 2025

China overtook the United States as Germany’s largest trading partner during the first eight months of 2025, preliminary data from the German statistics office has shown.

The data indicated that German imports and exports with China totalled $190.7bn (163.4 billion euros) from January to August, while trade with the US amounted to $189bn (162.8 billion euros), according to Reuters calculations.
www.aljazeera.com

China overtakes the US as Germany’s largest trading partner

Economists credit US President Donald Trump's tariff campaign with reducing trade between Germany and the US.
www.aljazeera.com www.aljazeera.com

"... trade wars are good, and easy to win." Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump 18/03/02 02:50
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And that $38 Trillion seriously understates the "real" debt - by definition the funding shortfalls for Social Security and Medicare are not included there. And then there are any number of state and municipal pensions (we've already seen cities declare bankruptcy to escape their pension liabilities).

This from 2019:

According to Kent Smetters, a Wharton insurance and risk management professor, shortfalls in Medicare and Social Security total between $80 trillion and $120 trillion, and are rising at a rate of $2 trillion annually. By comparison, he says, the value of all tangible property in the U.S. — homes, buildings, land, autos and personal property — is $50 trillion. “The few trillion thrown at the banks looks like chump change compared to that,” says Wharton health care management professor Mark Pauly.

knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

Social Security and Medicare: Trying to Tackle Two 800-pound Gorillas

While many people worry about the billions of dollars spent bailing out banks, auto makers and other sectors, shortfalls in Medicare and Social Security are what could ultimately sink efforts to revive the U.S. economy. As 78 million baby boomers begin to retire, funding for the government's two...
knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu
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This quote is 16 years old - assuming that those liabilities have increased at a rate of $2 trillion a year (and I personally suspect the real rate of increase is higher) that translates to an unfunded liability of $110 to $150 Trillion.
 
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Mike Johnson thinks the greatest threat to America isn’t corruption or guns, it’s naked butts on bikes. “The most threatening thing I’ve seen yet was the naked bicyclers in Portland who were protesting ICE down there. I mean, it’s getting really ugly.” -Speaker Mike Johnson

That’s an actual quote from the man second in line to the presidency.

💣
Not about war.
💸
Not about corruption or climate collapse.
🍑
But about naked bike riders in Portland.

Over the weekend, more than a thousand Portlanders, some bare, some brave, all soaked, took to the rainy streets to protest the militarization of their city and the harm being done to immigrant and Indigenous communities.

They weren’t throwing rocks or setting fires. They were riding bicycles, in the rain, in a city that has made “weird” its civic duty.

They called it an emergency edition of the World Naked Bike Ride. No sponsors, no summer festival, just an urgent message: you can’t strip people of their rights without expecting the city of weird to strip down in response.

Outside Portland’s ICE facility, where federal agents in riot gear have stood for weeks, the crowd looked less like an uprising and more like a fever dream of defiance.
Frogs, bananas, unicorns, axolotls, the costumes bounced through the haze of tear gas and rain. Someone played a trumpet. Someone else held a sign that read “Undress the System.”

Janene King, fifty-one, wore nothing but ....

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