Summary
White House aides are anxious ahead of Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement on Tuesday, expecting new “reciprocal tariffs” but lacking clear details.
Even key figures like VP J.D. Vance and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles remain uncertain. An insider told Politico, “No one knows what the f–k is going on.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and adviser Kevin Hassett said tariffs would target 10–15 countries, but Trump contradicted them, claiming all countries would face tariffs.
The confusion and internal contradictions have sparked fears of economic fallout and political backlash.
Trump is going to start WWIII and form a wartime coalition government that “postpones” our election process in the meantime. There may be no midterms.
Hey guys, let me tell you a secret whispers
The emperor has no clothes
Trump is the one with raging dementia this time
Dementia Don is unpredictable. He has been the entire time. These people are somehow still surprised.
I think a big part of the problem is the media sanewashes him so a lot of people don’t see the crazy.
Try reading a transcript of anything he says. It’s just enough gibberish for people to hear whatever they want.
I’ll bet you Putin knows precisely what’s going on.
Course! He wrote it
At this point we can consider ourselves lucky if he doesn’t straight up announce the annexation of either Canada or Greenland.
I honestly think it will be this.
That’s what I’m expecting. The optimist in me thinks he could pull an amnesia on wensday about tariffs to right the economy. But probably just invade Greenland or something
Which would be an illegal order that wouldn’t be followed.
There have been how many illegal acts so far that his stooges have followed along with? Nothing is illegal if there’s no one willing to enforce it and no one willing to refuse to obey.
I’m talking about the army specifically, the most basic grunt has an obligation to refuse to obey illegal orders even if they come from the Joint chief of staff in person. The process is simple, confirm the order, day you believe it to be illegal, refuse to obey until proven wrong.
And again, with both armies being so intertwined, they would be asking to fight their friends, the odds that they would refuse these illegal orders would be even higher. Add the attacks on VA by the Republicans and the worst case scenario would be that the army would be divided and the pro-Trump camp would end up fighting the anti-Trump camp.
I have a unique perspective on that, and I’ll tell you it’s absolutely no different in the army or military than it is in the government with DOGE walking into agencies it SHOULD have no jurisdiction over and ordering them to stand down, then destroying them from within.
Right now the propaganda machine is rolling at %100 convincing the Right that what they’re doing is in defense of the constitution, against the Left’s evils. You have enough stooges in place as leaders, and out enough people who still have a spine, and the rest will (and have) fall in line.
Deporting college students without Due Process? Or protesters, or immigrants? Unconstitutional. Using DOGE to destroy legislative controlled agencies? Unconstitutional. Using DOGE to destroy legislatively mandated executive agencies? Unconstitutional. Attacking the media and their 1A? Unconstitutional. Being crowned god-king by the SCOTUS? Yeah, unconstitutional.
The difference is that the army drills that into the soldiers mind, public servants might be told to do it in passing as part of their onboarding, it’s never made as clear as in the army.
I am telling you, that it doesn’t matter. When you replace the leaders who had a spine with stooges, and then beat down anyone else at the bottom who had a spine, and then start firing or refusing to pay people who aren’t falling in line, everyone else will follow along with whatever you want them to.
Look at the media right now, as a perfect example. Look at universities right now. People are afraid to speak out, because speaking out is being beaten out of them. It will and it has reached the military, too.
It’s naive to think that the military will stand up to it. The Trump administration already fired the leaders who could stand up to them, and then killed ‘DEI’ efforts to ensure that leaders know that they’re there only as long as they’re useful to the guys at the top.
Edit: HTF do you think murdering, executing, and committing genocide was normalized for the people and militaries in Nazi Germany and Israel right now? It’s happening here, and pretty soon convincing the military that Canada, Mexico, or Europe are enemies won’t be difficult. “They’re colluding to commit economic warfare against us! MAGA! Protect America from these bully Europeans!”
Edit 2: I’m afraid of speaking my opinions at work, or to say anything about my beliefs. I know good and well that there are ‘loyalty tests’ coming up, and I’m having to keep my head down now so that I don’t get labeled ‘not loyal enough’ now. And Lemmy here? In the future me exercising my 1A here could end up with me being fired or worse, sent to a gulag somewhere removing toxic waste from the soil after the US nukes itself. (The Handmaiden’s Tale reference.)
Wont they just be shot or disappeared? Its not like the army hasn’t any experience or problems with murder.
You mean like pretty much every order he has given that has been followed??
What illegal orders has the army been given? None.
You mean like the the unsanction invasion of Iraq under the false pretense of WMD?.. No, that never happened
So Trump gave that order?
Oh so your claim is that Trumps’s illegal orders would be refused? Not illegal orders from other presidents? OK my bad
I guess the illegal deportations would be my answer then… Aren’t these done with military planes?
In theory it wouldn’t be followed.
With how mixed together the US and Canadian armies are, the grunts would probably rather shoot the people giving the order instead of following them. You might have some MAGA soldiers, but that just means that instead of fighting “the enemy” the US Army will end up fighting itself.
What legally constitutes an illegal order? I wonder if this would qualify. Certainly, I should hope it does.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Military/comments/1itmpn4/we_need_to_have_a_discussion_about_lawful_orders/
Good post on that subject
The speedrun into economic and social collapse continues as scheduled…I never thought I’d be alive to see the (very much self-inflicted) downfall of the country I was raised to love. This truly makes my soul ache.
I think those outside the US figured it was only a matter of time. The US voting population has only become more disengaged and the country has created and is the epicenter of most social media misinformation campaigns.
The US pulled itself out of the great depression first through regulation via the new deal and then by selling military equipment to allied nations during WW2 (essentially leveraging its geographical isolation during the war). Its been addicted to making and selling military equipment since then, in part due to the cold war but I think we can all agree there have been a few wars along the way that were essentially treated as test runs.
Hoover’s nearly 50% tariff on agriculture stretched the depression out by a few years. If we take history as any indication, tariffs are typically either a buildup to complete economic collapse or to a public bailout. One of those seems more likely than the other now. What would a 21st century ‘New Deal’ even look like?
What would a 21st century ‘New Deal’ even look like?
It could look identical to the original. Restore the capital gains and high-income tax rates. Do all the infrastructure investments over again with modern tech (high speed and light rail, renewable energy, desalination, etc)
Fair labor standards 2.0, with 32 hour workweek, guaranteed leave, triple the minimum wage, and medicare for all. The last one should save small business more than enough money and administrative overhead to pay for the rest, but tax incentives for small businesses will help too.
Reinforce the national labor relations and social security acts. Create the political transparency act to overturn citizens united. Throw out the parties and the political bribery entirely if you can, if you can’t, limit and publicize it. Tax 1-5% of all political donations over X dollars, and feed all of it into social security and medicare. All of federal legislature, executive, and judiciary now gets their salary from social security and their healthcare from medicare.
This wouldn’t really save the world, but it should be enough to keep the US going until we find better answers. Obviously there’s no guarantees we could find the political capital to get any of this done, even in the Great Depression 2: electric boogaloo.
Infrastructure spending, upgrading and repairing our crumbling roads in the Midwest, green energy installation, massive expansion of high speed rail, higher corporate tax rates with tax credits available to incentivize manufacturing plants be built in the US.
I agree, but FWIW those crumbling roads are entirely due to state governments. There’s a reason Oklahoma’s roads are so terrible. You literally feel the difference in governmental priorities at the state line.
My assumption is he lets the tariffs play out more than a day or two this time. He might see how bad it gets first before he pulls back.
I hope his phone call after the announcement isn’t…“Hey Vlad! Vlad! I invaded something!”
A loose cannon
But not in the cool “80s cop movie” way.
