I have this feeling that JD Vance is way worse than Trump
He is much worse, but he’s also far less of a threat, as he doesn’t have ANY public mandate, in the form of any kind of following or cultish fandom.
Trump’s power is almost ENTIRELY a product of how he tapped into the country’s stupid fucking redneck hogs and narcissists and delusional conspiracy nuts. JD has exactly ZERO flat-earthers driving around with his face painted on the side of their van. Having a following of millions of people, even if they are mentally-deficient to a degree that is literally breathtaking, is still power, a great deal of power too because he has them under such tight control.
Vance might be dangerous in short-term policy decisions, but he doesn’t have electoral power, he doesn’t have chips in the game, he won’t make a dent in senate/house bill votes, he won’t have influence on local and state elections. He’s pre-neutered. The only ones who should be worried about Vance are the white-house sofas.
Vance is absolutely worse. He’s the true disciple of Curtis Yarvin, and that’s the end of the country as we know it.
Yes, I said he’s worse. First line, first paragraph.
Do you understand political power though? It’s a deep game but even at the highest levels, you can see that just being “bad” or “good” isn’t enough to shape policy and leadership. A president has a job to do, and that job is almost entirely negotiating political favors between various groups and committees and lobbyists. To be able to do this, you have to have both a shrewd understanding of political law and precedent, AND you need political capital.
Donald Trump has very little understanding of political law and precedent, but he has MASSIVE political capital.
Vance has none. Just like Stephen Miller, someone who is also literally a sack of insects in human skin, someone like him even being as close to the president as he is, he has no political capital. He would never get elevated to an electoral position so he had to worm his way to an advisor status.
They could do some harm, but all their attempts at passing policy without political capital will get shot down in the other branches of government. There are a lot of examples of this in history, even recently with presidents who had waning capital like Biden. If you aren’t actively gaming the game, you’re getting left behind.
You seem to be ignoring the entire class that owns them. Peter Thiel, Marc Andreeson, etc. can “create” political capital through manufacturing it. That’s how Vance even got elected to Senate in the first place.
He doesn’t resonate as strongly with the MAGA base as Trump of course, but since when did the will of the people matter, especially now that there are loyalists in every notable and important position in the whole of the executive (all agencies), legislative, and judicial branch.
We’re still talking about different things. It’s okay, we can agree that we don’t want any of these people in power but I’m saying Vance doesn’t have the political currency to have as strong of an impact as even Trump, nothing to do with “the will of the people.”
Vance also has no charisma or personality to speak of. He can’t lead a movement like MAGA.
Yep that’s what I’m talking about, having a “movement” behind you is the strongest form of political currency. The right has wanted someone like Trump for a VERY long time because he’s wealthy and not with cash. And he’s dumb enough to be led around.
Vance is largely a nobody. You can accurately deduce he’s a pile of shit, but he’s always going to be largely ineffectual on the political stage because his ass is broke.
I feel like you could have said the same thing about Chavez and Maduro in Venezuela…
While I do believe America is spiraling towards autocracy and dictatorship, it won’t be Vance’s face on the armbands. It will be someone but the way America falls into that hole will be a different path than Venezuela took, mostly because our government is so much larger and more complicated with far more international interests at play, requiring more long-term political capital to be spent to bend the system until it breaks.
Yes, but he won’t be backed up by maga. There will be more internal fighting.
OKey at least there is that. I just want somebody in the US office who will fix the political system to be more compromise based, but I think I’ll sooner see a unicorn irl.
Vance is totally owned by Peter Theil, who is a well-known Psychopathic Oligarch.
Yeah, unfortunately, there’s no one in the line of succession I particularly like. At least RFK is #12 and Linda McMahon is #16, both pretty far down.
He might be, but that’s a chance I’m willing to take given how fucking terrible Trump is.
That’s because he’s dumb enough to follow the dumb guy. We all know he’s a fuckin moron.
Is this a massive gamble by Elmo to rebuild his brand image by forcing me to agree with him on certain issues? Let’s not forget this was the same guy Nazi saluting this dude at his Inauguration a few short months ago.
No, its not. Musk is just salty Trump used and discarded him. You have to understand, these are just children who stumbled into power and never really grew up.
Yeah - nepo babies are like this. Made the mistake of marrying one, and any perceived slight needed punishment and retaliation.
It’s all just show. Elon well get government contracts and we’ll get wealthy from the stock market. Everything else is showmanship he’s the current fall guy look everything thet sucks is Elons fault
I’m not forgetting anything. I’m just enjoying two enemies fight it out.
So let me get that straight, you spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get a guy, who you think should be impeached and is guilty of underage sex, to be the president of the United States?
He spent hundreds of millions to scrape personal data of all US citizens and cripple investigations into his businesses.
This is the real bottom line, right here
He KNEW about the underage sex stuff when he spent the nearly 300 billion dollars too.
What I really love about this is that Trump is so narcissistic that he earnestly believed that Elon liked him. That he believed in his vision for the country and that he wouldn’t want anything in return, like a load more juicy government contracts, a bill to mandate that petrol cars would be phased out, or all safety regulations about self driving cars to be torn up.
Bless his cold dead heart for being exactly what everybody knows he is. Everybody except those idiots who jump into bed with him, because all those other people he betrayed were losers who just weren’t smart enough.
i mean…you could just as easily say the reverse, it honestly seemed like they needed each other just as much both ways
Yeah, but Trump got what he wanted first.
Who could see this coming said that one clueless guy who didn’t.
you call this BREAKING? just another day
Can we have both of these? Please please please?
- Trump impeached
- Musk deported
I know there is some clause or stipulation that allows for the seizure of assets obtained by illegal immigrants.
Musk is an illegal immigrant who pursued business ventures in violation of his school visa and lied about it.
If we’re dreaming of fantasies that will never happen, I also want nationwide ranked-choice voting, and maybe we can overturn Citizens United Vs Federal Elections and stop allowing corporations to literally run our country.
now we are talking
Well, I’ve been saying that for months. Do I get money now?
This scenario is quite the best outcome. Two narcissists fighting each other, hopong for a homicide/suicide ❤️
It’s already happening…
Musk was the bank that got MAGA elected in places they’d pissed off voters too much to keep winning.
If musk and trump split, the Republicans in the house and Senate need both musks money and Trump’s cult. They can’t win with either alone.
They’re already past the point of no return, their egos are too big to make up.
their egos are too big to make up
That’s where you’re wrong. They both constantly rewrite the past in their own memories. Shit one takes massive doses of disassociatves and the other can’t be bothered to digest a single thought. They can make up and act like nothing ever happened and they’re both the greatest. To hold a grudge you need to be able to hold a coherent opinion on anything and not exist in a perpetual stream of consciousness.
While both are wildly irrational and one is downright mentally incompetent, if they have one thing in common it’s holding on to grudges.
Oh I’m not saying that they don’t engage in extreme attacks on who they consider their enemies. But Trump rapidly flips on who his enemy and who his friend is based on the situation. He’s had that relationship with most of the GOP. Without the staff I honestly don’t think he’d be able to keep it together. Sometimes he shifts based straight up on who he’s in the room with and how they’re treating him at that exact moment. What I’m trying to say is there’s no actual calculation or payback in his mind. It’s entirely binary and subject to rapid shifts. Classic black and white thinking/cluster b splitting.
Reasonable thinking, expecially when we talk about the two actual main persons in the country and all the people and responsibilities around them.
Narcissists surround themselves of yes people, let’s see if those guys has cleared the area properly.
I don’t understand. This was quite possibly the most predictable thing that could have happened. Trump has a 40 year history of stiffing creditors and vendors. There has never been anything transactional about him, he just does this same thing over and over. Like there’s a reason that people have been saying, “a Trump never pays his debts” since like 2015.
Trump has probably made enough money off illegal crypto bribes that he can afford to dump musk.
Yeah but he’s not gonna spend his own money.
The knights Templar were the bank that kept the French crown in power, the crown was indebted to the monastic order. As that wasn’t ideal, went to the pope and had them excommunicated and rounded up on Friday the 13th.
One of these men will go.
Or they need to abolish free elections before the midterms, arrest noncompliant judges and just have the Trump dynasty rule by decree.
He couldn’t swing that with the backing of twitter/Facebook
Like, obviously him trying it is a big concern, but he wouldn’t be able to pull it off. I’d be surprised if he could even hold onto DC after suspendng elections.
We’d almost certainly see elected Dems immediately relocate to somewhere like Cali, and when push comes to shove, the military would be a 50/50 split at best. Like, trump can put sycophants in top military leadership positions, but that’s not enough.
That’s the entire point of a chain of command. 10 different chances for someone to grow a spine and tell them to fuck off. All the way down to the guy holding the gun.
He’s be more likely to try and use red state national guards, he’s still have to filter, and ship them across the country so they’re not acting against their own neighbors
The logistics would be a nightmare even for a competent leader. This admin can not handle something so complicated. It would be a failure, but likely a bloody one.
You have high expectations. From what I have seen of the system lately they’d just allow it and nothing would happen. Maybe some protests but nothing big as that would be to inconvenient for people.
You have high expectations
I have reason to, and not that you should just blindly believe me, but I’ve got a pretty good track record on predicting how shit shakes out.
Cancelling elections is a big line, and he just can’t count on the military.
Hell, Vance would almost certainly work against him.
There’s a long line of people who want to fill Trump’s void in 2028, and they won’t be happy if trump refuses to step down.
Like, it wouldn’t be a great thing to live thru. A lot of damage will be done and people will die. But trump just doesn’t have the juice for it without Musk’s money and willingness to spend.
Even other billionaires won’t light money on fire for trump like musk did.
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I kept seeing people saying that this is all performative and that they’re both in on it, but idk, I was raised by narcissists and this is basically the exact same fight playing out on the global stage that played out weekly in my childhood living room.
Yep, same, exactly.
This is way, way too in depth to be an elaborately staged, intetional hyperreality performance.
These two just actually are this stupid, this self-centered, this insecure and ego driven.
If this is some kind of an act, it would require both of them to have been method acting at Daniel Day Lewis levels for about a decade with no breaks.
Its ‘performative’ in the sense of intentionally being catty, shit-disturbing, dramatic, old men acting like the cast of the Mean Girls… but it is not performative in the sense of ‘entirely staged to fool us dumb rubes.’
That being said, this all still does function as a grand distraction to any other person or kind of nefarious nonsense… but no, these two are having the messiest, most high stakes, most public breakup in probably the history of the world right now, and they are both totally genuine.
… It is also arguably the funniest way concievable for the American Empire / Era to end.
How in the fuck do you write a history book about this in 20 years?
… I don’t fucking know, but I do know I want Larry David to write a script for a ‘The Death of Stalin’ style movie about the last 9 months.
EDIT: Wait! Mel Brooks is still alive somefucking how, get in him in the writing room too!
EDIT: Wait! Mel Brooks is still alive somefucking how, get in him in the writing room too!
I think this might be lethal levels of irony even for him.
Even if it was pretend to start with they’re both so sensitive and need to be right, it’ll turn into a real fight soon enough. But I agree, neither is clever enough to pretend this. For that you need professional wrestling level acting skills.
This is exactly like wrestling they have made Elon the heel. If contracts start being canceled maybe it’s real. Unless some unknown company gets the contract like space y.
Neither one of them is able to pretend at this level. It is a real fight.
Alien vs. Predator.
Whoever loses, we win.
Nah, we are still stuck with whoever wins.
So what you’re saying is we need to revive the push for President Schwarzenegger
“Get in the (Air Force Two) Choppa!”
One Big, Beautiful Breakup.
Oh I bet he’ll pay in some way to have trump challenged for being mentally unfit, I think that’s part of the constitution
Anybody have any idea what they’re trying to hide with this puppet show? Is the big bill getting too much attention or is it something else?
I think you’re giving them too much credit. I’m pretty sure this really is just a senile old man feuding with a ketamine addict.
It can and likely is both.
I don’t really see how. Trump could be playing it up a little to distract from the Medicare cuts, but I imagine he’s genuinely pissed about the Epstien thing. That probably played really badly with his base. There’s also no way Musk is doing this as a distraction; Telsa’s stock is imploding because of this.
I think its a senile russian asset fighting a ketamine addict and both of their handlers are simply making good use of the natural distraction.
While I don’t necessarily want to believe there’s anything decent in any of his supporters, I also really don’t feel like he’d lose a single one being a proven pedophile. They’re all in.
There was news today that the Senate is considering cutting Medicare in addition to Medicaid, as well as news of major changes to how science funding is sent out to researchers. Also the travel bans for foreign nationals from certain countries.
I highly doubt it’s anything. They’re selfish egotistical people out for their own gains. Elon never cared for Trump or the Republicans, just about what made him the most money. Now he’s buthurt and lashing out.
Imagine a timeline where Biden invited Elon to the electric car summit or whatever it was called. I imagine flipping to the Republicans was a response to being but hurt about that.
What a absolutely wild timeline we are living in
Consider this, JD Vance is Peter Thiel’s Acolyte, who desperately wants to bring about a global technocracy. What if all of this hasn’t been a genuine attempt yet. What if it’s merely theatre that has been setting the stage for Vance to take over. Trump gets to enrich his family beyond their wildest imagination, then he peaces out and the real horror begins.
I don’t see Vance flags on people’s trucks. I see Trump flags. I just don’t know that Vance gets the backing Trump does. I think the Rs capitulate to Trump so much because of his rabies base, and there’s this concern they’ll be replaced by someone who Trump endorses.
I do think it’s all a game for wealthy people, and we will just pay for it one way or another, regardless.
MAGA is a classic cult of personality. It’s all HitlerPig, there is no #2 waiting in the wings, not even his own spawn. When HitlerPig goes, MAGA is dead, and the backstabbing will become open warfare.
If the Dems can get their shit together, and have the spine to act, they’ll have the opportunity to sweep up the most corrupt traitors, and remove them from politics forever. They can hit a giant reset button on American politics.
Let’s see if they have the nerve for bold action on America’s behalf.
On the other hand, Vance is a loathsome piece of shit who even the MAGAts don’t like much.
Sadly enough, this won’t escalate into anything because Musk didn’t exactly have a lot of friends in the GOP even when Trump’s head was crammed shoulder-deep in his ass. He was only tolerated because the GOP had no other real choice, and they didn’t want to risk him funding a primary challenger. He has lots of money but no actual political clout. Which means I doubt there’s going to be a bunch of Republicans suddenly jumping to Team Musk.
He’ll probably go the Liz Cheney route of just being ostracized by everybody. But hey, it’ll be a hell of a lot of fun watching all this shit in the meantime.
I don’t know. He’s got tons of money and politicians are like flies to shit with money.
They’ll go where the voters go. If public sentiment among the MAGA base stays with Trump, so will they. And Musk isn’t popular enough among the MAGA base (outside of being a rich useful idiot) to significantly shake Trump’s hold.
His money is tied up in his companies, which are crashing. Tesla stock is dropping steadily, and the only reason it was making any money at all was because of EV credits, which go away in the Big Beautiful Bill. That’s why he hates it so much. It dooms Tesla, which will be bankrupt within two years.
Now he’s threatening to decommission the only American spacecraft that goes to the Space Station. That gives the government the excuse to cancel all contracts for Space X, or even confiscate it.
Kill Tesla and nationalize Space X, and he’s got nothing left.
He already announced he’s done donating to the gop after he burned all that money in wisconsins Supreme Court race.
Because he’s a man known for never going back on his word before…
Donald Frump controls the military, Melon Husk does not.
In what world is the president going to illegally use the military to kill a billionaire?
They have the CIA for that.
Sorry, wrong governmental agency chosen for my example.
He has the KGB for that as well!
The KGB has Trump. Maybe has Musk too.
Now might be a good time for Putin to off both of them. Maximum chaos effect.
Which means I doubt there’s going to be a bunch of Republicans suddenly jumping to Team Musk.
GOP grifters avoiding the biggest pile of money to grift, and you’re confident grifters will actively avoid it? I’m not so sure. I’m betting a number of opportunistic GOP will sign up on the Musk train if it means getting a paycheck/personal superpac donation.
Of course it’s far too early to tell how this is all going to shake out, but a number of articles are reporting that House Republicans are almost entirely on Trump’s side and lashing out at Musk. While there may be a few grifters from super-safe districts that may speak out, Trump is still the face of the party and his influence goes well beyond money; some of these people may stay on Trump’s side out of fear of retaliation, especially if sentiment among the rank-and-file MAGA base sticks largely with Trump.
I bet Thiel wants it too. Get his personalityless puppet into power quicker.
I feel like if he wanted to he could out right buy half the GOP congress people though. Money holds a lot of political power when the politicians are for sale.
He could buy all of them, politicians are particularly cheap. $10K each could buy the entire Congress. That’s nothing to Musk.
Half it’s been proven buying a politician is not expensive at all. He could buy everyone.
