He’s a narcissist. Letting go of ANY shred of power is unimaginable, because he deserves EVERYTHING. Any scrap of power he has relinquished has been at legal gunpoint.

Not to mention expanding the bunker at the WH. Dude knows he’s absolutely going to try to stay President no matter what happens. Expect full Franco.

Hate also just ages a person. Stress makes you age seriously fast.

This is almost certainly part of the idea. “It’s too loud and noisy here, I’m doing president stuff from Mar A Lago now”, so now the USSS and everyone else has to ship out there and rent from HIS properties and his cabinet is either making daily flights there, moving there, or simply discontinuing daily briefings because there’s simply things you can’t say or talk about on a Teams call.

Weirdly enough, that “privately funded” ballroom they’re building is almost $230m. You know, the one Trump said he’d build and pay for himself?

I was going to suggest Russia, but Russia’s having a hard time bankrolling Russia right now.

Because it’s way easier to convert cops to what amounts to a federalized police force than to recruit random civies and vet them. You can just assume any cop that applies is going to be onboard with everything.

We have, actually.

Because deep down, a lot of these fundies WISH they could transgress those norms. A lot of them WISH they could do half the shit he does. He’s their fantasy where they get a shitload of money and can now violate every single thing they’ve been told is sacred.

A lot of it is also just gonna boil down to racism. A LOT of Evangelicalism, especially in America, is deeply racist. White supremacists also realized they could hijack religious messaging and spread their hate a lot farther than just going “white power” - couching your hate in religious context makes it a lot more palatable for a lot more people. The religious right, and a scary portion of the center, hate nonwhites. They’ll be nice enough in public, they’ll make the noises about how they’re welcome at their churches and there’s a place for them in heaven, but at the end of the day? They really REALLY would prefer if they were “with their own kind”.

Fraudulently claimed, as in “people who aren’t supposed to get it”.

Won’t be for long.

I’ve also dealt with this! Clients loved asking me to lie to the EPA directly. Now that I’m doing medical R&D testing, every so often we’ll have to remind an engineer that “no, we can’t just do more testing and average the results.”

Nah, they’re gonna find someone who’s not skittish about just ordering the deaths of civilians without needing pep rallies and getting rid of oversight.

Stephen Miller comes to mind.

Yup. Look at the Palace of the People in Romania. Buildings are expensive to demolish properly, expensive to put up, so it’s easier to just leave them up if they are or can be made to fit a purpose.

Marvel did it!

Call it what it is: an intimidation tactic.

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This is also an administration that I do not think would have a problem arranging the deaths of any serviceman who decides not to follow orders, legal or extralegal.

From what we’ve seen of him playing Path of Exile, basically, yeah. As expected from most rich assholes, he wants the prestige of being good at a game, but wants to shortcut the whole part in between where you’re not good YET.

They weren’t making bombs, apparently they manufactured explosive filler for 155mm artillery shells.