I cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this corrupt leader? He even does this bizarre maffia like deals out in the open for his own interest, that's how confident he is no one will say anything
The message is clear from his circus administration, you can do anything as long as you bribe them
He pardoned the guy from Nikola, Trevor Milton, that staged a product demo to trick investors.
Why? Milton hired Pam Bondi's (the US attorney general's) brother to represent him.
King has to show his power by doing bad things constantly. If he only does good, he's just a people pleaser.
Americans cannot accept they have a corrupt government lead by a corrupt politician who is now corrupting the justice system. They prefer to continue propagating the myth of a "healthy democracy" and "open market".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias explains so much of our world.
I personally do not know any Americans that are as you described. 1/3 of Americans are as you describe, 1/3 are definitely not at all as you described, and another 1/3 is too apathetic to care about anything.
The recent "No Kings" protests were the largest in US history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protests_and_demonstra...
Exactly. Very few Americans are out there actively "promoting the myth" right now that aren't ideologically aligned with the current Republican administration. That's a distinct (if significant) minority.
Also, while I believe more Americans should be protesting, people in other countries (like myself, at one point) may have an inaccurate idea about what heavy US protest "ought to" look like in the media they see.
We'd love to be protesting at the iconic White House and federal Capitol building, creating horizon-to-horizon crowds for the rest of the world to marvel at... But for me (and ~40% of the population) that's a 3500-3700 km trip. How often would you expect someone in Portugal to travel the distance to Moscow for a day of protest? (Worse, assume no good trains.)
Instead, we gather at local state locations, which will typically not get shown (or recognized) internationally, except when folded into a sentence about how "millions protested across the nation."
> 1/3 is too apathetic to care about anything
I think at least some of that 1/3 has their own problems that prevent them from being able to devote energy to politics
This is measured via election participation, so a confounding factor is the recent uptick in voter suppression tactics; these tactics are employed most visibly in states with large minority populations (e.g. states in the Deep South).
These tactics include: consolidating polling places in urban areas; restricting the ability to submit an absentee ballot or otherwise vote by mail; restricting early voting; voter ID laws; and "poll watchers" who intimidate those at polling places, sometimes illegally.
Moreover, those forced to vote in-person at polling places are not given time off from employment to do so. This overwhelmingly disenfranchises the working class, who just so happen to overwhelmingly vote for progressive policies that favor the working class over the middle/upper classes.
I know of way too many people that "aren't political" or just don't want to think about it. That's not the same as "having their own problems", that's juvenile behavior.
> that's juvenile behavior
IMHO those words are based on an immature understanding of human beings and their limitations.
We not only have physical, financial, and temporal limits; even more powerfully, we have emotional limits. When we're scared or traumatized, we often can't act except to keep things immediately safe as much as they can; we are in survival mode. That's also how bad leaders get good people to do evil things - terrorize them, push them into survival mode, and direct their fear at the leader's targets.
What we can do is recognize those mechanisms and limitations in ourselves, using empathy (a universal human trait), our frontal cortex, and compassion - always the first step to taking of our emotions and being effective - and recognize it in others. Calling them names only traumatizes them more. Empathy and compassion gets them to a better place where they can act. It's not easy - that's why the word 'courage' exists; that's why it's sometimes called, 'grace under pressure'.
Effective leaders know this. What we're missing - what so many people are missing - is good, effective leaders. AFAICT, the leaders we'd expect to rise to this occasion also are traumatized - and they have an obligation to do better if they want to be leaders.
This doesn’t actually work in the real world where people cannot be isolated from or protected from people who keep doing this to them.
You can’t ’out empathize’ someone doing 24/7 manipulation against people.
The only thing that works are real consequences against bad actors.
And that there was no real consequences for bad actors is exactly why we are in the situation we are in now.
> This doesn’t actually work in the real world
It not only works, it is basic leadership skills that I and others use every day. You're unwittingly advocating your enemy's morals, saying only force works.
However, consequences are important too, depening on the situation.
What you’re advocating is appeasement.
You can’t out reasonable an unreasonable person, when then unreasonable person refuses to respect your (or others) boundaries.
Most of the time, in a civil society, other members of society (police, etc.) enforce the consequences silently that allow what you are describing to work.
If they won’t/don’t, what you are describing is a guaranteed path to failure with specific personalities. The evidence is all around you.
There is a reason why self-defense includes the option for violence nearly everywhere, why every society has some equivalent to armed police, why nations always have militaries, etc.
Advocating a failed approach in a given circumstance isn’t good leadership (even when it’s ‘being the good one’), it’s the worst leadership approach possible.
> What you’re advocating is appeasement.
Nope; that's the old knee-jerk insult that people use when you don't embrace aggression. Appeasement or non-appeasement has nothing to do with it, but that's the word they say to use in the flow-chart.
Many people - maybe you - are driven to conflict as an ideology, as if there is no other effective or higher power. That justifies the bad people; that's what they want you to embrace; you're helping them without realizing it.
Fascists already ‘know’ that violence is inevitable. By accusing the opposition of it first, they delay it and get the upper hand.
Read up on appeasement and tell me it isn’t applicable. [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Neville_Chamberlain]. It is exactly what you are proposing.
For fascists, there is no place they won’t go, or bridge they won’t cross, because they’re fundamentally driven by fear and insecurity. Fear and insecurity they themselves create through their actions. It’s an insatiable hunger.
It’s why inevitably, tanks are the only thing that works.
Or are you under the impression the opposite approach is winning?
Surrendering just speeds up the consumption, because the only thing they actually respect is fear of consequences. Which is why they work so hard to avoid them. Because they know, deep down, they are inevitable - and will be terrible.
Unless they kill or control anyone who can actually apply them first, anyway.
Or maybe people don’t want to discuss politics with you because they know you’ll label them juvenile, racist, vile POS and saying they aren’t political is the easiest way out of getting into a heated argument with you at the BBQ party. Most sane people know that arguing with you will not change anything (neither your opinion, nor the sad facts that we are all ruled by criminals no matter who we vote for).
I’m following politics and I have my opinions about things but you can be sure I won’t be discussing them with coworkers and friends.
Or maybe you don't know me at all, or any of the people I know. So don't act like you do to make a pointless internet comment.
Worrying about politics is the luxury of chattering classes.
Try living on or very near the poverty line, and then try and spend time worrying about politics. You are worrying about much more real (to you) problems.
When shit gets bad enough to motivate people on the poverty line, you're in deep shite.
Lots of poor people are politically active. Treating politics as some sort of vanity hobby for the reasonably well off is equivalent to saying that the working class doesn't have any meaningful political opinions. Maybe you meant they don't have time for obsessing over politics as an end in itself, but in my experience the majority of working class people have an interest in and opinions about politics, even if they're alienated rather than enthusiastic about political participation.
I should be more clear. My point is the sneering at the ~30% who are not politically engaged.
A boat load of meaningful change comes from working class agitation, but most of the political noise comes from the chattering classes, who have the luxury of creating cliques online, making and then banning phrases.
Of course the working classes have valid opinions. The issue is, unlike thier richer friends, they are living the discrimination that both left and right claim to endure. This leaves little time for mass organisation.
This has to be the most American thing I've ever read: the cognitive dissonance of the disconnect between income inequality and political systems.
I've got a (probably former at this point) buddy who makes less than $15K/year. He seems to have lots of time to listen to right wing propaganda podcasts and likes telling "jokes" about how minorities are problematic. He was never really interested in politics when we were growing up and I suspect never voted before 2024. Poor people have interests and opinions too.
They may also have been drawn into the all-too-tempting position of not opposing raw corrupt authoritarianism because the opposition party (the Democratic Party) and pre-Trump America both have deep flaws that are largely ignored.
I mean, their problems are politics, they just can’t do anything about them
There are many things anyone can do. You are not giving enough credit to the people shutting them down one by one. You won't hear them say they can't do anything.
You would be surprised…
Regarding CZ and Binance and the Trumps, they have kind of a symbiotic relationship.
After Binance and CZ pleaded guilty to money laundering in November 2023, for which they paid over $4 billions in fines, WLFI (which is a clone of AAVE belonging to the Trump family) launched a stablecoin called USD1. Magically on March 2025, $2 billion flowed into Binance through MGX, a state backed Abu Dhabi fund, later revealed to have been paid in USD1 (two months before it was unveiled and without at the time no effective audits), effectively propping WLFI’s coin (backed, unbacked, nobody knows, I assume backed). CZ applied for a presidential pardon inmediately after in May 2025.
WLFI now gets to earn about $60–80 million per year in yield from the USD1…
…As long as Binance doesn’t redeem those $2 billion.
I still don’t know what MGX got out of this deal, but I am pretty sure they didn’t walk empty handed.
For anyone unaware, financial fraud investigation YouTuber Coffeezilla just released a good video laying this all out a few hours ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEJTORMVN4
Even if you accept it, what are you going to do? Violence is not an acceptable option for most people. So, we carry on.
So you're saying that if people do accept it then nothing can be done, so better not to accept it and continue to live in a fairy tale controlled by criminals? I don't get it.
No. To make changes you have to participate or vote. But, if you dont like what we have now you are stuck with it until elections come up. No amount of complaining on the internet is going to change that. So, you just keep doing what you are doing because now is not the time we can make changes.
The time to make changes will never come because this is a corrupt system, voting means less and less each year.
If you take that stance you have concluded that it is futile or the only way to make change is through violence. If that is your conclusion we have already lost. When violence starts there is no telling how it shakes out or how many die. That is why rational people will avoid it as long as possible.
This is obviously false based on widespread protests and constant criticism. If you can’t find Americans who oppose Trump’s regime it’s because you don’t want to.
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> political violence being much more common historically than racial or other forms of violence
This is true if you take a very loose definition of "political violence" lol and probably just disingenuous at best.
The choice was between two corrupt options (same as its been for a long time). There is a lot of evidence coming out that the Biden administration was corrupting the justice system, FBI, and foreign relations for the benefit of the DNC and his family.
Honestly, the billionaire is less corrupt-able than the DNC nexus (we all know Biden wasn't running the show, and neither would Harris).
> billionaire is less corrupt
Why would you think that? Do you think that presents from foreign dictators (like plane or investment in crypto fund) are less corrupt?
> There is a lot of evidence coming out that the Biden administration was corrupting the justice system
This kind of vague fluffy language is becoming very common. What evidence? Where is it coming out from?
Not a fan of the other guy but keeping a decrepit old man from the press because you know he can‘t do the job, all while - surprise surprise - the exact same guy who is older than my grandpa when he died gets diagnosed with a long time form of stage 4 bone cancer that can‘t possibly have gone unnoticed while he was having access to presidential healthcare is kind of a big deal.
What does that have to do with “corrupting the justice system, FBI, and foreign relations for the benefit of the DNC and his family”?
If anything it would be a counter argument. Always strikes me as odd that Biden is somehow both a senile decrepit old man and a criminal mastermind depending on which is most useful at any given moment.
> senile decrepit old man and a criminal mastermind
both can be true at the same time. Biden was not always a senile incapable man. The corruption of the justice system seems to come from the fact that he's son has been operating in the shadows of the white house for a long time and it seems that very few people noticed it. But, of course, I know that Biden and his family are school kids when compared to a full fledged mafia boss like the current president.
> Always strikes me as odd that Biden is somehow both a senile decrepit old man and a criminal mastermind depending on which is most useful at any given moment.
Biden is not a criminal mastermind, and he never was. He changed into a decrepit old man, surrounded by a cabal of people that did not shy away to use the tools of the president's office for their personal gain. We know now that a lot of the president's autopen signatures did not originate from Joe Biden. This group of people also had a general interest in hiding the president's condition.
> Honestly, the billionaire is less corrupt-able than the DNC nexus
This is satire, right?
The grandparent comment shouldn't be wondering about anything now, should they....
Because it isn't about actions, it is about sides. Tribalism.
It is the loss of complexity. Many cannot understand that by choosing the lesser of two evils does not mean you support evil. It means your choices are limited. We have turned the political issues into good and evil, rather than disagreements in how to achieve our mostly shared goals. We can no longer see the other side as friends and family, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Anyone countering this can just proclaim "both sides" and in some sense they will be right, they have evidence and people do abuse that framework. But at the same time that destroys the bridge between us. The abuse of calling both sides evil along with the accusation that all use cases are instances of abuse. It binarizes the environment, creating a simple world where there are only two choices. Which is easy to do when everything is so complex, as we're so tired and don't want to think.
It's also why this administration's strategy is so effective: overload the opposition. After all, Brandolini's Law states: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it." They've weaponized it. It's an effective strategy, and hard to defend against. I'm sure someone will offer a solution, "it's so simple, you just..." and we perpetuate the game.
It's not half. I think close to 32% were fully supportive (voted for him) and around 36% sat at home or abstained, but in practicality they basically said they were fine with whoever won.
I don't know which is worse, that 32% were in support of the corrupt leader or that 68% in total are either supported him or didn't care enough to support anyone else
> around 36% sat at home or abstained, but in practicality they basically said they were fine with whoever won.
Or, they were not fine with whoever won.
We've got two abismal parties to choose from. Yes, there's an agument for voting for the lesser of two evils, but it's not a great one.
I'd like to believe at least some of those 36% would vote for a decent candidate/party. But once you lose faith in the system, and realize that it doesn't represent you, you might just stop participating in it.
> We've got two abismal parties to choose from. Yes, there's an agument for voting for the lesser of two evils, but it's not a great one.
No, we have one destructive/harmful party (R) and one status quo party (D). They are not the same level of bad and that's immediately obvious from this last year.
The problem with that is the status quo wasn't that good.
To compare the two parties with a house on fire, absolutely the sadistic pyromaniac arsonist burning down the neighborhood one house at a time is a bad guy and needs to be stopped. But when person trying to rally everyone to go after him is the abusive slumlord, it doesn't always resonate as effectively as it might.
A healthy society wouldn't tolerate either one. I wonder if the Democrats seeming inability to stop right-wing abuses has been partially motivated by the knowledge that successfully stomping out that sort of corruption would curtail their own abuses, too.
> I wonder if the Democrats seeming inability to stop right-wing abuses has been partially motivated by the knowledge that successfully stomping out that sort of corruption would curtail their own abuses, too.
Absolutely. And we know this because when they were last in power they did nothing to counter corruption or limit executive power. Instead they were partaking in it.
Trump is exploiting a system his predecessors created.
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> Yes, there's an agument for voting for the lesser of two evils, but it's not a great one.
This is only a remotely viable claim if you think the two evils have extremely similar amounts of evil.
if you're on a train to pittburgh, it stops in poughkepsie and you don't get off, you decided to go to pittsburgh by doing nothing. your reasons may be your own, but your ass is in pittsburgh.
If you are on a train going off a cliff and you can turn the train around to go off a different cliff, but decide it isn't worth the effort just to go off a different cliff, you still end up going off a cliff. Nice.
> you still end up going off a cliff. Nice.
This false equivalence is exactly what counts for being "fine with this corrupt leader."
I refuse to vote for a party that was complicit with the threats against me and my friends. The other party is pretty ass too, despite being closer to what I want politically.
> refuse to vote for a party that was complicit with the threats against me and my friends. The other party is pretty ass too, despite being closer to what I want politically
Sure. There are a lot of other people like you. Political operatives work hard to find folks like you, because groups who won’t vote are groups you can transfer resources from. (Same, oddly enough, for folks who will vote for you regardless of what you do. You can take advantage of that loyalty to buy votes on the margin.)
It’s dumb. And it directly undermines the causes you and others like and around you support, because again, your devoted non-participation creates political capital on the other side of any issue you would have voted on. But it’s common and a real part of any electoral—possibly political—system, and no elected who wins and keeps office can afford to ignore the free resources predictable non-voters offer up.
I don't really care if it hurts the causes I want, I am not voting for the people who send my friends death threats. Either way, neither party really supports what I want so voting for one would hurt the causes I want anyway.
> I am not voting for the people who send my friends death threats
Uh, then don't. I guarantee you have more people and issues on your ballots than the person who allegedly sent your friends death threats.
> neither party really supports what I want so voting for one would hurt the causes I want anyway
If neither party has any position you give any shits about, yes, I sort of agree you shouldn't be voting... (And I guess I'll concede you aren't voting against your interests and causes if you have no interests or causes.)
If I don't vote for the people who are a part of the party who sent my friends threats and didn't vote for the people who actively hurt the policy I want, I would either be voting for esoteric third party candidates (might as well not vote to save effort), or I would be out of people to vote for.
> If I don't vote for the people who are a part of the party who sent my friends threats and didn't vote for the people who actively hurt the policy I want, I would either be voting for esoteric third party candidates (might as well not vote to save effort), or I would be out of people to vote for
Well no, you'd be forced to participate in primaries or civically engage. You'd have to identify opportunities for compromise. You'd have to disaggregate your false monolith of a national political party. That takes effort.
Also, showing up to vote for an esoteric third party puts you on the board. Someone who shows up is provably not too lazy to vote, which is, honestly, most people who come up with convoluted reasons for avoiding the polls. Take a lazy person's stuff and they won't hurt you. Take a person who's showing up to the poll's stuff, and they might vote for the other guy--or worse, join a primary challenge.
Folks rejecting politics implicitly endorsing the status quo (whether they understand that they are or not is irrelevant to the measurable effect of their choices). They also put up a flag around themselves and their community that effectively marks it for cutting resources to benefit people and communities who reward their electeds.
welcome to Pittsburgh!
Honest question: Why do you think they are the same?
Friends and I have been threatened with violence multiple times by prominent members of one party and the other party does the same thing to other people. I would love to go into detail but I don't want to get doxxed because it is pretty specific. :(
>Friends and I have been threatened with violence multiple times by prominent members of one party and the other party does the same thing to other people. I would love to go into detail but I don't want to get doxxed because it is pretty specific. :(
So you're a nazi/white supremacist/Boogaloo boy? I wouldn't worry too much about getting doxxed, there are plenty of those around.
Or are you a batshit ancap[0]? That's a smaller group, but still sizable enough to avoid being doxxed just by mentioning it.
In fact, most groups that get that kind of hate (from anyone) are big enough (Trans folks are ~3,000,000 in the US, gay folk are ~30 million. I'd expect you could give at least some detail without doxxing yourself just by mentioning it -- assuming MiiMe19 isn't the name on your driver's license.
As such, I call bullshit on your claims. Prove me wrong.
The situation was specific enough and got enough media attention that yes, I would dox myself by giving pretty much any hint. And no, I am not in any of the groups you gave, or anything related. I hate politics and politics obsessed losers and have better things to do with my time. The only hint I can really give is that years later, despite not even being related to the action that started this whole thing, I (and friends) have been harassed in public and have had people threaten to hurt me just because of this one thing.
Okay, so you're a January 6th rioter/insurrectionist.
I get it, you don't want to come clean as you might have some "'splainin' to do" Lucy.
Enrique, is that you?
lol I'll bet OP has a super hot girlfriend who goes to a different school and plays bass in a punk band. No you can't meet her, she's on tour right now, in cities you've never heard of playing venues you've never heard of. No she doesn't have a bandcamp.
Here in Germany, we have like 20 different parties on the ballot, with maybe 6 of those having a reasonable chance to actually get any seats. Not a SINGLE ONE perfectly represents me and my issues.
I still voted, because my personal laziness or moral superiority does not trump the very real world effects of the "bad ones" winning. Lazy people like you with post hoc rationalizations exist here too, and they're just as bad and wrong.
> I still voted, because my personal laziness or moral superiority does not trump the very real world effects of the "bad ones" winning. Lazy people like you with post hoc rationalizations exist here too, and they're just as bad and wrong.
We're not talking about me. So maybe cool it.
Those are the same thing in our system.
By not voting, you are clearly saying you are fine with whoever wins. If you were not fine with whoever wins, you would have voted for someone, anyone else.
There's a double standard that I see a lot here, where people want to vote for a party, denigrate those who chose not to participate as being morally culpable for the results of the election, but won't take moral culpability for what their team does when they're in power.
If you vote for team A and they win and then do something bad (inevitable), shouldn't you be morally responsible for that? After all, you seem fine claiming non-participants have moral culpability for whatever the winning team does.
Yes, you are, to the extent that "the other option" would have been better.
This seems incredibly obvious. If my options are "don't bomb children" and "bomb children", there's an obvious choice and obvious culpability. If my options are "bomb children" and "bomb way the fuck more children" the choice is also obvious.
You do not get to pretend a moral dilemna doesn't exist just because you're not a fan of the available choices. You are still culpable.
Consider this scenario:
You have a train hurtling down the track that forks into two groups of people, 10 in one and 5 in the other, some of the people go on to cure cancer and some are murderers and you don't know where they are. Also it's possible batman set up the scenario to kill the bad guys and by flipping the switch you kill the good guys. Or the Joker set it up and the reverse is true.
In this case, you could argue that you only have moral culpability by intervening. Unless you are absolutely sure you have full knowledge of the intended consequences by acting, you can absolve yourself of the moral culpability by non-intervention.
And since we don't know the long term consequences of political actions, there is at least an argument for non-intervention.
I also sat out one election here in CZ, but that does not mean that I was "fine with whoever wins". It was "I really cannot decide which of the two guys is worse and I need to survive either of them."
Fortunately the Czech president does not have that much power.
How about parliamentary election?
I have voted in all of them so far. Smaller parties = not much personal attachment + higher chance to find at least one that is, in that particular moment, more aligned to your interests.
In general, I believe that more choice is good and polarizing political systems are subpar.
Participation adds a moral dimension. It becomes a trolly problem — do you throw the switch and take culpability for the outcome?
Well yes, but you're completely misunderstanding how the trolley problem applies to voting, esp. in the USA. You're pretending that "Not Voting" and "Voting" are the switch options, but that's simply not true.
There are just two possible outcomes: Dems or Reps getting power. That's the switch options you have. "Not Voting" simply means letting the trolley take the Rep route and being JUST AS CULPABLE for the results as every single republican voter.
Your fantasy of "not voting" being an actual moral option is like arguing "I disagree with the concept of a trolley, so I'm just going to turn away from the switch". You're morally exactly as culpable, because you made a choice that is morally the equivalent of "not switching tracks".
There is a subtle difference though because a vote is supposed to be a act of support. With the trolley problem there is nothing to support.
Voting for party A/B is a reward that encourages party A/B to do more of what they're doing.
So let's say only 1000 people voted because everyone else hated both options. That would pave a path for party C that would not exist if everyone held their nose and voted for crap.
Not participating in the trolley problem does not remove questions of moral responsibility. You had the choice to throw the lever, you said "either outcome is fine".
That's your choice. "I don't participate at all" doesn't work unless it makes the whole trolley go poof.
>Not participating in the trolley problem does not remove questions of moral responsibility. You had the choice to throw the lever, you said "either outcome is fine".
As the eminent philosopher[0] opined:
[0] https://genius.com/Rush-freewill-lyricsThere are more moral frameworks out there than just utilitarianism.
Everything about him since 2015 has been absolutely egregious. Anyone who hadn't realized it by 2016 will never change their tune. Even if he declares martial law for no good reason they're all still going to justify it somehow. Anyone who's hung on this long will be along for the ride forever.
> cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this corrupt leader?
They've normalized corruption irrespective of magnitude. That's partly a problem of the little corruption existing in the first place. But it's also a problem of education and tribal populism being given this much power.
>I cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this corrupt leader?
Don't think fox news is going to report that he enriched the prez...
I think most actually know and don't think it's all that much different from what other have done for decades. I'm not saying they are correct to think it, just that they do think it. They think it's refreshing that the corruption is in the open. It's a societal boy-cried-wolf numbness. People are tired of the of finger pointing and screaming about every thing and now don't listen when the real stuff goes down.
Yeah that seems possible too. Sad but plausible
I want to understand what you said.
You assumed the leader is corrupt, possibly assumed the leader has bad intentions, and that the world can't possibly be more complex than these assumptions. Assumed the leader made this choice instead of a team behind him.
Then presented a generality. Possibly assumed he doesn't know more than you and "everyone who won't say anything".
Called an entire administration a circus. Another generality.
Suggested bribery without evidence.
How does one respond constructively to a comment like this?
>How does one respond constructively to a comment like this?
How indeed? You certainly didn't.
Most polls that I've seen show it closer to 40% than half
Yes, and that's depressing. Why are so many people not understanding what is going on?
Reminds me of this Bill Gates quote: "We were a bit naive: we thought the internet, with the availability of information, would make us all a lot more factual. The fact that people would seek out—kind of a niche of misinformation—we were a bit naive."
Its difficult to digest lol. Im from Europe but damn I feel the Americans - its legit embarrassing to watch.
Watching the Great Brainwash happen in real time has given me (I hope) a lot of insight into how anti-fascist Germans must have felt before WWII. It's a hell of a thing to watch half the people you know fall victim to the deluge of simplistic, feral propaganda that's been pouring out of our media sources for quite some time now. YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and other socials being the primary driving force. All platforms that are incentivized to spread rage and misinformation, and yet we can't seem to quit them as a culture. We rationalized their existence and non-regulation because BUSINESS and FREE MARKET. It's a real sad time for America. We should have known better. It's all of our faults, collectively. For not being big enough to shun the pressure and money. For not doing what was right all along. Now, we'll reap the whirlwind.
It's easy to explain: They have no idea what's happening.
Most people can't keep up with the firehose of news and don't really want to. This particular bit of unethical behavior is just one more bit of inconsequential news which will have completely disappeared from the headlines by tomorrow. It basically never happened to 95% of the country, regardless of political leaning.
Secondly, conservatives live in their own highly filtered and mutated information bubble. Good news is amplified, bad news is either downplayed, justified (pure fiction is acceptable) or simply ignored. So even if they do hear about this, it won't be a big deal.
In short, most people won't care, and conservative media will actively work to overlook or more often, rationalize this sort of unethical behavior to the point where it somehow is totally fine. (Simply read this thread to watch it happen in real time.)
Only had of Americans vote, only half of them voted for Trump, and his approval rating is down significantly since inauguration.
It is not accurate to say that half of Americans are ok with this. It’s just our system doesn’t allow for doing anything about it except wait.
Arguing over whether half or a third are okay with this is splitting hairs anytime that isn't an election (where these margins matter).
That even a third is okay with this is a clear enough signal. He represents their values.
> It’s just our system doesn’t allow for doing anything about it except wait.
"Healthy democracy"
"I Could ... Shoot Somebody, And I Wouldn't Lose Any Voters" - Trump
They wouldn't be fine with it if they understood it. Instead they are not paying attention and only consuming propaganda media (Fox News) that refuses to report on Trump negatively in any way.
We're long past the time when FoxNews was the main vector. Now the propaganda is coming from social networks and mainstream media that is afraid of consequences if they tell the truth. It's all just a big mafia system.
Not sure we can blame fox news, it has like 5MM peak daily viewership...
FB, Twitter, Tiktok on the other hand...
Note that they all are, or will soon be controlled by one political grouping.
It is disconcerting. Having discussed openly with people who were supportive of similar politicians, their logic is often in the line of "all of them are corrupt, but at least his politics are different". Now when you point that certainly corruption exists, but this is another level, they're getting into non-logical territory. People perceive times as grim and will take whomever offers something else than the status-quo baseline politician I guess. Even if they grift throughout and everyone's worse off in the end.
On a baser level, if you go on twitter, there's a whole slew of delusional people who either don't believe this because of "fake news", another portion that's in the same "Clinton/Obama/Biden were even worse", and the rest just doesn't even care so long as "the libs are owned".
Half of America isn’t fine with Trump. Only 22.3% of Americans voted for him and his approval rating has gone down significantly since then.
Another 36% could've voted against him and chose not to. Even accounting for some amount literally unable to reach the poll booth, yeah, half of America.
> I cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this corrupt leader
It's because you are still thinking of the USA as a democracy. Musk helped buy the election for Trump. It's an open oligarchy since companies were allowed an opinion as if they were citizens.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citi...
The thing is, most won't hear about this at all. It's always amazing to talk to a Trump voter and realize they don't actually hear about most of this stuff
And if it does break through the right info bubbles, right-wing media pundits and influencers will be on-the-ready to quickly rationalize or what-about it away and coax their audiences back to their "happy" places, where they can nurse their favorite grievances about the left, the media, the trans people, etc
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Well, to be fair, 7 million showed up in the streets on Saturday. Up from 5 million before and up from 3 million before that. The last election was decided by 2.3 million votes.
Edit1: That's not to say don't worry about it. That's to say everyone can show their displeasure with peaceful protest and involvement/activism that will make it clear the people of the US disagree with this corruption. No matter how much any internet groups scream "stolen".
Edit2: people vastly underestimate, in their media bubbles, how many showed up from "red" states.
From the 7 millions that did show up, very close to zero of them will be deciding the next election due to the way the election system works in the US.
>From the 7 millions that did show up, very close to zero of them will be deciding the next election due to the way the election system works in the US.
That's not really true. Check the margins of victory in so-called "swing" states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina) for Trump and compare that with each state's turnout at last weekend's protests.
So no. Many more than "close to zero" of those folks will be deciding the next presidential election.
Edit: Corrected prose.
I think you underestimate how many showed up in and from red states. And how many don't get their news from Fox/NewsMax/Trump/Social. At least that's one good thing about all the AI polluting social media with obnoxious slop.
Ok, so the ones that showed up in red states basically don't count. That's the very definition of a red state. The ones that showed up on blue states as well. The ones in swing states may make some difference, the problem is that they almost certainly already voted blue in the last election. That's why i'm pretty confident that, unfortunately, these numbers won't make much difference.
I also believe you are making a category error expecting the next election to be like the last. His shift in approval has already been ~20% for the worse. And people aren't going to forget the demolition of the Whitehouse for a golden ballroom while Republicans twiddle their thumbs.
I mean, we shut down the government and so now we're just waiting (a year) for the midterms. What else do you expect people to do?
Among other things, people are constantly challenging Trump in court and have reversed many of his policies. For example, my passport needed to be renewed this year and he signed an executive order saying I couldn't get an accurate one. The ACLU sued him and now I have an accurate passport. Living your best life in spite of his attempts to ruin it is a valid form of resistance. He wants to erase trans people. I'm out there not being erased. That's something.
I'm from the UK and don't understand what you mean by accurate passport? Would you mind explaining?
https://www.aclu.org/cases/orr-v-trump
Thank you
It's about a question of if you get to decide the "sex" or "gender" field on your own documents or does the government get to decide and give you no input and no recourse.
Thank you
> we shut down the government
The government clearly isn't shut down. I'm still paying taxes through the eftps web site. Only the parts that the executive wants shut down are actually shut down. Perhaps "degraded" is a better word.
In many parts of Europe a couple of strikes would have taken place. Usans are numb or has no social conscience and muscle.
There was a No Kings protest just a few days ago, millions of people across nearly every state demonstrated against the administration.
>In many parts of Europe a couple of strikes would have taken place. Usans are numb or has no social conscience and muscle.
Americans are not numb. And we have both of those things, or at least most of us do. What we don't have are strong unions. Less than 10% of American workers are union members.
What's more, for as long as there have been unionization efforts in the US (150+ years), the forces of corporations, aided by the government -- to this day -- have suppressed those efforts -- for a long time, brutally and fatally -- and such suppression (although generally not with clubs and guns these days) continues, often with government support.
As such, even a "general strike" would have minimal effect, as many union members are forbidden by law to strike (in various jurisdictions, police, fire departments and others).
The vast majority of US workers are "at will" workers whose employment can be terminated at any time, for any (or no) reason. Workers can do so just the same as employers, so it's definitely fair!
More than half of Americans can't afford an unexpected $USD600 expense. As such, how many do you expect to essentially quit their jobs (possibly multiple jobs) to join a "general strike"?
Labor and unions don't work in the US the same way they do in say, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark and other countries with high levels of unionization[0]
As much as I'd love to see repeated "general strikes" in the US, protesting the anti-democratic (small 'd') assaults on the rule of law, freedom of expression and due process, given the state of organized labor in the US, that's just not going to happen.
As such, we organize where we can and mobilize widely. As the pain comes, more and more of folks will begin to see the problem. I hope it won't come too late.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_comparisons_of_t...
We inspired the French revolution and had a 7-million-person protest this past weekend.
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I know HN viscerally hates crypto, and yes Trump is embarrassingly corrupt, but the charges against CZ were a greater wrong than whatever quid pro quo happened in the pardon.
This is the most embarrassing part of all of it. The US is ping ponging between two very different ways of misusing state power.
CZ was charged with violating a highly technical US securities law that is not common to most countries despite not being a US citizen or ever setting foot in the US. His crime was letting his employees (also non-US and under no affirmative obligation to learn the laws of every country in the world just because they run a website) tell crypto whales they could use VPNs to get the non-US, non-nerfed version of Binance.
The public's interest in protecting crypto whales from Binance is extremely tenuous. Unsophisticated users would hit the geofence. These were whales using Binance because they wanted to, not because they were tricked.
The US's right to enforce arcane securities law outside its own borders is also very tenuous. If every country pulls this level of aggressive enforcement of atypical law on every website (even geofenced ones!) we will have total chaos. Should China, Russia, or India be able to hunt you down for violating some arcane law? No? Then why should the US?
This is also happening in the context of an active public debate over the application of this law within the US, one cryptocurrency supporters won fairly definitively in the last election.
Whatever discretion the law provides US enforcers, they should have recognized that it was wrong to use that discretion and left CZ alone once Binance made reasonable gestures at compliance.
Instead, once their political coalition signaled that they should put symbolic heads on platters, they went about scoring career points. This is the kind of misbehavior that drove Aaron Swartz (a friend of mine) to suicide. We should be clear that it's wrong.
And here we are. A choice between venal corruption and cruel punching down at immigrants on one side, and a blind, symbolic use of power for power and ideology's sake on the other.
> his employees (also non-US and under no affirmative obligation to learn the laws of every country in the world just because they run a website)
Employees of financial businesses are absolutely obligated to learn the laws of every country where they provide services.
I don’t think the problem is HN’s hate of crypto - it’s the horrendously ignorant takes like these that people dislike.
Surely you don’t believe that CZ was charged for shits and giggles, just because he happened to make a website that Americans use?
Hi, Trump voter here. I'm NOT fine with this.
If you’re not fine with criminals who get away with fraud, why vote for a well known fraudster? He’s been conning people since the 80s
He was clear about how he intended to run the country in his last term. And in the lead-up to the election. You are complicit in his crimes.
People are going to pile on you for not seeing this coming, but I really do appreciate your ability to change your mind and tell people about it.
People need space to make a U-turn. I hope you get some grace because it's a lot easier to say "I told you so" than "I was wrong."
I don't see where the GP changed their mind. They may not be ok with this particular action while still preferring the current administration to any alternative.
How wasn't his first 4 years enough time?
> People need space to make a U-turn
The problem is we dont believe him. There has been ample time to make a u turn. A decade at this point. Trump has never shied away from his corruption. He has been upfront about his intentions from the beginning. I just do not believe that this is the straw that broke the camels back when so many straws have come before.
Serious set of questions here from someone desperately trying to understand people who voted for Trump and how to have conversations with them that can be productive. None of them are meant to be insulting or insinuate anything.
To me, this sort of behavior just seems par for the course for how he has been acting since before his presidency. Did you follow his record in business and politics closely prior to voting for him? If so, what mitigating factors were there that let you still feel comfortable in voting for him?
Is this an isolated source of issue with him? Part of a broader trend? In either case, is it/these a big enough deal for him to lose your support moving forward? For the rest of the political party supporting him?
If there has been a shift in your ability to support him, what is it that broke the camel's back?
It is remarkably simple. There are countless meals on the menu but people get to see only the two on the front page. Say, monkey brains and bull testicles. Few can really appreciate either. There is a little talk about the slugs on page 1. An abysmal small number will turn a few pages and look over the burgers and pizzas... but you can't really order a burger in a restaurant like this? Can you? So even they pretend they really like to eat testicles.
You could have literally opened a random page and order whatever is on there. It is perfectly safe to order the burger as you will most likely be served monkey brains anyway.
No one will rage at you for voting for Afroman. There are no dire consequences.
I just honestly feel like any attempt to equate the two is insane.
I can't really align myself to either party, and I am diametrically opposed to the Democrats on some issues, like gun control, and think that there are a lot of real issues that they push far to the extreme to the point that it is problematic, but... there's also only one party that attempted insurrection and overturning the election, campaigned on all sorts of insane shit, pushes a narrative of needing the military to deal with protestors, etc.
It's not two shit sandwiches, it's a pot of live pit vipers vs a pot of boiled unseasoned kale and spinach. I'm not going to enjoy the latter, but it's probably not going to harm anything more than my taste buds. The other might kill me.
The magic is this: there are no other candidates who can win because you didn't vote for any of those in previous elections and there won't be in the next because you won't now.
It is like you ask someone to chose between death by fire, death by drowning OR finding the love of your life. Then they respond with: I don't want to drown! Or worse, they ask what other people chose.
Imagine yourself making your own choices. Picture it for a moment, doesn't it sound terrifying?
One should also look at it from the perspective of the other candidates. I mean those not part of the uniparty. Imagine making an effort to convince people to vote for a sanity riddled election program. The level of insult people sink to in order to NEVER even consider it.
Not OP but I reluctantly voted for Trump because of the direction he proclaimed he wanted the country to go. I could not tolerate the direction the democrats were wanting to go as it seemed an inevitable path to civil war.
But I knew Trump was shady and didn't like that he partied with Epstein in the 90s. A country takes a long time to change directions. I saw a chance for a smaller less restricting federal government. It was a gamble I was willing to take to at least get the ship turning around.
J/w: what direction does it seem to you that Democrats want? At least judging by its elected officials and internal leaders, it seems like a pretty directionless party to me.
Flooding the nation with immigrants and given them our tax money and berating anybody that questioned it. That is a 100% sure path to civil war.
When did your ancestors immigrate to the country? What was the process for immigration then?
For the majority of the history of the country it has never been anything like it is today. Until 1819 you basically literally just showed up. After that, ships had to include passenger manifest and pass that along to the state, and then state's handled immigration - but none there did more than try to charge 'head fees' to keep the truly destitute out, but not all states even did that. 1875/1876 there were laws that changed this - largely banning Asian immigrants and making immigration federal purview. The next couple of decades things got more formalized, but if you were a normal human being capable of supporting yourself you basically got held for a basic check and then were let in. <1-2% got turned away most years. It wasn't until 1921/4 that anything resembling our current immigration system was put into place, and while it saw significant revision in 1965 to how the caps and quotas were organized, we've not seen anything major change.
The Democrats want significant immigration reform, true. They want a path for people that have been living here as productive members of society to stay here. They want them to be treated like human beings.
This is not "flooding" the nation.
> and given them our tax money
This talking point seems to be repeated a lot, but it's just not true. Illegal immigrants pay more taxes in to the system than they receive in benefits - largely because they are ineligible for the vast majority of benefits. If you want to increase our tax revenue, more illegal immigrants is better than less. We effectively rip them off. It's like the claims that the shutdown is over giving illegal immigrants free healthcare - not a dime of the funding being discussed would go to them. You're being lied to.
I'm all for a system where we screen our immigrants for criminals, terrorists, etc. But the current system is broken, and we have built our way of life off of exploiting a large amount of hardworking people that contribute a hell of a lot to our ability to live the way we do. Legalizing them, streamlining the immigration process, etc., is not at risk of bankrupting our coffers.
This country was a frontier in 1819. We needed labor to tame the wilderness. We don't need more unskilled laborers anymore.
We have immigration laws. The US is incredibly generous, and naturalizes more than 1 million immigrants each year.
The American people don't want a "path" for illegal aliens. We already tried that in 1986. All it did was incentivize more illegal immigration.
And what the last administration did was absolutely flooding the nation. They removed nearly every EO related to border security, and then complained that they needed more laws to "fix" the problem they created.
> I'm all for a system where we screen our immigrants for criminals, terrorists, etc. But the current system is broken,
The current system is broken insofar as we are not enforcing the law thoroughly enough. We already have a system, it just needs to be followed. All illegal aliens have to go back.
> I could not tolerate the direction the democrats were wanting to go as it seemed an inevitable path to civil war.
Trumps action with ICE will lead to waco situations. Undocumented immigrants can obtain guns in this country and will not continue to go quietly into the night. Seems to me that his actions are far more likely to lead to civil war
I think a more likely scenario is that a citizen gets tired of being rounded up every other weekend or shaken down for ICE protection money and decides to put a stop to it, one way or another. And it would in many cases be legal too, because those iceholes don't identify themselves.
If somebody that is here illegally picks up a gun and fights citizens or government they are a foreign combatant on US soil. Fighting them is not civil war it is national defense and is the whole reason the federal government was established.
Now, if you are talking about citizens supporting an invasion against those that oppose it that is civil war. I agree that is a none zero possibility. However, telling citizens to get fucked while taking their money and giving it to non citizens, to me, was certain to lead to violent conflict between citizens.
>However, telling citizens to get fucked while taking their money and giving it to non citizens, to me, was certain to lead to violent conflict between citizens.
Whose money? Being given to which non-citizens?
Seriously. Be specific here. the words you used are all in English and are even fairly grammatical. But they don't model reality.
Undocumented folks, by virtue of being undocumented, are ineligible for public assistance of any kind, pretty much everywhere in the US.
What's more, in order to work, they need to provide an SSN and they need to use someone else's because they can't get their own -- because they're undocumented. But they and their employer must each still pay Social Security and Medicare taxes which pay for those programs -- but since they're undocumented, they'll never collect any of the money they paid into those programs in taxes.
So I ask again, specifically, what taxpayer money is being paid to which non-citizens? Please be specific here.
Illegal aliens are eligible for the following benefits:
Federal Benefits
* Emergency medical care
* School meals
* K-12 education
* WIC nutrition program
California State Benefits
* Full-scope Medi-Cal
* Cash assistance (CAPI)
* In-state college tuition
* Disability and Family Leave
FYI emergency medical care is not a federal benefit. You and your health insurance provider are on the hook for whatever it costs.
You knew who he is, and you voted for him anyway. You really didn't see this kind of rampant corruption coming from his 2nd term?
Well, you voted for it. Were you not capable of critical thought when you entered the voting booth?
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If you think this is wrong, please, I implore you to do something about it.
Your reps (or likely preferred choice of reps, if they didn't win their district) are enabling this, and don't give two shits about anything I say.
Trump is the most openly corrupt leader in american history. How can you vote for him while claiming to be against corruption?
Because he’s giving them the one thing they really care about “white nationalism”
They will overlook everything else he does. Everything
Just stop with that BS. I guarantee that "white nationalism" was the farthest thing from the majority of Trump voters mind. If you come out of the gate saying all Trump supporters are racist most people are just going to roll their eyes at you at walk away. You have already told them you dont like them and that you will most likely not even entertain their reasons as acceptable.
You're the one who was in another comment talking about how the dems ran on a platform of flooding our country with immigrants and giving them our tax money; sounds like you are, in fact, closer to the racist/white supremacist set than you might realize. At the very least, you share their goals or vision for America.
What exactly did you think you were voting for then? Because everything he's done has been extremely predictable.
A chance of making the federal government smaller and less overbearing. Also a path that didn't inevitably lead to civil war.
He said "I will be a dictator on day 1", and he meant it. It wasn't "a joke".
He's using US Military on US soil. Sending National Guard in where there is no legal justification for it. This is what the start of a civil war looks like.
That's such a vague response that it's difficult to respond with any specifics, but I will say that I can't imagine how you thought Donald Trump was the better of the two candidates to achieve either of these goals.
The primary reason you yourself gave was a view of "immigration issues" that is detached from the reality that Democrats have continually increased funding for CBP and ICE and increased militarization of the border with every single presidency since and including Clinton.
At the same time, your belief is that failure to enact a nativist crackdown will result in "a civil war". I thought it went without saying, but this is a very extreme view, to say the least...
The connection between nativist policy advocacy and white supremacist ideology in the US isn't new. It goes back to the very notion of "illegal immigrant"; the politician who shepherded the bill that criminalized unauthorized entry to the United States was an open an enthusiastic white supremacist who pushed this bill forward to advance his white supremacy: https://immigrationhistory.org/item/undesirable-aliens-act-o...
At the same time, this relationship is not ancient history. Indeed, nativist sentiments and white supremacist ideology are still closely linked today. See, e.g.:
https://direct.mit.edu/daed/article/150/2/40/98317/Immigrati...
> The correlation between immigration preferences and racial resentment was significant in every year. The steady correlation of 0.30 throughout the 1990s and early 2000s was impressively strong by the standards of opinion data of this sort. The rise from 0.30 to 0.50 by 2018 indicates an uncommonly strong relationship. [...] [E]very measure we have indicates that Whites' views of immigration are closely tied to their views of race.
There are many, many similar correlations between nativist beliefs and policy support and "racial conservatism", white supremacist beliefs, and Trump support (including support of Trump's extreme immigration measures).
"Racist" is not currently a label that many people in the United States are willing to openly embrace, even to themselves. It's not surprising that actual or perceived accusations of racism are received with defensiveness. But individual (and nominal) disavowal of "racism" is frankly less compelling than the entire history and presently observable empirical reality of nativism in the United States.
> Hi, Trump voter here. I'm NOT fine with this.
Welcome to the resistance!
Just curious. Since you voted for someone who is a terrible President last time, what are you planning to change about how you make voting decisions next time? Are there particular people or media you plan to listen to less, and others more? Particular aspects you will weight higher or lower?
Just to be clear, I'm not part of any "resistance". I don't know what that is. Sounds awfully tribalistic - something I go out of my way to avoid.
Thanks for all of the comments. I wasn't replying simply because I haven't seen them, but based on the comments I actually got: I feel like my words would be like yelling into a vacuum regardless of what I actually say.
Honestly, why did you vote for this then?
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Is the irony not lost you that Joe Biden pardoned his own son for crimes he was absolutely guilty of. I don't see how that is any less corrupt. This isn't whatboutism either because I'm not trying to say that what Trump is doing is okay, I'm pointing out that this behavior is not particular to Trump and his supporters. The large majority of Americans are fine with corruption as long as it's their team.
You talk as if corruption is a binary: corrupt or not corrupt.
I’m not supportive of Biden pardoning his son. But it’s inarguable that the Trump administration is orders of magnitude more corrupt than Biden’s was. To say “they’re both corrupt” is to flatten everything out to meaninglessness.
Biden pardoning his son was widely condemned by Democrats.
This is despite the fact that Hunter was gone after on a charge that is basically never enforced alongside a media and political campaign ramping up all sorts of lies and half-truths and trying to draw connections to things he was never on trial for, much less convicted of, with an incoming president that had spoken extensively about his desire to weaponize the government to enact revenge on his political rivals, which we have seen him do extensively already.
I don't like that Biden pardoned his son, but I also think the idea that it is at all comparable to the pardons Trump has issued that are blatantly corrupt is absurd. Meanwhile, Jan6 pardonees have a whole Wikipedia section detailing all of the crimes they have gone on to commit since being pardoned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon_of_January_6_United_Sta...
No. You are making it seem like Biden pardoned his family for petty crimes. He pardoned them in advance for any crime they have committed that is yet unknown. That‘s an unprecedented move and you claiming the other side will „come after your family“ basically confirms that the legal system is corrupt and that there is reasonable ground to do so.
Biden pardoned his son for a petty crime. He pardoned the rest for probably no crime at all.
See again:
> with an incoming president that had spoken extensively about his desire to weaponize the government to enact revenge on his political rivals, which we have seen him do extensively already.
> Biden pardoned his son for a petty crime.
Again no, Biden issued a sweeping pardon for his Son that pardons him of all crimes, known and unknown. Hell, it was a pardon so broad that even left leaning pundits like Politico publicly wrote about it [1]. It took me all of one second to confirm this. Why lie?
[1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/02/hunter-biden-pardon...
Biden issued sweeping pardons to expected targets of Trump's anticipated (and fairly explicitly signalled) partisan weaponization of DoJ, which is an effective and costly political punishment even if it never secured a conviction, but so long as a suitable pretext can be found.
As we now see that being executed after mass partisan purges and, in several cases (sone where this is already adjudicated, more where it is pending) illegal appointments because that was the only way yo get or keep willing hacks in position to carry out the prosecutions, its arguable the only thing Biden did wrong in that regard was not doing it widely enough.
> Biden issued sweeping pardons to expected targets of Trump's anticipated
A suitable pretext meaning a crime.
Biden's son had committed and was convicted of a petty crime that is basically never enforced.
The pardon was sweeping.
You seem to be arguing semantics. I care about what his son actually did. If someone is sitting in jail for a marijuana conviction, and gets a blanket pardon, I am going to say they were pardoned for the marijuana conviction, not for some theorized other crime.
You don't get a blanket pardon for a marijuana conviction. You get a pardon for that exact crime. No one gets a blanket pardon. That is my point.
Because, again, Trump was explicit he was going to go on a political witch hunt to target his enemies. A blanket pardon is your best defense against manufactured charges in that case - see all of the current cases being brought against his enemies.
I don't really understand why this is a difficult concept for you to grasp.
One can not be happy with that and understand that Trump would have found ways to lock up his son for 20 years. No one thinks this dude was going to be punished for political reasons.
Hunter Biden and the Biden family were investigated for years in various political witch hunts and Hunter was charged with filling out a gun form incorrectly in the end. Trump made it clear he was going on a revenge tour with the DOJ in his second term so I don't blame Joe for the pardons.
1. There is no evidence that Joe partook in hunter's scheme. No evidence of misuse of office or government resources. It was more conspiracy to engage in corruption than actual corruption.
2. Hunter's pardon was still wrong and widely condemned by dems.
Biden misused the office to pardon his son but he was not corrupt.
Biden didn't pardon, the auto pen did.
JFC did an auto pen write this comment. Might as well.
Biden obviously wasn‘t in the mental state to do anything himself in the last year of his presidency.
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