Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
Why does the media cover Trump's promises? He's a habitual liar.
Because, unfortunately, everything he says has real world implications. It's exhausting.
Jesus Christ, even ProPublica is doing the "he might not do it" thing? Have he and all of his surrogates not repeated themselves enough yet?
"But what about last time! The guard rails worked! It won't be that bad.”
Meanwhile every single guard rail is 50 miles behind us.
There's literally someone making that argument right now. "The genocide isn't going to happen, they're just lying about it" is the most dangerous possible position to take right now.
I don't expect him to. We already had one Trump term. It was filled with him making numerous over-the-top claims as political theater to score points and media time, and then not doing them.
His signature item was The Wall, which he led supporters to believe would span the southern border. This isn't even a new one -- Bush Jr played this one (in a somewhat-less-over-the-top fashion) with the Secure Fence Act. Trump changed the wording to "Wall" and recycled it.
His second-most prominent item was "tear up NAFTA". This one I was ready for, because I'd seen Ron Paul -- who has a bunch of constituents who have had people who don't like NAFTA sell them on the idea that NAFTA needs to go away -- give an extended speech about how NAFTA is terrible. What said constituents did not pick up on was his quieter comments saying that NAFTA was bad...because it wasn't "free enough" -- i.e. that Paul was advocating for fewer barriers to trade. Trump had, in several of his first speeches, say that NAFTA was a terrible deal and that we'd only keep it if he could negotiate a much better one. I went out and looked at the Trump whitepaper on NAFTA. Long on giving the impression of dramatic change -- all caps letters on the front, very short on concrete specifics. Sure enough, The Trump administration slightly liberalized it, gave one notable-but-limited handout to swing states in slightly increasing the percentage of domestically-manufactured parts required in an American car, renamed the thing "USMCA" so that "NAFTA" was gone, and proceeded onwards. Trump did not do what he was working hard to give voters the impression that he was doing, engage in major protectionist policy.
He worked heavily to give the impression that he had killed TPP and TTIP. Negotiations for these FTAs had failed prior to him entering office, but he made an enormous deal out of directing that they be canceled.
Point is that what Trump's first term consisted of was an overwhelming flood of political theater designed to appeal to low-information voters who have some really bad ideas about policy to convince them that that policy was being enacted while doing nothing of the sort. While I am not at all happy about this, think that instead of misleading and pandering to them, I'd like to see democracies explain why a policy makes sense, it beats actually doing them.
I saw Bill Kristol, a conservative commentator who deeply dislikes Trump, call it correctly in the first days of the first Trump term, called it "misdirection". Trump can't control what the media prints. But what he can do is put stuff out there that is so irresistible for the media to cover that they only talk about that instead of the actual policy, and as a result, actual policy doesn't actually get eyeball time and criticism. True, to accomplish that, he had to make what he is saying pretty outrageous, enough to get undiverted attention from the media. But he's calculated that being able to influence media coverage is worth it.
Steve Bannon had some infamous quote on the point:
The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.
The Trump model is to engage in constant outrageous political theater such that he has freedom of action on policy, keeps the media out of it. His statements and promises are often self-inconsistent, misleading, and often outrageous. His actual policy is pretty boring mainstream Republican stuff, though.
I think that there are a lot of problems with this approach. It validates voters who are pushing for said policies, might encourage them or normalize those positions. I think that it erodes the trust placed in Presidential statements, which I think may be important at various times. It's not the vision I have for democracy -- I'd like to inform voters rather than lie to them.
But one thing it doesn't do is actually enact said promises.
You seem to forget that in the first Trump term, he didn't control all branches of government.
If someone says they're going to be a dictator and commit genocide, BELIEVE THEM.
"He's probably not going to do it" is a ridiculous position to take.
You seem to forget that in the first Trump term, he didn't control all branches of government.
No, but he controlled enough to do plenty of policy in the direction that he'd been implying, and didn't.
"He's probably not going to do it" is a ridiculous position to take.
You are entitled to your opinion. I do not agree with it, and feel that I've spent enough time looking into the details of his first term to have formed my position on a fair bit of what he's done. I also think that if you think that it is outrageous for sources that you agree with on other matters -- like ProPublica -- to say similar things, it might be worth considering whether they might have a reason to say what they are saying.
I think that the only reason that Trump's statements are afforded much weight is because other Presidents have generally not engaged in this kind of stuff, certainly not to his degree, have worked to build the credibility of Presidential statements. I would judge Trump in the light of the credibility of his own past claims, which are exceptionally poor.
The election is over, and Trump is going to take office, so at this point, politicking isn't going to affect that. In four years, we can revisit this and look back at predictions and see whether this time around the US has become a dictatorship or whatever. My prediction is that Trump Term Two will look a very great deal like Trump Term One, with the same flood of outrageous statements and same plain Jane policy.
Would you tell an undocumented immigrant or a trans person to not worry because Trump doesn't follow up on his claims and neither do all the people who are working for him? I hope not.
Just because Trump lies a lot doesn't mean nothing is going to happen. Especially not when all the people who are part of his administration are backing him up on it. And Project 2025. And plenty of members of congress.
But sure, they're all lying. No one has anything to worry about. They'll be just as safe as they were under Biden and Obama. After all, like you suggested, Trump didn't do anything all that bad last time.
Trump and his whole planned administration and all those congresspeople and Project 2025... all a lie. Don't worry about it. Everyone will be safe. There won't be a any genocide. All of those people are just playing pretend.
When it comes to crimes against humanity, Trump will do as much as he can until he is stopped. He likes performative cruelty. As for promises of prosperity for the MAGidiots, those were just lies to grab votes, he won't do anything for those lumpen nitwits since there's nothing in it for him.
low-information voters
I really hate that term. While technically correct, it doesn't accurately describe the demographics of willfully ignorant voters, single-issue voters, or "only for my team" voters. It's giving undeserved charity to people who participate in the democratic process in bad faith.
Everybody has to use the "maybe he does, maybe he doesn't". His unreliability is a feature not a bug.
It is far from just Trump boasting in this case. And they are already acting on it. New Jersey is expanding its camps, and Texas donated land to build camps there too.
This is just not a "maybe" situation.
duh. they will use ai powered by the blockchain currency reserve. My god can know one think in more than three dimensions!!! do I really need to type it. I dunno. I feel I should not but then again. fine. /s
He'll just have Musk make them all.
"let that SINK in"
Mass deportation is obviously problematic for many reasons, but negatively impacting the profit margins of the Military Industrial Complex isn't one of them.
Increasing salaries of American workers by making labor scarce is the purpose of restrictive immigration policy.
negatively impacting the profit margins of the Military Industrial Complex isn’t one of them
Increasing salaries of American workers by making labor scarce is the purpose of restrictive immigration policy
Increased salaries directly cut into profits. or drive prices up. Either way, the military-industrial complex will feel the pinch. And reducing the supply of labor only drives up wages when there are other people willing to do the job. While I'd like to see hundreds of thousands of MAGA whack-jobs picking lettuce in Salinas, it's not going to happen.
But it's just another way things will implode economically.
The "implosion" of oligarchs profit margins isn't something any of us need to worry about. Over the short term, the vast majority of us will benefit from it - like 90% of the population stands to gain, 10% will break even, and the billionaires will see their income reduced.
In the long run, putting more disposable income into the hands of working Americans will be a driver of economic growth.
When I think of implosion and oligarchs, the image of a submarine springs to mind.
In the long run, putting more disposable income into the hands of working Americans will be a driver of economic growth.
Too bad none of Trump's policies will do that.
Implosion of oligarchs?
You are sadly mistaken that the fallout will harm the wealthy. They aren’t going to throw up their hands in despair, they’ll just further attack worker and consumer protections, salaries, benefits, retirement funds and all the rest. I don’t know what planet you live on where the oligarchy just go ahead and hand out money to the masses because their exploited labor force got deported. They just find new bodies and exploit even harder when they’ve already made it a mission to crush the middle class.
Yeah, its not credible to claim that large, profitable enterprises will "implode" if the supply and demand curve shifts slightly.
At the most cynical level, businesses that depend on cheap labor from undocumented immigrants will get squeezed as their labor costs increase.
America's Military Industrial Complex isn't going to fail if market forces require they offer more money to secure a sufficient supply of labor.
The “implosion” of oligarchs profit margins isn’t something any of us need to worry about. Over the short term, the vast majority of us will benefit from it - like 90% of the population stands to gain, 10% will break even, and the billionaires will see their income reduced.
I'd say what happened in 1929 suggests otherwise.
What happened in 1929 was a result of low wages and high unemployment pulling the rug out from under the economy, and therefore it suggests that policy that leads to higher wages and lower unemployment is needed to prevent a repeat.
And the cost of living was simultaneously driven up by an idiotic tariff policy that caused a collapse in global trade. Which directly led to less demand for labor, hence the low wages, hence the high unemployment.
Sure, that stock market crash that destroyed a whole lot of wealth had nothing to do with it. Nothing at all.
It crashed because people were broke.
People were broke because it crashed.
That is simply false.
🙄
You're welcome to roll your eyes, but you made a factually incorrect claim.