No, The People Didn’t Vote For This
from the your-mandate-is-lies dept
A stunning 54% of Americans now believe we’re in a Constitutional crisis, according to recent YouGov polling. They’re right. As a tech billionaire effectively dismantles federal agencies without Congressional authority — agencies that Congress explicitly created and funded — we’re watching in real-time as our system of checks and balances crumbles.
Yet supporters of the current administration keep insisting “this is exactly what the people voted for.” That’s clearly bullshit. While I’m sure that some cultists have no problem watching the US Constitution burn, and many will gleefully embrace all of this because it “makes the libs sad,” that’s wholly different from whether Trump has a mandate to destroy the constitutional order. The reality is far more complex, and far more concerning for anyone who cares about constitutional governance.
Yes, Donald Trump won the election, though he did so with a very small margin — just 1.2% of the popular vote — and less than 50% of the total vote. So there’s hardly a huge mandate here.
But, more to the point, he was elected based on promises that he wouldn’t actually do what he’s doing now. Trump swore up and down that he did not support Project 2025’s plan to gut the government. The entire premise of Project 2025 fundamentally misunderstands (or deliberately misrepresents) the constitutional framework of administrative agencies. These aren’t just bureaucratic inconveniences to be eliminated at will — they’re congressionally authorized entities carrying out specific statutory mandates.
Trump seemed to understand this political liability during the campaign, explicitly distancing himself from Project 2025’s plan to gut these agencies. And because the mainstream press has been beaten into submission by false claims of “anti-conservative bias,” they simply repeated these denials without examining either the reality of them or the implications if Trump was lying.
That’s why USA Today ran a fact check claiming Trump didn’t support Project 2025. Politico ran a report citing “anonymous sources” saying that Trump’s team had put together a blocklist of anyone associated with Project 2025, declaring that they would not be allowed in his administration.
Former President Donald Trump’s transition operation is compiling lists of names of people to keep out of a second Trump administration.
The lists of undesirable staffers include people linked to the Project 2025 policy blueprint
Of course, since gaining office they have ignored that entirely, basically enacting much of Project 2025 and including many Project 2025 authors in key positions, including one of its main architects, Russ Vought, to lead the Office of Management and Budget.
This appointment wasn’t just another broken promise — it was Trump explicitly installing the very architect of a plan he had repeatedly said he rejected, making his previous denials impossible to defend as anything but calculated deception.
It is hardly a “mandate” to do something if you spent most of the election denying you’d do that very thing.
Yes, the Musk/Trump cultists were gleeful after the election, saying that of course Project 2025 was the real plan all along. Political observers across the spectrum knew Trump’s distancing was a lie, but there’s a reason he felt compelled to make that lie: the actual agenda would have repelled the moderate and independent voters who provided his narrow margin of victory. Whatever “mandate” he claims was built on promises he never intended to keep.
For some supporters, this isn’t about policy at all — it’s a performative middle finger to “elites” they blame for stagnant wages and cultural shifts. Their support stems not from policy alignment but from tribal resentment, making them willing to burn constitutional guardrails if it “owns the libs.” But that’s a much smaller group than the cultists believe.
The polling data shows just how badly this bait-and-switch is playing with the public. Outside the narrow band of cultists whose only principle is “owning the libs,” Americans are increasingly alarmed by the Musk/Trump administration’s actions.
Democrats, obviously, aren’t thrilled, but the more meaningful data is that Republicans don’t like what Elon Musk is doing at all.
The share of Republicans who say they want tech billionaire Elon Musk to have significant influence in the Trump administration has fallen substantially in the months since President Trump was elected.
In The Economist/YouGov poll taken in the days after the November 2024 election, 47 percent of surveyed Republicans said they wanted Musk to have “a lot” of influence in the Trump administration, while 29 percent wanted “a little” and 12 percent wanted him to have “none at all.”
Today, however, the share of Republicans who say they want Musk to have “a lot” of influence has fallen substantially to 26 percent. Meanwhile, 43 percent of Republican respondents say they want Musk to have “a little” influence, and 17 percent say they want him to have “none at all,” according to the latest poll from The Economist/YouGov released Wednesday.
That’s likely to only get worse as the real economic impacts of Musk’s “streamlining” become clear. Voters who supported Trump based on economic promises are instead seeing federal support for their local hospitals vanish, government contracts that supported thousands of local jobs disappear, and consumer prices continue to rise. The very voters who wanted economic stability are getting the opposite: economic chaos driven by an unelected billionaire’s personal agenda.
That’s only among Republicans, who had been excited to have Musk involved in the government. But as his unilateral dismantling of federal agencies accelerates, even his former supporters are realizing this goes far beyond “running government like a business” — it’s about destroying the basic functions of government itself.
This growing awareness is reflected in a shocking YouGov poll that found 54% of Americans think we’re in a constitutional crisis, with only 27% confident we’re not. When more than half the country believes we’re in a constitutional crisis, and barely a quarter is sure we aren’t, we’ve moved well beyond normal political disagreements about the size and scope of government.
I know the cultists will argue that the public supports them, but they’re increasingly trapped in a shrinking snowglobe of propaganda, desperately denying the reality that more and more Americans are seeing this mess for what it is.
Those are fairly stunning numbers, given that when I called some of Musk’s actions a form of a Constitutional crisis just last week, some people mocked me as being hysterical. But it appears that a large part of the public is waking up to the fact that Musk isn’t driving towards “efficiency in government,” he’s looking to destroy the government.
The YouGov numbers reveal a stark reality: the American public is increasingly aware that something fundamental has gone wrong. While some extremists might celebrate this constitutional breakdown, the majority of voters — including many Trump supporters — are realizing this isn’t what they signed up for.
The campaign promised economic relief: cheaper eggs and lower gas prices. Instead, voters got an unelected tech billionaire systematically dismantling federal agencies, surrounded by a coterie of 4chan edgelord trolls LARPing as cabinet secretaries, all operating without congressional oversight or constitutional authority. They voted for economic stability and got the effective end of the American Constitutional Republic instead.
Filed Under: constitutional crisis, doge, donald trump, elon musk, mandate, popular support
Comments on “No, The People Didn’t Vote For This”
Balls?
Somebody has got to start dipping into their trousers and find their collective & figurative balls!
So when is Congress going to stop Trump?
Alternatively, when are the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the much-vaunted American armed forces going to initiate a coup?
Third alternative: all you 2nd Amendment gun-owners? It’s time to oppose the illegal actions of the authorities and declare a civil war.
Those are the three alternatives I see, because the media aren’t going to do it (though they’ll make money from a. pointlessly speculating about it, or b. gleefully reporting on the gruesome action). The tech bros aren’t going to do it, because they’ve already hitched their wagon. The police aren’t going to do it because they love Trump’s authoritarian positions. Wall Street won’t do it because their precious stock prices will suffer. It’s gonna have to be one of the first three options.
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US is speedrunning 90s Russia.
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Or 30s Germany.
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Why not both?
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Actually the US seems to be speedrunning Mao’s China.
Hey..... I take offense to that
I do LARP as a hobby. (Live action. Roleplay) . What they are doing is not larping. Not even cosplay. It’s monster skin walking as cabinet secretaries.
That said… Everything else I agree with. I am terrified for our country but I have hope. Maybe foolish and naive but to quote the great terry practhett. “You have to believe in things that are not true. How else can they become.”
🎵 It’s the end of World as we know it, and I feel fine. 🎵
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Yeah, REM led me to believe I’d be a lot more comfortable with this.
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Cry Harder
>YouGov polling
A fake webpoll.
Cry harder, the only poll that matters was in November. And the people have spoken.
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Just so you know, the percentage of eligible American voters who cast their ballot for Trump was approximately 31%, and Trump himself walked away with a little under 50% of the popular vote (which he won by a little over 1%). Trying to cast his win as a landslide majority mandate is disproven by the facts at hand. The emperor is naked, two plus two is four, and everybody wants a rock to wind a piece of string around.
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I’ve always been more partial to wearing prosthetic foreheads on my real head.
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matt go back to bed bro
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It’s like you don’t understand YouGov polling at all. Meanwhile, the article specifically addressed your bullshit. The people explicitly didn’t vote for this. Besides Trump not winning a mandate, despite claiming otherwise, he explicitly and repeatedly disavowed the incredibly unpopular Project 2025 that he’s now implementing. Stop lying.
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your name is ham solo
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Awesome. Go speak somewhere else.
Not even the mythical Voters Will is enough to void the constitution.
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It is if we repeatedly vote against it for decades on end. The Constitution is not a magic spell.
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Well, see, here’s the funny thing about that:
The Constitution is a piece of paper.
Get past all the grandiose talk about democracy and representative government and all that, and the Constitution is literally just a piece of paper. It doesn’t have any inherent enforcement mechanisms. American society relies on the notion that our co-equal branches of government will play nice with one another and respect the checks and balances that each branch has over the others. So if Donald Trump wants to defy a court order, nothing but the imaginary guardrails of our government can stop him—and we’ve all seen how much he respects those.
Sure, we can hope that the military or the FBI or whatever will defy Trump if they’re called upon to stop him or his cronies from violating court orders. We can even hope that Congressional Republicans decide that they want to exercise power more than they want Trump to basically say “fuck off, you’re not needed here any more”. But wishing and hoping and praying doesn’t accomplish shit. The truth of the matter is that Trump and his goons are one act of defiance of a federal court away from proving that the Constitution is nothing but a piece of paper. Anyone who thinks Trump making himself a de facto king is a bad thing might want to start preparing for the day when he does it…because it may not be as far off as even he thinks.
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The time to start preparing for that was January 2024.
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I agree. But given his amount of vanity, he might want to not just behave like a de facto king but actually declare himself king. Or Führer. Because it is the playbook of the latter that he is resuscitating from history.
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so what can we do about it
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Other than everything that can be done to (try to) influence lawmakers in Congress and leaders in your state that supporting Trump and his goals is a bad idea? Nothing, really. If Trump wants to defy the courts and put the government in a constitutional crisis, stopping that is something that is out of the reach of most people. So I’d start preparing for the day when Trump or one of his cronies tries to undercut the judiciary. How you prepare for that is up to you.
Yeah, not all that comforting, huh? You probably want to hear some grand idea like “if we get two million people to protest around the White House, Trump will have to listen to that”. But the truth of the matter is that the work being done to thwart fascism in the United States can’t be—and shouldn’t be—boiled down to a single “revolutionary” act. That might play well in a fictional story, but it isn’t how actual revolutions work. They work through a combined social effort of long, tedious efforts to gum up the gears of the people-eating machine that is fascism.
The fantasy of a white knight upon a shining steed riding in to save the day with a single bold maneuver is alluring. The reality of committing yourself to mutual aid, community building, and the other slow-but-steady everyday acts that help people survive? Not so much. But that work is how we’re going to help each other get through this.
Re: Hopium
I’m categorically against MAGA, especially its mean-spiritedness, and I’m against the administration flouting of the law. I am for drastically scaling back the federal government. It’s nearly impossible to do in an orderly and legal way. I hope that they’re executing a plan to shrink the government, and the mean-spiritedness is just a distraction and a way to sell the plan to people who don’t earn enough to pay income taxes. As much as I believe in reducing government, I’m against breaking the law to do it. They are playing with fire. It’s easy to see the government turning fascist, which is obviously contrary to my goal of a less intrusive government. I think some tech libertarians are getting played and will regret abiding this lawlessness and nastiness.
If we somehow survive this and democrats retake control. No more compromises, no more tolerance of republican evil. I simply never want to see a republican in charge of anything vital ever again; no more republican congressmen, no more republican judges, no more republican presidents, they can spend their free time being pissed on 4chan. Do not mistake my statement as endorsement for re-enacting histories worst atrocities, we’re still better than them morally.
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Being secure in that belief is what allows committing the utmost atrocities.
History’s been there, done that. Over and over again.
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You’re right, I didn’t realize that mistake when I added that last part in as I normally tell myself this stance is wrong we have to let everyone have a voice. The point is anyone voting for creatures like trump or vance will have their votes changed if there’s a next time, yes I know how this part sounds but we’re in dark territory now as there wasn’t supposed to be a president musk but a law abiding president harris.
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BY republican, do you mean do you mean the 75 million Trump voters, or only the 36 million registered republicans? How do we cut them out of the political process to prevent the evil they vote in?
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American conservatism revolves entirely around scapegoating, bigotry, and abuse.
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But we’ve never done that.
After the Civil War, did we summarily execute every Confederate soldier? No. But we should have: legally speaking, they were all traitors. Instead we let almost all of them go home and even their leaders, like Robert E. Lee, were treated like gentlemen.
After the Second World War, did we summarily execute everyone who wore a Nazi uniform? No. But we should have: they were all monsters. Instead we put a few of the leaders on trial, executed them, and let the rest go home.
We keep letting the most horrible, vicious, murderous, cruel, sadistic people off the hook, and we tell ourselves that this is because we’re better than that, that we’re principled, that we believe in a higher form of justice.
That’s nice. It’s a nice sentiment. BUT IT DOESN’T WORK. And so as we watch our country crumble at the hands of traitors and killers, I’m not inclined to find any consolation in the thought that at least we stuck to our principles.
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Just looking at the Civil War, you’re talking about the mass execution of over 1 million people, most of them conscripts. This is more than the total deaths on both sides of the war combined. Such executions would likely have had the opposite effect that you hopes, making a lot of the confederate propaganda look accurate, radicalizing people further.
“That’s likely to only get worse as the real economic impacts of Musk’s “streamlining” become clear. Voters who supported Trump based on economic promises are instead seeing federal support for their local hospitals vanish, government contracts that supported thousands of local jobs disappear, and consumer prices continue to rise.”
I feel that a huge chunk of Trump voters honestly struggle to keep up with what is actually going on because the only information they get is from MAGA/Trump friendly sources. It’s gotta explain some of the disconnect between what people believe Trump is doing/will do and what he actually does. It was the same with his first term. I can only hope that this time, people get hit where it desperately hurts so they will
Wake the eff up.
But didn’t they? The voters voting for this, that is?
Donald Trump may have promised a lot of things on the campaign trail (he promises a lot of often contradictory things from minute to minute), but more than that he already sat in the White House for four years. Everyone who voted in 2024 remembers well the previous administration of Donald J Trump. Many of them doubtless remember the weekly scandals, the criminal misadventures, and the revolving door of advisors and general chaos. Most of them probably watched his supporters attempt to violently overthrow the country and murder his vice president on live TV.
Irrespective of what Donald Trump says he will do (and everyone, even his own supporters will agree that what he says is not in any way reliable), everyone knows what he actually does.
That’s what the voted for. With full knowledge of what they would get.
And boy howdy are we all gonna get it.
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I don’t think that’s correct. Sure there were weekly scandals, but those were caused by “the deep state.” Sure Trump was impeached twice, but that wasn’t his fault, was it? It was those libs and classic conservatives in Congress conspiring against him. As for January 6th, how was that any different, in the opinion of the MAGA faithful, than the rioting after George Floyd? All those criminal trials? DOJ weaponized against him by a vindictive Biden Administration. That’s the kind of stuff people are inundated with. It’s the same kind of stuff that got an otherwise normal dude to drive to a pizza parlor with a gun to “save the children;” it’s the same BS that got poor people to vote republican (when all they wanna do is cut Medicaid funding); and it’s the same BS that motivated many of his supporters to invade the capital in the first place. Valid Information (or lack there of) is a very powerful. That’s why every dictator ever has tried to control it, and Trump and Musk have succeeded.
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“Trump and Musk have succeeded.” ok bro
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Oh look: an anonymous coward proving my point🙄
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no just that if he did you wouldn’t be speaking right now loser
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nor would techdirt be still working
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Hello again today. You can fuck off now.
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get out of here. ac we don’t need you here.
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Pot, meet kettle
Not just a tech billionaire...
…but a pathetic, whining, weak, thin-skinned, crybaby billionaire.
Hasn’t everyone noticed? Elmo NEVER confronts anyone directly: he’s much too spineless for that. No, he sends his thugs and goons to do that for him. Elmo would wet his pants if he ever had to actually stand up to a functioning adult. So instead, he rallies his fanboys and calls his attorneys to do it for him.
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He’s got better things to do than to confront every last person who criticizes him.
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True. All that ketamine isn’t going to do itself.
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You know, people with severe intellectual disabilities are more likely to be functioning adults than Elmo.
This is somewhat enheartening news. The reality is: if the majority of US citizens actually want the collapse of constitutional governance, there is no longer any way to defend it. The constitution DOES provide for ways to amend it. If “The People” actually wanted, it could be amended to be be something totally different. And at that point: any defense would be by the minority, and could not be considered the legitimate democracy the constitution requires.
However it is also alarming that apparently a full 27% do not view our current situation as a constitutional crisis. That it far too large of a group to just dismiss.
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That’s the number thats interesting to me. Because when trump left office, his approval rating taken from the period after J6 was at its lowest ever, at 34 percent. 30% was estimated to be the ‘core’ base, those who wouldn’t pull away from him no matter what. If we’ve pierced though to only 26% considering this a constitutional crisis, I see hope that some MAGAs radicalized before and during trump’s presidency having a disillusionment moment, weakening the movement in ways similar to what the Tories just went through. I don’t hold any fantasies that the GOP would remove Trump like Liz Truss got the boot, or complete collapse of the GOP, but it gives me hope that deradicalization will require a party realignment (or more realistically, a proper split).
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Don’t read too much into it. Just as polling showed Republican voters were concerned about the threat to democracy (which they defined as a threat from Democrats), they could well believe we’re in a constitutional crisis because courts are blocking his executive orders, rather than because his executive orders are unconstitutional.
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“they could well believe we’re in a constitutional crisis because courts are blocking his executive orders, rather than because his executive orders are unconstitutional.” so resort to what the far right does and say what a loud minority does is what everyone is doing
To be fair
In the last week before the election, Trump messaging went really loony toons, to the degree where reporters repeatedly asked whether the campaign wanted to send that message before the election.
Basically Trump made it sound as if he got success reports from Musk’s election machine hacker teams and then spent the final campaign (admittedly beyond the date people would have voted by mail) catering to implausible undeniability.
So he got the message out what people would be voting for. That doesn’t mean that people actually believed they’d be voting for that, because doh. But he did give them unfair warning.
The economy was too strong
Trump inherited an economy that was pretty great by any measure, so he needs to knock it down a bit in order to point a finger at Biden and claim it was bad.
And republicans, being stupid, will eat that shit up.
When his dumb tariffs cause massive issues (just like in his first term) he’ll whine about Biden and Harris and Obama(!), and his followers will clap like wind-up monkeys as they pay more for everything while the wealthy pay less taxes and laugh at them.
We’ve seen all this before. Every republican administration since Reagan has ended with an economic crisis.
It’s time to declare The Heritage Foundation a domestic terrorist organization! Project 2025 is a roadmap for overthrowing the U.S. government and a takeover by the oligarchs.
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That would be more unconstitutional than what they’re being accused of doing.
I encountered someone online the other day. They said they “only follow moderate commentators”, and stay away from “strident” authors.
Their opinion of what Musk and Trump are up to was “they’re treating the government like a corporation”.
My reply was, of course they’re treating it like a corporation:
– Like Musk treated Twitter, unplugging computers at random to see if everything still ran without it.
– Like Vulture Capitalism, where the assets get sold off for the benefit of the C-suite, and the empty shell goes into bankruptcy.
– Like executives whose priorities don’t include the health of the company itself, and with no concern at all for the employees.
It may be management, but it ain’t governance.
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and it won’t be a theocracy it will be a autocracy
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or a technocracy
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It will be a theocracy alright. It’s just that the corrupt liberal former God and his illegitimate oriental offspring have gotten the pink slip. Trump has been taking over in the acting position for now.
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i was thinking it’s either technocracy or autocracy since it’s not even theocracy anymore
Contrary to what the Supreme Court and some MAGA faithful think, he was elected to be president, not emperor.
Doing the coup thing is a lot like riding a Face Eating Leopard (or Tiger)…
You have to jump on real quick before they know what’s going on; and hold on for a ride because now you can’t get off.
People are going to die because of these idiots. Not just one person, not even a hundred or a thousand…
This is going to kill HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people over time.
This is going to eviscerate the middle class and put us all out on the street because natural disasters aren’t forseeable or preventable.
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“hundreds of thousands” is likely a severe underestimate. Keep in mind that thanks to his colossal mismanagement of the Covid pandemic (unsurprising given that Trump is too stupid to even spell “pandemic”) we are now watching a couple million excess deaths take place. And more millions of people will survive…for a while. But their lives will be miserable and they’ll die early, thanks to long Covid and related issues.
But it’s all part of the playbook: keep people poor, and unhealthy, and miserable, and uneducated, and make them focus every single day on just surviving to the next one…and they won’t have the time or energy to resist.
The misery is coming. And the billionaires won’t care a bit because they know they won’t feel the slightest impact from it. They’ll sit back in their bunkers and wait.
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why don’t just fight back instead of doomposting
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that’s not doomposting, it’s reality. You have to acknowledge reality to fight it.
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if it’s reality reality is unknown nothing is guaranteed if you think things is guaranteed to be doom and gloom then it is doom posting
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No, only the future is unknown. What the first and second ACs posted is reality right now, dipshit.
What are you going to do about it, Mike?
Mike,
I’ve been reading Techdirt for a long time and I respect your opinion and work. In this case, I need to ask, other than posting articles, what is actually being done in this situation?
I am not a US citizen. I’m doing what little I can. I’ve written to my government supporting their retaliatory actions against the International trade crisis that your president is creating. I’m being diligent to choose non-US alternatives to goods and services when I can. Although there are very few reliable options in the online services space.
So, what are the citizens of the USA doing? What are you doing?
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fighting against fascism is a long and slow process but it will work out if we keep fighting
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He’s on the board of directors at Blue Sky. That’s something.
This is the exact sort of logic Donald Trump subscribes to with his tariff-war nonsense. Don’t be like him.
We vote. Some of us do, anyway.
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Don’t tilt the table back? Seriously? And maybe in four years or more the Americans will vote Trump out after having enjoyed the unilateral benefits of his actions without drawbacks? Assuming they’ll still be allowed to vote?
That’s just not how you get him to back off. Appealing to Trump’s nobler nature is not buying you anything. At. All.
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The unilateral benefits? Say what now? American consumers do not benefit from tariffs. They categorically do not. There is no universe in which you can claim that they do. It is a tax imposed on Americans to dissuade them from purchasing foreign goods. The correct response to someone threatening to shoot themselves in the foot is not to threaten to shoot yourself in the foot too.
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Those who want to defy Trump/help others are doing whatever they can to accomplish those goals. That it’s not the kind of fantastic, media-friendly, “this one neat trick will stop fascism!” work most people who go “well who’s gonna do something about all this” want to see happening doesn’t change the fact that people are, in fact, fighting to stop or mitigate the worst effects of Trump’s bullshit.
(And yes, Congressional Democrats could be doing better on their end, but that’s always going to be the case.)
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As a Californian, I’m honestly perplexed at what I can do. I can’t yell at my Congresspersons, as they are both Democrats. I can’t yell at friends, family and neighbors who voted for Trump because I don’t actually know anyone who voted for Trump. If they did, they’re doing a good job of hiding it, probably because they know the consequences are to become persona non grata.
Whoever these people are who are enabling Trump, they are well outside my personal sphere, and that includes online. Are any Trump supporters here to yell at? Not that I’ve noticed.
If this was the kind of place where Trump voters are, it wouldn’t be the kind of place I want to be.
As for protesting, that’s hilariously useless. Remember the big Gaza protests? Now we have a president who wants to finish the genocide and turn the place into a playground for global elites. Yeah. That worked.
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You can always “yell at” (i.e., call) your reps. In fact, you should probably do that even if they’re Democrats. Letting them know that even the smallest support for the Trump administration pisses you off helps keep them on their toes.
Then check in on them to make sure they’re doing okay and if they could use a little help regardless.
Even if it has a neutral effect, it’s still better than having a negative one.
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Exactly what you’re seeing here:
Whining about it online and then going on quietly accepting it.
And the best part is if anyone ever suggests something that promotes something to actually deal with the issue, they’re silenced immediately.
Bread and circuses have finally been perfected.
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When what’s being suggested amounts to “go slit the throats of any conservative you can find”? Yes, of course it’s going to be shut down.
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Only on Techdirt could I read an article saying that the democratically elected president was not democratically elected.
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I know you’re just trolling from Australia, but there is literally nothing in the article that says what you falsely claims it says.
Honestly, what do you think you’re doing in these comments? Does it make you feel good to choose to misrepresent things to rile people up? Does it feel good to just generally be an asshole?
I don’t get it.
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Maybe he’s just trying to enjoy his succulent Chinese meal…?
And yet, 70% say he’s doing what he promised
Based on a different CBS/YouGov poll, only 30% of respondents believe Trump is doing something different than what he promised.
https://www.scribd.com/document/825874200/cbsnews-20250209-1
I think we may be witnessing the endtimes of our democracy, but I don’t know if thats actually a widely held belief. The same poll leads with a 53% approval rating!
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please stop doom posting
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you do know those are from days ago not yesterday
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Well, he is doing what he promised in a Shylock kind of way, now cutting his pound of flesh from near the heart of democracy.
In short, his “promises” were outrageous enough that they were incredulous.
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Don't believe you
seen too many of your polls that pull only from the left side and of course reflect their views. USAID was not created by congress. It was created by JFK per executive order, and can be dismantled by EO as well. As for the rest, if you’re ok with an Iranian Sesame street for 2.3M, and an office of High Five Uniformity, et al, then I suggest you make the offer to cover my taxes for me. I’m not ok with that type of spending.
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2.3M amounts to less than 1¢ per U.S. citizen while doing desperately needed pro-U.S. media influence in an adversal country.
That’s likely a whole lot more cost-effective than a whole lot of army utilization and causing less backlash.
Balls?
Somebody has got to start dipping into their trousers and find their collective & figurative balls!
So when is Congress going to stop Trump?
Alternatively, when are the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the much-vaunted American armed forces going to initiate a coup?
Third alternative: all you 2nd Amendment gun-owners? It’s time to oppose the illegal actions of the authorities and declare a civil war.
Those are the three alternatives I see, because the media aren’t going to do it (though they’ll make money from a. pointlessly speculating about it, or b. gleefully reporting on the gruesome action). The tech bros aren’t going to do it, because they’ve already hitched their wagon. The police aren’t going to do it because they love Trump’s authoritarian positions. Wall Street won’t do it because their precious stock prices will suffer. It’s gonna have to be one of the first three options.
Yes, they did
They voted for economic stability and got the effective end of the American Constitutional Republic instead.
No-one voted for convicted felon Trump because of ‘lower gas prices and grocery bills’. They voted for him because they were in favor of the suffering he promised to inflict, and the only reason they are showing ‘remorse’ now is because it’s slowly dawning on them that that suffering includes theirs.
Or put another way, you don’t get to elect a candidate that openly brags that he’ll be a dictator if elected and then turn around and act innocent when he gets elected and starts acting like one.
Saul Williams – Not in Our Name (Pledge of Resistance). On YouTube. You’re welcome.
I am Canadian. I did not vote for Trump. I would never vote for Trump. I am not now, nor have ever been, nor ever will be, a supporter of Trump.
And I still say “this is exactly what the people voted for.”
The signs were there. You Americans knew he was lying, and we did too. And yet he did win the popular vote. Guess what? Yes, this is exactly, EXACTLY, what the American people voted for. With their eyes wide shut.
You chose this.
Re: Ignoring a stadium's worth of red flags
Some of us tried to stop the disaster, but unfortunately election results can be like anti-vaxxers in that just because one group makes a stupid decision against their own best interests it doesn’t mean the resulting damage will be limited to only them.
For everyone who had the opportunity and didn’t try to stop it, or worse voted for it though? Yeah, they chose this and they’ll deserve everything that happens as a result.
Re: Re: Ignoring a stadium's worth of red flags
I can understand (and do agree with) the perspective that not all American persons chose this–specifically, those who actively voted for a viable alternative.
But it is still accurate to say that the winner of the popular vote was Trump. And it is accurate to say that the US does not use proportional representation, where voting for smaller parties in less-than-plurality-numbers counts for something–in the US, voting for a marginal party does absolutely nothing and counts for nothing. (The same is true, much to my ire, in Canada.)
As a whole, then, more American voters voted for Trump than voted for a viable alternative. The expressed will of the American people as a whole, made visible through the actions of the voting public, was to prefer Trump. Therefore, while some individual American persons may not have chosen this, I maintain that the American people, taken as a whole, have indeed chosen this.
I honestly didn’t believe the American people would choose that as a whole. I knew the electoral college might deliver a win to Trump anyway, but… No. He actually won the popular vote. There’s no escaping that fact. That is where I have to give up on trying to help your country and turn my focus to protecting mine.
Re: Re: Re:
A fair point, hopefully your country remains sane and keeps telling him to fuck off about that ’51st state’ crap among anything else he demands.
Yes they did.
They were *TOO DUMB* to realize it, but YES THEY DID VOTE FOR THIS MESS.
This is just as mature and effective as the republicans insisting President Obama wasn’t actually a U.S. citizen.
You’re in denial. Face the truth already:
The U.S. is a country built on racism and fascist undercurrents. Just because this side of the country didn’t appear overt in some periods doesn’t mean they were overcome. Stop pretending grade-school nationalist propaganda is truth. This country is and always has been sick.
Put that effort of covering your ears and eyes into paying attention to people who want to change that instead of insisting “the real America” will win in the end. Because this right now is the real America, and it needs to change.