Trump promises protection for TikTok, for which he has a ‘warm spot in my heart’ US President Donald Trump has said TikTok will be “very strongly protected” as the made-in-China social network has “a warm spot in my heart”. Speaking on NBC’s flagship Sunday morning political program Meet The Press, Trump was asked if he would extend the deadline for TikTok’s developer, ByteDance, to divest the app’s US …
I'm going stateside in a couple of weeks so holding back my criticism of Trump just in case. But what a dim witted, strange little man. His one warm spot is for a digital app that not only they suspect of being able to harvest intelligence, influence foreign politics but results in doom scrolling for a significant majority of users. I get why he is in office though at least he is visibly shaking things up. Maybe he has ADHD if that's even a real thing!
Exactly. It is diagnosed and treated in the absence of any solid evidence whatsoever. All a parent or patient has to do is read up on the right answers in DSM and bingo: diagnosis! benefits!
Remember, it takes longer to become qualified to diagnose and treat demonic possession than it does to diagnose and treat ADHD.
Yes there is no evidence at all - that's why it takes a clinical psychologist to diagnose, and why ADHD meds are completely unregulated... and have no effect.
Of course if I were to take adhd meds I'd be a right mess, because they're stimulants.
An adhd brain however is, for want of a better term, relaxed by those stimulants... it's entirely the opposite response from a neurotypical brain.
How about you either come up with your clinical psychology qualifications, or maybe admit that you have no idea what you're talking about, but you read it somewhere on some red top rag which isn't worthy of being used as toilet paper.
During term 1, Trump decided he wanted TikTok- which he hadn't paid much attention to previously- banned when it started being used against him.
Now he's lovey-dovey about it because it's being used to flatter him and work in his favour.
For all his capricious unpredictability, Trump is and always has been incredibly simple and predictable in the one sense that everything comes down to narcissism and self-interest.
And he'll change abruptly from love to hate and vice versa on that basis.
The worst thing that happened to America and the "free" world is the administrative state. Trump appears at least to be trying to dismantle it. I think people have been so brainwashed they believe that loss of freedom, censorship and perversion of the role of the law are good things if used to support something they like ... like a senile president or mentally challenged VP running for president. There is a bucket load of evidence on how bad things are but you won't hear it on the mainstream media because they are bought and paid for. I don't know if Trump is good, he may be just another side of the same coin, only time will show. I hope he is on balance. I don't think he's stupid, believing that is a huge mistake. I heard him described as the first president who isn't ashamed of his ego. I.e., they all have huge egos but hide it and you need that to want the job.
"The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.”
So, there will be massive censorship on foreign movies.
Fighting China by becoming a bad, dysfunctional copy of China.
China has a quota system limiting the number of Hollywood movies shown in China. They just reduced that quota in response to the silly numbers tariffs. Likewise, the Chinese market for Hollywood movies is shrinking in favour of the home grown market. I'm not sure how big a market it is right now, but it's definitely not on ongoing cash-cow for the future.
Depends on the outcome of the tarrifs, assuming they find some system of measuring the "import value". If "all" that happens is more productions move fully onshore, lossing out on the the locations and talent in the rest of the world, then yeah, those movies may not change all that much in storyline and content. But there is a lot of stuff watched in the USA that is not even made by US companies and so will "cost" twice as much to import, so a "self censorship" inside the US of all or most foreign made movies. Especially if they extend to TV shows too. It'll be interesting to see how this one pans out and if they differentiate between, eg theatrical releases, made for TV movies etc. (Bt definition, a streaming service is a TV movie, especially if getting around a huge tariff means having a "streaming launch event" instead of a theatrical release - that already happened during COVID, so they have an idea of the numbers involved.
Where the grass is grass is. There’s grass in the middle. The roses stay. Everything stays just the way it was, including the limestone paths and everything else. But we had the prime minister of India here and they had a lot of press, and the women were walking out with their shoes full of mud. So we can’t have that. The other thing — and you see what I’ve done to the Oval Office and that continues, 24-carat gold. It’s beautiful. And we have really gotten — because I know that people can be fresh and nasty, you know, but we’ve been getting rave reviews. It was not taken care of the way it should. Now, I have an advantage. I was a really good real estate developer so I know how to get things done. I know how to build it. You’ll see it in a minute when you look at the ballroom, which I built at Mar-a-Lago.
But the other thing, and the big thing, is going to be for 50 years they’ve wanted to build a ballroom at the White House. And they’ve tried, but the presidents were not real estate people. They had no clue. All you have to do is look at President Obama and look at his museum or library, whatever they call it, in Chicago. It’s a catastrophe. It’s way over-budget. Maybe it comes to an end. I don’t know what’s going on. But it’s a disaster because — and it’s not his fault. He’s not a real estate person. He doesn’t know how to build. I do really well. And what we’re going to do, you’re going to see the most beautiful ballroom in the world right now when you take a look.
President Donald Trump interviewed by 'Meet the Press' moderator Kristen Welker
If he can make a deal with TikTok then TikTok is good, otherwise it's bad. That's about as far as it goes.
The number of astonishingly stupid things he has said could fill the library of congress. A couple of my favorites
Just recently:
Time - You were harshly critical of what you called the weaponization of the justice system under Biden. You recently signed memos-
Trump - Well sure, but you wouldn't be - if this were Biden, well, first of all, he wouldn't do an interview because he was grossly incompetent.
Time - We spoke to him last year, Mr. President.
Trump - Huh?
Time - We spoke to him a year ago.
Trump - How did he do?
Time - You can read the interview yourself.
Trump - Not too good. I did read the interview. He didn't do well.
And a more vintage example, Trumps explanation of child care:
Well, I would do that, and we're sitting down, and I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so, uh, impactful on that issue. It's a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I'm\ talking about, that, because, look, child care is child care is. Couldn't, you know, there's something, you have to have it – in this country you have to have it.
But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I'm talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they're not used to — but they'll get used to it very quickly – and it's not gonna stop them from doing business with us, but they'll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Uh, those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we're talking about, including child care, that it's going to take care.
We're gonna have - I, I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with, uh, the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country, because I have to stay with child care. I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I'm talking about, including growth,
but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just, uh, that I just told you about.
We're gonna be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care, uh, is talked about as being expensive, it's, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we'll be taking in. We're going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we'll worry about the rest of the world. Let's help other people, but we're going to take
care of our country first. This is about America first. It's about Make America Great Again, we have to do it because right now we're a failing nation, so we'll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question. Thank you.
Or to put it more succinctly
Trump has a diarrhea of words, but a constipation of ideas (not mine but way too good to pass up).
A new one today
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cze17n02gego
Let's reopen Alcatraz to house our worst criminals, ignoring the fact it would cost a fortune to do so, it cost a fortune to run (3 times the cost per prisoner when it was closed) and is pretty small in terms of capacity anyway. Presumably he saw The Rock or Birdman of Alcatraz on TV over the weekend.
How can anyone read or listen to this totally senile, nonsensical gibberish and conclude that he's some kind of stable genius?
Of course, someone will be along in a moment with the usual catchphrase "but Biden...."
"Trump has a diarrhea of words, but a constipation of ideas"
I'd say 'diarrhoea' to both, and I'm not sure chugging bleach is a good way to cure it. Looks like he goes to 'blue sky thinking' meetings but falls asleep while they are suggesting sensible workable ideas and only wakes when someone suggests something crackpot and unfeasible.
The man* is a despot. He just hasn't got his absolute power yet. He's working on it by systematically dismantling anything that was good about the USA. He's inching forward with his plans and with each week, it seems to normalise the activities of the week before, if only by being more outlandish, irresponsible and stupid.
During the 'Meet the Press' interview, when questioned about costs increasing for businesses, he said that costs will decrease for the car industry, saving billions of dollars, and something about needing cars more than whatever it is you carry babies around in.
It's deranged behaviour. Out of the norm, and yet it is becoming the new norm.
He said that the next 100 days will see even more change, and now that he doesn't have to keep a rein on that elongated muskrat, he's going to have more time to devote to fucking up a once great country.
*the term 'man' is used in its loosest possible sense here
I know we're taking the orange imbecile to task, but there's a smidgen of truth in the failure of Hollywood. If they would just stop with the Superhero movies already. It takes away the imagination and there are a whole bunch of stories that could be told instead of being marginalised. Why no Frank Baum Oz series, they're all public domain I gather. Rebellion / 2000AD has some great stories which could be movies, (I for one welcome the potential of a Judge Dredd series BTW) The Stainless Steel Rat would go down great these days...
This is quite long for YouToob, but a worthy watch:Who is killing cinema?
The super hero movies - a lot of those are filmed at Pinewood so don't worry, they'll be hit by the tariffs.
Which sorta begs the question, when there are a number of actual Oz books which are already in the public domain, why commission entirely new "based on the world of Oz" prequel stories? It does seem to be Amazon and Netflix going after the "classic" SF "space opera" stories and turning them into big budget extravaganzas (while butchering them for $reasons)
Like the evil that sees all in LOTR, social has been bought and consolidated into a powerful force of manipulation and mind washing. The ticky tockers hold a special place as the platform to con young people into doing just about anything told. With the kind of special victims that make ticky tocky their home, the best thing to do would be let emperor frumpy buy it. These people are not savable, and will be conned and victimized as long as they subject themselves to the hive mind of truth/meta/x/ticky tock/ and now reddit. My guess is they are all being housed on the same servers at this point. Certainly, attacked by the same entities. Emperor frumpy will bankrupt them all in a short time if given a chance. The damage is already done, and we will rid ourselves of this societal nuke. Let him cook.... everything.
Sen. Rand Paul gave a chilling speech in the senate on the motion to withdraw Trump's emergency powers, one of the few republicans waking up to a hijacked democracy.
It's too late though, so many dictatorial precedents set, unprecedented corruption, and yet the US seems fine with it, going from attention drawing article to attention drawing post, ignoring things most ordinary citizens go to jail for the rest of their lives.
In that scale, Tiktok is irrelevant (as it is in general).
It's a nice fiddle to play while Rome burns though, for some.
How exactly do you add a tariff onto none American made movies? Are Netflix going to have to bung the US government some money before they can show the next James Bond movie on their platform?
Movies studios are very good at avoiding paying taxes anyway, they will just claim a $100m movie has lost money so there is no fee to pay or some other accountancy BS.
"Are Netflix going to have to bung the US government some money before they can show the next James Bond movie on their platform?"
Depends. Amazon own the franchise now so they can just go "all American" on it and turn Felix Lighter of the CIA into their version of James Bond, make, set and shoot in the USA, maybe with a few small mud-hut villages standing in for some 3rd world country and sweep any tariffs away.
“I think his people have done an incredible job. They’re brilliant people. They know the computer. I actually asked him, ‘What’s their big trait?’ He said: ‘They’re unbelievable at computers.’ In other words, you can’t fake them out.”
The mans a fucking orange, tango man child idiot.
Trump is a reaction to the blob. He has an odd way of speaking for "intellectuals" that like to think themselves special but it resonates with blue collars. They get a say too "if" you believe in equality and democracy. He is not stupid, he trolls and has a dry sense of humour. That is unusual for a president. He seems to want to eradicate the bias and corruption in government and media, that is a good provided he is not trying to swing it to bias for him. The corruption is off the scale but you will have no idea of that if you do not see the evidence and investigations of independent journalists and whistleblowers. The mainstream media has been captured as part of the corruption and bias.
> He has an odd way of speaking for "intellectuals" that like to think themselves special but it resonates with blue collars.
Pretty sure that incoherent rambling is incoherent rambling to everyone, regardless of class. But nice try with the usual "anti-elite" schtick anyway.
> They get a say too "if" you believe in equality and democracy.
The fact that Trump won a democratic election proves that "they" did indeed "get a say". (As did the billionaire tech bros and other elites who supported Trump because they thought he'd work in their favour).
And, unlike the time when he lost, there wasn't any rioting or attempt by his opponents to overthrow the results of democracy.
> He is not stupid
He is stupid.
> he trolls
Arguably so, but only at the basic name-calling/insult level. I'll grant you that he's certainly good at saying things that get him attention and publicity, which is essentially the only thing he's good at (*) and what got him where he is today.
> has a dry sense of humour
Er... no.
I can see why someone with the desire to rationalise or sanewash Trump might want to think that. But the reason he says what he does with a straight face isn't because he has a "dry" sense of humour (nor any sense of humour full stop).
It's because he actually means the shite he spouts to be taken seriously.
> He seems to want to eradicate the bias and corruption in government and media,
Yeah, I'm sure there's less "corruption" than there was before he was elected (ahem). And I've no doubt that Trump perceives anything less than 100% agreement with him as "bias".
> that is a good provided he is not trying to swing it to bias for him.
If it wasn't obvious... he is trying to swing it to bias [sic] for him.
(*) Sure as hell wasn't his business skill, since despite a life allegedly dedicated to endless bullshit "deals"- and puffing himself up on that basis- he's no richer than he would have been if he'd invested his inheritance in a tracker fund and spent his entire life working on his golf putt. Sad!
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