The Official "Damned Trump" Thread: Phase II

[AFTT47]

Biden shit my pants again.

Priceless!

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

“I’ve been screaming at Iranians all day, yes. A little bit of laryngitis because of my scream- I’ve been screaming at the Iranians,” Trump told Bartiromo.

I rather suspect he's been screaming about the Iranians, not at them.

Boru

[Angrboda]

Trump is hemorrhaging support among independents, but his support among those over 65 is firm.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Trump posted a clip of Frank Sinatra singing ‘My Way’ on Truth Social. No context and no explanation (apart from this being another one of his Grandpa Simpson moments).

Boru

[Fake Messiah]

The insider trading suspicions looming over Trump's presidency

Throughout US President Donald Trump's second term in office, traders have been betting millions of dollars just before he makes major announcements.

The BBC has examined trade volume data on several financial markets and matched them to some of the president's most significant market-moving statements.

It found a consistent pattern of spikes just hours, or sometimes minutes, before a social media post or media interview was made public.

Some analysts say it bears the hallmarks of illegal insider trading, whereby bets are made by people based on information that is not available to the general public.

Others say the picture is more complicated and that some traders have become more adept at anticipating the president's interventions.

President Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr, is an investor in Polymarket and sits on its advisory board. He also acts as a strategic advisor to Kalshi.

In December 2025, one user created an account on Polymarket called Burdensome-Mix. On 30 December, it placed its first bet on Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro being out of office by the end of January 2026.

Between 30 December and 2 January Burdensome-Mix placed a total of $32,500 on the position.

When Maduro was seized by US special forces and ousted the following day, Burdensome-Mix won $436,000.

Shortly afterwards, the account changed its username and has not placed any bets since.

"You can have massive trades on a financial instrument that clearly show that someone was privy to what Donald Trump was about to declare," says Paul Oudin, a professor who specialises in financial regulation law at the ESSEC Business School.

"Yet there is a strong chance that no-one will be prosecuted," he adds.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cge0grppe3po

[Fake Messiah]

Trump’s son-in-law has received billions of dollars from the foreign governments that he’s negotiating with on behalf of the U.S. and Donald Trump.

To be clear: These are bribes.

This isn’t a “conflict of interest” — it’s unprecedented corruption.

Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, is leading U.S. diplomatic efforts with Iran while engaged in a lucrative, ongoing, multi-billion-dollar business relationship with the Saudi government. This brazenly corrupt arrangement is being completely ignored by most major media outlets.

In 2021, Kushner raised $2 billion from the Saudi government’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) for his private equity fund, Affinity Partners. Since that time, Kushner has collected more than $110 million in management fees from the Saudi government, according to calculations by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Congressman Robert Garcia (D-CA). Even as he has assumed a central diplomatic role in negotiations with Iran, Kushner has reportedly sought billions more from the Saudis.

Accepting payments from a foreign government while leading diplomacy for the U.S. would be a glaring conflict of interest under any circumstances. But in this case, Kushner was on the Saudi payroll as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the de facto ruler of the country, reportedly lobbied Trump both to initiate and continue the war.

As the media largely ignores the Kushner corruption scandal, Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, just launched an extensive investigation.

In an April 16 letter to Kushner, Raskin writes, “your decision to act in these two roles—one public for the government and one private for personal profit—creates a glaring and incurable conflict of interest.” Raskin argues that MBS’s “desire to prolong the war imposes obvious financial pressure on you to prolong this war of choice, risking further harm to American servicemembers, deepening the military morass and draining tens of billions from American taxpayer dollars each week on behalf of your investor and benefactor.” Raskin argues that Kushner “cannot faithfully represent the United States with billions of dollars in Saudi and Emirati cash burning a hole in every pocket of every suit you own.”

https://popular.info/p/the-media-blackou...d-kushners

[Angrboda]

The Town That Reveals All of Trump’s Bad Economic Ideas

In China-shocked factory towns, younger workers left in search of opportunities elsewhere while older workers remained after being laid off. They scraped together lower-paying service jobs to make ends meet while waiting to be called back by local manufacturers. Many applied for disability. In Hickory, the number of disability recipients soared by roughly 30 percent between 2001 and 2012, and drug overdose deaths rose. With an aging work force, factory floors lost the tribal knowledge that was once passed from generation to generation of workers.

The trio of economists found that the voters in areas that were deeply affected by Chinese competition and had large white majorities were more extreme: They tended to vote for a Republican candidate further on the right than a more moderate candidate. Counties in the Hickory region voted heavily for Mr. Trump, handing him an identical 72 percent of the vote in each of the past three presidential elections.

The economists also offer an alternative history: If the United States had restricted Chinese imports so they had grown at half the rate they did — a still rapid increase — that would have given communities time to adapt to the changes and retrain workers for new jobs. In that case, they argue, the shift to the right would have been muted enough that Mr. Trump might have lost the 2016 election.

These days, Hickory is changing again. When I visited in December the mood was more optimistic. Factory employment had stabilized, although at a much lower level. The fruits of a $40 million bond issue were evident. Downtown was spruced up; young families walked along new hiking trails. A major university, Appalachian State, opened a Hickory campus in 2023 and was offering scholarships to local students. Young professionals who worked an hour away in Charlotte were beginning to buy homes in the less expensive Hickory region.

But there hasn’t been a manufacturing revival of the kind President Trump promised. Far from it. During his first term, Mr. Trump fought a two-year trade war with China. This led to everyday goods getting slightly more expensive and to many U.S. importers turning toward other countries to avoid tariffs, especially Vietnam. Manufacturing employment in the United States continued its long decline, as did employment in Hickory furniture factories.

While the trade war garnered headlines, a kind of natural evolution was quietly occurring in many of these cities. Factory workers stayed put, grew older and retired. The Social Security, Medicare and other government benefits they collected boosted local spending and goosed demand for health care, transportation and other service businesses that cater to the elderly.

In recent years, Mr. Autor and his colleagues calculate that the job growth in areas hurt by Chinese competition has outpaced growth in areas less affected. This growth can be attributed mostly to the sharp rise in service industry employment. “The employment recovery instead stems almost entirely from young adults and foreign-born immigrants taking their first U.S. jobs” in the regions, they write.

Since 2017, median household income in the hardest-hit regions has grown faster than the national average, Moody’s calculates, after years of lagging behind. The rate of people moving in to these regions has also increased.

In Hickory, economic weaknesses turned into strengths. Decades-old furniture factories were demolished to recover the valuable hardwood used in the ceilings and floors. Laid-off textile workers, skilled at producing cotton fibers, were scooped up by makers of the glass fibers used to connect the internet economy. Fiber optics is now one of the area’s largest manufacturing employers.

The extensive water and sewer systems required for the textile and furniture industries helped persuade Apple, Microsoft and Google to build thirsty data centers in the area, adding a total of about 500 jobs, often at salaries above the area’s per capita income of $34,000. Scott Millar, the president of the Economic Development Corporation of Catawba County, which includes Hickory, is wooing pharmaceutical manufacturers that also need ample water.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Trump Blocked From Accessing Nuclear Codes?

This has all the hallmarks of not being true.

US President Donald Trump was blocked access to his country's nuclear codes by a senior US military chief, according to bombshell reports.

Retired CIA analyst Larry Johnson said on popular YouTube show Judging Freedom that during an emergency meeting on Saturday, Trump tried to access the nuclear codes...

...The claims have not been confirmed, and it is unclear what the nuclear codes would be used for should they be accessed.

The general may have at most advised against it, but blocking Trump from accessing the codes seems pretty unlikely. 

Boru

[Angrboda]

CNN is claiming that Trump's posting about having achieved a deal with Iran in which they agreed to all his demands tanked the dealmaking that was in progress.

“The Iranians didn’t appreciate POTUS negotiating through social media and making it appear as if they had signed off on issues they hadn’t yet agreed to, and ones that aren’t popular with their people back home,” one person familiar with the talks told CNN, adding that the Iranians are particularly concerned about appearing to look weak.

The Trump administration is also considering unfreezing $20 billion in Iranian assets as part of ongoing negotiations with Tehran, CNN previously reported. The step would come in exchange for Iran turning over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/20/politics/...-iran-deal

[Deesse23]

The fact that I had to think twice about this tells us everything we need to know.... About the situation