#Trump’s Foreign Policy Influencers

[xtruss]

Trump’s Foreign-Policy Influencers!

Meet The 11 Men Whose Worldviews Are Shaping The 2024 Republican Ticket.

— 26 August 2024 | Foreign Policy Feature | By Foreign Policy Staff

Oriana Fenwick Illustration/Getty Images

If former U.S. President Donald Trump wins the White House again, what might his foreign policy look like? The Republican candidate often shoots from the hip—consider his grand declaration that he can end the Russia-Ukraine war in a single day as just one example. Trump is also quick to distance himself from policy shop documents, such as the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, when they become politically inconvenient.

But beyond the noise of the campaign trail, one way to gauge the possible foreign-policy agenda of a second Trump term is to profile the key national security thinkers in his orbit: Who are the advisors he listens to? What is the genesis of the ideas that animate the former president’s current worldview?

Consider the list below a handy guide in the days and weeks leading up to Nov. 5. But first, a few disclaimers. The men listed below (and yes, they’re all men—the picks reflect what our sources told us) are ranked not in order of importance but in alphabetical order. The names are not earmarked for any particular roles, such as national security advisor or secretary of state; we thought it best to just describe the people whose views and ideas could have a meaningful impact on Trump’s foreign-policy decisions. And lastly, the spirit of this endeavor is to add some texture to what is a common parlor game in Washington these days—nobody, of course, can actually claim to know exactly what Trump will do.

And now, here’s the list you came here for. — The Editors

Elbridge Colby (L), Fred Fleitz (R)

Elbridge Colby

Elbridge Colby, a once and possible future Trump administration defense official, is the loudest and perhaps most cogent voice in Washington advocating a complete shift away from Europe, NATO, and Russia and toward the growing challenge from China.

Colby served as a deputy assistant secretary of defense for more than a year in the Trump administration, where he helped put teeth into the belated U.S. pivot to Asia. He then joined with other Trump administration veterans to co-found the Marathon Initiative, a Washington-based think tank focused on great-power competition. If he gets another shot in a future Trump administration—and his name has been floated for another defense position or even a job with the National Security Council—he would hammer home his overarching point: China, not Russia, is America’s biggest problem.

In a series of articles, books, and speeches, Colby has for years made the case for the United States to use its limited defense resources to prevent a hostile hegemonic power from gaining ascendancy over the Asia-Pacific region. China has already economically cowed many of its smaller neighbors, and it continues to chip away at regional security in places such as the South China Sea. But Taiwan is the real test: A Chinese effort to reincorporate the island by force would mean a conflict with the United States and likely Japan—and, if successful, would open China up to domination of the entire Pacific Basin, the world’s most important economic region by far.

Colby’s ideas are a timely reprisal of one of the original blueprints of U.S. grand strategy, written by Nicholas Spykman in the middle of World War II, but turned on its head: Asia, not Europe, is now the economic and political center of gravity of the world, and its domination by Beijing would severely constrain America’s future prospects and freedom of action.

One problem for Colby is that his potential future boss, while willing to be plenty hostile to China at times, is also utterly transactional, and Trump has already signaled his willingness to barter away Taiwan’s autonomy. Realist hawks such as Colby tend to sit uncomfortably with a foreign policy that has no true north.

Another problem is that Colby’s vocal and repeated urgings to use limited U.S. resources exclusively for the big China fight that may one day come, even if that means abandoning Ukraine in the middle of a war, are grist for the Kremlin’s goons; Russian state television cheers Colby’s foreign-policy priorities.

Lawmakers may not buy an Asia-only defense strategy anyway, in a future Trump administration or a future Kamala Harris one. A congressionally mandated defense review panel argued in July that the United States should prepare to defend its vital interests in both Europe and Asia.

—Keith Johnson

Fred Fleitz

Despite being a longtime member of the U.S. national security community, Fred Fleitz is a hard-nosed proponent of the Trump-driven anti-establishment MAGA ideology that roiled Washington for four years. Fleitz is a Trump administration veteran who has emerged as one of the former president’s few top advisors on national security on the campaign trail.

Fleitz, alongside Keith Kellogg, drafted a plan for Trump to review aimed at ending the war in Ukraine if Trump wins reelection. The plan entails pushing Ukraine and Russia to come to the negotiating table and brokering a temporary cease-fire at the current battle lines, which would be sustained during the peace talks. The Trump administration would pressure Ukraine on one side by threatening to cut off U.S. aid if it didn’t negotiate, and Russia on the other by threatening to open the floodgates on U.S. military aid to Ukraine without peace talks. The proposal marks the most detailed preview yet of what a Trump White House’s Ukraine policy could look like if Fleitz and others in his orbit joined the administration.

Fleitz is vice chair of the Center for American Security at the America First Policy Institute, the think tank founded in 2021 to keep MAGA boots on the ground in Washington as Team Biden took power. He is a regular commentator on the right-wing news channel NewsMax and the author of Obamabomb: A Dangerous and Growing National Security Fraud and The Coming North Korea Nuclear Nightmare: What Trump Must Do to Reverse Obama’s ‘Strategic Patience.’

Fleitz has garnered controversy over his past comments and affiliations with hard-right and anti-immigrant groups that opponents refer to as fringe and Islamophobic. (He later distanced himself from some of those past affiliations.)

Fleitz spent more than two decades working in the U.S. government, bouncing between posts at the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, State Department, and the Republican side of the House Intelligence Committee. For significant chunks of his career, he circled the orbit of the pugnacious neoconservative hawk John Bolton, serving as his chief of staff in the George W. Bush administration when Bolton was the undersecretary of state for arms control, and then later as the National Security Council chief of staff when Bolton was Trump’s national security advisor.

Bolton has since broken very publicly with Trump, but Fleitz remains nestled in the MAGA world. While Trump has given no indication of who would staff his administration if he won, many Republican insiders say Fleitz is near the top of the list.

—Robbie Gramer

Ric Grenell (L), Keith Kellogg (R)

Ric Grenell

Within hours of presenting his diplomatic credentials to German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in 2018, Trump’s new ambassador to Berlin, Ric Grenell, took to Twitter to demand that German companies doing business with Iran should “wind down operations immediately.” The diplomatic relationship went downhill from there.

Disagreements with the German government were aired publicly, as Grenell—a political appointee—threatened to withdraw U.S. troops from Germany over the country’s lackluster defense spending and impose sanctions over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would have increased the country’s dependency on Russian energy. Wolfgang Kubicki, the vice president of the German Parliament, at one point accused Grenell of acting as if the United States was “still an occupying power.”

The pugilistic diplomat’s approach may have horrified Berlin’s mild-mannered political establishment. But if ambassadors are judged by their ability to convey their boss’s message, Grenell was an effective foot soldier. He was later appointed as the special envoy to the Balkans—where he was accused of causing the government of Kosovo to collapse—and acting director of national intelligence, becoming the first openly gay person to hold a cabinet-level position.

A graduate of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, Grenell worked as a spokesperson for a number of prominent Republicans before joining the 2000 presidential campaign of former Sen. John McCain—who would later become one of Trump’s most vehement critics.

From 2001-2008, Grenell served as the director of communications for the U.S. mission to the United Nations under four ambassadors, including John Bolton, who would go on to serve as Trump’s national security advisor.

Long before the Trump presidency, Grenell was known for his combative tweets—which, like those of his future boss, often took swipes at journalists and mocked the appearance of prominent women Democrats.

While several senior figures in the Trump administration broke with the former president during the ignominious end to his tenure, Grenell remained loyal. In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, Grenell was dispatched to Nevada to help challenge the results of the vote—despite knowing that there was no basis to the claims, according to a recent profile in the New York Times.

Since leaving government, Grenell has served as Trump’s envoy, traversing the world, meeting with far-right leaders, and undercutting the State Department—including in Guatemala. It’s that loyalty that is likely to land him a senior foreign-policy job in a future Trump administration.

A secretary of state needs to be “tough” and a “son of a bitch,” Grenell said during an appearance on the Self Centered podcast in March.

Keith Kellogg

When Michael Flynn was fired from his role as U.S. national security advisor just 22 days into Trump’s first term after lying about conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Keith Kellogg was one of the first people considered to replace him. He didn’t get the job, which went to another three-star Army officer: H.R. McMaster. Instead, Kellogg advised Vice President Mike Pence and served as the chief of staff to the National Security Council.

In those roles, Kellogg was caught up in some of the most pivotal moments of Trump’s presidency. Kellogg said he heard “nothing wrong or improper” on the July 2019 call where Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden. And Kellogg privately urged Pence to certify the 2020 election “TONIGHT” while a pro-Trump mob was still being cleared from the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But Kellogg nonetheless endorsed Trump over Pence in August 2023, criticizing Pence for concentrating on “political maneuvering” and his image. (Pence withdrew from the presidential race in October 2023 and has not endorsed Trump.)

Since then, Kellogg has sought to become a key member of Trump’s national security brain trust at the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank that is seen in Washington as a White House in waiting. Kellogg—a Vietnam War veteran who was serving as a three-star Army general in the Pentagon when al Qaeda flew a Boeing 757 into the west side of the building on Sept. 11, 2001—is at once pro-Ukraine and pro-NATO and yet willing to exact Trump’s famous brand of leverage on both. He’s tried to put teeth behind Trump’s pledge to end Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine “in a day,” mapping out a plan that would cut U.S. military aid to Ukraine if Kyiv refused to go to the bargaining table, but boost it if the Kremlin refused to negotiate.

At the July NATO summit in Washington, where European officials sought out Trump insiders, Kellogg was one former official taking meetings with U.S. allies. But the message they got might not have been the one that they wanted to hear. Kellogg has said that NATO countries that don’t meet the alliance’s defense spending target are violating the Washington Treaty (Trump threatened at a campaign rally earlier this year not to defend NATO allies that weren’t hitting the bloc’s spending mark of 2 percent of GDP ).

—Jack Detsch

Robert Lighthizer

Robert Lighthizer

Few members of the Trump administration still maintain a large degree of influence on policy. But Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s trade representative, current advisor, and perhaps future Treasury secretary, has become such an influential economic voice, especially through his back-to-the-past vision of trade, that he has helped shape the Biden administration’s newfound love of trade wars.

Lighthizer, a longtime trade lawyer who began his public service career in the Ronald Reagan administration, turned Trump’s inchoate notions on trade and the economy into a more or less coherent policy. Now, with Trump campaigning to return to the White House, Lighthizer is eager to double down on the policies he pursued the first time around.

Those famous Trump tariffs—on steel, aluminum, and many products from China—were the fruit of Lighthizer’s vision, and he was just getting started. He believes raising taxes on American consumers and businesses for things they import will make them import less; in an ideal world, it would also make American businesses manufacture and export more things as well.

His plans for the future, as laid out in books and writings since he left office, include much higher tariffs on a bigger range of countries (all of them, actually) in order to balance the ledger of American imports and exports, with a particular eye on China—one of America’s biggest trading partners and its top geopolitical rival. Ultimately, his objective is to get much closer to full “decoupling” from China than the lukewarm and partial “de-risking” now favored by the Biden team.

It’s of little concern to Lighthizer and some of Trump’s other still-influential trade advisors such as Peter Navarro (who was released from prison in July) that the avalanche of tariffs and belligerent trade policy achieved none of their stated aims. The trade deficit, the main concern for tariff hawks such as Trump and Lighthizer, grew under their watch. U.S. exports shrank, as did, in the end, manufacturing jobs (thanks to COVID-19).

Retaliatory tariffs by friends and allies curbed U.S. trade options abroad and weakened the prospects for an anti-China coalition. Consumer prices, juiced by import taxes, rose. China did not moderate any of the predatory economic behavior that prompted the trade wars in the first place, and in fact has made its own form of turbocharged, export-driven industrial policy the very centerpiece of its own economic rejuvenation.

But, as Lighthizer himself has argued, it takes time to right a ship that’s on the wrong course. Maybe this time the same old remedies will produce dramatically different results.

—Keith Johnson

Johnny McEntee

Johnny McEntee

In the summer of 2020, as Trump was running for reelection, an email from the White House invited Pentagon officials to sit down for interviews with a pair of staffers, where they would be evaluated for positions in a second Trump administration. After a spate of high-profile resignations in the building as the White House increasingly sought to assert itself over the Defense Department, officials saw the interviews as a test of loyalty to Trump.

The man behind the email was White House Presidential Personnel Office Director John McEntee. A onetime walk-on quarterback at the University of Connecticut, McEntee served as the president’s “body man” for the first year of the administration. He was fired by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly in 2018 for failing a background check due to a gambling investigation, only to return two years later, this time in charge of the powerful personnel office.

It’s often said in Washington that personnel is policy. Many of Trump’s early appointments came from the traditional Republican foreign-policy pool: more international, pro-trade, pro-NATO, and pro-ally than the standard MAGA crowd. Kelly, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson formed the “axis of adults” that largely controlled the levers of foreign policy for Trump’s first two years in office—even as the commander in chief finger-wagged at Washington’s perceived “deep state” for allegedly slow-walking his agenda.

But late in the game, McEntee would help get MAGA-approved people into top jobs. He helped orchestrate Trump’s reshuffling of the Pentagon brass, including the firing of then-U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper. He also tried, with others, to stack the Pentagon’s top policy boards with close Trump allies. Had Trump won, McEntee would have played a key role in trying to implement Trump’s planned “Schedule F” reforms that would have essentially turned tenure-track government jobs into at-will employees.

Since then, loyalty tests have become standard practice in Trump world. McEntee is now at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, where he’s helping to spearhead Project 2025—an initiative that calls for the next president to “confront the Deep State.” If you want in on a list of would-be Trump appointees, you have to send in your phone number and fill out a detailed questionnaire, largely predicated on loyalty to Trump.

—Jack Detsch

Christopher Miller

Christopher Miller

Christopher Miller had some early missteps after being named Trump’s acting secretary of defense in November 2020—literally. First, he tripped on his way up the steps and into the Pentagon. And then when he got up to give his first public speech at the U.S. Army’s national museum two days later, he forgot his prepared remarks under his seat.

It set the tone for perhaps the wildest two-month tour that any Pentagon chief has ever had. Trump moved Miller from the National Counterterrorism Center to take over for Esper as acting secretary of defense. Trump announced via tweet that Esper had been fired, less than 48 hours after the networks began calling the presidential election for Biden.

Miller, a former Green Beret, was given an ambitious lame-duck agenda for the Pentagon ahead of Biden’s inauguration. The Pentagon was tasked with withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Syria, and Somalia—all in the course of two months.

Miller faced widespread criticism for his failure to approve the deployment of the National Guard to contain the Jan. 6, 2021, pro-Trump insurrection at the U.S. Capitol for more than three hours after the Pentagon became aware of the breach. Miller said later that he feared creating “the greatest Constitutional crisis” since the Civil War by deploying active-duty U.S. troops. He has also said that Trump deserves blame for stoking the riots—but he hasn’t explicitly ruled out working for him again.

“I thought he was really good,” Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt in a December interview, describing Miller and his short stint at the Pentagon. “I thought he was very good.”

—Jack Detsch

Stephen Miller

Stephen Miller

Throughout Trump’s term, Stephen Miller made a name for himself as the radical architect of the president’s hard-line—and highly controversial—immigration policies. If Trump triumphs in November, he is widely expected to again lean heavily on Miller, who has already outlined sweeping new proposals to overhaul U.S. policy and crack down on immigration.

As Trump’s then-senior advisor and speechwriting chief, Miller played a pivotal role in shaping his presidential agenda. He drove forward some of the former U.S. leader’s most contentious schemes, including his family separation policy, known as zero tolerance, and the so-called Muslim ban, which barred travel and refugee resettlement from several Muslim-majority countries to the United States. Beyond pushing to slash refugee admission numbers, he reportedly also wanted to deploy troops to close off the United States’ southern border and proposed banning student visas for Chinese nationals.

Miller was known for encouraging some of Trump’s more hard-line positions, even in situations where other advisors reportedly urged the president to exercise restraint. In 2019, Miller came under fire after a batch of leaked emails published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy group, revealed that he privately touted white nationalist views. The emails, which were exchanged between Miller and conservative news site Breitbart News, date back to 2015 and 2016.

Today, Miller spends much of his time waging legal battles against “woke corporations,” despite having no formal legal training. In 2021, he founded the America First Legal Foundation, a conservative legal advocacy organization focused on challenging the Biden administration and the practices of private companies, including Kellogg and Starbucks. “America First Legal is holding corporate America accountable for illegally engaging in discriminatory employment practices that penalize Americans based on race and sex,” the company said.

If Trump defeats Harris in November, Miller has vowed an overhaul of U.S. immigration policy. “Any activists who doubt President Trump’s resolve in the slightest are making a drastic error: Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” he told the New York Times. “The immigration legal activists won’t know what’s happening.”

Under a potential second Trump term, Washington would dramatically expand policies aimed at cracking down on immigration, including by halting the U.S. refugee program and reinstalling some variation of the Muslim travel ban, the New York Times reported. Trump envisions conducting sweeping public workplace raids, enacting mass deportations, and constructing “vast holding facilities” to detain those awaiting deportation, Miller said. The former U.S. leader is also eager to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, he said.

“I don’t care what the hell happens in this world,” Miller told right-wing personality Charlie Kirk in a podcast interview earlier this year. “If President Trump gets reelected, the border’s going to be sealed, the military will be deployed, the National Guard will be activated, and the illegals are going home.”

—Christina Lu

Robert O’Brien

Robert O’Brien

Trump cycled through three national security advisors during the first two years of his tenure before settling on one who fit just right: Robert O’Brien. He stuck around for the remainder of Trump’s presidency.

A Los Angeles lawyer, O’Brien began his White House role as special envoy for hostage affairs. He helped to secure the release of Americans from prisons in Turkey and Yemen, as the Trump administration prioritized the plight of Americans wrongfully detained abroad.

More memorably, O’Brien led the administration’s efforts to lobby Sweden, an ally, to release the American rapper A$AP Rocky following a request from the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, according to the New York Times. Rocky had been convicted on assault charges.

As national security advisor, O’Brien had significantly less experience than his predecessors. He proved to be low-key and loyal, and served out the remainder of the Trump administration without major controversy.

In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, O’Brien became one of the first senior Trump officials to acknowledge, if grudgingly, that Biden had won the vote. “If the Biden-Harris ticket is determined to be the winner, and obviously things look that way now, we’ll have a very professional transition from the National Security Council. There’s no question about it,” he said at a virtual meeting of the Global Security Forum.

O’Brien has remained close with the former president and is likely to be tapped for a senior role should Trump return to the Oval Office.

In an essay in Foreign Affairs published in June, O’Brien sketched out the contours of a future Trump foreign policy: “A Trumpian restoration of peace through strength.” China is the primary focus, as O’Brien calls for a muscular posture in the Indo-Pacific, including the deployment of the entire Marine Corps to the region and for a U.S. aircraft carrier to be transferred from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

O’Brien also advocated for the United States to resume nuclear weapons testing, not carried out since 1992. “Washington must test new nuclear weapons for reliability and safety in the real world for the first time since 1992—not just by using computer models,” O’Brien wrote.

—Amy Mackinnon

Kash Patel (L) Mike Pompeo (R)

Kash Patel

Kash Patel had a meteoric ascent during Trump’s tenure, rising from little-known staffer on the House Intelligence Committee to chief of staff to the acting secretary of defense in the last months of the administration, despite having no military background. As an aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, who was then chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Patel was central to efforts to challenge accusations that the Trump team had inappropriate contact with Russian government officials while on the campaign trail.

Patel was reportedly the lead author of a controversial 2018 memo that alleged that law enforcement officials had acted improperly when they sought permission to surveil the communications of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. While Democrats slammed the decision to release the document, describing it as a partisan attack on the justice system, a court later found that some of the surveillance warrants against Page were unjustified.

After a stint at the National Security Council as senior director for counterterrorism, Patel moved to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2020 as a senior advisor to the director of national intelligence, where he became integral to the former president’s attacks on the intelligence community, pressing for declassification of documents from the investigation into Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

In the waning days of the Trump administration, the former president reportedly considered firing CIA Deputy Director Vaughn Bishop and replacing him with Patel, according to Axios. If then-CIA Director Gina Haspel resigned in protest—which she threatened to do—Patel or another Trump ally would be appointed to lead the sprawling intelligence agency, according to reports.

Patel would likely play an integral and senior role should Trump return to the Oval Office. In an appearance on Steve Bannon’s podcast in December, Patel said a second Trump administration would target and prosecute journalists. “Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections—we’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out,” he said.

Patel has also authored a children’s book titled The Plot Against the King, a revisionist fairy-tale rendering of the Russia investigation in which Patel appears as a wizard who informs the kingdom that King Donald “did not work with the Russonians.”

—Amy Mackinnon

Mike Pompeo

Mike Pompeo was one of the few Trump cabinet officials to maintain a strong relationship with the brash and mercurial president throughout his term in office. Trump plucked Pompeo from relative obscurity as a Kansas congressman to be his first CIA director. As head of the premier U.S. intelligence agency, Pompeo forayed into diplomacy by secretly traveling to North Korea to lay the groundwork for direct talks between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

In 2018, as Trump sacked his first secretary of state, Tillerson, he announced Pompeo as his replacement. Pompeo joined the State Department vowing to restore “swagger” to the diplomatic corps after the Tillerson era, prompting relief among some longtime diplomats and eye rolls from others. While at the State Department, Pompeo was careful to ensure he remained a top player in Trump’s inner circle, even when it put him at odds with the embattled diplomatic corps—during Trump’s tumultuous first impeachment hearing, for example, and other scandals involving harassment, mismanagement, and watchdog investigations into Trump appointees at the State Department.

Pompeo, a California native, graduated first in his class at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, served as a U.S. Army officer, and attended law school at Harvard. He moved to Kansas in the 1990s and served as a member of Congress for the state’s 4th district from 2011 to 2017 before joining the Trump administration. After Trump was voted out of office, Pompeo did not join other top Trump administration officials in condemning the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and Trump’s demonstrably false claims of election fraud.

Pompeo briefly toyed with the idea of running for president but bowed out of the race early on when he failed to raise his national profile or as much money as other Republican challengers to Trump like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. In June, he established a new private equity firm with veteran financiers that aims to back mid-sized technology companies.

Mike Pompeo About CIA : “We Lied, We Cheated, We Stole”

Pompeo still maintains close ties with Trump and his inner circle, and many Republican insiders believe he would be a top contender for a senior administration role, such as secretary of defense, if Trump is reelected.

In Trump’s circle, Pompeo is among the most outspoken advocates of Ukraine. He visited Kyiv in early April and told Fox News that arming Ukraine was the “least costly way to move forward.” Many European officials believe that the appointment of Pompeo to a senior cabinet position would be a good thing for Ukraine and NATO, and bad news for Russia.

An ardent hawk, he was also a primary driver of Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and architect of the former president’s muscular approach to China that now largely has bipartisan backing.

—Robbie Gramer

[usindistress]

Pretty sure this is a bold face Logan Act violation. But it's Trump, so it will take years for charges to be filed, if ever. Republicans have a long history of making deals with foreign government to help them win elections (Reagan, HW Bush, Iran)

Sedition. Corruption. Treason. Betrayal.

Trump publicly works for our enemies.

[bitcoinversus]

Politics: Trump reportedly Appoints Marco Rubio as Secretary of State

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[kesarijournal]

A New Reality of US-India Relations: Going From Natu Natu to NATO+

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[avelera]

PSA: You should question news articles that make you not want to vote

Hey Tumblr friends, but especially young Americans in this, the year of our Lord 2024.

Unfortunately, it is an election year.

Unfortunately, a US election year becomes everyone's problem, and yes everyone else, we are very very sorry that you have to deal with our nonsense.

But in all seriousness, the level of propaganda that's going to be flung around on all sides is going to reach peak levels this year for the English-speaking internet in particular. There's going to be a lot of influence operations, on all sides, and yes including on sides you agree with but they are still influence operations.

Source: I am speaking as a cybersecurity professional who also did a great deal of work in election security.

So, here's what I am going to ask you to do. What I am going to beg you to do: be careful of any article that makes you think there's no point in voting.

That's it. I'm not going to tell you who to vote for, or how to think, or that you should trust or distrust every article out there. I don't care about that. I care about whether or not it makes you think you shouldn't vote.

A lot of influence operations are about making you feel like there's no point. That both sides are just as bad as the other. The the election is falsified. That you can "protest" by not voting (false: you will simply not be counted and your voice will be ignored). All sorts of reasons not to vote.

No matter what you do, what you believe, or who you trust, you really really have to vote this year, and every year, and you need to not listen to articles that say there's no point because among those articles are in fact active foreign influence campaigns trying to promote one side or the other for their own reasons, I am deadly serious right now.

(More context, sources, and examples sources below the cut.)

In 2016, Russian influence operations were focused on tearing down Hillary in order to specifically depress voter turnout among young men of color in the belief that this would help Trump get elected.

From the article: "“Buried literally in the middle of the indictment is a paragraph that should jar every American committed to the long fight for voting rights,” Anders wrote in a statement. “The Russians allegedly masqueraded as African-American and American Muslim activists to urge minority voters to abstain from voting in the 2016 election or to vote for a third-party candidate.”

This is the flavor of influence campaign that has been proven, that does exist, and is the sort of thing that does numbers here on Tumblr.

Things like the situation in Gaza, for example, are incredibly fraught situations. Articles don't even need to lie about facts on the ground there to make people feel hopeless and angry. Again, I am not telling you who to trust or not trust when it comes to news sources. But if an article about this event, for examples, makes you think or even outright tells you, "There's no point to voting, both sides are awful, I just shouldn't bother." You need to pause and at least consider that this might be an influence operation. You need to think critically. You need to check sources. You need to think about the world you want to live in, to vote for, and who might not want that world to happen for any variety of reasons.

Protesting by failing to vote isn't a real thing.

Old politicians ignoring young voters because they famously do not bother to vote is absolutely 100% a real thing. It is why so many policies that are popular with young people are low priority for politicians: they are not afraid of losing the young vote because no one plans on having it in the first place when it's never there in big enough numbers to matter.

So please, please, read what you want. Believe what you want. Follow your heart and your brain and whatever other organ you want to think with. I'm not here to tell you who is right, wrong, trustworthy, good, or bad. I'm just here to tell you that despite all of that, whatever you read, you must vote in your elections, no matter where you are in the world and you must not listen to voices that tell you not to as a protest.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Keith Edwards at No Lies Detected:

Fascism doesn’t come for every generation, but it has come for ours.  This is not a fight on the beaches of Normandy, but in our own country. This article begins a series on what opposing Donald Trump and his movement can look like. I hope you will join me as these progress.

[...]

Do not leave. Faced with the might of the United States government aligned against you, you might consider resigning preemptively to avoid the humiliation of inevitable termination. This is counterproductive for at least two reasons: If you leave, you save Trump Administration officials the time and effort of identifying you, which otherwise could have taken months or years. Second, your principled stand would likely only result in your replacement by an unprincipled Trump loyalist. By staying on, you may find yourself helping to implement policies you find hateful, but by refusing to leave, you can ensure that you have some influence on those policies, because then you can...

Delay. Delay. Delay. Waiting out the enemy until he moves on, gives up, or forgets is a time-honored strategy not just among civil servants but also history’s best generals. That email about a proposed rule change to healthcare protections? Bury it in everyone’s inbox by sending it late. A meeting on reviewing the U.S. government’s foreign aid commitments to a region you oversee? Oops, you’ll be out that day! That agency conference your political-appointee boss requested you arrange? Next month didn’t fit everyone’s schedule, so you had to push it to after the new year! Slow-walking is the classic tool in any bureaucrat’s toolbox, and in the next Trump Administration, you can use it in defense of the Constitution.

Be intentionally incompetent. As a career employee, you likely have always had the advantage of knowing your workplace better than your politically appointed overlords. This is perhaps your most potent weapon against Trump. Draft rules unlikely to survive judicial review. Favor lengthy rulemaking or review processes over expedited ones. Complete tasks sequentially rather than in parallel to draw out timelines. Add complexity, stakeholders, and process wherever possible. In short, exploit the knowledge gap you hold over your bosses to diminish, defuse, and defeat their plans.

Leak. Federal employees have the right to report what they believe to be illegal or abusive of authority to their agency’s inspector general (IG) without fear of retaliation. Trump however has singled out IGs for replacement after one played a pivotal role in his first impeachment, so the availability of this option may depend on how politically prominent your agency is. Fortunately, you can anonymously tip prominent news outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post, which boast extensive investigative units and employ rigorous safeguards to protect sources’ identities. You can also seek out sympathetic elected officials, such as Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee, whose main function is investigation of the federal government. (If you choose disclosure, be sure that the information is not classified, the unauthorized disclosure of which carries stiff federal penalties.)

Disregard and refuse. When you have exhausted all other options, you may want selectively to resort to riskier behaviors. These include going behind political appointees’ backs to subvert their activities, say by picking up the phone and countermanding their directions. In extreme cases, you may have outright to refuse direct orders to the appointee’s face. Though such actions seem like a fasttrack to termination, you may still be protected by the fact that overwhelmed political appointees might hesitate to go through the onerous process of finding a politically reliable replacement. Remember, the longer you stay in, the harder you make it for Trump to do what he wants. Know your rights. If the worst happens and your agency moves to terminate you, you can still fight back. There are multiple avenues an employee designated for dismissal can pursue to delay, reduce, or reverse agency penalties against them.1 The beauty of these options is that they can take months or even years to resolve and may be appealed to higher bodies, further extending the process. All the while, you are collecting a salary and occupying a full-time equivalent (FTE) position that your agency can’t fill until you finally depart. (This is not legal advice. If you find yourself in this situation, please seek a lawyer.)

Keith Edwards writes in his No Lies Detected Substack on how civil servants can show resistance to the tyrannical Trump 2.0 Regime from within.

[rongzhi]

actually maybe you know but what is cnets reaction to the us election results? i have weibo but i feel like im getting a pretty limited view

Hmm, the general reaction I've picked up on is: they think it's funny that he got elected. There's a very 吃瓜/watching with popcorn vibe to viewing U.S politics, but I don't think that there's a particular happy or sad feeling about it the way maybe other Western countries' people have reacted? Generally speaking, whether it's Trump or Harris, Republicans or Democrats, they both hate China and don't give a shit about Chinese people, which is the main concern of people in China.

I don't think they give a shit about the platform minutiae of it all; democrat or republican is largely the same to Zhang San and Li Si making 3000 yuan a month. Trump being president is in that sense inconsequential. In the meantime, I sense cnets find Trump very entertaining, so they tend to "like" him. I mean, he's funny to watch from afar, and because the China has developed largely self-sufficient industries, even with Trump's rhetoric on China, there is not a really an economic concern over on that side. Moreover, Trump in his first term, through his brashness, gave China a lot of opportunities to develop international relations with those countries that Trump alienated. He weakened the U.S grip on other nations, especially those developing ones, which found a friend in China instead. He was/is enormously racist and xenophobic toward China but his first presidency was actually considered good for China. For his aggressive talk, he is viewed as an an idiot that is easily influenced, and while yes, he can be unpredictable, at the end of the day, he's a "business president" and you can trust that money will always speak to him the loudest. As long as he's president, he will also embroil the U.S in domestic chaos, preoccupying the country and perhaps preventing us from starting new wars and stuff. (Biden is viewed as a war hawk; Harris would've continued his foreign policies)

Meanwhile, China will keeps doing China and the cnets, I guess I will say, largely have faith that the government will do what's best for China, and therefore best for them.

That's my read.

I will say, the main Chinese social media I use (where I actually get news, anyway) is douyin, which attracts a different user base than Weibo, I think. It's largely a video sharing site, where Weibo is more for posting text (deeper reflections, maybe?). I'd be interested to know what the Weibo reaction is, or at least, the reaction in the circles you or anyone else frequents!

[usindistress]

Can't wait to see what kinds of floats they make for his felony convictions, sparsely attended rallies and rapidly progressing dementia.

[metamatar]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2024/us-sanction-countries-work/?itid=ap_jeffstein

NEW: THE STAGGERING RISE OF AMERICA'S GLOBAL ECONOMIC WARFARE (summary by author Jeff Stein from twitter)

1. ~1/3 of all nations on Earth now face some form of US sanctions. Huge increase from when mostly applied to Cuba & a handful of regimes

2. +*60%* of *all poor countries* are under US sanctions of some kind. Has become almost a reflex of US foreign policy

3. Sanctions have spawned multi-billion-dollar lobbying & influence industry, enriching former US officials who are hired by foreign countries & oligarchs

4. Sanctions have had devastating effects on innocent civilians. In Cuba, they've made critical medical supplies impossible to import. In Venezuela, they contributed to a financial collapse 3X greater than the US Great Depression. Syria faces its greatest humanitarian crisis this year after a decade civil war & sanctions.

5. Treasury staffers drafted a ~40 page plan aimed at reforming the sanctions process that was dramatically whittled down amid disagreements w/ State

6. OFAC is widely described as overwhelmed by tens of thousands of requests. WH officials have brainstormed sanctions scenarios w/ outside nonprofits

7. Biden has unleashed unprecedented volley of +6K sanctions in 2 years. Higher than even previously unprecedented rate of Trump.

“We don’t think about the collateral damage of sanctions the same way we think about the collateral damage of war ... But we should.”

[mariacallous]

With Donald Trump’s election win fueling fresh speculation over the prospects for a negotiated settlement to the Russo-Ukrainian War, Russian President Vladimir Putin has once again underlined his insistence on Ukrainian neutrality. “If there is no neutrality, it is difficult to imagine any good-neighborly relations between Russia and Ukraine,” he commented on November 7 in Sochi.

This is nothing new. Since the eve of the full-scale invasion, the Kremlin has been consistent in its calls for permanent Ukrainian neutrality. Neutral status was a key condition set out by the Kremlin during the abortive peace talks that took place in the first weeks of the war. It once again featured prominently when Putin laid out an updated peace proposal in June 2024.

Many in the international community regard Putin’s push for a neutral Ukraine as by far his most reasonable demand. Indeed, some have even accused NATO of provoking the current war by expanding into Russia’s traditional sphere of influence since 1991 and deepening cooperation with Ukraine. They argue that if Ukraine can be kept in geopolitical no-man’s-land, Russia will be placated.

Such thinking is likely to feature prominently as the debate continues to unfold in the coming months over the terms of a future peace deal. While Trump has yet to outline his plans for a possible settlement, unconfirmed reports suggest that a twenty-year freeze on Ukraine’s NATO membership aspirations is under consideration. This would be a costly blunder. Imposing neutrality on Ukraine will not bring about a durable peace in Europe. On the contrary, it would leave Ukraine at Putin’s mercy and set the stage for a new Russian invasion.

Ukrainians have already learned the hard way that neutrality does not protect them against Russian aggression. The country officially embraced non-aligned status during the 2010-2014 presidency of Viktor Yanukovych, but this didn’t prevent Moscow from seeking to reassert full control over Ukraine. Initially, Russia’s efforts focused on orchestrating Ukraine’s economic reintegration through membership of the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union. When this sparked a popular backlash that led to the fall of the Yanukovych regime, Putin opted to use force and began the military invasion of Ukraine.

Ever since the start of Russia’s attack on Ukraine in spring 2014, Putin has sought to justify Russian aggression by pointing to the looming danger of Ukrainian NATO membership. In reality, however, Ukraine has never looked like progressing toward the distant goal of joining the alliance. For the past decade, NATO leaders have refused to provide Kyiv with an invitation and have instead limited themselves to vague talk of Ukraine’s “irreversible” path toward future membership. Putin is well aware of this, but has chosen to wildly exaggerate Ukraine’s NATO prospects in order to strengthen his own bogus justifications.

Putin’s complaints regarding NATO enlargement are equally dubious. Indeed, his own actions since early 2022 indicate that Putin himself does not actually believe that the alliance poses a genuine security threat to Russia. Instead, he merely exploits the NATO issue as a convenient smokescreen for Russia’s expansionist foreign policy.

Tellingly, when Finland and Sweden responded to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine by announcing plans to abandon decades of neutrality and join NATO, Putin was quick to declare that Russia had “no problem” with the move. This evident indifference was particularly striking, given that Finnish NATO membership has more than doubled Russia’s NATO border while Sweden’s accession has transformed the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake. Over the past two-and-a-half years, Putin has continued to demonstrate his almost complete lack of concern over NATO’s Nordic enlargement by withdrawing the vast majority of Russian troops from the Finnish border and leaving the area largely undefended.

Putin obviously understands perfectly well that NATO is not a threat to Russia itself, and sees no need to guard against a NATO invasion that he knows will never come. While Putin’s resentment over the expanding NATO presence on his borders is real enough, he only really objects when the alliance prevents Russia from bullying its neighbors. In other words, Putin’s opposition to Ukraine’s NATO aspirations has nothing to do with legitimate security concerns. Instead, it confirms that his ultimate goal is the destruction of Ukrainian statehood.

For years, Putin has made no secret of his belief that the emergence of an independent Ukraine is an historical mistake and a symbol of modern Russia’s retreat from empire. He has repeatedly claimed that Ukraine is not a “real country,” and is fond of declaring that Ukrainians are actually Russians (“one people”). In July 2021, Putin even published an entire essay arguing against the legitimacy of an independent Ukrainian state.

Since the start of the full-scale invasion, it has become increasingly apparent that Putin’s ultimate goal is not Ukraine’s neutrality but Ukraine’s destruction. The Kremlin propaganda machine has portrayed Ukraine as an intolerable “anti-Russia,” and has promoted the idea that Ukraine’s continued existence is incompatible with Russian security. Meanwhile, Putin has compared his invasion to eighteenth century Russian ruler Peter the Great’s imperial conquests, and has repeatedly claimed to be “returning” historically Russian lands.

Putin’s imperialistic outbursts must be taken seriously. Throughout occupied Ukraine, his soldiers and administrators are already imposing a reign of terror that directly echoes the criminal logic of his imperial fantasies. Millions have been displaced, with thousands more simply vanishing into a vast network of camps and prisons. Those who remain face policies of relentless Russification and the suppression of all things Ukrainian. Adults must accept Russian citizenship in order to access basic services, while children are forced to undergo indoctrination in schools teaching a new Kremlin curriculum.

The crimes currently taking place in Russian-occupied Ukraine are a clear indication of what awaits the rest of the country if Putin succeeds. Despite suffering multiple military setbacks, he remains fully committed to his maximalist goals of ending Ukrainian independence and erasing Ukrainian identity.

Furthermore, since 2022 Putin has demonstrated that he is prepared to wait as long as it takes in order to overcome Ukrainian resistance, and is ready to pay almost any price to achieve his imperial ambitions. Imposing neutrality on Ukraine in such circumstances would be akin to condemning the country to a slow but certain death.

Any peace process that fails to provide Ukraine with credible long-term security guarantees is doomed to fail. Acquiescing to Putin’s demands for a neutral Ukraine may provide some short-term relief from the menace of an expansionist Russia, but this would ultimately lead to more war and the likely collapse of the current global security order. There is simply no plausible argument for insisting on Ukrainian neutrality other than a desire to leave the country defenseless and at Russia’s mercy.

Peace will only come once Putin has finally been forced to accept Ukraine’s right to exist as an independent country and as a member of the democratic world. Naturally, this includes the right to choose security alliances. It is absurd to prioritize Russia’s insincere security concerns over Ukraine’s very real fears of national annihilation. Instead, if serious negotiations do begin in the coming months, Ukrainian security must be the number one priority. Until Ukraine is secure, Europe will remain insecure and the threat of Russian imperialism will continue to loom over the continent.

[hero-israel]

homelessness and the housing crisis is growing, healthcare is shit, education system is shit, ppl can barely find jobs, white supremacy movements is growing, etc etc etc but ppl are willing to let trump win bc biden and kamala aren’t anti israel. as if trump isn’t even more outwardly pro israel than they are?? and why are we letting issues in israel and palestine, that yes are important, decide what president we elect in the united states of america???

foreign policy has never played such a big role in an election since what, vietnam?? afghanistan? but americans were getting affected by those two on a large scale. there are only a few US spec ops forces in israel rn, and that’s mainly to help identify hostages especially american ones. and ppl are blaming all of these issues above on US aid money to israel when that’s not the cause of it and would most likely just increase under trump. ffs i hate these leftists so much.

In Putin's Russia, robots program people!

This is the most obvious case I've ever seen of trollbot accounts swaying public opinion and motivating previously normal-ish people towards political extremism and even violence. It's like all the propaganda we see whipping up angry mobs in "The Boys," but on the other side; their college diplomas did not save them from becoming Sandy Hook Truthers.

I remember when Occupy Wall Street fizzled out ineffectively - and that was about day-to-day economic conditions for American voters! People couldn't motivate themselves over that, but some influencer talking about a "Gaza famine" could help Trump carry MIchigan? A repulsive, sick joke.

The epistemic closure of leftists needs a lot more examination. I will not forget the person who posted this: "Do you dare to claim that the Left promote anywhere in the world real anti-semitism, namely theories that the Jews are by their nature evil or inferior or that they are the root of all the problems in the world  ? Or do you claim perhaps that the Left promote policies of discrimination or exclusion towards Jews, let alone of persecution of the Jews ?...

...Anti-semitism is not a problem for the Left as a movement for the reason that I have explained above, namely the total incompatibility between the worldview of the Left and anti-semitism. The same obtains for anti-Black racism. Perhaps there are some leftist individuals with residual anti-Black tendencies, but obviously anti-Black racism is not today a problem for the Left as a whole, as the Left is in its very essence for the equality and equal dignity of all people”

Homelander can't be a badguy, he's the goodguy

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Trump may try to push Brazil away from China and boost the far-right in the region, says analyst

Professor Barbara Motta says Brazilian diplomacy may seek normalization in its relations with the US

Although Brazil is not currently a priority country for US foreign relations, the effects of Donald Trump's electoral victory, confirmed on Wednesday (6), may be felt in the foreign policy of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's government. That’s the analysis of Barbara Motta, professor of International Relations at the Federal University of Sergipe (UFS, in Portuguese) and coordinator of the Foreign Policy Observatory for Brazil (OPEB, in Portuguese).

“At first, the main consequence is how Brazil will manage to take a stance amid the trade war between China and the United States. For Brazil, it is important to maintain good commercial and diplomatic ties with both the United States and China, since both countries are important economic partners,” she told Brasil de Fato.

She believes that Trump will resume the policy he used in his first term, applying trade tariffs on Chinese products and pressuring allies to do the same. In a new round of Trump at the White House, Motta points out that this may be political pressure from the US on the Brazilian government.

“The United States sees Latin America as its exclusive area of influence, and Brazil is one of the major countries in the region. This could be pressure from the Trump administration on Brazil to distance the country and the regional bloc from a close commercial and diplomatic relationship with China.”

Continue reading.

[forsetti]

On Calls For Pres. Biden To Step Aside: Know The Players And Motives Tossing aside one of the most progressive presidents in fifty years because you are afraid they might not win an election is just plain stupid without a really, really, really solid backup plan. It is even stupider if you look at who is pushing for him to step aside and their motives. Here are the main groups calling for Pres. Biden to step away from running against Trump in November and why:

1-Republicans. Republicans know Biden is the biggest threat to them getting back the White House and enacting their batshit crazy policy agenda. They want nothing more than to not run against Pres. Biden because not only does he have the track record of beating Trump before but has an amazing economic record to run on. If you ever want to understand who Republicans view as their political threat, all you have to do is look at who they are attacking. They were going after Hillary for three years prior to 2016. The entire Benghazi witch hunt had no other purpose than to damage her electorally. Every single hearing about Hunter Biden, the border, the Biden Crime Family,… is nothing more than dog and pony hearings to dampen Democratic and Independent voter enthusiasm.

2-The Media. Trump’s non-stop crazy train administration was a goldmine for media outlets. Every day there was a new outrage, wild-ass rant, something that brought eyes to screens which translates to selling ad time/space. The Biden administration is efficient and boring. No scandals, except the ones Republicans gin up that turn up nothing. No rants. No chaos. No real controversy. Just plain old boring governance which is great for the country but bad for a business model that relies on shock, drama, and negativity. “Dems in disarray,” has been a media cottage industry since Bill Clinton was in office. If you don’t understand the financial motivation for why the media constantly derides Democrats for the slightest misstep while ignoring Republican malfeasance, you are probably likely to fall for their own brand of political propaganda.

It should tell you something that major news outlets have come out demanding Pres. Biden step aside for not looking good on camera during one ninety-minute debate but not a single one has asked the same of the candidate who was found guilty of sexual assault, found guilty of thirty-four felony charges, misspeaks dozens of times at every rally, and goes off on wild, illogical, batshit crazy tangents, and is tied to child sexual abuse via Jeffery Epstein. That they are not treating Trump with the same non-stop demands to step aside as they are Pres. Biden should tell you something about their motives.

3-Bad Foreign Actors. Russia wants nothing more than for Biden to lose the election. He is their biggest threat to taking over Ukraine and pushing their influence farther into Western Europe. NATO is stronger now and has more members than at any time in its history. This is the last thing Putin wants. Russia has been actively pushing propaganda online to influence U.S. elections for some time but really have ramped it up the past few election cycles.

Russia targets Republicans by fueling rage over culture war topics like abortion, immigration, racial violence, and the decline of Western, Christian norms. They also target liberals by trying to divide them over issues they care about Israel/Palestine, LGBTQI rights, Bernie vs Clinton, Bernie v Biden, DNC v “real progressives,”… They want liberals at each other’s throats because, if unified, the left is the largest voting bloc in America. Conservatives are electoral dinosaurs but they maintain power through gerrymandering, voter suppression, and liberals being more invested in their petty arguments than voting Republicans out of office.

4-Sandernistas. There is still a good-sized faction of people on the left who are still upset about Bernie Sanders not being the nominee in 2016 or in 2020. They are especially mad at what they deem as “establishment Dems,” screwing over Sanders in 2020 starting with the South Carolina primary. What they really are upset about is black voters, predominately female black voters, denying their White Progressive Savior his rightful spot at the head of the ticket. Because Pres. Biden was the one who benefited from this minority voting bloc in 2020, tearing him down and taking him out is a passion project for a lot of so-called “progressives.”

These “progressives,” are under the disillusion that if the Democratic Party fails far enough, hard enough, they will be able rebuild it in their own, perfectly progressive image. They never explain how this magical transformation will happen, they just take it as a matter of faith. Of course, anyone who understands American history and basic civics knows if/when conservatives have ultimate power, they will make sure they never lose another election.

These “progressives,” are the worst kind of progressive. They are often white, middle to upper-class liberals who view politics as a game because they are usually shielded from the consequences of the electoral decisions. If you are a middle/upper-class white, male progressive, very few, if any of Trump’s actions when he was in office affected you directly. The same cannot be said about the progressive voters who overwhelmingly supported Hillary in 2016 and Joe in 2020. They have the most skin in the game, have the most to lose and they vote accordingly. For white dudebros to step in and demand Pres. Biden step aside is a direct “fuck you” to the most loyal part of the base which has the most to lose if Trump is reelected.

Never mind this group has NEVER accomplished a damn thing politically other than cost many good Democrats to lose and decades and decades of progressive policy and law wiped out. They are as adamant about their political skills as they are it is always someone else’s fault when the find-out portion of their fuck around actions comes to fruition.

5-Progressives suffering from 2016 PTSD. This is the one group I can actually relate to and sympathize with. Hillary's loss in 2016 was a major shock to a lot of people. This shock was compounded because not only were we denied the first female president, but we got a lying, narcissistic, misogynist man-child in her place who went about rolling back decades of hard-earned progressive policies and turning the Supreme Court into a right-wing arm of the Federalist Society.

For those of us who lived through 2016, there is no election data that will make us feel good or at ease. It also makes us hyper-vigilant about anything and everything that can be seen as a negative towards the nominee. The second anything bad happens, whether factual or not, a lot of people in this group take the flight instead of the fight option which is associated with PTSD.

Being overly anxious and hyper-vigilant are not necessarily bad unless they lead to bad decisions.

There is only one sure way to make sure Trump is not reelected. Vote for the candidate running against him. Period. Full fucking stop.

If you aren’t willing to do this, for whatever reason you tell yourself, then you will be directly responsible for the very thing you claim is a politically existential moment. Stop listening and parroting Republican talking points. Stop allowing the media to determine who you should vote for. Stop listening to butt-hurt progressives who have no record of political success about what those who do should/shouldn’t do. Stop acting like frightened little bunnies whenever someone says something negative about successful Democratic leaders. Stop automatically going into flight mode when something goes wrong or something negative is said. Fight.

If you aren’t willing to fight, and I’m not talking about inter-party fighting (that time came and went,) for women’s rights, minority rights, safe air/water/food, climate policies, democracy… then you really aren’t as progressive as you tell yourself and others. You are a big reason why we are even in this situation. Whether you like Pres. Biden or think he is too old really isn’t the pertinent issue if you really care about the things you say you do. As long as Pres. Biden is willing to fight like hell for progressive policies and prevent Republicans from turning the country into a white supremacist, misogynist, oligarchy, you should be doing the same.

I don’t know what is going to happen between now and election day. Neither does anyone else. The one thing I am 100% positive about is if Trump does win, the people on the left who have spent the majority of their time and energy railing against the Democratic Party and Pres. Biden will blame anyone and everyone other than themselves. If Pres. Biden wins reelection, these same people will claim their childish hissy fits are what led him to “change course,” enabling him to win. Their view of personal responsibility for election outcomes is some fucked up “No True Scotsman,” bullshit. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING ever counts against their political beliefs and views.

I know some people reading this will wonder why I spend so much time and energy railing against the left. The answer is really simple-I fully expect the people on the right to be bad-faith actors who are hell-bent on destroying any and all progressive policies and candidates. I don’t, and shouldn’t expect the same from people who claim to be political allies. You can't claim to be a member of Team Good™ if your behaviors and actions help Team Bad™.

[yourreddancer]

Trump Won. Now What?

The United States is about to become a different kind of country.By David Frum

Donald Trump has won, and will become president for the second time. Those who voted for him will now celebrate their victory. The rest of us need to prepare to live in a different America: a country where millions of our fellow citizens voted for a president who knowingly promotes hatred and division; who lies—blatantly, shamelessly—every time he appears in public; who plotted to overturn an election in 2020 and, had he not won, was planning to try again in 2024.

Above all, we must learn to live in an America where an overwhelming number of our fellow citizens have chosen a president who holds the most fundamental values and traditions of our democracy, our Constitution, even our military in contempt. Over the past decade, opinion polls have showed Americans’ faith in their institutions waning. But no opinion poll could make this shift in values any clearer than this vote. As a result of this election, the United States will become a different kind of country.

When he was last in the White House, the president-elect ignored ethics and security guidelines, fired inspectors general and other watchdogs, leaked classified information, and used the Department of Homeland Security in the summer of 2020 as if it were the interior ministry of an authoritarian state, deploying U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Coast Guard “troops” in American cities. Trump actively encouraged the January 6, 2021, insurrection at our Capitol. When he left the White House, he stole classified documents and hid them from the FBI.

Because a critical mass of Americans aren’t bothered by that list of transgressions, any one of which would have tanked the career of another politician, Trump and his vice president–elect, J. D. Vance, will now try to transform the federal government into a loyalty machine that serves the interests of himself and his cronies.

This was the essence of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, and its architects, all Trump fans, will now endeavor to make it become reality. Trump will surely try again to dismantle America’s civil service, replacing qualified scientists and regulators with partisan operatives. His allies will help him build a Department of Justice that does not serve the Constitution, but instead focuses on harassing and punishing Trump’s enemies. Trump has spoken, in the past, of using the Federal Communications Commission and the Internal Revenue Service to punish media organizations and anyone else who crosses him, and now he will have the chance to try again.

Perhaps the greater and more insidious danger is not political repression or harassment, but corruption. Autocratic populists around the world—in Hungary, Turkey, Venezuela—have assaulted institutions designed to provide accountability and transparency in order to shift money and influence to their friends and families, and this may happen in America too. This is not just a theoretical threat. As loyalists take over regulatory agencies, filling not only political but also former civil-service jobs, American skies will become more polluted, American food more dangerous. As a result of this massive shift in the country’s bureaucratic culture, Trump-connected companies will prosper, even as America becomes less safe for consumers, for workers, for children, for all of us.

American foreign policy will also reflect this shift toward kleptocracy. In his first term, Trump abused the powers of his office, corrupting American foreign policy for his personal gain. He pressured the Ukrainian president to launch a fake investigation of his political opponent; altered policy toward Turkey, Qatar, and other nations in ways that suited his business interests; even used the Secret Service to funnel government money to his private properties. In a second term, he and the people around him will have every incentive to go much further. Expect them to use American foreign policy and military power to advance their personal and political goals.

There are many things a reelected President Trump cannot do. But there are some things he can do. One is to cut off aid to Ukraine. The Biden administration has three months to drop all half measures and rush supplies to Ukraine before Trump forces a Ukrainian surrender to Russia. If there’s anything in the American arsenal that Ukraine might successfully use—other than nuclear weapons—send it now, before it’s too late.

Another thing Trump can do is to impose further tariffs—and intensify a global trade war not only against China but also against former friends, partners, and allies. America First will be America Alone, no longer Ronald Reagan’s “city on a hill,” but now just another great power animated by predatory nationalism.

Around the world, illiberal politicians who seek to subvert their own democracies will follow America’s lead. With no fear of American criticism or reaction, expect harassment of press and political opponents in countries such as Mexico and Turkey to grow. Expect the Russian-backed electoral cheating recently on display in Georgia and Moldova to spread. Expect violent rhetoric in every democracy: If the American president can get away with it, others will conclude that they can too. The autocratic world, meanwhile, will celebrate the victory of someone whose disdain for the rule of law echoes and matches their own. They can assume that Trump and Vance will not promote human rights, will not care about international law, and will not reinforce our democratic alliances in Europe and Asia.

But the most difficult, most agonizing changes are the ones that will now take place deep inside our society. Radicalization of a part of the anti-Trump camp is inevitable, as people begin to understand that existential issues, such as climate change and gun violence, will not be tackled.

A parallel process will take place on the other side of the political spectrum, as right-wing militias, white supremacists, and QAnon cultists are reenergized by the election of the man whose behavior they have, over eight years, learned to imitate. The deep gaps within America will grow deeper. Politics will become even angrier. Trump won by creating division and hatred, and he will continue to do so throughout what is sure to be a stormy second term.

My generation was raised on the belief that America could always be counted upon to do the right thing, even if belatedly: reject the isolationism of America First and join the fight against Nazism; fund the Marshall Plan to stop communism; extend the promise of democracy to all people, without regard to race or sex. But maybe that belief was true only for a specific period, a unique moment. There were many chapters of history in which America did the wrong thing for years or decades. Maybe we are living through such a period now.

Or maybe the truth is that democracy is always a close-run thing, always in contention. If so, then we too must—as people in other failing democracies have learned to do—find new ways to champion wobbling institutions and threatened ideas. For supporters of the American experiment in liberal democracy, our only hope is education, organization, and the creation of a coalition of people dedicated to defending the spirit of the Constitution, the ideals of the Founders, the dream of freedom. More concretely: public civic-education campaigns to replace the lessons no longer taught in schools; teams of lawyers who can fight for the rule of law in courts; grassroots organizing, especially in rural and small-town America; citizens and journalists working to expose and fight the enormous wave of kleptocracy and corruption that will now engulf our political system.

Many of those shattered by this result will be tempted to withdraw into passivity—or recoil into performative radicalism. Reject both. We should focus, instead, on how to win back to the cause of liberal democracy a sufficient number of those Americans who voted for a candidate who denigrated this nation’s institutions and ideals.

[sirenthatmakesyouwantcake]

to be clear for those who don't know, the US president can not make laws, all they can do is veto or sign them. They can also influence foreign policy which can be bad but trump is not the worst part of this election, it's the Senate and House (probably) being majority Republican, since they are the ones who vote and debate the laws, they have a lot more influence.

Fun fact, if something were to... happen to Trump and Vance, neither could become president and instead, the secretary of state would become president. Not that I think hurting people is usually a good thing or anything like that, but you know