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> You have a President who is ordering the defunding of tons of groups (universities, media, aid, institutes) while not clearly having that authority and often
by mathgeek 1y ago
> You have a President who is ordering the defunding of tons of groups (universities, media, aid, institutes) while not clearly having that authority and often doing so for what he views as ideological crimes.
It’s important to remember that while the President issues the orders, there are other actors behind the scenes writing them for him. They have goals that go beyond a single man considering ideological crimes.
- bhouston 1y agoCan you explain and reference sources? Otherwise it is a pretty vague comment.
- afavour 1y agoI would imagine Project 2025 is a good source here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025 Every American owes it to themselves to familiarize themselves with the project and its aims, because a number of its authors are the ones wielding power right now.
- andrewblossom 1y agoAnd a good way to keep track of their "progress" here: https://www.project2025.observer/ https://www.project2025.observer/
- bhouston 1y agoThank you!
- rahimnathwani 1y agoThe chapter about education is a great read.
- vel0city 1y agoIt's insane to me how many people argued with me that Project 2025 was democrat propaganda to smear Trump. Both online here on Hacker News and in person.
- yks 1y agoDARVO in action
- mschuster91 1y agoThe thing is, people are expecting that campaign promises are pointless blathering. That's what led many people to believe it will be just the same this time.
- vel0city 1y agoNo, they were arguing these things are so obviously bad and wrong, Trump would never actually do these and these aren't his platform. They're just conspiracy theories by Democrats to slander Trump. So many people and news orgs kept repeating Trump's lies about how he doesn't know anything about Project 2025 and its totally unrelated to what he wants to do. Some examples on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41505433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41505433 > It’s “real” in the same way as Steele Dossier was real. > As far as I can tell it’s just a smear device along the lines of “when did you stop beating your wife”, or fake “dossier”, or “Russian collusion” And even if you were dumb enough to think "this is just puffery, he wouldn't do things this terrible", why are you voting for the guy arguing he's going to do terrible things?!
- watwut 1y agoNo, this happens all too often and was successful too many times to bee random. Moderate republicans used this as a tactic for decades. They always claim the thing that is happening is not happening, they always claim that opposition is paranoid. This is just people who want republicans to win and either support the project or who do not care about whatever one way or the other protecting the party.
- faster 1y agoHere's a dashboard. https://www.project2025.observer/ https://www.project2025.observer/ Not a substitute for reading the doc but good for a quick overview.
- rstuart4133 1y agoOnce I stated reading that dashboard (a couple of weeks ago) I could not stop. It's a real page turner. My favourite moment (spoiler): > Abolish the Federal Reserve and move to a "free banking" system. Don't let that reveal dint your interest. In the Handmaids Tale such a long list of horrors would have bored the reader, but in the Administrations blueprint for the USA that already has 41% of the items off in just 100 days it's riveting reading. I can resist pointing out another highlight for me: > Lessen child labor regulations to allow "teenage workers" to work "inherently dangerous jobs". In sure Project 2025 is sustained to become a true classic.
- beardedwizard 1y agoProject 2025 would be the most obvious answer
- justinrubek 1y agoHow do you suppose such evidence could be procured? I understand the burden of proof in terms of claims, but this is one that is, by design, difficult to gather substantial evidence for. Particularly without legal/criminal repercussions, and that's in good times when they are at least making an attempt to follow the law.
- ffsm8 1y agoIs it? I mean it wasn't a particularly spicy statement - did anyone actually think the president wrote any of the plans he's greenlighting / signing? If anything, I was kinda confused why he called that into question, the job of the president is to decide whose plan is getting executed at any given time, not actually do the planning himself
- mbfg 1y agoProject 2025 is the playbook, plenty of references on line.
- alabastervlog 1y agoAs with the Project for a New American Century douchebags, they just straight-up told us the bad things they were going to do to the country, and now they're doing them, and people still manage to be all, "hey, where'd all this stuff come from?!". Our news media are terrible.
- SpicyLemonZest 1y agoThis was all widely reported, I'm not sure why you're criticizing the news media.
- alabastervlog 1y agoThere is no reason at all it shouldn't have been the only thing they'd bring up when talking to or about Trump during the campaign. Instead, they let "oh, yeah, never heard of it" slide.
- SpicyLemonZest 1y agoI don’t agree with the premise. Should the news have refused to talk about his tariff plans or promises of personal retribution so they could reserve the space for Project 2025?
- Sindisil 1y agoWhat was widely reported was that he disavowed Project 2025. Those denials were seldom challenged, nor were the many Heritage Foundation related people that were also in Trump's inner circles reported upon in any critical way.
- mikepurvis 1y agoMass deportations was right there in Project 2025, the "plan" about which Trump claimed to have no knowledge during the campaign: https://www.aclu.org/project-2025-explained https://www.aclu.org/project-2025-explained Dude can barely string two sentences together— can't tell when a photo has been annotated and has no idea what Signal is. Thinks "groceries" is an old-fashioned word. It's pretty clear at this point that it's others behind the curtain running this show.
- Brohampton 1y agoBy that logic wouldn't any of the presidents since Regan be fulfilling project 2025s "Mass deportations". Trump admin is behind even the previous admins total deportations at this point in the term. And they're being extremely lenient to businesses who hire illegal immigrants (which breaks the law) and even encouraging it.
- wing-_-nuts 1y ago>It's pretty clear at this point that it's others behind the curtain running this show. Honestly, the fact that he's now surrounded on all sides by Curtis Yarvin acolytes should have us deeply concerned. I fear someone with that ideology who's maliciously competent coming to power.
- ecocentrik 1y ago> It's pretty clear at this point that it's others behind the curtain running this show. It doesn't matter who else is running the show in his name in the same way that it didn't matter who else was running the Biden administration. He's more than just culpable by association. Stop trying to infantilize the man. He's old but he's nowhere a stupid as everyone makes him out to be. He is callous and vindictive and expects loyalty in all things. He hates all forms of liberalism including the Republican ideals of liberal democracy and believes himself to be above the law. It's his administration, even if he doesn't seem to know about or even care about all the details.
- mikepurvis 1y agoOh for sure, I don't think any of this lets him off the hook; the concern is more that the movement is significantly greater than just him. When he's out of the picture there's a whole machine ready to slot in the next guy and keep on the agenda.
- SirFatty 1y agoIt's not at all vague, unless you haven't been paying attention. Project 2025, for example.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- DonHopkins 1y agoThey're fully aware of Project 2025 because they have been paying 100% full attention to people like Trump who have been claiming they never heard of it and that it was Democratic propaganda. So they know exactly what it is because we told them so, we told them so, we told them so, we told them so, and we told them so again and again, and every time they just denied it harder and harder. Now they're pretending they are surprised and never heard of it either.
- Workaccount2 1y agoI'm pretty sure with Trump this time around it is much less the case. In his first admin there are endless stories of the "Adults" in the room keeping him in check. This time around he was sure to only fill his cabinet with yes men, so no one could keep him reigned in.
- thesurlydev 1y agoMy thoughts exactly and it makes me truly terrified.
- agloe_dreams 1y agoHeh...it is so much worse than that. Trump has no idea what he is doing, it has been very clear in interviews. In the first admin, it was the adults in the room, the thing is, it's not yes men this time...it's the villians in the room. Trump is being handed EOs that he doesn't have a clue about. For all the talk about P2025 and denial of any relation to it, they have done roughly 50% of the actions in the project already with more on the way. ~2/3rds of all his EOs have been in the plan. Virtually everyone related to the project is now in the admin - the head of the FCC literally wrote the 'FCC' section and boy is it an attack on everything the EFF holds dear. I think what is notable is that it seems to have gotten more bold - the plan called for reducing USAID, not killing it for example. And Yes, page 246, killing funding for PBS.
- dgreensp 1y agoExactly. Trump is practically illiterate and is being handed things to sign. His original ideas that were pushed back on by his advisors in his first term were a different sort of idea, things like, "Why can't we just force that country to do what we want, we're the USA, we're the most powerful, we could just bomb them."
- ta1243 1y agoFor those downvoting you for saying Trump is practically illiterate Here he is asking the UK prime minister to read out a letter he'd been sent https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yxxpxe5qko https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yxxpxe5qko
- whoknew1122 1y agoI'm not sure how important that is to remember. The president is issuing the orders. The president is chief executive of the country. The president can't pawn off responsibility to some White House staffer or think tank. An executive order is the president's order. Is it useful to look at the people who wrote or lobbied for the order? Perhaps if you want to want to understand the context of an order. But none of that context mitigates the president's responsibility for any order. At the end of the day, it is a single person exercising their sole authority to issue executive orders.
- alickz 1y agoCutting one branch off the poisonous tree won't do much, even if it is the biggest, even if it's the trunk Needs to be taken up at the root
- great_wubwub 1y ago[flagged]
- scarby2 1y ago> the enablers and puppet masters are already planning and laying groundwork for when Cheeto Jesus drops dead. We've already lost the battle, let's not lose the war. Their success in some way is tied to trump right now. Nobody else seems to captivate his base in the same way, and they've made most of this about a man and less about a movement. So it's entirely possible this dies when he does.
- ta1243 1y agoDepends how the next generation of MAGAs works. The republican party is full of them who are backing Trump all the way. The only opposition seem to be bond traders. The great thing about wannabe dictators is they don't allow the new generation the space to grow and take over, so there's no clear line of succession (Vance doesn't have it yet) But the democrats seem completely at a loss, and the mid terms are only 18 months away.
- 1y ago
- vjvjvjvjghv 1y ago"It’s important to remember that while the President issues the orders, there are other actors behind the scenes writing them for him. They have goals that go beyond a single man considering ideological crimes." All dictators/authoritarians have a whole layer of very capable people under them that will implement orders from above without thinking about ethics or morality. But they will do a good job. Hitler had people like Himmler and Speer, Stalin had Beriya and many others (don't know names). The interesting thing is that these people will also do well in democracies. A lot of ex-nazis in Germany turned into good democratic people (example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Filbinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Filbinger). You also have these people in companies where for example layoffs are done in the most humiliating way.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- HistoryLogs 1y agoI've seen many people draw a comparison between Trump and Hitler (because of course - people compare everybody to Hitler). But what I don't think people remember is that a guy like Hitler didn't just show up and "make a dictatorship". He was an opportunistic guy who showed up when Germany's democratic, constitutional republic was weakened by a poorly-functioning congress, and most of the actual power was concentrated in the executive branch. When the time came, Hitler wasn't the one who passed the Reichstag Fire Decree allowing him to suspend the freedom of the press and jail his political opposition. That law was passed by president Hindenburg. Hitler didn't create a dictatorship. He was handed one on a silver platter - by an ailing 85 year old man with too much power.