1y ago

Donald Trump's Nato comments labelled ‘appalling and unhinged’

www.bbc.com /news/world-us-canada-68268817

And so it begins. Nine months still to go before the next US presidential election and already the Republican party favourite and former President Donald Trump is sending eyes rolling skywards with his seemingly outlandish statements.

And yet they will delight many of his supporters.

Suggesting at a rally in South Carolina that he would "encourage" aggressors (for example Russia) "to do whatever the hell they want" with Nato countries that fail to pay their dues has prompted an immediate slap down from the White House. A spokesman called the comment "appalling and unhinged", saying it was "encouraging invasions of our closest allies by murderous regimes".

Nato Secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg has also responded forcefully, saying: "Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the US, and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk."

134 comments

But we are going to elect him anyway, because the other guy forgot a thing once. Just like we elected him 8 years ago, because the other one ran her own email server.
- She ran a shit campaign. Everyone likes to forget that part
- We’re going to get Trump again (barf) because the DNC insists on running shit candidates and refuses to acknowledge that they are bad, instead insisting that the voters are just too ignorant to understand how good their candidates really are.
  Hillary Clinton was a horrible candidate: immensely unpopular even with the Democrat base, running on a status quo platform right in the wake of disappointment with Obama’s failure to deliver on “hope and change”, and acting as if she was somehow entitled to the position.
  Biden is not as bad as Clinton in most ways, but is utterly lackluster and feels more like a moderate Republican. His unwavering support for Israel during their campaign of atrocities is despicable and shameful. The fact that he’s totally ancient and losing his mind isn’t helpful in the least. Why can’t we have a more compelling candidate from the DNC?!
  This post will get modded down and ignored, as will the incredibly common and widespread sentiment that it expresses, and we will get Trump again as the nation and the DNC acts shocked yet again. It’s so predictable and infuriating.
  
  His unwavering support for Israel during their campaign of atrocities is despicable and shameful.
  If we're going to get Trump again it's in part because of the absolutely all-or-nothing brook-no-compromise attitude of voters. Like this, for example. Biden's support has not been unwavering, he's criticized Israel's actions. But not enough for you, and so he gets no credit whatsoever for any moderation he might have. And that's why you say he "feels like a Republican" to you, because someone can only be 100% totally on your side or they must be on the other side.
  I'd love for there to be a viable fully-progressive candidate who happened to agree with everything I believe in. I'd also love to have a pet unicorn. When elections actually roll around in reality, though, none of the candidates are going to be perfect. And unfortunately in many first-past-the-post electorates the system is set up in such a way that there are only two viable candidates. So pick the one that's closest to your views. Push for better candidates in the primary, of course, but accept that you won't always get everything you want.
  
  Fuck Putin.
  
  Before New Hampshire's primary I thought Biden was fucked.
  I'm still worried now, but I'm no longer sure we're doomed.
  
  Shit country continues to be shit, doesn't seem like news anymore.
  
  Yeah, who is the candidate that has beaten Trunp before anyway?
- Not if we beat the drum about him being insane, instead of letting him get away with it as just another wacky thing
- I mean, the people did elect her. She won the popular vote, but as I understand it, the electoral college had different plans.
- Sorry, but no. You elected him. You don't get to no-true-Scotsman the responsibility of the American voters for this, enough Americans support this loon that he can indeed win elections.
- Despite how abhorrent Trump is, what if he actually got elected again simply because Americans are that fed up with establishment politics status quo? Maybe Americans are desperate for change, anything but the same abuse by corporate overlords we’ve suffered since the 1970s, even if we know it’s going to do more harm than good?
  Also, if you think the main reason Hillary lost is because of email-gate, consider that your own point of view may be compromised by Republican framing.
- But we are going to elect him anyway, because the other guy forgot a thing once
  Are you going to pretend the genocide being carried out in Gaza is a non-factor?
  
  the genocide being carried out in Gaza
  Biden is not complicit in Israel's attack on Gaza.
  
  If Trump wins and dissolves NATO, and Russia, China, North Korea and Iran start a massive conflict as an axis of evil, tens of millions, if not a hundred million or more could die. More, if nuclear weapons are used.
  Russia alone lost 24,000,000 people in the last war alone.
  40-50,000,000 were killed in WW2. And that was with ancient technology, by comparison. Going to Normandy and seeing the endless rows of graves stretching as far as the eye can see shows the incalculable loss of global war, something that must not ever be repeated. Far too many paid the ultimate price to keep evil at bay.
Did Trump mean what he said? Probably not. This is typical Trump fare. Say something provocative, grab some headlines, outrage your critics and thrill your fans.
Oh bull fucking shit, don't downplay his idiocy and danger
- Yeah... his understanding of his own lunatic words and actions is of very little consequence when compared their real world impact.
"Appalling and unhinged" describes the vast majority of things Trump has said in the last decade or 2.
- But here's the cool thing: it's somehow going to get worse!
Can we all agree to say Trump has dementia, and constantly hound him, his supporters and gop about this, beating the drum non stop, instead of just pointing out his wild statements when they come up, we need to question his sanity constantly like they do about Biden senility. If rather have a forgetful old man, than a bonafide lunatic
- The good news is that Biden isn't even a forgetful old man. The media just takes every normal slip up he makes and runs it non-stop.
  
  He's in pretty good shape for his age, both mentally and physically. I'd still rather have somebody younger. On the other hand, I genuinely cannot think of anyone less qualified than the Orange Baboon.
- Dementia Donnie
  
  It's like Donnie Darko's creepy uncle.
- Well said!
Donald Trump, traitor.
- We can only hope he has a stroke before the election. A massive one.
  
  Could it maybe be with a razor sharp edge, too? And then an encore would be nice. Front row tickets'd sell out in seconds, no contest. Far better men than him have attempted it, but none have deserved to be a spectacle more than that pile of fetid shit.
That tracks, because Trump is appalling and unhinged.
- Where is the shocked fry meme when you need it.
Suggesting at a rally in South Carolina that he would "encourage" aggressors (for example Russia) "to do whatever the hell they want" with Nato countries that fail to pay their dues
I would "encourage" people to piss on Trump's grave when he's dead.
- I would encourage America to piss on his grave while he's still alive.
  
  According to the dossier, he might like that.
- I fucking hate golf courses, they're a waste of land, so I'm not going to make it. Pee off for me.
I am honestly scared and I don't think society (not just the US) would really survive if this turd becomes reelected a second time.
- Vote. Get all your friends and family to vote. Four more years should buy us enough time while his power is waning.
  If there was ever an election that was important to vote and be clear-eyed in, it's this one.
- American exceptionalism is disgusting lol.
- Very few people care who your little country chooses to lead it.
- The US doesn't run the world, and is having less influence every year at this point. Society will pull through.
  
  The US military's influence throughout the world is as strong as ever, and Trump is 100% on board with reducing its presence worldwide. I don't necessarily disagree with it, but global trade will take a massive hit out of the gate, not to mention the more obvious issues with Russia, Israel, etc. But hey, Trump has been critical of Israel lately.
Vote. Get all your friends and family to vote. Four more years should buy us enough time while his power is waning.
If there was ever an election that was important to vote and be clear-eyed in, it's this one.
Donald Trump = traitor
- Everyone knows that. Even his voters.
  They just don't care if they can diss the libs.
  Which is why each and every drumph voter should be stripped of their nationality for treason and expedited to Alaska or whatever country will have them.
  
  Drumpf was in fact his original family surname.
  
  They like he's a traitor because destroying the government was always their goal.
- Since when has calling someone a traitor ever convinced anyone? It's the political equivalent of calling your opponent bad.
  
  There are no words that can penetrate the ooze of lies, hypocrisy, and bad faith arguments the GOP has shielded themselves in. Just as I can walk into any church and say, "your religion can't be the only correct religion, it's a statistical quagmire" and no one will back down. They are fully assured in their flawed decision making.
Why should we, America, carry the burden of defending Europe when it won't pay for its own defence?
I love this sentiment simply because the idea that the US would be spending less on the military if they weren't in NATO is ridiculous. There's no stopping US military spending without absolutely crippling the US economy. Other NATO members spending more on their militaries will not save the US taxpayer a dime.
- I's about selling more weapons made by the US military industrial complex to NATO countries. Which does bring more money into the US economy, but only by growing the military industrial complex larger.
  Kinda like franchising out McDonald's but with more death machines involved.
  But personally, I like Ike, "Beware the military industrial complex."
- I'm actually okay with the idea that perhaps Europe ought to be more interested in bolstering their own defenses. The part about urging Russia toward aggression I think any reasonable person can see what's wrong with that.
  But the military presence worldwide, in more instances than not, exists to protect corporate interests. I'm almost okay with the idea of scaling it all back. Tax money shouldn't go to line pockets of the wealthy. The obvious issue is the immediate effect on the economy, but where do we draw the line? I know this site leans towards stopping the global corporatocracy, but I don't know that anyone's ready for things to really grind to a halt.
  So I guess we will just have to wait til next January and then we will see what happens!
  
  Trump wants to sell weapons to Russia so they can take over Europe. I honestly think Trump just doesn't like that there's no many countries and leaders in Europe to keep track of and wishes it was all just run by one guy he can try him art of the deal bullshit on.
I hope this time around he won't be able to hide behind "he doesn't mean it, he'd never actually do that"
- I don't think anything Donnie says correlates with reality. Does that mean we shouldn't worry? Fuck no! He's a disaster.
If the US is stupid enough to elect this idiot a second time, then we deserve to become the banana republic we've instituted in countless other countries. I'm not too worried about it. He lost by 7 million votes in 2020 and about 1 million of his voters died with COVID. Plus I know at least a few percentage points of his voters that will not vote for him again. And I don't know ANYONE that hasn't voted for him before that are now interested in giving him their vote. It will take unprecedented election interference for Trump to win the electoral vote (there's not a chance he wins the popular).
- If the US is stupid enough to elect this idiot a second time, then we deserve to become the banana republic ...
  "A banana republic, if you can keep it"
  
  United Fruit Company bitches!
  Embrace Idiocracy
  
  There’s always money in the banana republic.
- I did the math a few years ago because I couldn't find anyone else who had published it. This is rough and IANAM (mathmagicman).
  Every single day 8,000 boomers and above die, and 12,000 people turn 18 and those numbers are actually accelerating. If you use existing data to estimate conservative/liberal and likely voters within those groups it works out to a delta of 10,000 per day on a national scale. That's 5,000 votes switching every single day. That might not seem like alot. Because it really isn't. Out of 155 million votes cast, 10,000 is .006 percent. But here's the thing. It's cumulative. And it just doesn't stop. It is relentless. it's 300k a month, 3.6 million per year. And that pace is accelerating. Between 2020 and 2024 it's a 15 million vote difference. By 2028 it's 30 million.
  It used to be that people age into conservatism. But that is not happening with millennials. The demographics are changing, and changing quickly. The most conservative group in the country is dying. While the most liberal group is rising.
  We just have to hold on to democracy for a few more years. This will all be behind us. Another 10k today.
  
  And that explains why Republicans have given up on democracy. Thanks for doing the math.
  
  Interesting. But I think there is also a conversion from left to right with age. We are making conservatives as fast as we are losing them. They are converted because we all become fearful with age and Republican mass media preys on that with FUD.
The fuck else is new
It's not Nato, it's NATO isn't it?
- It's Nato according to the BBC:
  https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsstyleguide/grammar-spelling-punctuation
  our style is to use lower case with an initial cap for acronyms, where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word (eg Aids, Farc, Eta, Nafta, Nasa, Opec, Apec)
  If you don't like this, then start referring to the BBC as bubbakuh, so they'll have to change the spelling to Bbc.
  
  Well, the Bbc is on their own on that, because I've never seen it done that way elsewhere, including the NATO website. They're unhinged.
  
  Which Etonian fuckwit came up with this?
But fuck if the electorate doesn't give a shit
I know this isn't the place, but what's that helmet strap thing they're sporting?
- Laser training?
  https://www.edrmagazine.eu/saab-receives-order-to-expand-czech-republic-tactical-training-system
  https://www.saab.com/products/live-training
  
  That looks pretty right to me.
- Could be IR strobes/beacons
  
  I was thinking this, but I'm not sure what would be on the front and I don't see a mount for the goggles.
It's the movie Idiocracy. He's fixin to do somethin prezidential up in here. /S
I'd so much rather vote for president Camacho.
- At least President Camacho recognized when someone had good ideas and supported them.
  I would vote for a 3 year crusted ancient skeet rag before ex-president cheetolini, it would do less damage to world peace.
  
  This is going to draw agro, but I feel like you're describing all my voting choices lately.
labeled?

134 comments