volkris @volkris@qoto.org

What people might want to take away from #Hannity interview of #Trump and #Musk is that, firstly, yes Trump is president and deserves all blame. Please stop saying he gave the presidency to someone else. That's not helpful for the sake of holding him accountable.

But more importantly, it's Hannity, not Musk, that represents the idiocy that Trump is Jacquelyn in his administration.

Musk is just messing around, you can see him stroking Trump's ego to keep playing in the sandbox, but it's Hannity that is promoting the utterly ignorant positions that Trump ends up listening to and acting on.

The buck stops with the president in the US system, but if you want to understand what Trump is doing in office, follow Hannity because he represents the mainstream conservative perspective that Trump is acting on.

And you really can't strategize against it if you misunderstand what's going on between those three people.

#USPolitics

No, #Trump isn't causing a constitutional crisis. The Constitution has mechanisms in place to address everything that's happening here. There's no crisis, there's just a need to apply the constitutional order.

But, I just keep thinking that #Democrats yelling constitutional crisis must be referring to their own crisis wherein the Constitution just doesn't provide them with the tools to impose their political preferences on the country after voters rejected them.

It's a crisis of party, not of Constitution.

They should put forward better candidates than this.

#USPolitics

Recently a friend said we're about to see the Red Lobstering of the #US, referring to the time the restaurant chain was bought out, had its supply chain directed vertically, and then sent into bankruptcy.

At first I thought he was just going on one of his normally nutty rants, but then I realized he had a point, just in the opposite way from what he meant.

We've been in the Red Lobstering process for a long time. Measures ranging from national debt through public dissatisfaction with how power has been used point to that.

So what we're seeing now is the end of the story, not the beginning: the bankruptcy.

I always point out that #Trump is the result, not the cause. In this case, he's tearing things up like the bankruptcy administrator when things can't keep going as they were.

Yes, it's painful. Bankruptcy always is. And it didn't have to be this way.

But here we are.

#USPolitics

No, #Trump didn't blame yesterday's crash on #DEI during his press conference today. What he did was much more obscene: since he didn't make the causal connection, that means he used the occasion to politicize a tragedy to go off on a different political tangent that rambled out into the utterly bizarre as he started reading off of his printed out papers.

When folks say things like Trump blamed DEI, that only increases his support among voters who are obsessed with taking down DEI. Don't give him that. Just be honest that he spewed a bunch of garbage and politicized a tragedy.

After all, misrepresenting Trump in ways favorable to his base is part of how we got him reelected in the first place. If we were honest about him, even his own supporters would reject him.

#USPolitics

The #SCOTUS ruling on #TikTok was really unfortunate because it was based on the justices not understanding the technology, the facts of the situation.

You could see in the oral arguments that they didn't understand how the platform was engineered, they got multiple things very wrong about it. And that's really a shame.

The role of the Supreme Court in the US is to interpret laws and review lower court rulings, but in this case the issue wasn't either of those, it was a matter of fact that they struggled with, not law.

This legal proceeding was rushed. The two sides did not have time to hammer out their factual disagreement through the normal course of the normal process. And so when it got to the Supreme Court, the Court was presented with a record with inconsistencies.

And this is why we should never try to rush these legal processes.

The justices seemed to think that a shutdown wasn't even on the table. Well, the platform shut down. The justices were proven wrong. Unfortunately, as far as I know there is no procedure for the Court to fix a factual error like this. We are stuck with this ruling until who knows when some future case might provide the opportunity to fix it.

It's legally tragic.

#USPolitics #law #technology

#Democrats overwhelmingly voted against keeping government open.

That really gets lost in all of the media discussion about this. But it really needs to be emphasized. Did your representative vote against keeping government open? You should know that, and hold them accountable for that vote.

#USPolitics

Remember, #Democrats in the #House have nearly a majority of votes in the chamber.

The math says that if they wanted to, they could partner with even a few moderate #Republicans to take control of the chamber outright or at least move their preferred legislation ahead.

The ONLY way a few #GOP hardliners get their way is if Democrats vote with those Republican extremists, supporting their cause.

We shouldn't let politicians point fingers at others, scoring points in this us-vs-them mentality, when they themselves have the tools to make things better.

If the #US government shuts down it will be because Democrats refused to break with Republican extremists and vote to pass funding.

Dems have the votes. Hold them accountable for using them.

#USPolitics