volkris @volkris@qoto.org

#Republicans have been pushing this story that #Trump had his explosion with the #Ukraine president after the Ukrainian said the wrong thing, forcing Trump to cancel his big deal.

It's just another example of, if y'all listen to yourselves, are you saying your guy really is that weak that the foreign president is able to manipulate him that way? Doesn't sound like much of a president.

It's unfortunate that this administration is really being run by the stupidest, most oblivious people on the scene.

#USPolitics

The head of #DOGE has been revealed!

It really says something that it took this long for people to figure out who was actually in charge of this high-profile group.

#USPolitics

A while back I heard an interesting way of viewing positions in #USPolitics:

> The left tends to make an error of sign while the right makes an error of magnitude.

That is, #Democrats might get the effects of some proposal backwards while #Republicans might think it will have far more impact than it actually will.

I see this often now that I look for it, including here in this #DOGE era where conservatives are vastly overestimating the amount of savings that they can get from the effort.

It needs to be called out forcefully that #BBC in its news breaks, If not elsewhere tonight, is flat out lying about what #Trump is saying about #Ukraine.

Trump says plenty of idiotic stuff. BBC has plenty to work with to show him as an idiot. But putting out falsehoods about what he has actually said only undermines #journalism as a whole because everyone who heard the direct quotes will know that the press is lying.

This goes beyond US politics. This is a serious problem for the whole world, and it happens way too often.

In the US system of government separation of powers is a core feature to make sure nobody gets too much power and to promote cooperation and consensus. With power separated different groups with different incentives have to work together to make things happen.

That's why it's so disappointing to see people missing the separation of powers issue when it comes to #Congress and spending.

We all hear the phrase power of the purse, too many don't understand what it actually entails. Yes, Congress has the power to open the purse, but it absolutely does not have the power to spend. There are a lot of ways to prove that, but let me emphasize that this is a separation of powers issue.

The power to authorize spending is separated from the power to actually spend, which happens over in the executive branch.

In the US system the legislative branch does not spend, that happens from the executive branch. And a whole lot of congresspeople are insisting on a power grab to claim that power for themselves.

I wish the public knew better, to easily deflect that power grab.

#USPolitics

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