[kylehotchkiss]

shock-and-awe presidency. Create just enough chaos over meaningless things to help distract people from higher impact legislation (and to slow down court opposition to them, by keeping the courts busy dealing with other nonsense)

[throwaway5752]

And it has the benefit (depending on perspective) of further weakening the US by harming diplomatic relationships with the two nations with contiguous borders.

Canadian statehood and renaming the Gulf of Mexico were never brought up during the campaign. These actions serve no interest other than to antagonize American allies. They weaken the security posture of the United States, and that is ultimately the point, like soon to be DNI Gabbard.

[xp84]

I personally think ALL of his Canada BS is mental, so, no arguments there. But what right does Mexico have to object to what we call a body of water? He's not renaming what we'll call Mexico itself.

These things serve a real purpose which is to troll the easily offended. In that, it's a huge success, as every breath wasted whingeing about this harmless renaming is one that isn't used to ask good questions like "Why fight a trade war with Canada instead of asking why we even have free trade with a country (Mexico) whose wages are so low that it promotes the gutting of American industry." That would be a good question to ask Trump.

We should have a bilateral trade deal with Canada, which would strengthen both countries, and cut Mexico out of it. But all this has distracted from how poorly he's executing his tariff strategy.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

So, no, no national security benefits, no other benefits.

[JKCalhoun]

I'm just here hoping that the billionaires can get a little richer while no one's paying attention.

[kylehotchkiss]

If they were doing something cool with the money, great! But seems like it just gets funneled into yachts and converting perfectly good Hawaiian real estate to doomsday bunkers

[hypothesis]

At least one guy is/was trying to get to Mars or something, potentially spending us all in the process…