[fuzzygroup]

No. Large numbers of Americans aren't. Corruption and abuse of power is why we we have millions of people protesting. It may not be covered on the mainstream news but I was on the ground in Chicago where I easily saw a quarter of a million protestors. New York, Los Angeles and other big cities had similar numbers.

[jfengel]

Large numbers are not. But if you reran the 2024 election today you'd likely get the same result.

Nothing has happened to change anyone's mind. They were very clear about their priorities, and those who voted for it accepted that. And would again.

[reactordev]

I know a lot of people who would change their votes due to what has happened to their businesses and farms.

[metalman]

it's telling that travelling "first class" means more leg room , a wet towlett, and microwaved slop, but all in all is just bieng pushed through a big metal tube, like everybody else, and the important people are gone, as they travel private, bank private, go to private clubs, etc Hard working generational busineses and farm familys are now explisetly, second class, and even having millions will only get you an airplane with propellors and not the required jet, with the rapidly changing and irrational policys making those smaller, hard won fortunes, precarious. It's a situation where the "base" is waking up under threat from all sides and will start to make exceptionaly, pragmatic decsions.

[reactordev]

Exactly. An Etsy shop and a CNC will only get you so far. The tariffs are killing businesses bottom lines and either they raise prices or close up shop. If they raise prices, they anger their customers. If they close shop, they anger their customers. My friends are furious that they are in this position.

Then there’s a few local farmers who basically sold their land to housing and gone are 150 year old heritage sites. Replaced with a Ryan Homes banner for townhomes starting in the low $400k’s.

It’s back to the point where only generational wealth will survive and the American dream of working hard to achieve it is gone unless you scam people with AI slop or fake accounting. The back and forth over what’s “true”. As if truth itself has no solid underlying footing in reasoning and science.

No. It all doesn’t make sense because ReasonGPT is down…

[heresie-dabord]

> Nothing has happened to change anyone's mind.

If "We the People" means anything anymore, the blatant, pervasive criminality, incompetence, and corruption of this ghoulish administration will be judged harshly in the midterm elections.

But it would take significant change in the US to regain the international trust that the country formerly enjoyed among allies.

It is hard to see the latter happening.

[jaybrendansmith]

This too, shall pass, but we need to make it happen. I am looking forward to the day when we spit on their remains, destroy their ballroom, torch his painting and turn this administration into a footnote in history that future historians will hold up as an object lesson. Let's hope it happens without too much bloodshed, but we fought too hard and for too long to watch this happen to this once great republic.

[kccoder]

If you reran the 2024 election right now Trump and the republicans would lose in a landslide. Just look at recent polling and election results.

[lapcat]

> But if you reran the 2024 election today you'd likely get the same result. Nothing has happened to change anyone's mind.

I don't think this is true. Trump's approval rating among independents has dropped 20%+. There's a reason he lost the 2020 election, but voters had 4 years to forget those reasons and look back with rose-colored glasses. Now they remember.

> They were very clear about their priorities, and those who voted for it accepted that.

I don't think this is true either. (I did not vote for Trump, to be clear.) Project 2025 were very clear about their priorities, but before the election Trump tried to pretend that he had no knowledge of or involvement with Project 2025. After the election, he changed his tune.

[m-hodges]

> There's a reason he lost the 2020 election, but voters had 4 years to forget those reasons and look back with rose-colored glasses.

So many people forget that Joe Biden did, in fact, defeat Donald Trump.

[lupire]

And that covid happened and made everyone mad and kicked out the incumbents in every major election in the world.

[__s]

Trudeau got a lot of hate, but won next election. But your point stands, covid was turning point in Trudeau's popularity, Liberal's kept power between Trudeau stepping down more gracefully than Biden, Carney being a very centralist candidate (it's a compliment when your opposition is down to accusing you of stealing their policy ideas), & Trump's recent victory giving many the ick towards Poilievre

[RickJWagner]

I believe you are right.

There is a wall in place that causes people to believe things others don’t, and vice versa.

To those seeing awful corruption here, Hunter Bidens $500k Ukrainian gas job was legitimate. They were not outraged by the emails describing a 10% cut for ‘the big guy’. Joe Biden joining business conference calls was fine.

It seems like the end of the world, but it’s no worse than we’ve seen, historically. It’s always been there.

[felixgallo]

This is total 'both sides do it' nonsense.

Doubtless Hunter Biden's job was a naked nepo quasi-bribery thing, and he said and did all sorts of ridiculous things. Dude is indefensible.

But on one hand you have a president joining a conference call and not discussing business, and on the other hand you have a president literally demanding tribute, gold bars, a ballroom, firing all available oversight, blackmailing all of the universities to toe his ideological line, installing crypto and antivax scammers, and looting like it's going out of style, and meanwhile all of his kids are becoming millionaires trading openly off the name and the power.

"Barron’s first major business move came in 2024, when he co-founded World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency venture launched with his father and older brothers. He is even credited inside the family with explaining basic crypto concepts to his father. After Trump won the presidency, the company exploded in value. Forbes estimates it added more than $1.5 billion to Trump family wealth—about 10% of which belongs to Barron." (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/etimes/trending/net-wort...)

[RickJWagner]

Given your statements about Hunter, I believe you have decent visibility into both sides of the issue. Kudos to you.

I don’t disbelieve what you say about Trump and his family. I am certain they are cashing in on his time in office, at a tremendous pace. ( It has to be worth it, given the damage being done to the Trump corporate brand. )

[jazzypants]

You're absolutely right, and it's frankly disgusting to see feckless traitors on this website pretending like Trump is somehow excusable in any way.

[RickJWagner]

I’d like your opinion on something. What do you make of these allegations?

1) Romania: On September 28, 2015, Vice President Biden welcomed Romanian President Klaus Iohannis to the White House. Within five weeks of this meeting, a Romanian businessman involved with a high-profile corruption prosecution in Romania, Gabriel Popoviciu, began depositing a Biden associate’s bank account, which ultimately made their way into Biden family accounts. Popoviciu made sixteen of the seventeen payments, totaling over $3 million, to the Biden associate account while Joe Biden was Vice President. Biden family accounts ultimately received approximately $1.038 million. The total amount from Romania to the Biden family and their associates is over $3 million.

2) China- CEFC: On March 1, 2017—less than two months after Vice President Joe Biden left public office—State Energy HK Limited, a Chinese company, wired $3 million to a Biden associate’s account. This is the same bank account used in the above “Romania” section. After the Chinese company wired the Biden associate account the $3 million, the Biden family received approximately $1,065,692 over a three-month period in different bank accounts. Additionally, the CEFC Chairman gives Hunter Biden a diamond worth $80,000. Lastly, CEFC creates a joint venture with the Bidens in the summer of 2017. The timeline lays out the “WhatsApp” messages and subsequent wires from the Chinese to the Bidens of $100,000 and $5 million. The total amount from China, specifically with CEFC and their related entities, to the Biden family and their associates is over $8 million.

3) Kazakhstan: On April 22, 2014, Kenes Rakishev, a Kazakhstani oligarch used his Singaporean entity, Novatus Holdings, to wire one of Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca entities $142,300. The very next day—April 23, 2014—the Rosemont Seneca entity transferred the exact same amount of money to a car dealership for a car for Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden and Devon Archer would represent Burisma in Kazakhstan in May/June of 2014 as the company attempted to broker a three-way deal among Burisma, the Kazakhstan government, and a Chinese state-owned energy company.

4) Ukraine: Devon Archer joined the Burisma board of directors in spring of 2014 and was joined by Hunter Biden shortly thereafter. Hunter Biden joined the company as counsel, but after a meeting with Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky in Lake Como, Italy, was elevated to the board of directors in the spring of 2014. Both Biden and Archer were each paid $1 million per year ( note: I am quoting a source here. I’ve always seen this number at 500k, not 1M ) for their positions on the board of directors. In December 2015, after a Burisma board of directors meeting, Zlochevsky and Hunter Biden “called D.C.” in the wake of mounting pressures the company was facing. Zlochevsky was later charged with bribing Ukrainian officials with $6 million in an attempt to delay or drop the investigation into his company. The total amount from Ukraine to the Biden family and their associates is $6.5 million.

Are people that ignore these ‘feckless traitors’? Why or why not?

[jazzypants]

Why do you think that I'm going to defend Biden? Politics are not sports, and I don't have a "favorite team". Your silly gotcha questions won't work on me because I don't reflexively defend people just because they are supported by corrupt political organizations.

Two wrongs don't make a right, and one person's crimes do not excuse another's. Arrest them all.

We need fundamental changes in our political system, and we're not going to be able to achieve anything if you keep pretending like these whataboutisms are worth anyone's time. Wake up.

[hypeatei]

How is Hunter Biden writing a letter to an embassy the same as untraceable investments into Trump's meme coin? No deals or payments ever materialized from the Burisma letter or "the big guy" email... while Trump and his family have literally amassed billions (with a B) in profits and net worth from crypto grifting.

To compare these things to what is happening now is disingenuous. I believe you know that, but you choose loyalty to MAGA over any principles or ethics.

[RickJWagner]

I’m afraid you are hopelessly across the wall.

Hunter was paid $500k per year by a gas company. He has no expertise in the domain, and does not even speak the language. To pretend this is not corruption is amazing.

I believe you know this, but are not mentally acknowledging it because that would lead to uncomfortable internal reckonings.

[hypeatei]

What special deals did Burisma get for having Hunter Biden on their board?

Nothing about the right wing obsession with Hunter makes me uncomfortable. He has never held public office and was investigated for multiple years (along with his family) by Congress.

[RickJWagner]

It’s odd that you complain about untraceable transactions in Trumps favor, but hold Biden blameless in spite of amazingly obvious corruption.

The icing on the cake is Bidens conviction on tax evasion and gun charges ( against a Democrat! The irony is too rich ). Of course Joe Biden issued a pardon, so Hunter did not go to prison.

(1) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hunter-biden-guilty-verdict-tax...

Yet you see crimes only on one side. The crimes of the Biden family are invisible to you. How does your brain do it?

[LightBug1]

I sympathise. I genuinely do.

But, I always say, once is a aberration. Twice is democracy speaking.

Of course, many many people are opposed but, in the end, you have to own it. And by that I mean, not complaining that it's not your fault, but by doing anything you can to oppose it.

Good luck.

[rstuart4133]

> Twice is democracy speaking.

Those of us who live in countries that banned gerrymander decades ago, made discriminating against voters a crime, and use something other that first past the post have a quibble about you calling the USA a beacon of democracy. One citizen, one vote, one value has never been a priority there.

Having a high percentage of participating voters invariably drags the outcome towards the centre. It's almost certain if the USA had of bothered to get their democratic institutions in order sometime in the past 2.5 centuries Trump would not have won. But as the citizens of the USA demand they have the freedom to not participate in their democracy, it's unlikely it will be fixed any time soon.