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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   34257 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 15, 2025

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What is it with Trumpists forgetting who was president from 2016-2020? Is Barr saying Trump got her fired?

  • -10

Probably because the first Trump administration was quite impotent. In 2016-2020 it never felt like Trump was holding the reigns.

Your mileage may definitely vary. Trump hadn't assume the absolute mastery over the American right he (or at least his coterie of handlers) has now, but he was very much in charge and his political adversaries felt it.

I further feel extremely confident saying that Barr getting canceled was not the product of pressure from the Trump administration, and hold up her statement quoted above as demonstration of a particular kind of delusion victim complex.

Yep. Trump appears to have largely tamed the Deep State in a manner he did not do in his first term.

Project 2025 seems to have worked.

Or Agenda 47

Trump was holding the steering wheel from 2016 to 2020 ... but the establishment had cut the cables connecting the wheel to the rudder and he hadn't figured out how to reconnect them. Trump 47 has leveled up their game.

This is just another way of saying the GOP hadn't yet coalesced around the "Donald Trump gets to do whatever he wants" platform. Trump very much wielded the power of the presidency during his first, but he had a less cooperative Congress and judiciary.

And way less cooperative PMC in the executive branch. Which was the main problem.

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