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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025

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So, for the American commentators - should I be concerned about this? Is this just Trump saying shit, is there a left wing equivalent I missed, is there some form of precedent that excuses it? Did I miss something major in my interpretation of it? Is this just not a big deal at all.

Consider all the things that Trump says he will do that never come to fruition and some have literally no chance of ever happening. From literal promises like lower prices, end to Israel/Ukraine conflicts both on day one (which we're way beyond) to the impossible like lowering medicine prices by 1500% or the trillions of tariff revenue. His admin boldly claims to have saved millions of lives from fentanyl. He's a natural liar and anything he says needs to be interpreted under this lens. Just go back a few months and you see this exact same sort of nonsense like threatening to take Greenland, make Canada into a state or whatever.

And it's not just him, it's the whole structure around him. Musk went on Fox News during the doge period literally promising increased social security payments, it was Pam Bondi who said they saved 258 million lives, and multiple parts of the admin during and before the campaign (and even earlier this year!) were all claiming to be fine with releasing the Epstein files

Sept. 3, 2024 — Lex Fridman’s podcast

Trump was more assertive when asked by Friedman about releasing Epstein’s client list.

Trump: “Yeah, I’d certainly take a look at it. … Yeah, I’d be inclined to do the Epstein, I’d have no problem with it.”

Only to go on and threaten MTG/Massie/etc for trying to get the files he had no problem with it and was "inclined" to do, then when the votes were clearly against him suddenly be ok with doing it again at the same time he orders an investigation to be started for the purpose of delaying things more.

So the first question is why take anything he says seriously? He lies as naturally as he breaths and he makes ridiculous bold claims that will never happen. His admin tries to follow up with some "well I guess we kinda technically did it if you're half blind and squint" way like with the flag burning EO where Trump boldly claims to make flag burning illegal whereas the EO doesn't do that whatsoever (and has no ability to) so maybe we'll see some noise of them larping about it but until they actually take a meaningful step forward, why is it any different than the rest of his larps?

Here is my heuristic: if Trump is promising the American people the Moon, he can safely be ignored. (Excepting Ghislaine Maxwell, whose quality of life he really did improve substantially.) If he promises to attack his enemies, then he can be expected to at least make a good faith effort to do so, consequences be damned.

How well the latter will work depends a lot on the specifics. His progress on defeating free trade is rather impressive (though I think there is still a court decision pending if he had the authority to enact tariffs on that scale). Directing his AG to attack his enemies has mostly been meh, because he does not do a good job of convincing the courts. Getting rid of illegals and/or Hispanics is something where he is actually making progress due to his willingness to spend a ton of taxpayer money to have his goons deport school girls. Sending the national guard to cities to punish them for voting against him is more meh, for the most part he is making the liberals mildly uncomfortable.