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He's selling Trump 2028 merchandise in the official White House gift shop. Administration staffers don't feel able to say "Of course Trump won't run in 2028 - the constitution limits presidents to two terms" on the record, because Trump wouldn't like it.
Trump is deliberately maintaining strategic ambiguity about whether he will run for a third term. (Even if he wants to, he won't, because age is catching up with him). That is a good reason for people who care about the survival of American democracy to be worried.
In addition, Vance running the show doesn't fix the problem if Vance is also committed to using false allegations of voter fraud to undermine American democracy. And Vance was chosen because he is, indeed, committed to using false allegations of voter fraud to undermine American democracy.
Dammit, stop making me like him! I don't want to like him! I disapprove of him! He's a vulgarian and worse!
But he has a sense of humour in contrast to the wokescolds (imagine President Kamala's merch - a fake plastic cocoanut tree?) and makes me laugh even when I don't want to.
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He's literally just trolling. One time he was meeting with Dem congressional leadership and offered them the hats.
If true it makes a difference but not that much of one. It's a divisive strategy that is contemptuous of democracy and makes him an enemy of democracy.
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Which is also what you would do if you really were planning to run for a third term and trying to normalise the idea.
If anyone who wasn't Trump was selling official merch with "Candidate Year" on it, you would say they were running.
Nothing about Trump running again is credible. He has none of the institutional support required to take such a big step, he's already old as hell and would be considerably older by the time it is relevant.
Such a sweeping thing for the most widely criticized president of all time would require things like the military being on board and they simply are not and there is no credible path for them to become so.
It makes no sense.
Thinking it is likely (regardless of his interest or lack) is a sign that he's broken your brain and you need to take a step back and think about actual motivations, priors, and so on.
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You are the kind of person Trump is trolling.
It isn't bad to be annoyed by stupid shit. If someone who is your ideological foe says stupid shit for malign reasons you probably get irritated too, whether they're trolling or not, especially if they are very powerful. Be honest with yourself.
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Greenland was joking until it wasn't. Gaza was joking (really funny joking, actually) until it wasn't. Since the patterns were the same, Canada and Panama were likely not joking either.
It's the same thing I've noticed /pol/ or even certain communists on Discord do. Make "jokes" targeted in a certain direction. If you press on it at all, it's announced that it's just a joke. It's really boundary pushing, and if circumstances ever became more favorable, you'd find that the sentiments were real.
After Greenland, I am pretty tired of the "just trolling" defense. If he is trolling, it's fundamentally indistinguishable from when he is not trolling. He's lost all right to be trusted about whether he's "trolling" or not. I'm not even entirely opposed to getting Greenland, or other expansions, but in hindsight, it obviously was not just jokes, and I hate the lies being peddled about that.
Greenland was never trolling.
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Not joking, trolling. And if it wasn't... why isn't Greenland under US occupation?
What joking?
It's indistinguishable to you because you were successfully trolled. Trump never had any intention of invading Canada or Greenland; he just made ambiguous remarks and let the media get hysterical when he refused to rule it out.
The deal didn't go through. Were you paying attention? Why has there been rather significant talking about it multiple times over the last year and bragging about the framework of a future deal if it's just trolling?
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/us-military-option-acquire-greenland-denmark-territory-nato-rcna252669
So is all of that trolling, or just the military part of it? This isn't the first time that Greenland has been talked about extensively. What about next time? How much will the military be suggested next time? Does trolling often take the form of multiple officials stressing "vital national security" multiple times over several months? Why troll harder on Greenland and stop trolling on Canada?
The Trump Gaza AI post was made in response to his earlier talks about acquiring it and making it awesome. Don't worry, though, there was nothing to it. That's why Jared Kushner totally didn't seriously suggest putting skyscrapers in it during the Board of Peace presentation. Well, at least they're not talking about making it a state.
Are you sure that it's not indistinguishable to you, too, and you just confidently make assumptions about what it is?
This is the right's version of "it's not happening but it's a good thing". Up until it actually happens, you'll claim "it's not happening". If it were to actually happen, you'd justify it. It's apparently an effective strategy.
Personally, though, I think he should just go for it. I hate Europe. Perhaps if he nuked NATO (figuratively!), then Europe would stop being such a good friend towards the American left.
Wait, so for you the outrageous thing about it was that he offered to buy it?
No. I actually don't think any of it was ultimately that outrageous, though I was briefly offended at the thought of using the military. What I hate, as I've said, is that people think the whole thing was just trolling and that Trump wasn't really serious about getting it. Pretty much all the evidence points towards him being serious about getting it, and if not, then you can't trust the words anyone in his administration is saying, which is even worse.
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@aldomilyar is the person who brought up the third term, not me. I explicitly said I think Trump is too old to run for a third term.
Since I'm not American, I had to look that up. It's only been the rule since 1947 as an amendment to the Constitution. And since it's an amendment, what was amended once can be amended twice, so if a future Congress decides to go back to pre-1947 standards (where the norm was two terms but there wasn't a formal rule about it), or that they alter it to "non-consecutive terms", then why not?
An Amendment to the Constitution would also require ratification by the states. Even if two-thirds of both houses were onboard, it would require three-fourths (38) of the states to ratify - or, to put it another way, 13 states to shoot the amendment down, which would be pretty trivial.
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Well I guess I mean that Trump is sort of ridiculous, which makes his enemies even more ridiculous when they take his jokes seriously.
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If you think there's the slightest chance he'll run, bet me about it.
I just said I think he won't, because he is too old.
But the thread isn't about betting odds - it is about why people who worry about MAGA authoritarianism are behaving rationally or not. A 10% chance that Trump is Hitler is a good reason for Americans who don't want to live under Nazi rule (or foreigners who might have to fight a future Nazi America - the main reason why Hitler is the worst is the aggressive war) to be worrying, but I still wouldn't want to bet on it.
"Trump probably won't do the bad things he says he is going to do" is not very reassuring to someone who saw Jan 6th, and is currently watching him do much more of the bad things he said he was going to do than he did in his first term. Even if true, "The President probably won't send troops to interfere with the certification process if his party loses the election" (which Trump has said he should have done in 2020) is a very, very low bar.
The OP claimed not to understand why people were worried. I think it is very obvious why people are worried, even if you disagree with their judgement about the odds. The idea that Trump is so clearly trolling that only a fool or a lunatic could take him seriously, even though his supporters say they take him seriously (but not literally), doesn't seem tenable to me after January 6th, and even less so after the Fulton County raid.
I maintain a fan theory that Vance will take the throne by assassination after the midterms, diadochos-style. Does that make you feel better?
Certainly he would wait until late January 2027.
Well yes, that's what I meant. 'After the new congress is seated'.
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I think it's pretty much always rational to worry about government authoritarianism, it's just a question of proportionality.
What I think codes as irrational is that the people who claim to be worried about Trump Hitler don't seem interested in stopping him through normal democratic means.
Let's take the recent ICE stuff discussed in another post in this week's roundup. Democrats could sweeten the deal for Republicans by saying something like "we want to pass a bill to pare down ICE's authority. In exchange, we will delete the National Firearms Act and defund the ATF."
This would be a HUGE win for (some) righties, and might be able to pull off enough Tea Party types to pass in Congress (I haven't done a headcount). Obviously the NFA might be a good piece of legislation (it isn't, but for the sake of argument) - but if you think Trump is Hitler, removing a bunch of sworn, armed federal agents from his control is...actually a good thing? So it would be two birds with one stone for the left and something that righties could spin as a win - in other words, a good political play that would go beyond mere grandstanding. Furthermore, it could actually split the GOP coalition since there's a chance Trump would come out swinging against it and that would sour all of the pro-gun right on him.
You can repeat the thought experiment with whatever else you like - abortion, perhaps, or economic regulations.
But that's actually not what you see (or at least not what I've seen). Instead lefties seem extremely concerned about the very specific things Trump is doing that impact them right at the moment and not at all concerned about his ability to exercise federal power in ways that tribally code "left" even when those things are tools that could be used against them. If you're on the right, the left is showing basically zero interest in compromise. The message righties get from the left is whining about how Trump is mean and then how righties should lose and get nothing. That's not a palatable message.
I'm sure due to my media bubble and such there's some stuff that I am missing. Probably I am not being entirely fair. But if Trump is actually dangerously authoritarian, for crying aloud, work with Republicans to disarm as many federal law enforcement agents as you can! Be concerned about how the FBI treated him - go further and suggest they be punished by slashing their funding! Demand more investigation into how Tulsi was treated by DHS and go after their funding too! Pivot towards the IRS next. Map comprehensively every single thing the federal government does that could be turned against lefties but has been used against righties and work with them to defang that power.
By and large, I don't think that is what is happening. The left seems quite content to leave the massive (and often armed) federal bureaucracy in place, even though it would be turned against them if a right-wing authoritarian seized power. Which is why righties think that leftists (at least in power) aren't sincere in their concerns, or (alternatively) are incompetent.
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As gattsuru pointed out, I'm happy to offer 10:1 odds. I just flat out don't believe that anyone actually thinks "Trump is Hitler" is even remotely likely, and I don't think they are actually worried about that.
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If you thought there was a 10% chance for anything, you should be willing to take a bet, just one at steep odds. (Modulo ethical objections to gambling in general, lump value risks, yada.) Even with counterparty risk, I'd take a 10% chance at 50x returns and smile all the way to the bank.
But no one actually believes that number. I'm not sure many people buy 1% as a number.
As a (former) poker player, I feel obliged to point out that these "If you really believed it, you'd bet money on it" gotchas miss the point of betting the odds.
A single bet at 10% odds with a 50x payoff is not a good bet, because there is a 90% chance you'll lose. Twenty bets at 10% odds with a 50x payoff is (probably) a winning strategy. A single bet is not. That's why professional poker players measure success over the long term, not whether a single bet paid off (and they also understand that variance is a bitch). If you're doing polymarkets or something, maybe it's rational to make a lot of bets like this. It's not a rational challenge to a single claim.
Of course there is also the fact that if someone wins betting on "Will the US become a fascist state?" then their payoff is going to be small comfort…
(And yes, while "literally Hitler" is absurd, I think 10% is a reasonable estimate of how likely we are to see something like a descent into fascism. But I'm not going to put money on it because I can't bet on 10 different alternate timelines.)
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