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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.
So he’s just eroding the one norm that keeps the whole project of peaceful transition of power together through the way he talks as president but only for fun and for meme value, not doing it seriously.
Thats not really better.
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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.
Ok, right. That was the part that the Nybbler was asking about. If he wasn't joking about thr military, the deal not going through makes the lack of occupation more surprising, not less.
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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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