I don't think we're lucky enough for him to bite it during this term, because fuck us, but if he did I really wonder if the media would be willing to run the same cover for JD Vance as it is for him as fucked as it is I don't think they see Vance as the embodiment of the Volk the same way
His circle is a bunch of narcissistic sociopaths who all need to be the center of attention. They defer to him bc he’s King Shit of Turd Mountain, but once he’s gone, they’re all going to try to climb to the top and the shit-slinging will begin in a heartbeat. It’ll be a free for all, JD included
Does it even matter? Another years of purging the govt/military and installing toadies, who's going to stop him? He's there to work for the oligarchs, they'll pull out all the stops. Since they own basically all the media (MSM and other), that includes basically all the media.
I hope he wakes up in pain everyday. Covered in his own piss & s**t because he is incontinent. And I hope his massive ego is wounded by this reality.
Pretty sure if he did die they would weekend at Bernie’s. He cannot look worse decayed and some animatronics with JD spouting all the awful and animatronic Trump nodding with gold sunglasses on
the faceless Nazi apparatus that's puppeting Trump would still probably continue to drag our country into hell but by God can you imagine the shenanigans our buddy JD would get up to before the whole thing explodes our first and last boy president
By then, they'll settle for "no dementia."
In D&D terms, Vance has a -4 modifier to Charisma-based skill rolls. I think he's toast without Trump.
Why would anyone elect a couch-fucker? Well at least we don’t yet have testimony that Vance raped children.
Would any republican politician be afraid they would get primaried if Vance said so? Would anyone be afraid of Vance creating a mob based on nothing but some bullshit he said? Nah.
vance wouldn't get re-elected, but i think he knows it, so it gives him scope to go for it
They absolutely wouldn't. To put it in Discworld terms, Trump has charisn'tma. Vance doesn't even have that.
I followed you just because this is a brilliant insight that I wish I had had.
I’m willing to see the media try
The upside to him being a camera whore is that they will have a hard time making (legit) excuses for him if/when he’s literally drooling on himself.
I remember people making excuses as to why they wouldn't vote for Harris, saying he'd be dead soon anyway. But his mom lived to 88 and his dad to 93! Unless his general hedonism gets him first our odds aren't great.
Vance is a charmless fool who will be bullied relentlessly by nearly everyone. I think he'll be DOA.
JD doesn’t have the star power, he’s not a draw. I don’t think he’ll get the same “oh, you” treatment
No, Vance will always be awkward, like DeSantis is also smart but awkward. It really doesn’t sell to the masses. Vance’s perpetual vacations, however, may be intended to insulate him from repercussions when the details of this (mal)Admin finally come out — i.e., “I wasn’t there, I didn’t know.”
bsky.app/profile/emig...
zero percent less than zero, maybe, somehow
Trump has some pseudo-religious dark charisma weirdo shit going on that's a once in a lifetime thing. I don't think Vance has what it takes to replicate it.
Yeah. The only person on earth with less juice than Don Jr is Vance
Nobody on the right does. When he is gone, those working class voters are going to be frustrated. We need to channel their frustration toward good government.
If he did, I would expect the GOP to frame everything in their agenda as "It's what he would've wanted..." I don't know how successful that'd be though.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, is scared of JD Vance. Not in Congress, not in the media.
The media would 100% treat Vance diffe(R)ently and more favorably than they would a Democratic politician and give him more charitable coverage than he deserves the way they always do for Republicans. I doubt it would be to the same extent as what they do for Trump though.
Yeah I think it's personal to him
I would bet real money both that a) the Trump presidency is still going in 2029, and b) the presidency that immediately follows the Trump presidency is substantially shorter than 4 years
Dude has late stage dementia, and is one bad fall away from never again being a problem for anybody. May gravity do the great work that the rest of us refuse to.
Call me a cynic but yes the whole media machine and political system has a contingency for President Vance. They did the SCOTUS gambit for fifty years without a hitch. They know EXACTLY what they are doing and will get away with it. If Trump makes it to 28, Vance is toast. We get Rubio/Noem.
Vice President Vance is the GOP and their friends saying with zero subtlety "you better hope Trump lives"
I do. I think he has six months to a year and he’ll be dead.
I honestly think if he dies this term they'll cover it up for as long as possible and even pose his corpse for photos as "proof" that dear leader is just fine don't you dare ask why he hasn't been live on camera or on stage for a while.
They’d have to hide it from JD, too, because there is no way he’d cover up Trump’s death and pass up becoming president himself.
I'm old enough to remember when the NYT ran cover for W. For the rank and file, it's the cult of personality. For corporate America, it's the ideology.
Did you see the reviews for Hillbilly Elegy
I think Vance would do some stupid thing to try to appeal to the rest of the country, and get oustered by the right because of it. He's just smart enough to be hated by everybody.
Vance will style himself as Trump's successor and try to seize the reins of MAGA, but I have little doubt that when that happens he'll be knifed by every motherfucker in Trump's cabinet while they all scramble for the crown.
As my granny would say, I’m gonna pray about it
I have a hard time seeing the same level of fervor invested in a guy who had his post in the succession briefly usurped by a ketamine addled Boer who brought one of his Future Brain Transplant Shell babies into the Oval Office.
Vance hasn’t been a celebrity for 40+ years. He’s incredibly awkward on camera and in social interactions. He works for a billionaire, not the other way around. As Tim Walz would say - he’s just weird and the people in charge of the media know this.
It’s still interesting to see every president age 16 years in 4 years
I'll be fucking stunned if he makes it another three years, but I was stunned he made it to 2024 in the first place and before that I was absolutely flabbergasted than covid didn't get him, so.
COVID had him and our doctors were too fucking good.
They've been softballing the fuck out of Couchfucker, so they'll give it a try.
Plus you KNOW they would play up the "tragedy" of an untimely passing
Which is sort of ironic because Vance actually is from rural Ohio. The Media loves trump because he's a rich new Yorker like them, and the media sees Vance as uppity
I mean the thing is the knives would come out for him. No one wants to be Vance's toadie, they would want him to fail so they can replace him on the ticket in 28.
And there are a dozen other Republicans who think they should be the heir apparent including Don Jr. Vance will be torn to shreds. I mean, Reagan primaried Ford.
Vance can’t keep the MAGA coalition together. I refuse to believe this. You can take a look at what the Stephen Miller wing of the movement thinks about his wife and kids on Twitter. Those people are feral and they will never accept him as a true believer in the cause
Counterpoint: how much did the media try to normalize Bush? I don't think the media would do a great job of normalizing Vance, but they're definitely gonna try.
He always looks worse than in my head. I do hope yur wrong tho. This term getting cut short would be great for my mental health.
JD Vance is smarter, but doesn't have the instincts or the chops to head a demagogic movement and command unwavering loyalty the way his boss does. While batshit right wing ideology will persevere, MAGA itself will die when asshole does.
Interesting how he gave his neck vulva a little breather. I wonder if he had some kind of a medical episode that made it difficult to breathe
Only Trump could pull all of this off. Even Elon got chased out of town, and Vance is really unlikable. Like, all of the elitist tags the right tried on Obama, Hillary, Warren actually land on Vance and from every direction.
They will if Peter Thiel pays them enough to. Always Remember that Vance is a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of the worst Silly Valley has to offer.
Vance has the oligarchs who are all in the group chat. But everyone else recoils in disgust from him so I don't think media will be as willing.
He's got another ten years easy. He has good genetics, doesn't drink and the best medicine
yeah he grew up a trash person, he's not in their clique
Trump is a showman. I will give him that. Vance, on the other hand, struggles to order a donut like a normal person.
I think there’s a real chance Vance can’t hold the coalition together.
Vance is universally disliked with zero charisma. He is the Tech oligarchs guy, but they are universally disliked as well. Vance is not the successor for the MAGA base. Trump has sucked all the oxygen out of the MAGA room and has too big an ego to consider a successor.
Stephen Miller hides Vance in a backroom and secretly runs everything like an even more racist Edith Wilson.
Miller really needs to be first against the wall come the Revolution.
After Roberts
i don't think he'll croak during this term but i also don't think he'll even have *this* level of energy by this point a year from now, he's draining, fast
Former rn Im calling it. 12-18 months Possible renal failure/dialysis Usually goes along with heart failure, which is what is happening caused by (CVI). Tick tock mthr fkr😂 If he doesn't suffer sudden cardiac death I'd be surprised.
I am not an expert. I have seen some people grow old, and some people die. He doesn't look well, but he doesn't look terminal.
Jimmy Carter managed to look like he was on death's door for years. But we can still hope that won't be true for Trump.
maybe but the prospect of accountability if he loses midterms is going to be like lightning straight into his neckbolts as november approaches
Even if he declines into a clearly incapacitated condition he will pull a Woodrow Wilson and refuse to hand governing power to JDV. And his handlers sure as he'll won't make that call to Vance.
Heart failures a bitch
My husband passed from heart failure->renal failure. It was horrid.
From what?
The magic burger could be any of them, & strike at any time!
Yeah he’ll be like, Baron Harkonen-ing from a bathtub but still president
oh to see the moment when Trump yanks out Marco Rubio's heart plug
I'm hoping for resignation in September and expiration in December
Today was one of those days when something is so off that people begin to realize that others are thinking what they're thinking. It doesn't go back to normal. People start looking for signs that "oh, this is another of those days" and then they start finding them
they're not going to literally weekend at bernies him but there's going to be a lot more situations where they send a toadie out to read statements made from him instead of him actively talking
Even compared to his first term he's like a husk
His approvals about to really take a nosedive it's all exponential at this point I think.
I don't like it when people hang too much on "well my political opponent will die or otherwise self-destruct without me having to take any kind of political action" so I don't like the whole "he won't last his term" angle, but damned if it isn't hard for me to wonder....
....how many "Incidents" White House staff are having to clean up each month already.
The thing about modern medicine is that if you've got the money, we can keep you dying slowly for years, even with a serious diagnosis (stage 4 kidney, HFREF, Alzheimers, Parkinson's, and a whole lot else)
Staff will have to cover more, but he spends most of his day tweeting so it won't be too hard.
Of course there's the question of how long Donald's already been in that stage lol
True.
Theres going to be a very weird period of seclusion where he tries to mostly rule via tweet and everybody argues about whether hes alive or not
Probably why he goes golfing every weekend. Getting treatments too.
Elon Musk is frantically working to transfer Trump's brain into a robot using Neuralink, but so far, all the robot bodies have rejected the implant on moral grounds.
lmfao it's gonna be like when Fidel died
can you remind us how that process went
he died, the government sockpuppeted his accounts and posted old but unreleased photos and footage of him, and did so until they could establish Raul
WOW. not sure how I missed that but holy hell
but yeah to my estimation it was approximately 3 months that he was straight up dead and they were desperately pretending he was still alive because they knew shit would go haywire if everyone realized there was no longer a castro in havana
3 months lmao
my family back on the island had to be so fucking careful about their phrasing when discussing it with us and we had to be soooo careful about what we were saying too but like everyone KNEW and just kind of had to live in this nebulous state b/c nobody knew what the military would do.
he had been sick for a while and like actively looking worse and worse and then just magically suddenly wasn't doing any public appearances. the moment the news started to leak that nobody had seen him, the gov't started sending pre-done photos and footage to the media so int'l media would see it
In the event such a thing happened during his term, you know Stephen Miller has a list of ultra-illegal stuff cooked up for the period of time before the public is notified. One last hurrah.
I can't see what difference it'd make; it's not as though Trump being technically alive puts a stop to any of it now
I could see that happening, with a “Weekend at Bernies” scenario, where Stephen Miller and Kash Patel walk his bloated corpse back and forth in front of a White House window as proof of life.
I've always had an "I wish I could have seen that when it was live" attitude towards these SNL skits but actually, no, I don't wish that or anything like it. (Context for the young: after his final public appearance, Western news reports kept repeating that officially, Franco was still kicking.)
Melanie trying to pull an Edith Wilson… youtu.be/ta1ZcjpwVLo?...
"his team" aka Cheung, Miller, fuck knows who else who are also probably making most decisions even now But hey, this is what AI videos are for, right? Like the great Oz, he will no longer grace us with his physical presence, but he can "speak" to MAGA every night...
.
The occultated Idiot.
He’s going to get a cold. Like Brezhnev and Andropov
To recycle a soviet joke from that era: "Today, due to bad health and without regaining consciousness, Donald Trump was sworn in for his third term as president."
yeah this. the only evidence we have of his continued living is his all caps social media tweets
Melania starts ruling America like Woodrow Wilson's wife
Or via Zoom-- MSNBC anchor: Sir, you look very healthy and beautiful today! Can you comment on your plan to incorporate the island of Tasmania as the new state of South Florida? Trump's brain in a jar: Glub blub blub blorp
What's the o/u on a deepfake video?
I think this is a pretty good bet.
Gonna be weekend at Bernie's level of shenanigans.
It's gonna be like the early 1980s when the Soviets had three straight leaders in the 2-3 years before Gorbachev who were perpetually sick and dying, and state media was like "Comrade Andropov has a cold" every day for 6 months.
"Trump Praises Kim Il Sung For Remaining Eternal President While Dead, Claims 'Absolute Right' To Stay President In The Afterlife"
Then we will have the Weekend at Bernie’s phase of his presidency.
He’ll be installed in a Neuralink Gilt Chair in the Oval Office by the end of the year, rule via tweet for a few years, then conveniently pop his clogs directly after winning a third term that will be taken up by whoever wins the GOP Battle Royale in the meantime
I was thinking about that just today! Eventually there will be an actual health event, and we probably won’t know about it for two or three weeks (or more!) except by rumor! Unless he just keels over on the tarmac in front of everybody, then we’ll know! 😕
I mean hes clearly some degree of ailing but all this white house will admit to giving him is aspirin, if and when he takes an actual nosedive they will just lie about it harder
All my doctor friends are convinced he’s on a metric ton of fluid pills
I think we’re going to get some Woodrow Wilson style he’s fine but in the other room resting stuff at some point He acts like my dad after he got dementia but before he was bad enough for people that didn’t want to see it saw it
The 25th Amendment was supposed to protect the country from a Wilson (or Reagan) incapacitated POTUS. But it requires that his VP and Cabinet (and/or Congress) step up and implement it, which seems extremely unlikely.
I’m not sure how they’d play it. His obviously mounting fear of death and his lifelong inability to admit vulnerability are an unstoppable force and an immovable object.
(The bitch is that given an infinite budget, modern medicine can keep an ailing old guy ailing for a real long time)
if he can't actually die can he at least pass out live on camera
Yeah I never really thought about this aspect but you're right. If this goes on there WILL be a time when he'll be on camera much less. And you BET there will be constant speculation. (There already is!) It will be obnoxious. (But also fun sometimes!)
There’s really not that much speculation, though. The topic of his physical health and mental fitness is not discussed in the mainstream media at all.
Oh I can’t speak to that. I just mean on HERE! If he’s MIA for a few days? Come on. People will lose their minds. (This happens with other decrepit leaders too, of course. But this guy inspires strong feelings!)
(HE'S gonna hate it too, though. What's the point in being president if you're not on tv?)
The thing is he's so vain and narcissistic that he's gonna cling on to the spotlight way longer than he should, so it is entirely possible we see him pass out live on television (or even see the end when it comes).
O/u on how quickly that becomes the most viewed video in the history of the internet?
Less than 12 hours. 24 hours for the remixes putting it with movie soundtracks.
rooting for the Poppy Bush at the Japan dinner 2.0
Honest to God, I’d take George H.W. Bush *in his present state* over Trump.
90 seconds
Jesus. That last phrase gave me a frisson of ecstasy. Literally nothing I’ve ever seen would make me happier.
Everyone will remember where they were when REDACTED on live television and there’s REDACTED all over the REDACTED and people are running everywhere and screaming
I won't but only because when REDACTED happens I will be so drunk I'll recreate the plot of The Hangover in celebration.
The drama queen / huckster that he is makes me think you are correct on this.
I expect to see more vengeance and disinhibition, more speech and short term memory decline. A fall they can’t cover up. Eventual forced withdrawal from public life, which (if he still has cognition) will wreck him because excessive admiration and validation are the malignant narcissist’s heroin.
MORE disinhibition?? I know you're right and there IS still some room for decline there. But man. Just imagine.
My mom was kind, so she started doing stuff like stroking a child’s hair on the bus, or talking way too long to a stranger she encountered on a walk. He’s cruel, so it could be f-bombs or n-words on live TV, or fondling young women.
Apropos of nothing, I just realized how weird it is that we don't call it hibition.
Almost fucking happened in a more visceral way if that idiot just recalibrated an inch.
Is Yakkety Sax still under copyright?
I do not believe so.
The estate of Ludwig von Yakkity was famously litigious but in the end failed to keep the beloved whimsical piece from the public domain.
I'd pay some real foldin' money to watch that, tbh
It's not like he's going to eat right and follow doctor's orders. He'll keep shoveling diet Cokes and big macs down his gullet until he strokes out taking a shit.
Oh MAN remember when we all joked about Queen Liz being probably dead and replaced with a robot/clone/etc before she finally kicked it Good times
Right that. It’ll go on forever and be super intense lol. At least on THIS site.
lest we forget, when Trump got COVID the first time (October 2020 iirc, pre-vaccine) they pumped him with literally milligrams of Regeneron's antibodies, lmao
Miller is the new Edith but somehow more racist
Can you imagine the Death of Stalin hijinks that will play out until somebody finally feels like they hold enough cards to make the announcement?
We’ll know his health’s really taking a nosedive when his golf outings become notably less frequent. Not being able to golf will also make him miserable, & give him more time on his hands to make things worse for everyone.
I’m far from a conspiracy theorist, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they send some body double out to golf, in order to buy time & avoid public speculation.
One golf video they showed as proof he’s alive is from months ago
I feel like an LLM could reasonably imitate Trump and they could just attempt to govern via ChatGPT
You've seen his vocabulary, a small language model could do it
President Markov Chain.
I need a bigger heart button for this one. “Small Language Model”!
How does it feel to be right?
I was just thinking he looks very close to bedridden
My grandma went from "maybe she's starting to lose it" to living in a locked ward with the other dementia patients, wearing a diaper and hooked to a monitor that warned the nurses' station if she tried to stand up independently in like 6 months
A year ago my MIL had a fresh diagnosis of dementia and a year later she can’t follow the directions to microwave a frozen meal. There’s no treatment, no amount of money can fix it or even pause it.
She had actually lost it some point prior to all that, but the familiarity of her home and routine made it far less obvious until she had to spend what was supposed to be a brief time in a rehab facility
That’s my instinct but I’ve also learned that some people are too mean to die
Strom fucking Thurmond. DJT isn't as tough as him, but more wiley. Also has great instincts for how to sell his slop and get people vibing with him. JD Vance has never had a clue about any sort of vibe except condescending resentment & nastiness.
JD Vance seems to have the bipartisan appeal of being uniquely unlikable: in the Senate, MAGA, Fox, etc. IF something happens to Trump I think MAGA will go nuts with conspiracy theories on how Vance was involved and so-called normie Republicans who have kept their heads done will find their spine
“Heads down” dammit. I do not like Vance but will be sincerely worried about the safety of him and his family if Trump has a lethal health event Worse case scenario for Republicans: Trump has a catastrophic issue but won’t leave, I honestly don’t know what they’d do
Scared of the answer but still hope we find out.
The media would eat Vance alive.
Vance is in the pocket of the oligarch triad. Thiel, Yarvin and Musk.
theplotagainstamerica.com www.thenerdreich.com
I warned you.
I don't think Vance will be able to command and direct the wrath of MAGA like Trump.
No way. He has no juice at all. If Trump is gone Vance is entirely powerless. He can't energize a crowd for shit.
Doesn't need juice, just power, and he's got the oligarchs behind him.
Even if they're sitting on couches?
Does this manboy look like he could turn a mid presentation surprise boner into anything but eternal shame?
Doesn't little JD have a couch with his personal hole drilled in it? Also thought he was coming out with his own line of head wipes
Trump is a character. Vance has all the malice and sadism (or even more?), but no personality whatsoever.
Trump is dying. I’ve seen plenty of dying people, and I can see it..he’s dying.
Unlike a lot of liberals I believe Trump’s movement is tied to him personally and when he’s finally gone it loses much of its power. These awful people won’t go away but they will lose their juice.
He definitely seems different from what he was like in his first term. That said, ANYONE can look bad in a photo taken while they're talking. The challenge of photographing someone who's performing isn't to get a photo where they look weird; it's getting a photo where they DON'T look weird.
Hm. Yeah. That's why sociopath Thiel has been finding religion and is now making the rounds.
When Trump dies every MAGA will jump to Trump Junior and forget that JD Vance even exists
Maybe I’m being too pessimistic at this point, but I think we will get a bunch of “A Return To Norms” whitewashing of JD. “He negotiates offline instead of posting through it” and such.
Vance? Offline? lol he’s more dependent on social media than Tom Haverford.
I didn’t say it was going to be an accurate description
He’s a Lurker (derogatory)
No, these people are in thrall to charisma. Plus, Trump has this profound menace lurking beneath the clownish veneer. That’s legitimately intimidating—something the press respects—whereas Vance is just a punk. He’s also vastly more punchable, with smugness rivaling Paul Ryan’s and even Ted Cruz’s.
The thing about Trump is that the press doesn’t need to sell him. He sells himself and can do it without their help. They need him far more than he needs them. Not so with Vance, who they would actively have to promote, even while he’s tanking their audience numbers.
Lastly, Trump’s own party is terrified of the guy because of the wrath he can exert via his extremely dedicated fan base. Vance has no fan base. This makes him vulnerable to rivals in a way Trump simply isn’t. And that makes him a much softer target in a world with no shortage of knives.
He’s juiceless. In fact: he’s got negative juice.
Hours later the technical term appears: The man is a sponge.
I regret to remind you that the press adored Paul Ryan.
The rebranding will come from the same establishment Ds who whitewashed George W Bush
Ugh you are probably right😑
No way. The unspoken truth is they think he is Volk because he’s stupid and thinks there is an easy answer for everything (just like the avg American, in the media’s mind.). JD Vance is actually smart so he doesn’t get the same deference.
I still think he's being pumped full of every possible drug to keep him alive. He'll make it past 2028. I don't know what happens after that. Vance scares me because he has that mediocre white man anger and cruelty.
They don’t. More importantly, neither does MAGA. Neither does the Heritage Foundation. And I think he’s being held together with duct tape and spackle already …
They'll absolutely TRY to run cover for Vance but the problem is Vance is a loose cannon radical. Project 2025 can't control him, the Tech Bros can't control him. The clamoring for Don Jr to take over will start almost immediately.
They publish too many meme pics of JD Vance (“Irish PM shows this pic of Vance in Congress”) to make me think they like him.
I'm not a doctor, but I'm fairly convinced that he's suffering from heart disease and he's visibly declined cognitively over the last couple years. If he croaks, I don't see anyone in his inner-circle or the GOP generally who could succeed him.
The only thing that makes me wonder is that weird riffing he was doing about going to heaven. This is not a man with a filter and I am extremely curious about what prompted that particular word salad.
Same thought process here. 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
I dunno, I cannot understand why anyone would want TFG in power in the first place, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they simply transferred it to Vance. The agenda must live.
Eh, Trump has a boisterous charisma. He dominates the room. Vance has all the charisma of a spreadsheet*. There's a reason the "had sex with a couch" caught on. *And yes, that is an *actual* description from someone who went drinking with Vance.
As my dad put it: JD Vance has the charisma of a jar of Vaseline
The cult doesn't worship the agenda, they worship their leader. Few cults ever survive the death of their founder.
Cromwell to Charles II took how long?
Vance doesn't have the same weird charisma that Trump does Also, unlike Trump, Vance would face Republican competitors who want to be the successor to Daddy
Vance is very flatfooted with the press and public--he has no clue about how to vibe--which is Trump's great talent. All of Trump's Volk will feel that Vance is condescending to them.
They're gonna try to deepfake him and weekend at bernies his fascist husk as long as possible
Eh. Remember how they covered his book like he was Tom Joad despite a lot of pretty easily identifiable exaggerations about his background.
I think they will easily transition to writing puff pieces about Vance. This is a Republican daddy problem, and the media are addicted to it.
No, but don't underestimate the ability of the American Nazi Party to rally around whoever's in charge. They will stand as a group to support President Couch-Fucker, until January 2028, then primary him for someone less cringy.
Vance and Cruz are repulsive, bitter nerds with negative charisma, and Rubio is a toady, so they don't go anywhere. Kristi Noem could, but apparently Americans just don't see the presidency (specifically) as a job for women.
Trump's effective success is downstream from his instinctive understanding of media and spectacle. The media can't keep him out of their heads because he indulges them so well and they don't understand kayfabe.
No, absolutely not. I dont think ANYONE has the juice to unite the right in the way that Trump has, and there are a thousand assholes who all individually think that they are the ubermensch and will waste all their time fighting eachother
MAGA sure as hell doesn't. And one BIG reason the media is so often in the tank for Trump, (possibly the biggest reason!) is because they think MAGA represents 'Real Americans' more than Democratic voters. But MAGA ain't gonna like President JD
So I'm wondering: what happens if he doesn't die, but turns basically nonverbal like my grandma did? Do his handlers basically put on a show like he's still all there and try to run the executive branch without him?
Death of Stalin style? They might try but they's not a lot of bright bulbs left in the admin. It would get out pretty quick once he stopped making appearances.
that is what biden’s inner circle did, after all
I think they'd try but you have the problem that his cabinet is 10 lbs of crazy in a 5lb bag and a lot of that crazy is mutually exclusive. Theyre going to be fighting over stuff constantly and it'll become really obvious when trump can no longer decide who wins the argument if both sides puppet him
Absolutely not
Washington DC has an opportunity to do the funniest possible thing.
Maybe worse if he does bite it because then Vance would take office & incumbents have a huge advantage.
apparently alex jones thinks he’s headed for a health collapse
I hope it'll be an Aeschylus situation personally, just for how out of left-field a falling turtle would be.
Vance does not have the cult of personality. Plus I think most of the GOP hates him. When he is gone, I think the GOP will try and save their skins.
What if he were to swim across the Yangtze River?
Deep cut! Respect.
Vance has all the charisma of a wet bag of dog shit. He'll get eaten alive without Trump behind him.
But Vance has got the tech bro oligarchs behind him like Peter Thiel, who will be happy to play puppet master with Vance in a way that they can't with trump because he's too unruly, hard to manage, and unpredictable. Vance will be puty in their pasty hands.
Vance would worse in some ways.
I want him to last long enough that he will be the only one to blame for a lot of the destruction.
I don’t think Vance would be able to control other Republicans by threatening to campaign against them because he’s nothing without Trump.
But since media owners can't risk their dream workplace without unions/taxes/trans/minorities/women fighting assault/AI opposition getting even the slightest chance of reversal after 2028....
And throw any trust that hasn’t been withered away after this year?
I just don't get what is Trump charisma, like why tf anyone listen to him? Let alone the entire US media, he's the easiest dip shit to ever live to make fun of (outside of Vance) and yet everyone treats him as the Dalai-Lama
It's mainly to do (at least in the US) with his base. Hardcore MAGA nuts and other fascist wannabes are the most prevalent violent psychos darn near in world history, and people just don't want to get Pelosi-ed.
Or shit, those two reps in Minnesota, one of whom did actually get murdered.
No I don't think so, I don't think it's a rational decision. I would encourage you to read Ionesco Rhinoceros, it's a play but it's super well written and easy to read; Rhinocerite is spreading through the population and people embrace it. It's about the spread of fascism.
Only Béranger remains at the end and despite everything he stays human and decide to fight. And I feel so much like them rn, despite everything I cannot understand what is so appealing about Trumpism.
A few people have made the analogy to fascism being like a disease and if you have an immunity to it, it doesn't affect you or affect a society. I think there's a ton of people who don't have that immunity, even though they fucking should, and so they fall for it.
I find him so repulsive!
Me too! And I think I understood his appeal I wrote about it here (particularly the link post, but the thread is also good)
They listen to him because even as a feeble old senile dipshit he embodies everything they actually worship
I wouldn't even be surprised if some evangelical start a new religion based on him being a prophet of God or something
They literally did www.bbc.com/news/article...
In Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” the Dear Lady we all know personifies a knowing path. youtu.be/qnpZCB9BUIw She picks 1) Foo Fighters “Everlong” 2) Oasis “Wonderwall” 3) Tool “Pneuma” 4) docs.google.com/document/d/1... 5) Collective Soul “Shine” 6) RHCP “Snow” 7) “Battle Hymn/Republic”
I think the media is so cooked they would
It's be interesting to see whether the media would try to run the same stuff for the Yale Couch Effer as they do for Trump (probably?) but I doubt it'd work if they did.
I had an opinion... bsky.app/profile/litt...
No, even republicans dislike Vance. They tolerate him. Once DT passes, the whole thing falls apart
And people don’t have the same weird, cult-like devotion to Vance, who could teach classes on how to be unlikable. (I will never understand Trump’s appeal, but millions seem to see something in him. There’s nothing to suggest that Vance has that same appeal.)
Tbh Vance doesn't have the juice at all, nobody respects him. His job is patsy.
