That's why I think Rubio will be Trump's successor, because he still kinda appears normal enough to regular people who want to vote for Nikki Haley instead of Trump, but still gives the base its red meat, while mollifying elite concerns.
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Yeah, that's cursed enough that it could be true, I'll buy it.
aug 11, 2025, 12:47 am • 43 0 • view
People say he’s dead behind the eyes or whatever, but I think he is legitimately a true believer. Florida now isn’t Florida 2010. He believes his side should have power, that’s all he believes and he’ll do whatever to make that happen.
aug 11, 2025, 1:00 am • 10 0 • view
I don't even know if he's a true believer. I don't think it matters. He wants power and he probably is in the best position of any of this team of reprobates to take it.
aug 11, 2025, 1:03 am • 18 0 • view
He doesn’t have an ideology, he’s just full of unspecified hate at whatever the left is at the moment. People forget how long he’s been around.
aug 11, 2025, 1:05 am • 11 0 • view
I don't believe Marco Rubio has an interior life.
aug 11, 2025, 1:07 am • 69 0 • view
www.tetleystldr.com/tetleystldr-...
aug 14, 2025, 6:27 am • 0 0 • view
yeah, he doesn’t strike me as someone who reflects on anything
aug 11, 2025, 1:09 am • 78 1 • view
Millions of dead wonder why😱
aug 11, 2025, 1:12 am • 0 0 • view
aug 11, 2025, 1:11 am • 5 0 • view
shame, reflectiveness, and the like would have been active hindrances to climbing the ranks of Miami politics, where he was one of the cleaner ones by default by virtue of never facing a publicly known criminal investigation. corrupt polities reward sycophancy, impulse, and mindless compliance
aug 11, 2025, 1:15 am • 35 0 • view
I'm becoming even more of a frothing-at-the-mouth anti-corruption guy thanks to this administration, everyone in the Brooks Brothers riot should've gotten 5 to 20
aug 11, 2025, 1:17 am • 116 10 • view
I feel like the solution is not jail, but some kind of SSI-style stringent asset cap to make them poor for the duration of their sentence. I don’t want these people buying a pardon and going back to their lives.
aug 11, 2025, 3:44 am • 1 0 • view
or jail
aug 12, 2025, 6:20 am • 0 0 • view
Sword of Chang
aug 11, 2025, 1:12 am • 3 0 • view
Honestly, finding out his connections to Miami drug operations made him seem a lot more interesting.
aug 11, 2025, 1:52 am • 2 0 • view
I think the only thing Marco Rubio believes in is “will this particular position at this particular moment increase Marco Rubio’s chances of becoming president?” Remember he was all in on “sensible bipartisan immigration reform” at the point when it seemed beneficial to him
aug 11, 2025, 1:25 am • 4 0 • view
In this light his unanimous (?) approval by the Senate looks almost like a cross-party conspiracy, like Democrats decided that Rubio would be an acceptable successor to Trump and that's why they voted the way they did. Granted I would've voted for him, because I was afraid of nuclear war.
aug 11, 2025, 2:30 am • 0 0 • view
I don't think it was that. It was that a lot of people thought he would be a reasonable voice within the administration, not the modern Von Ribbentrop. That's his real danger: not a conspiracy, but a comforting appearance.
aug 11, 2025, 2:35 am • 1 0 • view
I think it's likely that he is the only reasonable voice in the administration and for that very reason he's left to do the absolute worst shit so that he will shut up.
aug 11, 2025, 2:37 am • 1 0 • view
The future of MAGA belongs to whoever is able to keep both business/media elites on-side by promising to rein in the "excesses" of the regime while letting the base marinate in the knowledge that somewhere an immigrant is being brutalized. That's Rubio.
aug 11, 2025, 12:51 am • 48 0 • view
the complete charisma vacuum is against him. trump puts enough vaseline on the lens to let people enjoy the idea of state violence whilst permitting them to ignore the reality
aug 11, 2025, 1:52 am • 1 0 • view
Yeah, but in the absence of someone with Trump's charisma, the person who has the best handle on power and can consolidate elite opinion will probably win. Rubio lacks Trump's charismatic leadership, but so does everyone else. Barring a dark horse I think Rubio is the most likely successor.
aug 11, 2025, 1:55 am • 3 0 • view
barring another left-field spurned democrat willing to use "these sons of bitches are gonna get what's coming to them" language, yeah, that's fair
aug 11, 2025, 1:59 am • 1 0 • view
A sort of cursed MAGA Thermidor.
aug 11, 2025, 12:52 am • 15 0 • view
2029 is a long way away, but I haven’t yet felt media elites agonizing much over Trump’s “excesses” and search for a palatable successor, at least not since Peak DeSantis in 2023 They seem to have no qualms and little difficulty covering for Trump or, say for example, Musk’s Hitlergrüße
aug 11, 2025, 1:14 am • 3 0 • view
That's the thing, we will probably be dealing with backlash to Trump by the midpoint of his term, so elites who accepted Trump as a way to beat down workers, minorities, etc. will probably be looking for a successor who keeps them feeling safe while delivering what they like about Trump.
aug 11, 2025, 1:16 am • 3 0 • view
whole thread where i expand on this bsky.app/profile/utop...
aug 11, 2025, 1:13 am • 7 0 • view
Oh yeah, I think I remember reading this and kinda agreeing with it, but not fully. But as time has gone by and I've mulled it over I've come to agree with you.
aug 11, 2025, 1:14 am • 2 0 • view
ha, didn’t mean to impress a need to agree with my analysis, just think that there’s definitely a ton of room for this evil gusano to take power
aug 11, 2025, 1:16 am • 2 0 • view
There's a universe where Marquito gets his payoff for 12 years of clownish syncophancy i.e. a nomination, reverts to the "sane conservative" shtick that fooled a lot of us until 2017, and the GOP kind of returns to a party in a democracy.
aug 11, 2025, 1:49 am • 0 0 • view
But #ETTD and Marquito fits the profile of just one more of Trump's suckers, so I doubt he'll see the payoff. I just hope he fights Vance to the death for it.
aug 11, 2025, 1:50 am • 0 0 • view
This might be overly optimistic, but I think republican political power is likely to fall apart after trump, because every ambitious shithead is currently only restrained by the knowledge that hitching themselves to trump is the optimal strategy.
aug 11, 2025, 2:57 am • 1 0 • view
These people all hat each other and consider themselves gods gift to humanity, and I’m having a hard time imagining anything other than a war of mutual annihilation in the absence of trump.
aug 11, 2025, 2:59 am • 3 0 • view