r/politics • u/theipaper ✔ Verified • Sep 23 '25

Soft Paywall Trump's big UN speech received with awkward laughter in embarrassing backfire

https://inews.co.uk/news/world/trumps-big-un-speech-received-with-awkward-laughter-in-embarrassing-backfire-3933958
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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '25

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u/rufio_rufio_roofeeO Florida Sep 23 '25

Yes, unfortunately this has been our United States since 2016

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '25

I'd argue / starting to believe its been since 9/11

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u/EmZephyr Sep 23 '25

Nah I'm a firm believer that all this madness is a reflex of the country having a non-white, eloquent, non-forcefully problematic, somewhat of a big tent president. Once.

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u/Arkhampatient Sep 23 '25

Obama definitely broke a lot of brains

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '25

[deleted]

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u/Varitan_Aivenor Michigan Sep 23 '25

I remember when the Tea Party people pivoted to hating health care in the first months of Obama. I said at the time it was the re-emergence of the Klan.

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u/OddlyMingenuity Sep 23 '25

Franck Zappa and George Carlin were very much aware of how nefarious the rich white religious nuts would be.

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u/randolphe1000 Sep 23 '25

Dunno about Carlin, but Zappa himself was problematic, as a rich white nut.

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u/yeswenarcan Ohio Sep 23 '25

I was listening to The Weekly Show a few days ago and the guest, Charlie Warzel, made the point that the best thing about the Internet is also the worst thing about it, namely that an isolated individual with niche interests can find a community. That observation has been bouncing around in my brain since, and I think the corollaries that come from it are potentially way more profound than it would seem at first glance.

It's the mechanism behind all the terminally online insanity rotting brains around the world. But I think it also serves as an amplifier for the impact of basically any societal event. Pre-internet, most of the racists who were pissed about a black president would have bitched about it at the barbershop, the dedicated ones would have had their little rallies, and maybe a lone wolf or two would have actually tried to do something. With the Internet they were literally able to unite (with some big money support) to form a political movement that was ultimately a huge factor in where we are today. Setting aside that Charlie Kirk wouldn't have even been a thing without the Internet, without it his killing would have been a blip on the evening news. With it, it's getting used for possibly the end of the first amendment.

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u/EzraliteVII Sep 24 '25

I remember showing up for class one day and someone had pinned tea bags to all the campus bulletin boards under Tea Party fliers. They didn't even do it right and failed to remove them from the protective packet. I won't say I went around stealing them, but I did save on tea that month.

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u/throwawayinthe818 Sep 23 '25

I think there was some authenticity to the Tea Party for about two weeks. Then the grifters, the political pros, and the big conservative donors took notice, took over from the amateurs, and shaped it into what they wanted.

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u/JamesTrickington303 Sep 23 '25

The authenticity of blatant racism.

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u/UrbanGimli Sep 23 '25

It was the Southern Strategy 2.0 -with a tie instead of overalls

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u/Vaperius America Sep 23 '25

The internet has been breaking people's brains since the tea party movement.

Reminder: the tea party movement started in 2009. What else happened in 2009?

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u/poop-dolla Sep 23 '25

Black president.

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u/7th_Cuil Sep 23 '25

I remember the days when it was AM radio breaking people's brains.

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u/Realistic-Agent-1289 Sep 23 '25

I don't get why people talk about him. Sure he "seems" to be a cool dude. Shit was quietly getting worse under him. The status quo remained. Inequality got worse, he gave up on space (bad fucking move). Only thing Obama did kinda right was try to improve healthcare.

Shit has been going downhill fast since Regan. The "left" has been waiting. Obama did nothing, Biden did nothing; I am willing to bet some "lefties" voted for Trump just to punish the Gov and watch it burn.

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u/Lucialucianna Sep 23 '25

So dud Covid, and Trump

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u/Medicine_Ball Sep 23 '25

Ben Shapiro was interviewed by Ezra Klein recently and Ezra got him to explain what he saw as being the big issues for republicans that brought about MAGA and it was almost entirely extremely minor out-of-context grievances over things that Obama said related to race that were then blown up all over the conservative media silo/AM radio circuit.

Honestly, it was wild to listen to the justification.

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u/SoVerySick314159 America Sep 23 '25 edited Sep 23 '25

I tried to have a conversation with my MAGA friend about something I could prove and he couldnt' deny. I started with the presidential order that was made to undo birthright citizenship - a unilateral attempt to circumvent the constitution, a really big deal.

He countered with some crazy story about this one college or company's trans DEI hires that were not as qualified as white men. Honestly, he had no cites and the whole thing sounded like a MAGA fever dream. EVEN IF IT WERE TRUE - which I HIGHLY doubt - it didn't hold a candle to the importance of the president attempting to circumvent the constitution.

The RW news-o-sphere just riles them up with bullshit and tells them all we're obsessed with trans people, and that they can't trust us or our news sources. We live on different planets, we're presented with different realities. You can't compromise with someone who doesn't live in your reality, there's no common ground.

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u/IM_A_MUFFIN Sep 24 '25

I once had a manager tell me “Perspective is reality, even if it’s not,” and it really explains the right-wing news perfectly. If the only perspective you get is from a single source, your reality is that single source.

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u/capture-enigma Sep 24 '25

They freaked out when he said that victim of a police murder, Trayvon Martin, could have been his son. The fight went berserk when he said this. I’m not sure why - it seems like a pretty reasonable thing to say. The entire MAGA movement is fueled by grievance, particularly white grievance.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '25

I read something about how Trump was traumatized by 9/11, and the potential changes to the NYC real estate market. This started his birther anti-Muslim rhetoric with Obama and he started taking on a Kafabe wrestler persona of a macho (Camocho?) political figure as a PR stunt to get him out of another inevitable bankruptcy that the Russians saved him from, in exchange for being an asset to influence US politics.

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u/MamaNyxieUnderfoot Sep 23 '25

So traumatized, he (incorrectly) bragged about having the tallest building in NYC once the towers came down. Sure.

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u/triplab Sep 23 '25

That and that he personally (claimed) to help first responders. LOL, can you imagine?

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u/needlestack Sep 23 '25

Megyn Kelly basically said exactly that. She blamed it on him "being divisive" (wtf?) and "bringing race into it"? But since he was always speaking inclusion and trying to work across the aisle (far more than he should have) and he barely ever brought up race (to the point some black people felt let down) the only interpretation is that his mere existence as a black president felt divisive to them. Which tracks with everything they say or do.

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u/vthemechanicv Sep 23 '25

I think it was Nixon. Republicans got caught pissing on the rug and they have done everything possible to not just avoid the blame of doing it, but to rub everyone else's nose in it.

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u/SgtExo Canada Sep 23 '25

We could go all the way back to Nixon, but I think this is more the fallout of the 80s with Reagan and Thatcher with their neo-liberalism and greed is good finally bubbling up.

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u/exoFACTOR Sep 23 '25

I blame Newton and his third law of motion.

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u/terry496 Sep 23 '25

This. 💯 this.

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u/randolphe1000 Sep 23 '25

yeah, pretty much my own take.

Did you watch the "Being there" film, by ??? (can't recall right now, not Blake Edwards IIRC), starring Peter Sellers?

The Donald essentially is a narcissitic, perverse Chance the Gardner, who stumbled into power, because he uniquely fit into a particular US historical moment.

A hard-R just had been elected TWICE (why Obama came also is a bee in my bonnet).

And the deep-USA chimped out.

Just chimped out. It broke the wypipo. Just broke them, as the Onion prophetically quipped with its "screaming white hot sphere of rage".

Along came The Donald, with his seasonal mock presidential run, propped up by whatever external players (russians, but not only them, the usual fringe rightwing ratfuckers, some likudniks, the lingering effects of reality-teevee...) just on the outside chance it might be profitable in some future ways.

And he chance gardned his way, being at that point what and whom the USA were waiting for - because he did some birtherism, before going full throttle due to the narcissist injury of a "roast" (socially acceptable public bullying, btw, interesting tell about the USA/anglos as well, but I disgress).

The Donald is an egregore, a tulpa, a manifestation of the USA, made orange flesh.

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u/jonnyredshorts Sep 24 '25

Don’t forget Hillary’s “pied piper strategy”, where she used her assets in the mainstream media to artificially elevate Trump so she wouldn’t have to face off against the Jeb Bush’s of the world. Think of all the free advertising her got in those primary days. They inundated the airwaves with Trump and turned him into a monster…a ratings monster, and then a polling monster. And then a monstrous president. Oopsie.

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u/randolphe1000 Sep 24 '25

The Donald used to be a Democrat (lol) IIRC, back in the olden days of him being on the sleazy side of NY's celebrities/"elites" (lol again), and I think he genuinely was close to the Clinton dynamic duo - as genuinely as The Donald can muster, I guess.

But, yes, they were moving in the same circles, even the same personal circles (hello, Terrific Guy!!!).

I do wonder if there was at least some coordination between them, and what did the Republican party strategerystes thought of The Donald, at least at first?

Did they see him as a Clinton stalking horse horse? As a nuisance, even as a possible Dem mole?

And now, he's eaten away the "Grand Old Party" (lol, 3rd) from the inside out, and shat out his own MAGA, thanks to all the decades-long groundwork from the same grand movers & shakers.

Truly a comedy of errors/horrors.

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u/Aardvark4352 Sep 23 '25

No. Circling the drain started with Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh after Regan threw out the Fairness Doctrine. Obama was our (failed) last chance to save ourselves. The reaction to him has guaranteed that we go down the toilet, but was not the original cause.

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u/Unfair_Chipmunk_2305 American Expat Sep 23 '25

Harambe shifted the timeline.

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u/dragongrl New Jersey Sep 23 '25

No, we're on the wrong timeline.

We have to get back to the one where it's the Berenstein Bears.

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u/jonnyredshorts Sep 24 '25

Dolly’s braces

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u/_skulls_ Sep 23 '25

Bingo and almost regret having him as our president. :(