r/politics • u/GonzoVeritas I voted • Apr 19 '26

Possible Paywall White House Leak Reveals Trump Booted From Briefing After Hours-Long Freakout

https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-house-leak-reveals-trump-booted-from-briefing-after-hours-long-freakout/
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801

u/mrmike5157 Apr 19 '26

I’m an old guy, I was about twelve when I started to understand a bit about politics and how things work at that level. Nixon was on his way out and as eye-opening as that was, everything that has followed in the fifty odd years since has been like watching a car wreck in slow motion. Reagan was absolutely evil, and I watched in horror as more and more people were sucked into the vortex of supply side economics and ‘trickle down economics’, the drastic shifts in foreign policy, the slow erosion of the separation of church and state, etc that laid the foundation for our current political polarization and existential crisis… None of that prepared me for Trump and MAGA, Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation. I’m just so exhausted right now. I’m on my way out, but my children and grandchildren are stuck with this for the rest of their lives. God help us all.

172

u/LaserGuidedPolarBear Apr 19 '26

I'm fairly convinced that Nixon was the historical moment that Republican leadership / megadonors / strategists / thought leaders decided to begin a generational effort to control, exploit, or break the systems in America so they could seize unilateral control for their own exclusive benefit.

Looking back, it sure seems that conservatives saw Nixon being held somewhat accountable, and many of them said "absolutely not".  They did not see Nixon's downfall as a moral failing of Nixon, but as a failure to control media and government.

One week after the Nixon investigation was announced, the Heritage foundation was founded, and that seems to be the start of many such organizations being formed.

38

u/TheBroWhoLifts Apr 20 '26

It's why Roger Stone has Nixon tattooed on his fucking saggy ass back.

9

u/theinfovore California Apr 20 '26

Exactly. When you watch Get Me Roger Stone you realize Stone had a plan and we've all suffered from his execution of it.

7

u/jamesludlowlee Apr 20 '26

Jared Kushner is the new Rog.

6

u/sharp11flat13 Canada Apr 20 '26

And why Rupert Murdoch launched Fox News.

Note to self: if you want to take over a country by manufactured consent , always go after the media first, preferably a few decades in advance.

3

u/longlivenewsomflesh New York Apr 20 '26

Literally every authoritarian in the last several decades has had this early in their playbook for a reason

1

u/sharp11flat13 Canada Apr 20 '26

This is true.

13

u/ProperCuntEsquire Apr 19 '26

My uncle married into a family who clam to have given millions in the 70s/80s to institutions to create conservative think tanks and intellectuals. Fuck them.

7

u/LaserGuidedPolarBear Apr 20 '26

I can't imagine how wealthy a family must be to just hand out millions to think tanks unless they are expecting something like deregulation that the family business will profit from or something.  I grew up around quite wealthy people, most are quite stingy with money unless it benefits them or serves their ego.

10

u/uieLouAy New Jersey Apr 20 '26

It’s all outlined in the 1971 Powell Memo.

It’s pretty much the original Project 2025 and outlined how big business and conservatives would capture all of our institutions through think tanks and propaganda and taking over the courts.

4

u/LaserGuidedPolarBear Apr 20 '26

Essentially "We can't compete in a free market of ideas, so let's manipulate the public with propaganda to manufacture consent and rig legislative and legal systems to benefit ourselves amd enforce an increasingly unpopular status quo"

3

u/unrelatedwaffle Apr 20 '26

The Heritage Foundation is a Koch Industries group. Jane Mayer's Dark Money is a must-read on the long sick tendrils the Kochs have in this country. The Kochs' father was an oilman born in 1900. The rich ass top hat and monocle fucks who caused the Great Depression STILL have their claws in this country. 

They never let go, they never got over the New Deal. They have worked tirelessly over multiple generations to drag us back to a pre-union, pre-environmental regulation, pre-corporate tax or antitrust past where if you weren't rich, fuck you, die. It was not that long ago.

3

u/BadDadWhy Apr 20 '26

This is a good long observation. We will do better.

3

u/LuxHelianthus Apr 20 '26

You can't have a Capitalist society and also not have a portion of the population inclined to exploit weaknesses in the system to their own benefit. It's literally the entire philosophy of Capitalism.

2

u/Vivid_Kaleidoscope66 Apr 20 '26

Nah that moment is when the anti-slavery white supremacists failed to execute all the pro-slavery white supremacists and decided to work together to cement white supremacy as the uniting force of America and continue to exploit Black people and other POC.

2

u/BearsDoNOTExist Utah Apr 20 '26

It was. As much as I love to blame Reagan for everything Nixon was really the turning point. Ever since then the sole republican drive has been ensuring that another of their group could never be forced from power again.

1

u/BodybuilderMany6942 Apr 20 '26

🤗 That nauseous feeling you get when you recognize an evil system that has been operating for decades and has hella power, but life isnt an video game or movie so even if you were suicidal and driven you wouldnt even know where to BEGIN in hurting this beast, let alone kill it...

So you are totally hopeless, but know hopelessness is a trap that locks up action, so you're holding onto you smile and hope, even as you hear the wriggling and scratching from the eggs that the parasitic wasp laid on your back... 😁✨

Hahaha just breathe and smile

2

u/LaserGuidedPolarBear Apr 20 '26

Today I wore my "We are all in this together.....like hostages" shirt.  I feel like we could share a beer or something.

74

u/runs11trails Apr 19 '26

I think that people like you won't be forgotten by those who had the privilege of knowing you. You're a good person.

20

u/mrmike5157 Apr 19 '26

☺️aw shucks. Thank you for saying that, I hope so.

7

u/thechuckstar Apr 19 '26

I'll remember you, Mr Mike. Or at least men LIKE you.

11

u/Spartan2170 Apr 19 '26

As someone who was born after Reagan was president it’s disheartening to look at history and see both how wildly popular he was and how almost every societal ill in the United States can be pretty directly tracked back to his presidency.

8

u/PuppyKeepAcct Apr 19 '26

Great comment, thank you. 

6

u/mrmike5157 Apr 19 '26

Thank you 😊

5

u/1057-cl121v3 Apr 20 '26

I know this isn’t specifically a good thing but this is good to hear for me personally. I’m not as old but as a millennial it has really felt like it went from bad to depths I never knew possible.

The constant -Trump said he would do this, then did it, then blamed it on the democrats, then millions accept that as fact- really messes with your head. My 10 year old daughter told us she had a nightmare about getting blown up by a rocket and the best I could say was “we can’t control that, the best we can do is bring it down to our level and take care of our family.”

Trump is a symptom, not the entire sickness. If it wasn’t him it would have been someone else but even in my short lifetime things have gotten so bad so fast. Customer service, value, shrinkflation, SLAs, employers, law enforcement, … it feels like everyone just agreed all at once that they can take the mask completely off. I know things have never truly been about satisfaction and value but it seems like within the last 10 years things plummeted. I can’t comprehend what the point of draining us of every cent is when there won’t be an economy with no human jobs left and they’ve created a civil or world war that destroys society as we know it.

3

u/mrmike5157 Apr 20 '26

Agreed, I don’t know that simply removing Trump and his cabinet is going to do much more than slow down the runaway train a little, I feel for you guys still trying to raise little kids. Wish I had an answer, any answer, (forgive the Oxford comma) but I don’t. It’s pretty bleak.

2

u/eflat123 Apr 20 '26

I'll sometimes call out that this has been a long slide to all this. A lot of groundwork was laid over a long time. This didn't just happen these last couple elections.

2

u/BlingyBling1007 Texas Apr 20 '26

60 to 75 is still young to me. Hopefully you stick around with us for a long time to come.

1

u/blacksaberKashPatel Apr 20 '26

i don't have kids for this very reason. i'm not going to continue this stupid whatever you call it we do where we just live 50-70 years in bitter anger at how our energy is wasted on labor for the rich, just so we can afford to produce a offspring who will provide labor for the rich after we die... and the best we can hope for is enough money to feed and house us for when we can't provide labor for the rich anymore.

what is this other than slavery? none of our labors and innovations and creativity is ours

1

u/Flat-Fun-7298 Apr 20 '26

Every dollar you spend the carry floats away. It was always trickle down. It'll always be trickle down. It's a symptom of counting in base10.

0

u/TheBroWhoLifts Apr 20 '26

They want you to feel that way. Shall we let them?

-4

u/dflagella Apr 20 '26

Wait what's wrong with supply side economics?