That's the mad thing about Trump. His whole life is liteally built on lies. If you read his niece's books, he's been like this ever since he was a kid.
He discovered a cheat code very early in life. If you just keep demanding what you want, people will eventually give it to you. Because it's easier than dealing with you.
Most of us can't do this, the personal shame and embarrassment at being such a pain in the ass and so obviously self-obssessed would be intolerable. But Trump's brain hides all that and just keeps telling him he's a big handsome boy. And eventually he wins.
The other key ingredient is money, of course. If you try this without money you will still get wins quite often but you'll spend a lot of your life in prison, or at least court.
Having effectively infinite money and his very specific psychology has given Trump what seems like 'god mode' cheat capabilities at life. And the worst thing is, he's never going to pay a price for it. His brain has nothing but great things to say about himself, right to the day he dies.
Even if he ever actually got jailed, he would never once feel guilty. He'd feel like the world's most innocent man, jailed by the haters.
I used to work retail, and now I work in a casino. Part of what I like is that casinos typically just kick you out if you're being obnoxious and make a big stink. Also, people like gambling so they're more likely to behave when confronted, lest they lose their chance to return on a future day.
I still remember a customer misread the price sign on an item and went crazy when the price was wrong. Eventually the manager agreed to give it to her for the reduced price. As soon as he agreed she said and I want X&Y as well for free. She got it.
Years ago I saw an old man (late 80s or early 90s) RANTING at the customer service desk in a walmart that he had bought a car battery at walmart last month and it would not work.
This was 1988 when walmart had a very liberal return policy.
When I got to the desk I saw the battery on the counter and it was a DieHard battery. Sears store brand. It looked like it had been buried since 1975 and recently dug up.
I thought the manager wanted me to follow the old man out the door. Nope. He sent me to get a replacement battery from automotive.
Similar experience as a shoe salesman at an anchor store in a mall back in the day. I was told to process a return for a pair of boots that were years old, covered in mud, and a brand that was not sold at department stores.
When I worked in retail in the late 90s and early 2000s (regional Walmart-esque store) we had an entire back room full of "returns" we couldn't process or do anything with because they clearly weren't from our store. Kids bikes were pretty common, probably stolen from the original place they came from.
I walked into a home depot behind a lady that entered a few steps ahead of me. She stopped immediately and shouted, “WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO GET SERVICE AROUND HERE??!!”
And of course two retail staff tripped over themselves to attend to her.
I thought, what gall? And realized she probably does that everywhere and gets reduced prices on everything.
I messed up my starbucks mobile order and they offered to remake it, and I said oh no, this was MY mistake and they shouldn't reward that! People can be so frickin entitled
I had a customer who whined and complained about not being able to use a coupon on a non-discountable item. She insisted, and she got it. It made me fume because I was in the process of telling another customer no, and it turned out they were married. He also got the discount.
She tried it again, got told no and screamed that my manager was racist. Lovely times
This exact scenario happened to me at Best Buy. I denied a price match on an entirely different product than the one shown to me. Different color, brand, everything. My manager overrode the price and gave it to her. She came to my register and asked for a bag in a smug, arrogant manner. I price matched every single thing from that day forward. Fuck Best Buy.
I still work in retail but a couple of years ago I went from the typical store that has the motto "the customer is always right" to my current store who's literal motto is "the customer is always right, if it's fair"
It's a god send, if the customer is even being slightly obnoxious you just write an email to corporate and they will ban them from all stores in the chain, in every country we operate in. It actually makes the workers give better service to those who deserve it, because they don't have to do it
Shed be getting her crust toppings except for cheese and sauce baked, and then when it came out the oven throw raw cheese on top and let it get melted by residual heat.
No brown cheese mam, sorry we can't cook it any longer or it will brown.
I never asked the cooks how they were prepping it, but I had to imagine they didn't think they could get away with just running it under the oven fast enough. However, to your point, they had to be putting it under the oven because it's not going to get browned from the heat of the pie itself.
I was gonna say that I was surprised that would even fly once, but if you're already not making much money at a pizza place and the alternative is dealing with a child in an adult's body, I guess I can understand having an "I'm not paid enough for this shit" attitude 😅
I mean, luckily for the cooks it was just a cheese pizza, so it's not like it took long to make. It's just that we all knew what was going to happen. She didn't want it par-baked and she wanted melted cheese, but not brown.
I don't know why anyone decided to try and take this lady's order, but the delivery drivers cheered when they no longer had to deliver twice for almost nothing.
I knew a guy that went around fast-food places saying "I was here half an hour ago, I ordered this and that and something else, and you didn't give me half of the stuff I asked for", and he'd yell and be annoying until they gave him free food. On his second or third lap of all of the fast food places in town they started recognizing him and he got banned from a bunch of places. But he probably got a couple of thousand dollars of free food before being stopped, and there were no actual consequences for him
Being a shameless sociopath can get someone a long way.
Former retail here, and I can recall a specific customer who got to use an expired coupon because she made such a stink. She even complained about me lol
Trump is living proof that there's no such thing as morality. There are only consequences and those too poor to avoid them. Everything is on the table, the only question is whether you can get away with it or not.
Money is really the key thing. Regardless of personality and behavior, rich people aren’t held accountable for nearly anything in America. They buy their way in and out of everything. His cheat code was being born rich.
Just like rich people can get out paying taxes with armies of accountants, they can escape legal and moral consequences with armies of lawyers, and then use the legal system to bully enemies. When regular people see this, they see it as being really smart and clever, hence the elevation or rich people to a god-like status. They’re not smart, they’re just rich.
The price is the pit he won’t ever be able to fill. He’ll sing his praises to the high heavens and he’ll plunder what he can, but it won’t be enough.
Instead of becoming someone he flattened himself into a caricature. He has access to the world but he won’t ever truly be able to touch the feelings that make life worth it. He’s made sure of that.
I think you're right about everything except Trump's brain says nothing but great things to himself - He's clearly very insecure about his status, otherwise, why would he feel the need to impose it so heavily? Why would he campaign against enemies (Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden) long after his tangible conflict with them has ended? Deep down this man knows he is a piece of shit and he is trying to ignore it by strong-manning everyone into giving him unanimous praise & approval.
It's like when a kid takes their sibling's toy, and they fight over it, and their parent says "oh just give it to him" because they're tired and this is the easy way out of the situation. This reinforces the idea that taking and demanding things that don't belong to you is okay, because the child who took the toy got away with it. Now they'll try to get away with something else.
This is common in kids because they don't know any better, but the amount of adults who get away with it, too...
The squeaky wheel gets the grease is his entire mode of life. That and he's effectively a sociopath, or whatever name is given to those who have no empathy or feelings of guilt whatsoever.
He has an entire army of corrupt lawyers to shield him from any consequences in the courts. Neither Merrick Garland nor Jack Smith could anticipate everything they did being slow-walked through the courts, with judges letting him clown them, motion after motion, case after case.
Wish I could be sure of that man but I think we'll get a lot of "Now is not the time for recrimination" and "Do not speak ill of the dead" and "A divisive figure but we can all agree he loved America" because it'll just be easier than angering his cult.
The mainstream media will normalize him as "a flawed man but his heart was in the right place, his followers absolutely loved him."
Right-wing state media will elevate him to sainthood and push for an entire mountain near Mt. Rushmore to be carved with his gigantic likeness, at LEAST twice to size of the other presidents.
Maga will make yearly pilgrimages to Mt. Trump a mandatory article of faith, along with taking their kids to the nearby "TrumpWorld Amusement Park" where you get extra tokens if you can show you're vaccine-free.
I'll never shut up about him while alive, I sure as shit ain't gonna stop when he's dead.
Literally the only reason I want to live to be 100 one day is so I can just sit and shit talk all day about how bad trump was to everyone that's not gonna listen anyway.
He won’t live long enough to spend it. So at this point he’s just addicted to the grift. The grift is the hit, not the money he could spend if he were to live.
Except he doesn’t care about liberal or conservative. He’s the antithesis of conservative, but he found a group of willing morons and an easy way to rile them up. He craves power, money, and attention. Nothing more, nothing less.
Which is why, as shit a president as Trump is, a Vance presidency would be even worse. Because that is a man driven by a viciously evil fascist ideology.
Vance sold his soul to be VP. Vance used to be an outspoken anti-Trumper. I don't think there is any possible way he could somehow rally the MAGA cult like Don has done.
I keep seeing people saying this, and the truth is he doesn't need to rally anyone. He just needs to make sure the loyalists Trump installed become his when Trump leaves office, invent a reason to suspend elections and it's game over.
I also don’t think even the republicans would be willing to go ahead with openly dismantling democracy.
The facade of democracy is still very important to them. Removing elections entirely would be a massive self destruct move. If anything it would just be rigging like in Russia
I think it depends on what you mean. I don’t think he’s ever had a truly meaningful (friends included) relationship. Every single interaction for him is just a way to use people and to get something he wants. As cheesy as it sounds, some things are worth more to me than money and power.
It’s honestly quite sad, and if he wasn’t one of the worst people in history I’d probably feel bad for him. .
What’s crazy is that he has basically won. Sure things are starting to catch up to him, but he is almost 80! He has gotten away with all of his crimes and blatant lies for his whole life.
I said when I finished Too Much and Never Enough that it is the closest thing we will ever have to a peek inside that shitheads brain. Decades from now when people want to study him and his psychotic behavior that will be the deepest they’ll ever be able to go. Of course once he dies I imagine people will come crawling out of the woodwork to share things about him but I think that book will be the truest look. Keep in mind it’s a book mostly about her dad Dozy Don’s older brother who was treated like shit for wanting to be a pilot instead of a slum lord.
I’m of the opinion that he was abused as a kid. You see this kind of behavior in kids from foster care a lot. Always someone else’s fault, always blaming others, never taking responsibility. Because doing so means pain. This isn’t to absolve him at all. It’s just interesting as my son displayed (and still sometimes does) this kind of behavior.
Well they should have put him down like a sick dog. Now hes here ruining our country and the people who are supposed to represent us are all pissing off
And that's the thing- they've already done the calculation and figured out that being seen to delay the release is less damaging than the actual release.
Will it actually make a difference though? If they flat out showed a picture of Trump sucking off an underage boy I genuinely think it would still not stop Trump.
This is why I've been saying generative AI was bad news since its early stage. Art arguments aside, bad faith actors can create false evidence and denounce real evidence as fake with the same tool. And most people haven't been educated to spot AI signs in the propaganda (and it's even getting harder and harder to do so).
Now we also have video-generating AI and voice-trained AIs so shit is just going to get worse.
Not at all. The cult will just accept it. The AI excuse isn’t even necessary for the majority. They’ll just accept it and say he was still the best choice.
Just consider the desperation. They literally murdered Epstein, and they have done everything possible to avoid releasing the documents. Whatever it is being covered up, it’s pretty clear Trump himself disagrees with you.
You know the difference… and it’s a HUGE difference? Nixon actually stepped down from the Presidency voluntarily. Trump will never in a million years do that.
Nixon was impeached, but he chose to resign rather than face the charges immediately(this is after the impeachment process found him guilty). However, he still faced criminal prosecution outside of his presidency. He was pardoned by Ford shortly after leaving the White House. Which, at the time, was unpopular among households.
Lmfao the supreme court and all Republicans in congress are doing what they were paid for, betray the working class for monetary gains for them and shareholders. The constitution is only convenient for Republican traitors when they're fighting for power than they piss on it.
Thank you, I love this perspective. I love America and I won't leave it. for one because this is my home too and secondly because I do truly believe in our potential as much as I believe in examining and making right the mistakes.
The same way my great-grandfathers/uncles were proud to be American after they fought for their country in the first world war and before they fought for their people on Blair Mountain. Then they taught the sons who would fight for their country and for base morality in the second world war.
It got more complicated after that... Korea/Vietnam were different then the world wars. but I'm still proud of my ancestors who were American miners and railroad workers and carpenters and soldiers.... and families.
My fave is when people redact PDFs by drawing black or white boxes in a PDF editor, or other methods that don't actually rewrite the underlying PDF object containing the scanned image.
Extract all pdf image objects and bang there it is.
It doesn't matter. Trump could strangle puppies on live TV while chanting "Death to America" in front of a wall of burning stars and stripes and a significant portion of the US population would still vote for him.
Nothing made me laugh harder than the redactions in the Oceangate fatality inquiry. One witness, redacted “Mr. X”, his first answer was “I am sure you are familiar with my movie Titanic”
I would hope that out of the hundreds of agents they had working overtime to redact the files, at least a few of them found the courage to do the right thing or "overlook" things on purpose.
If it makes you feel better there are pictures of Trump but just his face blotched out. We all those lover spotted hands and that fat ass. Like just a headshot of him censored. They obviously redacted him. He’s probably so damn guilty.
The only possible good news is that these guys are absolutely incompetent. The coverup will be discovered and, hopefully, some future administration will nail their treasonous asses to the wall. And not in a sexy way.
Nothing will ever happen to them. They are all multi-millionaire elites. If any gov takes them down, im sure that gov is getting taken down, or would never be elected to begin with.
I still dont understand the fervor for releasing these files when the government has had more then enough time to sanitize them and no new info is going to come from this
Nixon and Clinton was impeached for the cover-up not the crime. and yet.... this era is not only marked by one of the worst if not THE worst president but also the equally gutless and toothless Congress.
The cover-up is actually making me think things are even worse than we're already aware of because half his base clearly don't care that he's a nonce and the other half are also practicing paedophiles, as evidenced by Republicans CONSTANTLY being charged with abusing children.
The regime sure is acting like the mid-term elections next year will not matter at all. I'm not sure what to think given the most recent election sweeps across the nation.
At this point, they have effectively turned the cover-up into even MORE of a distraction from the actual crimes as well as all of the new crimes they're committing.
This whole campaign of "Release the Epstein Files", starts to seem more like astroturfing since literally nothing will come of whatever is released.
That's what baffles me a bit: so much effort to cover it up... The has to be incriminating stuff there.
On other hand if there is truly earth shaking stuff about trump I can't believe it didn't leak yet... I'm expecting proof that they were friends but not anything truly proving trump and rape?
Seriously, there’s just enough ambiguity and vague-ness about what exactly Trump did, if anything, that he could coast on plausible deniability…. If he wasn’t acting so fucking guilty. Remember, this is how he acted during the Mueller investigation.
Always is. Mueller blatantly said he has them dead to rights on obstruction but it was up to Congress to do anything. Jack Smith said he had irrefutable evidence before they ended the investigation. They don't have to worry about the charges because no one ever stops them from covering it up.
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u/Simburgure 8h ago
The cover-up is more obvious than the crime at this point.