NPR's Fresh Air had a very interesting interview with Jonathan Swan and Maggie Habermann from the New York Times who have written a new book entitled Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. In the interview they said Don liked comparing himself to Hitler and Stalin as being the most powerful man in the world.
The interview is a 42 minute listen, but the link I posted gives some of the highlights of the interview.
In the interview they said Don liked comparing himself to Hitler and Stalin as being the most powerful man in the world.
I think this tendency of Trump's has been known about for awhile now? Long-standing claims of Mein Kampf in his bedside library back in the day, and he himself has publically said stuff like "The one thing I loved about Saddam was that he killed terrorists. He was so good at that."
Taken as a whole, Trump's list of heroes would seem to belie the notion that he has a studied adherence to any particular ideology of authoritarianism, because even the most dumb-assed neo-nazi would know that valorizing Uncle Joe is the absolute opposite of what he's supposed to do. And vice-versa for a stalinist.
(It is still the case that MAGA, as an informally cohesive phenomenon, is much closer to the ethnonationalism of Hitler than the class warfare of Stalin. But in learning about what gives the ideology its own particular characteristics, Trump's personal list of murderous heroes is of pretty limited utility.)
NPR's Fresh Air had a very interesting interview with Jonathan Swan and Maggie Habermann from the New York Times who have written a new book entitled Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. In the interview they said Don liked comparing himself to Hitler and Stalin as being the most powerful man in the world.
According to that article—which is entitled “Trump relished in being compared to dictators like Hitler and Stalin, journalist says”—what they said wasn’t that Trump compared himself to people like Stalin or Hitler, but that he likes it when others do:
Swan notes that the president, who sat for an interview for the book, has been particularly fixated on becoming a "great man of history" during his second term. During one interview, Trump showed Swan and Haberman a document that compared him to notorious historical figures like Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan.
"[The list had] nothing to do with morality, all just about pure power projection. And Trump was relishing being in their company," Swan says. "Maggie and I talked about it afterwards, and it really occurred to us that when you look at it through that lens, his second term makes a lot more sense."
Liking to compare himself to dictators like Stalin and Hitler, and liking it when others do, both tap into similar delusions of grandeur, but they’re not quite the same thing. I’d argue that what the article describes is possibly worse, as it’s about how he wants others to see him rather than just about how he sees himself.
I’d argue that what the article describes is possibly worse, as it’s about how he wants others to see him rather than just about how he sees himself.
So, thinking about President Muffley's blandly sinister self-aggrandizement when hesitating on a nuclear counter-strike...
I will not be remembered as the greatest mass murderer since Adolf Hitler.
Trump is sorta the reverse of that. Like Muffley, he's improperly obsessed with his own image, without Muffley's semi-redemptive desire to at least be remembered for peaceful policies.
And now trump's personal warmonger has come up with a way to assure the physical and moral integrity of the armed forces:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday a new mandatory screening program to test all service members age 30 and older, including women, for testosterone deficiency annually.
Trump is to give a major primetime speech tonight promoting his SAVE AMERICA ACT which is supposed to reform the American Voting System (thus insuring Republican victories in perpetuity--my opinion). Reports are he is going to blame the his failed election of 2020 on the Chinese, though the American intelligence community at the time said there was no evidence of Chinese involvement in the election.
Politico is saying Republicans are scared sh-tless about the speech. They would rather he talk about the current situation rather than something that did not happen six years ago.
From the little I have read this is more classic brinkmanship. The problem is, is he dragging his own support to and potentially over the brink. He has avoided that for years but can it continue forever?
From ABC News, a headline I was never expecting to see...
White House teleprompter operator made more than $ 100, 000 betting on President Trump's speeches, sources say
As far as inside-betting goes, in terms of gravitas, this is pretty much the opposite of, say, military advisers betting on whether the president will authorize a particular missile strike. So I'm tempted to laugh it off as "no harm, no foul", but still probably illegal(*), and possibly emblematic of the general skeeze that permeates this particular administration.
(*) I am of the opinion that rigged gambling is as close as you can get to a victimless crime while still having an actual victim.
And now trump's personal warmonger has come up with a way to assure the physical and moral integrity of the armed forces:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday a new mandatory screening program to test all service members age 30 and older, including women, for testosterone deficiency annually.
While hormonal imbalance is obviously a legitimate medical concern, in the absence of any evidence that it's a big enough problem among the troops to impact military effectiveness, this really comes off as just another example of the warped sublimated homoeroticism that permeates Hegseth's view of military culture.
Is that anything like “Preacher Bingo”, in which you have a card with, say, fifteen phrases and you tick them off as the preacher uses them?
Trump has a pretty limited repertoire, I expect a teleprompter could set Trump up and no one would be any the wiser.
From ABC News, a headline I was never expecting to see...
White House teleprompter operator made more than $ 100, 000 betting on President Trump's speeches, sources say
As far as inside-betting goes, in terms of gravitas, this is pretty much the opposite of, say, military advisers betting on whether the president will authorize a particular missile strike. So I'm tempted to laugh it off as "no harm, no foul", but still probably illegal(*), and possibly emblematic of the general skeeze that permeates this particular administration.
(*) I am of the opinion that rigged gambling is as close as you can get to a victimless crime while still having an actual victim.
Now, will the next step be trump's lawyer demanding that Mr Perez hands over his winnings to his client?
Is that anything like “Preacher Bingo”, in which you have a card with, say, fifteen phrases and you tick them off as the preacher uses them?
I saw a version of that in a Christian joke book once, with the bingo-card designed for a pre-mil end-times sermon. The squares were labelled with stuff like "Hal Lindsey", "Europen Common Market", "Trilateral Commission" etc.
Trump has a pretty limited repertoire, I expect a teleprompter could set Trump up and no one would be any the wiser.
Apparently, the guy on occasion allegedly changed his bets in the middle of the speech, if it started to look like a topic or phrase he had bet on wasn't going to appear.
Is that anything like “Preacher Bingo”, in which you have a card with, say, fifteen phrases and you tick them off as the preacher uses them?
Trump has a pretty limited repertoire, I expect a teleprompter could set Trump up and no one would be any the wiser.
Tangent Alert
Just a few weeks ago I introduced the word cruciform to the congregation I supply preach. Cruciform refers to a life patterned after the self‑giving love revealed in Christ’s crucifixion. I challenged them to count how many times I used it in the sermon. They said I used in nine times.
Is it not to do with thickening the blood? I was under the impression that this is why cis men are generally at higher risk of heart attack and stroke.
I’d argue that what the article describes is possibly worse, as it’s about how he wants others to see him rather than just about how he sees himself.
So, thinking about President Muffley's blandly sinister self-aggrandizement when hesitating on a nuclear counter-strike...
I will not be remembered as the greatest mass murderer since Adolf Hitler.
Trump is sorta the reverse of that. Like Muffley, he's improperly obsessed with his own image, without Muffley's semi-redemptive desire to at least be remembered for peaceful policies.
At least two separate commentators have referenced Jack T. Ripper and "precious bodily fluids" in their takedowns of Hegseth's apparent obsession with testosterone.
It's ludicrous anyway. He's about a thousand years out of date if he's trying to create an army of berserkers, and there's a reason why they went out of fashion.
Is it not to do with thickening the blood? I was under the impression that this is why cis men are generally at higher risk of heart attack and stroke.
It seems to raise risk for older men who return levels to what would be normal for, say, a 20 year old - rather than the sort of massive dosing seen in body building. And they are often people who seem quite fit. The medlifecrisis YouTube channel did a video on Rohin Francis’ anecdotal experience of this as an NHS cardiologist in practice - and that study was the outcome of someone then reaching out to him with funding to conduct a proper investigation.
The medlifecrisis YouTube channel did a video on Rohin Francis’ anecdotal experience of this as an NHS cardiologist in practice - and that study was the outcome of someone then reaching out to him with funding to conduct a proper investigation.
It seems that trump's "bombshell" speech last night attracted very little attention, with none of the major networks - apart from Fox - covering it. It was just the delusional ramblings of an old man who must know he is almost finished. He is surely now on political life support, and his handlers could bring in the 25th Amendment any time now if JD Vance had the integrity to do it. Joe Biden at his worst was more coherent and rational.
CBS covered it. Most of the (liberal) reviews are warning that what he is doing is providing the reasons he is going to throw the election. He is not above posting federal agents at polling place, seizing ballot boxes, declaring mail in voting invalid.
Will this drive a wedge between Trump and Infantino?
Somehow I don’t think so, but I like to contrast the White House’s view on Free Speech here with that cited in Trump’s multi-billion dollar suit against the BBC.
Pedantic alert--I used "throw" on purpose. Don't try to correct what I said.
Fair enough. But could you then please explain what you meant by "throw the election"? Because it is not self-evident, at least not to me. Like @stetson , to me that phrase means that Trump is trying to lose the election (throw the election, like a team throwing a game). Is that what you meant? Or did you mean something else? I am not being pedantic--I just want to know what your intended meaning is so that I can understand.
Pedantic alert--I used "throw" on purpose. Don't try to correct what I said.
Fair enough. But could you then please explain what you meant by "throw the election"? Because it is not self-evident, at least not to me. Like @stetson , to me that phrase means that Trump is trying to lose the election (throw the election, like a team throwing a game). Is that what you meant? Or did you mean something else? I am not being pedantic--I just want to know what your intended meaning is so that I can understand.
We can probably assume that @Gramps49 meant that Trump will try to use illicit means to win the election, but any prediction more specific than that depends on the verb, eg. "rigging" could include the stuffing of ballot boxes, but not what took place on 1/6. Assuming that Trump is trying to win, "throw" would tell us nothing, because(at least in my experience), it's almost never used to describe that particular goal.
Sowing suspicion about the validity of the election prior to the election is a go-to page out of Trump’s playbook.
Yes. "Toss out the results" would be a common way to describe that. "Throw out the results" would likely work, as long as you included the "out", but "toss out" is more common and flows a bit more smoothly from the mouth.
Will this drive a wedge between Trump and Infantino?
Somehow I don’t think so, but I like to contrast the White House’s view on Free Speech here with that cited in Trump’s multi-billion dollar suit against the BBC.
Mildly clever play by the administration. From what I can tell, strong sentiment in favour of "The Falklands" is confined largely to one mid-populated country and its dwindling band of loyalists in the erstwhile settler states, along with quiet and sometimes reluctant(*) support from the foreign-policy elites of the global north. Everywhere else pretty much just ranges from "meh, whatever" to outright support for "Las Malvinas".
Milei, of course, is a big Trump ally, so that obviously helps as well.
(I supported the UK in 1982, simply because you can't allow a country to just one day decide to grab territory from another country outta-the-blue. No idea who is ultimately in the right or wrong on ownership, and don't really try to force myself to care anymore.)
(*) Barack Obama is known to have used "the Malvinas" in a speech to an OAS summit, subsequently getting himself chastised during cocktail hour by the Canadian Prime Minister.
@stetson but the country in favour of "the Falklands" is the country in question. The human inhabitants of the Falklands (which were genuinely not inhabited before the British arrived) have very firmly voted in favour of British identity. They couldn't be more clear about the fact that they want to remain British and be known as the Falklands. If you don't know what you're talking about on a subject, please don't bother commenting. You keep commenting on British political issues without actually having any knowledge about said issues.
The issue is one of self-determination, not Evil British Colonialism (and I am the first to criticise British colonialism on its many evils).
The human inhabitants of the Falklands (which were genuinely not inhabited before the British arrived) have very firmly voted in favour of British identity.
While it's undeniable that the inhabitants of the Falklands consider themselves British, the history of human habitation isn't as simple as "not inhabited before the British arrived". The first explorers to visit the islands were probably British, at the end of the 17th century. The first colonies were French (1764) and British (1765), with the French colony transferred to Spain in 1766 and the Spanish briefly capturing the British colony in 1770. The British colony was removed in 1774 and the Spanish in 1811 leaving the islands almost entirely unoccupied.
The Argentine claim to the islands stems from an 1816 claim to all Spanish territories in the South Atlantic, leading to the re-establishment of a settlement in 1826 with an Argentine garrison in 1832 which promptly mutinied. British troops returned in 1833 to restore order, and the islands became a Crown colony in 1840 and British settlers arrived. The importance of the islands as a place to repair ships rounding Cape Horn lessened with the opening of the Panama Canal, and it was the introduction of Cheviot sheep and development of a trade selling wool that made the colony financially viable - without that the British would have probably abandoned the islands by the end of the 19th century. It was 1914 which made the strategic importance of the islands in naval control over the South Atlantic and British Antarctic Territories clear, and cemented the British intention to maintain control over the islands.
In terms of claims, the Argentine claim is that the first colony was French transferred to Spain and then all Spanish colonies were transferred to Argentina, with the 1826 re-settlement under Argentine authority (though technically only an Argentine colony for the couple of months there was a functioning Argentine garrison there); the British claim is based on re-occupation of the islands in 1833 and continuous occupation since 1840 with the current population almost entirely descendants of British settlers since 1840 (there will be some descent from the Argentine settlers from 1826-33, and almost certainly some of the naval forces based on the islands in the first half of the 20th century).
@stetson but the country in favour of "the Falklands" is the country in question. The human inhabitants of the Falklands (which were genuinely not inhabited before the British arrived) have very firmly voted in favour of British identity. They couldn't be more clear about the fact that they want to remain British and be known as the Falklands. If you don't know what you're talking about on a subject, please don't bother commenting. You keep commenting on British political issues without actually having any knowledge about said issues.
The issue is one of self-determination, not Evil British Colonialism (and I am the first to criticise British colonialism on its many evils).
And, just for the record, yes, I do indeed remember the referendum in the Falklands. There was the memorable photograph of the one guy showing up to vote dressed as the Union Jack.
Given what happened to the Chagos Islanders, I suspect the Falklands would already be Argentinian if the inhabitants hadn't been white. But that's another can of worms.
Otherwise, what Pomona said. Despite the murky beginnings of the colony, they surely have squatters' rights after 180 years or so.
Do people have the right to self determination when their houses are compulsory purchased to make way for a public construction project - or only when they live on a strategically important asset ?
At last census there were approxinately 3600 residents in the Falklands. There are thousands of CPOs in the UK every year.
Arguably you could give the population 1 million each for compensation and allow them to retain British Citizenship and just transfer sovereignty - at which point they are expatriate British citizens living in their own properties. (Perhaps with an arrangement for the Falklands Legislative assembly to continue to function much as it does now.) There are, for example, a quarter million or so expatriates, living in Spain.
I hate to drag the thread back to you-know-who in the midst of this vigorous discussion on the Falklands, but now you-know-who has threatened tariffs on Canada in retaliation for wildfire smoke.
I hate to drag the thread back to you-know-who in the midst of this vigorous discussion on the Falklands, but now you-know-who has threatened tariffs on Canada in retaliation for wildfire smoke.
How long, O Lord, how long?
As my mother used to say about me when I was four “You’re just opening your mouth and letting the wind blow your tongue around.”
He’s no more than a toddler, intellectually and emotionally. I hope that red button has been unwired.
His mind has gone. Even his handlers must be wondering how much longer this can be allowed to go on.
I dunno. Four Michigan congressmen had already sent a letter to Canada complaining about the wildfires before Trump made his threats. So I think Trump is possibly playing to a genuine section of public opinion on this. If his complaints manage to bring borderland votes into the GOP column in November, that calls into question the idea of Trump as an irrational actor on this.
Politicians always point to outsiders of any kind to deflect responsibility. Harm may be caused by the wildfires in Canada, but only in Trump’s fevered imagination can another country be held responsible.
There's not much to be done to reduce the severity of wildfires, nature can't be controlled like that. There's action that can be done to try and reduce the changes in the environment that are drying out northern forests, but that's an international requirement (Canada can do their part, but if the USA and other big polluters don't do their share of action it's not going to make much difference). There's potential action to do with education and restricted access to dry forests to reduce the chances of a fire starting given that the vast majority of wildfires are caused directly by human activities - including deliberate fires getting out of control, discarded cigarettes, discarded glass, spreading accidental fires (eg: there have been fires started by car accidents, or cars driving across grass with the hot exhaust igniting the grass), and arson. When the fires are out, there's likely to be an investigation to ask if it could have been prevented, or whether faster response could have helped stop the spread ... but, ultimately the fires are caused by climate change resulting from burning fossil fuels and human actions within critical environments.
Politicians always point to outsiders of any kind to deflect responsibility. Harm may be caused by the wildfires in Canada, but only in Trump’s fevered imagination can another country be held responsible.
Well, politicians will often attack other politicians in their own country for supposedly inadequate management of natural disasters. In fact, a few days ago, the leader of the opposition in Ontario blamed the Ford government for the severity of the current fires, claiming that, among other things, Ford let the provincial firefighting force "shrink year after year".
Now, I have no idea if that leader's criticism is valid, or if she's just throwing out anything she can to see what will stick(an honourable practice in politics, to be sure). But once you accept that governments CAN have negative impacts on the way natural disasters play out, it's not too huge a leap for a voter in Michigan to assume that's what happened in Canada, and that Trump is just looking out for the borderland's interests by fighting back, and maybe the GOP deserves his vote in November after all.
Right now, I'm doubting that Trump is actually going to impose any tariffs over this, but this kinda schtick is likely aimed at low-info voters who will just be impressed by all the belligerent posturing, and assume that means he must be doing something.
(NOW Magazine headline: Doug Ford says Ontario 'won't spare a penny fighting wildfires, Marit Stiles isn't buying it)
Hoekstra, the US ambassador to Canada, has said that Trump might postpone the Spain vs. Argentina World Cup final in New Jersey over the bad air.
I guess this is meant to be some sorta threat to Canada, but it's not exactly clear what Canada is supposed to do at this point, even assuming Canadian culpability. Probably just a scapegoat in case Trump does actually cancel the game.
Comments
They will have to change the Sioux City code first.
The interview is a 42 minute listen, but the link I posted gives some of the highlights of the interview.
I think this tendency of Trump's has been known about for awhile now? Long-standing claims of Mein Kampf in his bedside library back in the day, and he himself has publically said stuff like "The one thing I loved about Saddam was that he killed terrorists. He was so good at that."
Taken as a whole, Trump's list of heroes would seem to belie the notion that he has a studied adherence to any particular ideology of authoritarianism, because even the most dumb-assed neo-nazi would know that valorizing Uncle Joe is the absolute opposite of what he's supposed to do. And vice-versa for a stalinist.
(It is still the case that MAGA, as an informally cohesive phenomenon, is much closer to the ethnonationalism of Hitler than the class warfare of Stalin. But in learning about what gives the ideology its own particular characteristics, Trump's personal list of murderous heroes is of pretty limited utility.)
Liking to compare himself to dictators like Stalin and Hitler, and liking it when others do, both tap into similar delusions of grandeur, but they’re not quite the same thing. I’d argue that what the article describes is possibly worse, as it’s about how he wants others to see him rather than just about how he sees himself.
So, thinking about President Muffley's blandly sinister self-aggrandizement when hesitating on a nuclear counter-strike...
Trump is sorta the reverse of that. Like Muffley, he's improperly obsessed with his own image, without Muffley's semi-redemptive desire to at least be remembered for peaceful policies.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday a new mandatory screening program to test all service members age 30 and older, including women, for testosterone deficiency annually.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/15/us/politics/hegseth-troops-testosterone.html?unlocked_article_code=1.yFA.PtO2.9Ezxn-Dg4-1Z&smid=url-share
Politico is saying Republicans are scared sh-tless about the speech. They would rather he talk about the current situation rather than something that did not happen six years ago.
Not planning on watching it.
As far as inside-betting goes, in terms of gravitas, this is pretty much the opposite of, say, military advisers betting on whether the president will authorize a particular missile strike. So I'm tempted to laugh it off as "no harm, no foul", but still probably illegal(*), and possibly emblematic of the general skeeze that permeates this particular administration.
(*) I am of the opinion that rigged gambling is as close as you can get to a victimless crime while still having an actual victim.
While hormonal imbalance is obviously a legitimate medical concern, in the absence of any evidence that it's a big enough problem among the troops to impact military effectiveness, this really comes off as just another example of the warped sublimated homoeroticism that permeates Hegseth's view of military culture.
Trump has a pretty limited repertoire, I expect a teleprompter could set Trump up and no one would be any the wiser.
Now, will the next step be trump's lawyer demanding that Mr Perez hands over his winnings to his client?
I saw a version of that in a Christian joke book once, with the bingo-card designed for a pre-mil end-times sermon. The squares were labelled with stuff like "Hal Lindsey", "Europen Common Market", "Trilateral Commission" etc.
Apparently, the guy on occasion allegedly changed his bets in the middle of the speech, if it started to look like a topic or phrase he had bet on wasn't going to appear.
Tangent Alert
Just a few weeks ago I introduced the word cruciform to the congregation I supply preach. Cruciform refers to a life patterned after the self‑giving love revealed in Christ’s crucifixion. I challenged them to count how many times I used it in the sermon. They said I used in nine times.
That's what you call active listening.
End Tangent Alert
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352396426002562
At least two separate commentators have referenced Jack T. Ripper and "precious bodily fluids" in their takedowns of Hegseth's apparent obsession with testosterone.
It seems to raise risk for older men who return levels to what would be normal for, say, a 20 year old - rather than the sort of massive dosing seen in body building. And they are often people who seem quite fit. The medlifecrisis YouTube channel did a video on Rohin Francis’ anecdotal experience of this as an NHS cardiologist in practice - and that study was the outcome of someone then reaching out to him with funding to conduct a proper investigation.
tangent/ do you have a link to the study ? /
The video he first discussed it in is is here. The science direct link gives you the whole article if you scroll down.
We live in interesting times.
Pedantic, but "throw the election" is not the term you want. That would mean he is going to use illicit methods to ensure that his party LOSES.
Sowing suspicion about the validity of the election prior to the election is a go-to page out of Trump’s playbook.
Somehow I don’t think so, but I like to contrast the White House’s view on Free Speech here with that cited in Trump’s multi-billion dollar suit against the BBC.
Fair enough. But could you then please explain what you meant by "throw the election"? Because it is not self-evident, at least not to me. Like @stetson , to me that phrase means that Trump is trying to lose the election (throw the election, like a team throwing a game). Is that what you meant? Or did you mean something else? I am not being pedantic--I just want to know what your intended meaning is so that I can understand.
We can probably assume that @Gramps49 meant that Trump will try to use illicit means to win the election, but any prediction more specific than that depends on the verb, eg. "rigging" could include the stuffing of ballot boxes, but not what took place on 1/6. Assuming that Trump is trying to win, "throw" would tell us nothing, because(at least in my experience), it's almost never used to describe that particular goal.
Yes. "Toss out the results" would be a common way to describe that. "Throw out the results" would likely work, as long as you included the "out", but "toss out" is more common and flows a bit more smoothly from the mouth.
Mildly clever play by the administration. From what I can tell, strong sentiment in favour of "The Falklands" is confined largely to one mid-populated country and its dwindling band of loyalists in the erstwhile settler states, along with quiet and sometimes reluctant(*) support from the foreign-policy elites of the global north. Everywhere else pretty much just ranges from "meh, whatever" to outright support for "Las Malvinas".
Milei, of course, is a big Trump ally, so that obviously helps as well.
(I supported the UK in 1982, simply because you can't allow a country to just one day decide to grab territory from another country outta-the-blue. No idea who is ultimately in the right or wrong on ownership, and don't really try to force myself to care anymore.)
(*) Barack Obama is known to have used "the Malvinas" in a speech to an OAS summit, subsequently getting himself chastised during cocktail hour by the Canadian Prime Minister.
The issue is one of self-determination, not Evil British Colonialism (and I am the first to criticise British colonialism on its many evils).
The Argentine claim to the islands stems from an 1816 claim to all Spanish territories in the South Atlantic, leading to the re-establishment of a settlement in 1826 with an Argentine garrison in 1832 which promptly mutinied. British troops returned in 1833 to restore order, and the islands became a Crown colony in 1840 and British settlers arrived. The importance of the islands as a place to repair ships rounding Cape Horn lessened with the opening of the Panama Canal, and it was the introduction of Cheviot sheep and development of a trade selling wool that made the colony financially viable - without that the British would have probably abandoned the islands by the end of the 19th century. It was 1914 which made the strategic importance of the islands in naval control over the South Atlantic and British Antarctic Territories clear, and cemented the British intention to maintain control over the islands.
In terms of claims, the Argentine claim is that the first colony was French transferred to Spain and then all Spanish colonies were transferred to Argentina, with the 1826 re-settlement under Argentine authority (though technically only an Argentine colony for the couple of months there was a functioning Argentine garrison there); the British claim is based on re-occupation of the islands in 1833 and continuous occupation since 1840 with the current population almost entirely descendants of British settlers since 1840 (there will be some descent from the Argentine settlers from 1826-33, and almost certainly some of the naval forces based on the islands in the first half of the 20th century).
The Falkland Islands are a country?
Just out of curiousity, on what other British issues have I done this?
Otherwise, what Pomona said. Despite the murky beginnings of the colony, they surely have squatters' rights after 180 years or so.
At last census there were approxinately 3600 residents in the Falklands. There are thousands of CPOs in the UK every year.
Arguably you could give the population 1 million each for compensation and allow them to retain British Citizenship and just transfer sovereignty - at which point they are expatriate British citizens living in their own properties. (Perhaps with an arrangement for the Falklands Legislative assembly to continue to function much as it does now.) There are, for example, a quarter million or so expatriates, living in Spain.
How long, O Lord, how long?
As my mother used to say about me when I was four “You’re just opening your mouth and letting the wind blow your tongue around.”
He’s no more than a toddler, intellectually and emotionally. I hope that red button has been unwired.
Low IQ probably is.
*Testosterone
I dunno. Four Michigan congressmen had already sent a letter to Canada complaining about the wildfires before Trump made his threats. So I think Trump is possibly playing to a genuine section of public opinion on this. If his complaints manage to bring borderland votes into the GOP column in November, that calls into question the idea of Trump as an irrational actor on this.
Well, politicians will often attack other politicians in their own country for supposedly inadequate management of natural disasters. In fact, a few days ago, the leader of the opposition in Ontario blamed the Ford government for the severity of the current fires, claiming that, among other things, Ford let the provincial firefighting force "shrink year after year".
Now, I have no idea if that leader's criticism is valid, or if she's just throwing out anything she can to see what will stick(an honourable practice in politics, to be sure). But once you accept that governments CAN have negative impacts on the way natural disasters play out, it's not too huge a leap for a voter in Michigan to assume that's what happened in Canada, and that Trump is just looking out for the borderland's interests by fighting back, and maybe the GOP deserves his vote in November after all.
Right now, I'm doubting that Trump is actually going to impose any tariffs over this, but this kinda schtick is likely aimed at low-info voters who will just be impressed by all the belligerent posturing, and assume that means he must be doing something.
(NOW Magazine headline: Doug Ford says Ontario 'won't spare a penny fighting wildfires, Marit Stiles isn't buying it)
I guess this is meant to be some sorta threat to Canada, but it's not exactly clear what Canada is supposed to do at this point, even assuming Canadian culpability. Probably just a scapegoat in case Trump does actually cancel the game.