Thread: President Trump - 2nd Term

Originally Posted by 39TG

I think that's correct. Europe and the UK have been caught with their pants down. If Europe could defend Europe from Russia, then Europe would be fine. Trump is a moron. The US isn't going to do well out of all the argy-bargy Trump is causing.

Europe has nukes.

It's not invasion from outside it needs to worry about.

James O'Brien about truth and lies

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Europe has nukes.

No it doesn't. The frogs have nukes, as does the UK. The rest of Europe doesn't.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

It's not invasion from outside it needs to worry about.

Originally Posted by bsnub

The frogs have nukes, as does the UK.

That means Europe has nukes.

Originally Posted by bsnub

as does the UK.

hmmm, the last two test firings suggest we have them its just they don't go anywhere.




By Jonathan Beale, defence correspondent, and Andre Rhoden-Paul


BBC News


The test firing of a Trident missile from a Royal Navy submarine has failed, for the second time in a row.


The latest test of the UK's nuclear deterrent was from HMS Vanguard and was seen by Defence Secretary Grant Shapps.


The missile's booster rockets failed and it landed in the sea close to the launch site, according to the Sun, external, which first reported the malfunction.


Mr Shapps said he has "absolute confidence" in Trident's submarines, missiles and nuclear warheads.


This is highly embarrassing for both the UK and the US manufacturer of the Trident missile.


British tests of Trident missiles are rare, not least because of the cost. Each missile is worth around £17m and the last test in 2016 also ended in failure when the missile veered off course. Test-fired missiles are not armed with their nuclear warheads.


What is Trident and how does it work?


Both Mr Shapps and the head of the Navy were on board HMS Vanguard when it fired the unarmed test missile in January.


The submarine had just had a more than seven-year refit.


In a written statement to Parliament, Mr Shapps confirmed "an anomaly did occur" during the test on 30 January this year, but said Trident was "the most reliable weapons system in the world".


He said: "The test reaffirmed the effectiveness of the UK's nuclear deterrent, in which the government has absolute confidence. The submarine and crew were successfully certified and will rejoin the operational cycle as planned.


"On this occasion, an anomaly did occur, but it was event specific and there are no implications for the reliability of the wider Trident missile systems and stockpiles.


"Nor are there any implications for our ability to fire our nuclear weapons, should the circumstances arise in which we need to do so."


He added Trident remained "effective, dependable, and formidable."


The missile was supposed to have flown several thousand miles before landing harmlessly in the Atlantic between Brazil and West Africa. Instead, it dropped into the ocean near to where it was launched.


At the time of the failed 2016 test, the Sunday Times reported that it was launched from HMS Vengeance off the coast of Florida.


The paper said the Trident II D5 missile was intended to be fired 3,700 miles (5,954 km) to a sea target off the west coast of Africa but veered towards the US.


The cause of what went wrong remains top secret, the paper reported, but quoted a senior naval source as saying the missile suffered an in-flight malfunction after launching out of the water.


Dr Matthew Harries, director of proliferation and nuclear policy at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), said it was impossible to say how significant the test failure was.


He told BBC News: "There could be a variety of explanations for something going wrong in what HMS Vanguard was doing in test-launching this missile, and there isn't enough information on what exactly that was.


"The missiles the UK uses are drawn from a common pool that the US and UK both use, and the US has conducted multiple tests without these kind of problems.


"Of course it is embarrassing when the launch is announced in advance and the defence secretary is on board. It doesn't look good."

Originally Posted by cyrille

That means Europe has nukes.

not really, France has them and like their stance with the weapons and NATO there is no guarrantee France will use them for its allies

In English, that does not mean Europe does not have nukes.

It's like saying the US does not have nukes because there are none in Kentucky.

Dpends if you are defining Europe as the loose colalition of countries or the geographic region, you weren't clear on that. All the news focuses on "Europes" response, implying the former.

Originally Posted by cyrille

That means Europe has nukes.

Oh get real. Do you really think that the UK would nuke ruzzia if Poland was invaded?

Originally Posted by malmomike77

not really, France has them and like their stance with the weapons and NATO there is no guarrantee France will use them for its allies

Exactly and they won't.

Originally Posted by cyrille

In English, that does not mean Europe does not have nukes.

Oh FFS.

Originally Posted by cyrille

It's like saying the US does not have nukes because there are none in Kentucky.

That is not the same thing at all. Not even close.

Originally Posted by bsnub

All the effort Kyiv had expended in wooing the White House, combining flattery with bribery and a share of Ukraine’s mineral wealth, imploded in minutes when Volodymyr Zelenskyy broke the fundamental rule of the new global reality: he told the truth about Donald Trump.

All America’s allies, the great majority of Republican leaders who have bowed to him, and a good number of his own cabinet, know full well that Trump is trapped in a disinformation bubble, but Zelenskyy said it out loud at a press conference on Wednesday.

In this new world where the foreign policy of the most powerful country on Earth has been rapidly reorganised around the fragile ego of a sullen and resentful old man, you might as well launch missiles at America’s eastern seaboard as utter a few words of rebuke.

Zelenskyy was aware of this. On Tuesday, he had complained that his country was being excluded from talks about its fate between the US and Russia in Riyadh. They were “about Ukraine but without Ukraine”, he said.

It was a fair point. What happened in Riyadh was an upending of western policy towards Ukraine, but none of that matters any more. This is year zero as far as Trump, Elon Musk and their supporters are concerned. The Ukrainian president’s gripe triggered a meltdown in Mar-a-Lago, where Trump told stunned reporters that Ukraine had started the war, and that Zelenskyy had a 4% approval rating.

It is hardly surprising Zelenskyy lost his cool. Part of the reason he has a 57% confidence rating in the latest poll (13% above Trump’s own current standing) is because he has led his country through years of war with his heart vividly on his sleeve. Having been subjected to eight years of Russian aggression, followed by an entirely unprovoked full-on invasion which has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian citizens, and then to be told on the world stage that: “You should have never started it”, would be too much for most people.

When slighted and sprayed with Trumpian falsehoods, other world leaders, with much less at stake, have resorted to a “smile-and-wave” default strategy, deflecting direct questions and changing the subject to some aspect of relations with Washington that is still functioning normally.

Zelenskyy did not do this on Wednesday. Instead, he said out loud the bit that European leaders keep quiet. Trump, he observed, is “trapped in this disinformation bubble”. He was stating the obvious, but not even Zelenskyy could have known how fetid the air inside Trump’s bubble has become. Now we know.

Trump’s tirade on his own app, Truth Social, is a distillation of the greatest hits of Russian disinformation from the past three years. He said Zelenskyy was “A Dictator without Elections” (something Trump has never said about Putin) who had hoodwinked the Biden administration into a $350bn war of choice, which only “TRUMP” could fix. The president’s repeated references to himself in the third person and all caps erased any lingering doubts about the single unifying compulsion now driving Trump foreign policy.

The child who guilelessly points out the emperor has no clothes is the hero of the folk tale, but the emperor in Hans Christian Andersen’s story did not have a vast nuclear arsenal and the world’s mightiest army. Telling the truth is cathartic, but getting into a personal spat with Trump amid the dizzying euphoria of his restoration to the Oval Office risks serious damage to your country.

That begs the question: what will work with Trump now? He admires autocrats and is eager to please them, but that is not really an option for the world’s remaining democracies. The hope in western European capitals, based on patchy evidence from the first Trump term, is that if they can make discreet common cause with the calmer heads around Trump he can be gently steered away from his more extreme whims.

In that regard, they have some faith in Marco Rubio and Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff. They may be able to talk the president out of his stated plan to own and ethnically cleanse Gaza, if only because it would be so disastrous for the US. But from the evidence of Trump’s rants, the poison about Ukraine has seeped deeper into the president’s nervous system.

Zelenskyy’s best option might be to persevere with the offer of an American share in Ukraine’s rare earths. Trump’s first offer was to take half of the spoils with no security guarantees in return. But the absurd opening offer is likely to be just part of his “art of the deal” brinkmanship. Further negotiations may distract him, like a dog with a bone, from his profound pro-Putin impulses.

It is a long shot. It is also an act of faith to believe this Trump episode in American history will eventually pass. But we are not even one month into his chaotic second term. For a country like Ukraine, facing an existential threat, it is going to be a very long four years.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...th-about-trump

I always enjoy your posts snubby ..always factual

Im all for making America great again but it shouldn't be at other countries expense? It's sad that the billionaires get to call the shots.

Originally Posted by BLD

It's sad that the billionaires get to call the shots.

They always have and always will BLD. Carlin was spot on a decade ago.

Jonathan Pie has rev'd up

Originally Posted by BLD

Im all for making America great again but it shouldn't be at other countries expense? It's sad that the billionaires get to call the shots.

Well anyone who has even the slightest modicum of 20th century history knows what happened the last time the US chose to thumb its nose at what was happening in the rest of the world.

Btw, By April 2022, the US and all European NATO members should have had boots on the ground. At least half a million. Putin would have backed down and we wouldn't be discussing this now. Choosing to feed the Ukraine with arms and cash while leaving the Ukrainians to do all the fighting and dying was strategy doomed to fail!

So now here we (Europe) are scrambling to finally take an action to get troops on the ground.

Churchill had it right when he said, "I never worry about action, but only about inaction".

The west's failure to take action is predictably coming back to hurt us far more than action 3 years ago would have.

Originally Posted by Norton

Choosing to feed the Ukraine with arms and cash while leaving the Ukrainians to do all the fighting and dying was strategy doomed to fail!

Worse. They were denied some weapons and were prohibited to use them efficiently.

Originally Posted by beachbound

And what if he didn’t?

Then we would have had a nuclear war. Your question implies Putin can do what ever he wants for fear he might use his nucs?

^we should stick two fingers up to Trump and the US and put a "peace keeping" force in Ukr whilst Putin is still in a mess personnel and equipment wise. Of course UK and European countries are similarly taxed in terms of consumables and there is no spetite in Germany so it won't happen unless there is a tri partite pact between UK, France and Poland.
It's a great opportunity to stick the middle finger up to Trump and call the War Criminals bluff.

So of course the fascist-in-chief has taken control of the White House press room.

Apparently him picking only brown nosers is "giving access back to the American people".

The White House said Tuesday that its officials “will determine” which news outlets can regularly cover President Donald Trump up close — a sharp break from a century of tradition in which a pool of independently chosen news organizations go where the chief executive does and hold him accountable on behalf of regular Americans.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the changes would rotate traditional outlets from the group and include some streaming services. Leavitt cast the change as a modernization of the press pool, saying the move would be more inclusive and restore “access back to the American people” who elected Trump. But media experts said the move raised troubling First Amendment issues because the president is choosing who covers him.

White House says it '''will determine''' which news outlets cover Trump, rotating traditional ones - ABC News

It's because AP has continued to use the name 'Gulf of Mexico'.



White House says it will decide which news outlets cover Trump | Trump administration | The Guardian

It's like the world's supposedly biggest superpower is being run by a nine year old.

Trump shares AI video of Gaza vision featuring golden statues, bearded belly dancers and Netanyahu on a sunbed | US News | Sky News

Trump Gaza