We don’t call North Korea the “DPRK” or “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea”. We don’t call Taiwan the “Republic of China”. Heck, we call football “soccer”.

Sometimes, people have different names for different things, and that’s OK. If Trump wants to waste time and effort renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America to stroke his own ego, that’s his choice. That doesn’t mean everybody else has to play ball. He can’t use military might to force other countries to adopt the name change, just like North Korea can’t force us to refer to them as the DPRK.

My bigger thought is what kind of geopolitical laughing stock the US is going to look like four years from now. I mean we’re 5 days into his term and he’s already promising to create an entire branch of government to show the rest of the world he has no fucking idea how tariffs work, he’s threatening to take Greenland of all places by force, and now one of his cronies wants to use military might to force other countries to adopt an irrelevant name change.

It’s like the country is being run by Kim Jong Un.

Keep in mind that they don’t need a Constitutional Amendment to pull this off by hook or by crook. It’s just the “cleanest” way. They do have other options at their disposal:

• Someone could come up with a “reinterpretation” of the 14th amendment that says it doesn’t apply to Trump because he served non-consecutive terms or somesuch. In this political climate, all they need is for it to be juuuuuust plausible enough to sound legitimate and that’s probably good enough.

• Trump could just file a lawsuit, probably through Aileen Cannon’s court, and argue that the 14th amendment is unenforceable, similar to what they did when Colorado removed Trump from the ballot last year. Then they just yadda yadda yadda it up to the Supreme Court that could just hand-wave the rest of the 14th amendment away like they do every time the Constitution gets in their way, resigning the 14th amendment to little more than wasted ink on old paper.

• Trump could just run anyway, under the “Yeah, what the fuck are you going to do about it?” rule that has served him pretty well so far. Of course, states would then try to have him removed from the ballot again, only for the Supreme Court to step in just like they did last time, and say that states aren’t empowered to actually enforce the 14th amendment. The Supreme Court decides to hear the case, but of course, delays it until the last possible moment. Then the Court rules that “It is now too late to have Trump removed from the ballot this late in the election process, so we are going to let his candidacy stand and let the people decide.”, essentially giving Trump a free pass while not directly ruling on the matter to ensure that future popular Democrat doesn’t try the same thing.

• Congress could pass a law giving Trump an exemption from the 14th amendment, which he of course would sign into law. When the inevitable lawsuit is filed because this would be blatantly unconstitutional, the Supreme Court could simply chime in and say that this is a political matter that is not up to the courts to interfere in, and let the law stand. This would of course hold until a Democrat tries to run for a third term. Then watch how quickly they can act.

.

If any of these things seem completely ludicrous or unrealistic…these are all tactics that Trump has already successfully used in court in some form. Trump has the backing of the DOJ, a complicit Congress, a Supreme Court that has already both said and proven their willingness to accommodate Trump, especially if they can increase their own power or further shield themselves from scrutiny in the process, and about half of the state governments as well.

The Constitution is not a magical, sentient, self-enforcing papal bull. It’s a really old piece of paper written by people who couldn’t predict the needs of society today any better than we can predict the needs of the society of 2275. It is only enforceable so long as our three branches of government are willing to enforce it. And with all three branches right now looking at the Constitution as less the law of the land and more of a nuisance that’s in their way, I wouldn’t be putting too much stock in those protections holding up for very long. There is a very real possibility that this administration really could suspend the Constitution, with not only the backing of the Supreme Court, but also the thunderous applause of about half of the voting public.

I give it a week before Trump gets Aileen Cannon somehow involved and uses some jedi mind trick to try to reinstate the EO.

I’m not saying its right, but all of these people should not be the least bit surprised and should have seen this coming. Not only is it typical for an incoming POTUS to replace at least some top officials with their own nominees, but Trump explicitly stated he’d be purging anyone not sufficiently MAGA enough for his liking. It’s not like this came out of nowhere. And anyone who has been paying any attention should have known that Immigration was going to be one of the first departments purged.

To me, this just comes off as someone trying to make a political statement regarding contraception and just falling flat.

You know, I remember a time where things like freedom of speech, expression, and the press were a thing. Where you could criticize a government official (or in this case, someone pretending to be one) and not have to do things like lose your job, cough up millions of dollars, or have to apologize for stating facts.

And for those wondering why everybody’s suddenly referring to it as an “arm gesture” instead of a “Nazi Salute” is because they don’t want to have to get fired, sued, and forced to apologize anyway for saying it. Trump has left a permanent chilling effect on freedom of the press that will linger long, long past his presidency.

I’m not entirely sold that when it returns it will have all of the things it once had. Only time will tell I guess.

If you have any belief that any of this stuff will be returning, I have beachfront property on Mars that you may be interested in.

Isn’t this just going to impact the US credit rating, leading to higher borrowing costs and enormous inflation spikes?

I don’t think Russia does enough business with the US for this to have any meaningful impact one way or the other. And I admit that I know little about the subject, but if I recall correctly, Russia got hit with all sorts of sanctions when they invaded Ukraine to begin with, just to see many of those sanctions either “worked around” or outright ignored because many European countries weren’t in a position to actually enforce such sanctions without doing even more harm to their own people than to Russia (mostly because of European reliance on Russian gas). And in the end, what sanctions were enforced did absolutely nothing to stop Russia anyway.

Russia will not be stopped by diplomatic means. They have allies in China, Iran, North Korea, etc. that can help Russia achieve their goals, work around sanctions, and replenish their soldiers and arms. Just like they’ve been doing. Continuing to supply Ukraine with supplies without actually putting boots on the ground has only ensured that Ukraine will slowly die a death of a thousand paper cuts instead of Russia just steamrolling in and taking the whole country all at once. The only way this is ever going to end in Ukraine’s favor is boots on the ground, but no country is willing to give them that.

Ukraine can’t hold out forever, even with supplies from NATO allies. Russia has historically been willing to shove soldiers into the meat grinder en masse until they win by attrition, and then simply move Russian citizens into the territory they take over in the process. And Ukraine is fighting Russia’s war by Russia’s rules, where Russia gets to replenish their troops with soldiers from allied nations, but Ukraine isn’t allowed to do the same.

Ukraine and its allies really do have to make a tough decision if they want the war to end. Either allies can actually start supplying boots on the ground in order to help Ukraine drive back Russia and get soldiers out of Ukranian territory, or Ukraine is going to have to enter peace talks with Russia where they will have absolutely no negotiating power, which at best means they’d be giving up a good chunk of their territory and promising Russia that they’ll essentially become a puppet state. The current barely-a-stalemate where Russia slowly takes over more and more territory over the course of time just delays the inevitable and causes a shitload of deaths in the process.

It’s time we did something about it.

We had that chance, just over two months ago.

We elected one of them to office.

This is leverage, nothing more. He has every intention of saving it. He’s just going to make sure that he gets his cut and assurances that any anti-Trump videos be scrubbed and any searches return no results. And he wants to make sure they continue to do what he wants, when he wants, and the way he wants by literally hanging a potential ban over their heads that he can sign into effect by EO at the stroke of his favorite sharpie.

It is literally a Mafia protection racket on steroids.