Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 16:05
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"You never blame yourself. You have to blame something else. If you do something bad, never, ever blame yourself."
- Donald Trump
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-say-never-blame-yourself/ cannot verify that Trump said these exact words, but he has said similar things about avoiding responsibility many times and about blaming the President (when he wasn’t in office).
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
cannot verify that Trump said these exact words
Of course you can't.
But you have a brain defect that made you post it anyhow.
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Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
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Easily the most important story so far about the inner workings of the second Trump Administration appeared yesterday. It appeared in Vanity Fair, and was based on numerous interviews with Trump’s political inner circle, in particular with his Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. The story is very detailed and in two parts, and here are links to take you to archived versions of both sections.
Section 1: https://archive.is/79tgs
Section 2: https://archive.is/wDiHj
For those who do not know Wiles, she is arguably the most important person in the administration not named Trump (with Trump, family always comes first). A long-time Republican political operative, Wiles was taken onboard during Trump’s first election campaign when she was his Florida chair (a rather important position considering the crucial weight of Florida’s electoral votes). Wiles stayed very close since and helped Trump win election again in 2024. She was them immediately named Chief of Staff. She runs the White House.
In other words, Trump trusts her politically as much as he trusts any non family member and she knows where the bodies are buried.
This makes the whole story invaluable and worth a close read. There are many extraordinary tidbits. RFK Jr and his anti-vax lunacy are not some fringe movement, for instance, but respected in the White House. This is how Wiles described him.
She referred to Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., another world-class disrupter, as “my Bobby” and “quirky Bobby.” In Wiles’s view, RFK Jr.’s shock treatment of HHS is warranted. “He pushes the envelope—some would say too far. But I say in order to get back to the middle, you have to push it too far.”
. . .
The whole story is fascinating. But it is Wiles’ comments that stand out as they are so frank and have the ring of honest answers.
Much more at https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/trump-knows
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Boy. You really are stupid, aren't you?
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Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
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Easily the most important story so far about the inner workings of the second Trump Administration appeared yesterday. It appeared in Vanity Fair, and was based on numerous interviews with Trump’s political inner circle, in particular with his Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. The story is very detailed and in two parts, and here are links to take you to archived versions of both sections.
Section 1: https://archive.is/79tgs
Section 2: https://archive.is/wDiHj
----------------
Susie Wiles Gets in Trouble for Saying What Everyone Knows
The Trump administration delivers yet more shocks but no surprises.
By Jonathan Chait | December 16, 2025, 3 PM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2025/12/real-revelation-susie-wil
es-interviews/685281/
In a normal presidency, the interviews that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles gave to Vanity Fair would trigger her resignation, maybe even the president’s impeachment. She admitted that President Donald Trump employs prosecutorial power for “score settling,” called Budget Director Russell Vought “a right-wing absolute zealot,” described Vice President J. D. Vance as “a conspiracy theorist for a decade,” and attributed Elon Musk’s erratic style in gutting federal agencies to his “avowed ketamine” use.
Yet no one on the right is calling for anyone to resign, or even for a congressional investigation into these allegations. That is not because Wiles—who is credited with largely masterminding Trump’s victorious presidential campaign—lacks credibility, nor is it because she has denied these comments (she has accused the magazine of taking her words out of context, which is what people say when they know they were recorded). It is simply because these quotes, while dire, are also unsurprising. Wiles did not say anything that Republicans didn’t already know. Her error lay in the breach between what Trump’s supporters understand and what they are permitted to say.
To grasp the moral abnormality of this state of affairs, let’s try a thought experiment. Suppose Joe Biden’s chief of staff had told a reporter that the president at least sometimes charged his political enemies with federal crimes because he didn’t like them, and that his most influential officials were ideological zealots, conspiracy theorists, and drug users.
I can imagine two possible responses to such an interview. One is to conclude that the chief of staff had gone crazy and should be fired immediately. The other is to consider the allegations worthy of investigation in order to assess whether the president is fit to hold the powers of the presidency. What I can’t imagine concluding is that the allegations were true and that Biden could continue going on his merry way as president.
Yet this is the Republican Party’s response. The Trump administration swiftly rolled out a series of tributes attesting to Wiles’s loyalty and blaming the “fake news” media for her comments. “The radical left is at it again, trying to create discord on President Trump’s team. It won’t work because we know & love @SusieWiles,” tweeted Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who added: “As someone who actually works closely with Susie, I can attest that she is brilliant, tough as nails, and is 100% dedicated to President Trump & America.”
Kelly Loeffler, the head of the Small Business Administration, called Wiles “a brilliant strategist who leads the Cabinet with grace and grit, even in the face of relentless fake news.” Donald Trump Jr. wrote a long testimonial calling Wiles “by far the most effective and trustworthy Chief of Staff that my father has ever had,” neglecting to even mention the inconvenient revelations.
Outside of the administration, Trump’s media defenders have responded by angrily castigating Wiles for opening her mouth to the media. “Genuinely sick to death of people on the right who seek the approval of left-wing media. Or even play with them for a minute. I can’t take it. It’s the saddest fetish,” complained the Federalist editor Mollie Hemingway. “You talked to them. What did you expe
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Boy. You really are stupid, aren't you?
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Starting at 9 minutes, Trump is giving away money to everybody! Vote for me!
The revealing pointlessness of Trump’s primetime speech
The president is a desperate man.
By Zack Beauchamp | Dec 17, 2025, 9:25 PM CST
https://www.vox.com/politics/472786/trump-primetime-speech-wednesday-i
nflation-pointless
When a president gives a primetime televised speech, it is typically about something of serious import: to make the case for a major new policy or to announce the beginning of a war.
President Donald Trump’s speech on Wednesday night had no grave significance. In fact, there didn’t seem to be much of a point at all.
The speech was a jumble of his usual false or even impossible claims — like a promise to reduce prescription drug costs by an impossible 400 percent — smashed together in no particular order. The speech began with a discussion of the cost of living, a subject he would drop and then return to as if just remembering that it was the number one reason his polls were low. Even the delivery was weird: Seemingly under network time constraints, the president read off the teleprompter angrily and quickly, speaking with the motormouth intensity of a 20-something banker who just discovered cocaine and now has a really great idea for a new restaurant.
So why am I writing about it at all?
Because the fact that it happened at all tells us something much more important: that the Trump administration is sinking, and his White House has no idea what to do about it.
The haphazard presidency, in one crystal clear moment
Earlier this week, I described the president’s second term governing style as “haphazardism.” Trump has basically authoritarian aims — he wants to wield untrammeled power — but has no clear plan or strategy for securing it. So what has happened so far is a series of individual abuses of power, each dangerous and damaging to democracy, but ultimately adding up to less than their parts in that they have not helped build a durable authoritarian model of governance.
https://www.vox.com/politics/472346/trump-democracy-2025-haphazard-aut
horitarian
Ultimately, haphazardism has put his presidency on the pathway to failure. Because the main guide to policy is Trump’s own instincts, which are changeable and inconsistent and often just weird, he does things that do serious damage to his own political position. The most notable example is tariffs: a policy that has clearly contributed to his biggest problem, a high cost of living, and thus a significant driver of his collapsing poll numbers.
For the White House, this is a very hard problem to solve. While actual policy on many issues is delegated to advisers like Stephen Miller and Russell Vought, the ultimate foundation of their power is the charismatic authority of Donald J. Trump. They cannot contravene him on his personal obsessions, like tariffs or prosecuting his enemies, without risking defenestration. So getting Trump to back off entirely from some of his most self-defeating moves is off the table.
Yet the White House is staring down abysmal poll numbers, a series of schisms inside the GOP and among the conservative elite, and looming midterm elections where Democrats appear poised to make massive gains. So what can they do?
Try other stuff and see if something, anything, might work to turn the ship around. Like, say, a televised address where the president just talks — yells, really — at the country for 20 minutes
Under normal circumstances, no White House would ever greenlight such a move (and, frankly, the networks probably wouldn’t go along with it). But things are looking desperate, and the Trump administration still retains a capacity to threaten private sector actors with the kind of persecution they’ve directed at places like Harvard. So why not demand some time on TV and see if a weird pseudo-stump speech will move the dial?
I’m not saying it’s a good approach. It’s not: It reeks of desperation.
But the fact that they needed to try such a desperate move at all is notable. It is the latest sign, among many,
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This Is What Presidential Panic Looks Like
Donald Trump delivered a fear-drenched rant live from the White House.
By Tom Nichols | December 17, 2025, 10:36 PM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/12/what-presidential-panic-look
s-like/685307/
The president of the United States just barged into America’s living rooms like an angry, confused grandfather to tell us all that we are ungrateful whelps.
When a president asks for network time, it’s usually to announce something important. But tonight, Donald Trump did not give anything like a normal speech or address. He was clearly working from a prepared text, but it sounded like one he’d written—or dictated angrily—himself, because it was full of bizarre howlers that even Trump’s second-rate speech-writing shop would probably have avoided, such as his assertion that inflation when he took office was the worst it had been in 48 years. (Why did he pick 1977 as a benchmark? Who knows. But he’s wrong.) He read the speech quickly, his voice rising in frustration as he hurled one lie after another into the camera.
We could take apart Trump’s fake facts, as checkers and pundits will do in the next few days. But perhaps more important than false statements—which for Trump are par for the course—was his demeanor. Americans saw a president drenched in panic as he tried to bully an entire nation into admitting he’s doing a great job. For 20 minutes, he vented his hurt feelings without a molecule of empathy or awareness. Economic concerns? Shut up, you fools, the economy is doing fine. (And if it isn’t, it’s not his fault—it’s Joe Biden’s.) Foreign-policy jitters? Zip it, you wimps, America is strong and respected.
In effect, Trump took to the airwaves, pointed his finger, and said: Quiet, piggy.
I consider myself a connoisseur of Trump’s speeches. I’ve watched them and live-tweeted them for years because I think Americans need to see what kind of man sits in the Oval Office. But even by Trump’s standards, this was an unnerving display of fear. I can only imagine America’s enemies in Moscow and Beijing and Tehran smiling with pleasure as they watched a president losing his bearings, berating his own people, and demanding that they absolve him of any blame when things get worse.
His rant contained no news, other than an example of his contempt for the U.S. military, whose loyalty he thinks he can purchase with a onetime $1,776 bonus check. This is projection: Trump has shown his willingness to be bought off with gold bars and trinkets, and he may think that the men and women of the armed forces are people of equally low character.
This was not a holiday address from the president of a great democracy to its citizens. This was a desperate tin-pot leader yelling into a microphone while cornered in his palace redoubt. Trump has been unraveling for weeks, and his speech tonight, like Trump himself, was unworthy of America and its people.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
This Is What Presidential Panic Looks Like
Donald Trump delivered a fear-drenched rant live from the White House.
No he didn't.
I could see why YOU might be scared after watching it though.
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Quote:Did you miss the part where Trump gives 1776 dollars to everybody in the military, before Christmas? How about Trump giving $11,000 to $20,000 to "most" taxpayers? Trump is scared, and he is paying bribes to protect himself. He is saying, "Here is money. You've got to love me. I gave you money!"
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
This Is What Presidential Panic Looks Like
Donald Trump delivered a fear-drenched rant live from the White House.
No he didn't.
I could see why YOU might be scared after watching it though.
But if you think about it, all Trump is really doing is doubling the National Debt in the next ten years because of the weird rules and laws he passes now will prevent the IRS from collecting taxes long after Trump is dead meat.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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