Or he did speak to him, and Putin's doing this to remind Trump that he's still under his thumb.

"You can't even tell the truth, without everyone questioning if you're really lying." Powerless to even control that simple narrative.

It continues

Trump said he'll close the Department of Education “very early” in his administration

I guess the hope is that he's just lying again? Or joking? How hilarious is this guy! Stickin it to the libs! LOL!!!

The version of rationale that I've read about suggests that it isn't so much the American Arabs voters think Trump will be any better than Biden when it comes to supporting Palestinians. It is just that they are so upset with the Biden-Harris administration in how they insist on Israel having "the right to defend itself", and how they continue to provide military support to Israel that they can't bring themselves to vote for Harris, how the Biden administration supported the cracking down on pro-Palestinian rallies at the universities, so many of them choose to abstain themselves from the voting as a protest of sorts to the Democrats. Many also seem to know Trump would only be even more supportive of Israel / Netanyahu, but they just can't bring themselves to vote for the Democrats for the on-going support for Israel. Some also think that the situation can't get much worse for the Arab countries regardless of whether Harris or Trump is the president, so they abstained from voting, or voted for Trump bcos of other issues instead.

While I have some degree of sympathy and understanding for that kind of sentiments, I am a realist and pragmatist before I am an idealist most of the time. In this case if I were in their shoes, I would definitely have chosen the lesser of the 2 evils and voted for Harris instead of Trump.

It sounds like Trump is not the most cooperative for the transition, my hunch is it's gonna take some time after he takes office for things to happen because of that.

Another unrelated observation I've had with this election is that in terms of hostile outside (of the US) desires, Russia wants Trump in, whereas China prefers Harris due to Trump's stance. It does seem that Russia and China are, despite being in a "friendly relationship", increasingly on different ends of the spectrum.

There are also land disputes between Russia and China, though those are kind of hush hush. I feel like there's an outside chance, however miniscule, that China and Russia might be the ones that start shooting at each other.

Russian sounds like they are really weakened militarily ... reports as high as 100,000 dead due to the Ukraine war! They can't pump out enough babies to replace that ... that and it'll take 20 years. Never heard of China and Russian conflicts but yah, Chinese will wipe them out or they both nuke each other.

Yah, I saw a short piece on the the Arab Americans as well, in Michigan, a swing state. Welp, you got Trump who is even more Pro-Israel although he seems to have some sort of magic potion to be able to stop both the Ukraine/Russia and Israel/Hamas & Hezbollah wars in 24 hrs after he takes office.

I think anyone who wants to end the Ukraine conflict, ultimately Ukraine is going to have to cede some territory. I think everyone involved realizes this endlessly funding of Ukraine to simply stop the push of Russian forces isn’t sustainable.

If Biden did it, it would probably be celebrated, if Trump does it, he’ll get shit on saying he sided with Russia.

I can’t see the ultra nationalist Ukrainian forces giving up territory or abandoning the fight. There’s no easy solution to this conflict.

One of the purported reasons why Russia did it was to "steal" Ukrainian population to bolster their own. We are at the point where they are creating another echo chamber of low birth due to the casualties that will resonated through the next 4-5 generations. We saw this with WW2 where the millions killed affected that particular cohort through the 70 years since.

There's a strong belief with military analysts that while China has built up a mighty military on paper, the Chinese high command is fearful what happened with Russia will happen to them as well because the PLA has not seen any real conflict for generations. Their main objective for the last 30 years have been to put down internal strife. They have no real way to measure how effective their forces are once boots hit the ground.

I don't think Europe is ready to give in even if Trump calls it, but it will hurt Ukraine. The US has the benefit of the conflict not being in their backyard thus Trump can just pull out at the detriment of their own reliability. What we might see as a result of this is the dropping of the nuclear non-proliferation agreement as nations no longer feel that US would have their backs, and push to develop their own deterrences.

We are a bit away from it, but we are essentially watching the potential rise of another cold war with more participants this time.

Oh the irony in you saying this.

As someone with an interest in WW2, it is incredibly unfortunate that we have someone as short-sighted as Trump in the White House. The World saw what happened when UK's Chamberlain tried the appeasment strategy. Had Churchill not stood his ground, and had Roosevelt not backed the UK and the Allied Forces, the World would be in a very different place now.

History is repeating itself, but the World has learned nothing from it. FailFish

lol bra, you and everyone else in this thread are playing out exactly what you’ve always said in the Canadian politics thread

Trudeau - just a figure head! He doesn’t actually affect you! It’s the party!!!

Trump - personification of evil!! Single handed ruining the world!! He’s turning everyone against each other

Dunno where the irony lies in that I’ve always said this game of propping up Ukraine with just blank cheques is bad business. As much as you guys want to cry about it being a cheaper toll, it has to ultimately end at some point. If Russia can just keep buying soldiers and armaments, eventually “the west” will tire of backing this conflict and ultimately have to find a resolution.

You can save your Trump rage for when something actually happens.. like all these items you guys are crying about.

And so on.

Russia took a fuck load of territory for their own in and after WW2 as well, it was just as evil and ill conceived then. They just weren’t seen as the “bad guy” at that point.

Flatten Moscow and you can draw the line wherever you want. Different times, different conflicts, different powers.

Politicians control policy, they don't control economics. Understand the difference?

Yea those are completely unrelated. They never have an impact on one another.

Yah... economic policy is discernable anywhere from 1-3 years or more after its implemented.

Global policy is instantaneous especially if there are other parties involved.

Policy has an impact on the economy, however, it creates minor changes in a grand system that is impacted far heavier by the rest of the world.
It seems like your biggest issues with Trudeau are based on economic issues which are impacting the rest of the world fairly similarly with entirely different policy.
I know your goal is to be obtuse, but I'll just articulate it so everyone else understands why economic impact of policies are a lot different than the impact of social and medical policy like the goal of dismantling education and health for certain groups of people.

Musk has a role in Trump's government .. Dept of Government Efficiency. Objectively speaking, this might not be a bad role for him. How do you critique a more efficient government and cut through some of the red tape and layers.

It's worked exceptionally well for Twitter.

Sounds like a shit load of people are about to lose their job

Lmao, he's pumping "DOGE." I give Musk six months before Trump fires him, there's only room for one egotistic psychopath in the White House.

Not that easy to fire or gut government departments. There's something called the "administrative procedures act" which will slow or block changes major changes and any action take can be challenged in court.

Whatever it takes to replace the DEEP STATE with... anyone willing to suck Trump's dick

Trump will get a visit by the "deep state" first day he's back in office and that'll be the last we hear about him replacing them.