Trump 2.0

[Woodchopper]

while attempting to show off Starlink’s in-flight WiFi capabilities while onboard his private jet over the weekend, Musk streamed himself playing some PoE2 on the hardest difficulty, which was broadcast live on X.

The DOGE chief was, predictably, terrible at the game, but that was the least of his problems—Less than five minutes into the stream, a player logged on and asked Musk if he could “please jerk off mr trump so he dies of a heart attack.” It only got worse from there.

For the next hour and a half, Musk sat in stony-faced silence and blasted techno music while dozens of users with names such as ELON_IS_A_PEEDOPHILE and ELON_MUSK_IS_PATHETIC repeatedly spammed the chat to tell him “YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND YOU WILL DIE ALONE” and “YOU WILL ALWAYS FEEL INSECURE AND IT WILL NEVER GO AWAY.”

“Elon. It’s me, Ashley St. Claire. I have no other means of contacting you so I bought PoE2 early access. Please pay your child support. Thank you Elon,” said an account pretending to be the conservative influencer currently locked in a custody battle with Musk over their five-month-old child, while another said his estranged daughter Vivian “was right” about him being terrible at video games.

[…]

“There’s a lot of r-----s in the chat,” said Musk at one point, using the r-word slur while a user named HC_John_Wick repeatedly spammed “ELON HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO LOOK THIS DUMB AND UGLY WHY IS UR TESLA COMPANY FALLING APART AHAAHAAHAAH! WHAT HAPPENED BUDDY?”

[…]

Eventually, he vanished when his WiFi connection abruptly cut out and ended the stream, which he later deleted from X but was swiftly reuploaded onto YouTube.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk ... -the-chat/

[Tristan]

while attempting to show off Starlink’s in-flight WiFi capabilities while onboard his private jet over the weekend, Musk streamed himself playing some PoE2 on the hardest difficulty, which was broadcast live on X.

The DOGE chief was, predictably, terrible at the game, but that was the least of his problems—Less than five minutes into the stream, a player logged on and asked Musk if he could “please jerk off mr trump so he dies of a heart attack.” It only got worse from there.

For the next hour and a half, Musk sat in stony-faced silence and blasted techno music while dozens of users with names such as ELON_IS_A_PEEDOPHILE and ELON_MUSK_IS_PATHETIC repeatedly spammed the chat to tell him “YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND YOU WILL DIE ALONE” and “YOU WILL ALWAYS FEEL INSECURE AND IT WILL NEVER GO AWAY.”

“Elon. It’s me, Ashley St. Claire. I have no other means of contacting you so I bought PoE2 early access. Please pay your child support. Thank you Elon,” said an account pretending to be the conservative influencer currently locked in a custody battle with Musk over their five-month-old child, while another said his estranged daughter Vivian “was right” about him being terrible at video games.

[…]

“There’s a lot of r-----s in the chat,” said Musk at one point, using the r-word slur while a user named HC_John_Wick repeatedly spammed “ELON HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO LOOK THIS DUMB AND UGLY WHY IS UR TESLA COMPANY FALLING APART AHAAHAAHAAH! WHAT HAPPENED BUDDY?”

[…]

Eventually, he vanished when his WiFi connection abruptly cut out and ended the stream, which he later deleted from X but was swiftly reuploaded onto YouTube.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk ... -the-chat/

See? Childish bullying is good actually!

[Martin Y]

So this "r-word slur". Is it Republicans? (Honestly, I don't know what it is.)

[FlammableFlower]

I believe it ends in a similar fashion to petard and custard and can be used as a synonym to reduce, impede or hamper...

[Martin Y]

Ta.

[jimbob]

https://youtu.be/zZmDGMyeQpg

Splendid rant

[Grumble]

https://youtu.be/zZmDGMyeQpg

Splendid rant

I enjoyed that. Slightly more obliquely I also enjoyed the Midas episode of Podyssey, which starts and ends with Trump.
https://overcast.fm/+ABN4GeQAcCE

[Rich Scopie]

"Donald Trump is going to "make America's showers great again" by easing rules restricting water flow, the White House says."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2eeggyppzo

[Gfamily]

"Donald Trump is going to "make America's showers great again" by easing rules restricting water flow, the White House says."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2eeggyppzo

A new golden era?

[Tessa K]

"Donald Trump is going to "make America's showers great again" by easing rules restricting water flow, the White House says."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2eeggyppzo

A new golden era?

[Martin Y]

He released all that water from Northern California or Canada or wherever it was, and now he'll do the same with showers. Make Americans wet again. What could go wrong?

[jimbob]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly22xm8kx1o

British bloke finds his tattoo (of his daughter's birth date and time) used on the ICE website as an example of a Venezuelan gang tattoo.

[Chris Preston]

Trump has finally turned his Cabinet Meetings into an imitation of Kim Jong Un's.

[Chris Preston]

"Donald Trump is going to "make America's showers great again" by easing rules restricting water flow, the White House says."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2eeggyppzo

Trump tried this with toilets in his first term, presumably because he was having a hard time making his dumps go away.

[Brightonian]

State Department orders employees to denounce colleagues for any "anti-Christian bias":
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/1 ... ias-033535

Wonder if some will get their denouncements in first to avoid being sent to the El Salvador gulag.

[Grumble]

State Department orders employees to denounce colleagues for any "anti-Christian bias":
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/1 ... ias-033535

Wonder if some will get their denouncements in first to avoid being sent to the El Salvador gulag.

I wonder if the form is available for anyone to fill in

[Gfamily]

Oh, nearly forgot with all the other news, how's 'his' ceasefire in Ukraine going?

[bjn]

Man with valid working visa deported after returning to the US from an overseas trip to scatter his sister's ashes. Called "retarded" in the process and told "Trump is back in town; we’re doing things the way we should have always been doing them."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... d-deported

[Grumble]

Man with valid working visa deported after returning to the US from an overseas trip to scatter his sister's ashes. Called "retarded" in the process and told "Trump is back in town; we’re doing things the way we should have always been doing them."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... d-deported

Tourism from Europe has dropped a bit. Considering valid working visas don’t guarantee entry I think this will go down a bit further even.
https://bsky.app/profile/jburnmurdoch.f ... kphoheqc27

[Fishnut]

The SAVE act has passed in the House without any safeguards.

The act will require US citizens to register to vote in person by presenting their ID along with a birth certificate, passport or other form of ID that proves citizenship. It does not include proof of name change or a marriage certificate as acceptable proof of identity, meaning that it's going to be a lot harder for married women - and anyone else who has changed their name - to vote. Plus the requirement to register in person will likely disenfranchise people who live in remote areas, poor people, disabled people, elderly people and those who live or work overseas.

And if you think this was an oversight, Republicans blocked an amendment that would safeguard against this problem.

[Grumble]

https://open.substack.com/pub/deanblund ... medium=web
How Canada played a key role in forcing Trump to back down

[gosling]

The SAVE act has passed in the House without any safeguards.

The act will require US citizens to register to vote in person by presenting their ID along with a birth certificate, passport or other form of ID that proves citizenship. It does not include proof of name change or a marriage certificate as acceptable proof of identity, meaning that it's going to be a lot harder for married women - and anyone else who has changed their name - to vote. Plus the requirement to register in person will likely disenfranchise people who live in remote areas, poor people, disabled people, elderly people and those who live or work overseas.

And if you think this was an oversight, Republicans blocked an amendment that would safeguard against this problem.

Do you think this might backfire on them? Thinking of the situation here where Rees-Mogg admitted that voter ID requirements hit Tory voters more than they expected.

[Fishnut]

The SAVE act has passed in the House without any safeguards.
...

Do you think this might backfire on them? Thinking of the situation here where Rees-Mogg admitted that voter ID requirements hit Tory voters more than they expected.

No, but only because I don't think we'll be seeing free and fair elections in the US for the foreseeable future. Trump has already used the Alien Enemies Act (only supposed to be used in wartime, and last used in WW2 to intern Japanese Americans) to deport people to El Salvador. By the time the midterms come I think the US will be far closer to Russia or Turkey in the validity of its elections than the UK. By the time of the next presidential election I can see the 22nd amendment being repealed and the Insurrection Act invoked.

A podcast I listen to likened Trump's strategy to the T Rex in Jurassic Park testing the fences and it feels an apt description. He's seeing what he can get away with and so far it's everything. The courts aren't doing anything meaningful to stop him because they know they can't but all least by going along with him they are able to pretend they still have authority. There may come a time when he goes too far even for the Supreme Court but then what? He'll do whatever the hell he wants anyway and the court will be powerless to stop him. In his first term he showed that much of what people think were rules were really just conventions, and that even if you break the rules people will do little more than huff and say "you can't do that!". And instead of recognising this and building in restraints to prevent a repeat, everyone just seemed to sigh with relief when Biden got in and assumed that things were back to normal.

Trump's now back, with an actual plan this time, and he knows there's no-one who can stop him. Protests and fake filibusters aren't going to fix this. I don't know where the future leads but it's looking rather scary right now.

[jimbob]

The SAVE act has passed in the House without any safeguards.
...

Do you think this might backfire on them? Thinking of the situation here where Rees-Mogg admitted that voter ID requirements hit Tory voters more than they expected.

No, but only because I don't think we'll be seeing free and fair elections in the US for the foreseeable future. Trump has already used the Alien Enemies Act (only supposed to be used in wartime, and last used in WW2 to intern Japanese Americans) to deport people to El Salvador. By the time the midterms come I think the US will be far closer to Russia or Turkey in the validity of its elections than the UK. By the time of the next presidential election I can see the 22nd amendment being repealed and the Insurrection Act invoked.

A podcast I listen to likened Trump's strategy to the T Rex in Jurassic Park testing the fences and it feels an apt description. He's seeing what he can get away with and so far it's everything. The courts aren't doing anything meaningful to stop him because they know they can't but all least by going along with him they are able to pretend they still have authority. There may come a time when he goes too far even for the Supreme Court but then what? He'll do whatever the hell he wants anyway and the court will be powerless to stop him. In his first term he showed that much of what people think were rules were really just conventions, and that even if you break the rules people will do little more than huff and say "you can't do that!". And instead of recognising this and building in restraints to prevent a repeat, everyone just seemed to sigh with relief when Biden got in and assumed that things were back to normal.

Trump's now back, with an actual plan this time, and he knows there's no-one who can stop him. Protests and fake filibusters aren't going to fix this. I don't know where the future leads but it's looking rather scary right now.

Yup, it's bad when my greatest hope is that he eats the wrong faces too soon. Not his base, but the minor functionaries who would need to implement things on the ground, and who might find themselves noticeably worse off in ways that they link to Trump.

[dyqik]

By the time of the next presidential election I can see the 22nd amendment being repealed and the Insurrection Act invoked.

I wish people would actually read the Constitution before commenting on it.

The only way that the 22nd Amendment can be repealed is via a vote of 2/3rds of Congress, and then ratification by 3/4 of the States. That's not possible before 2028, because more than 1/4 of States are Democrat controlled.

Similarly, all talk about cancelling elections is raging gibberish. Elections happen on a Constitutionally determined timescale. If they don't take place, then Trump doesn't get any new laws and no budget to operate the government.

Elections not being fair is another matter, but elections are run by the States, not by the Federal government.