Try listening to the Behind The Bastards podcast about this guy if you can spare the time.

He is messed up far more than you think.

Removing outside sources of information? There are a few countries that already do this, and they’re not great places to live.

“This bloated liberal socialist program is inefficient and doesn’t work. Because it’s liberal and socialist. So we’re going to get rid of it. We’re planing to plan a replacement plan, but we haven’t planned on when to plan it. But we’ll blame the libs for that too, even though we have essentially captured all branches of the government at this point.”

Some inside perspective:

You are talking to staff or an intern. You might be the hundredth call for the day. They’ve heard all kinds of shit, from long-winded conspiracy crazies to the most courteous and intelligent calls ever. Yelling at them or being a jerk will get you nowhere. Be prepared to state your case clearly and concisely. Your concern will indeed be noted and logged.

Do not call a congressperson that isn’t your own. They are not required to listen to you, you are not their constituent. Do not write a congressperson that is not your own. The letter is almost guaranteed to go straight into the trash.

The best letters go on the intern break room fridge to be enjoyed by all.

Even so, unfortunately the congressperson may not act in a way consistent with the majority of people’s calls and letters. Thank money and power plays in politics for that.

Could it not be both?

I deleted Threads five days ago.

It was a cesspool of (Russian? Troll Farm?) propaganda attacking Harris for not having any accomplishments for the last four years, complaining about housing, grocery, egg, and gas prices, “fixing” America, a crapton of pro-jesus stuff, pro-Elon comments and reposts, government money going to “illegals” instead of hurricane victims, and a ton of made up lies. …

All of which were as transparent as fuck why they were wrong. VP’s don’t make policy, so what accomplishments should she have? Housing has been going up for a decade+, it’s not new, egg prices were normal while the pics were of organic egg prices and expensive grocery carts had hidden high cost items or just straight up lied about the cost, gas prices are the lowest they’ve been for years. Jesus stuff praised trump, America, tons of AI generated “holy” trump pics, bashed atheists, posted Elon’s BS pseudo-wisdom, Ignored the $20Bn spent on hurricane relief in favor of a few hundred million housing the undocumented workers living in the affected area…

It was infuriating. Because they were so obviously wrong…blatantly, in-your-face, completely fucking wrong. It was a constant flood of lies. Eight out of nine posts were BS.

But as soon as the election swung in Trump’s favor…poof…it went quiet. Hardly a peep. Gone.

And I realize that Threads was captured completely by troll farm bots spewing right-wing propaganda. And it was a waste of time. So my account will be deleted.

Musk is probably more popular inside and outside the administration.

No way trump can handle being in anyone’s shadow.

He also bought 9% of it and didn’t disclose it, IIRC that had something to do with it as well.

In addition to the other answer - it isn’t about hurting consumers. They don’t think that far ahead. They’re toddlers who can’t think past their immediate feelings.

It’s been proven time and again that republicans don’t care about the reality of a situation, only the feels they get about it. So making tariffs is a retaliatory maneuver that has absolutely no follow through - IOW, if you make tariffs against Chinese electric car imports the wise thing to do would be to boost US manufacture of the same with tax incentives or similar increase US buyers and manufacturers’ uptake of home-grown EVs. But that’s not what trump does.

That’s not what the people who voted for him want. They don’t govern. They want to punish everyone that ever slighted them, perceived or real.

They just lash out without a plan in an act of spite and revenge, and when the consequences come home to roost, like price hikes and increasing inflation, in true narcissist fashion, they yet again blame others and lash out more.

Guess Walz’s ANG service wasn’t good enough.

Not quiet at all. Miller tweeted openly about it.

The 777 is 375-ish tons, and the A380 is 630-ish tons.

When you have a president that dgaf about anything saying otherwise.

Musk has enough money to change whatever rules he wants and tie up all the government lawyers for years fighting over all the rules he might want to break.

Billionaires shouldn’t exist.

Slash government funding for everything except the socialism for the rich.

At no point did I suggest otherwise. In fact , I clearly stated WWIII was on the table. Go make up something else I said.

Pretty standard Dictator Handbook stuff.

Manufacture external enemies.

Manufacture internal enemies.

Take all the money.

Blame everyone else for the problems the country faces, choose populist, stupid, ineffective or detrimental solutions, repeat.

Choose violence.

There you go again.

Dems bad, who cares if trump is worse.

Well, you’ll get what you wanted when Israel finishes off Gaza and everything else, or starts WWIII when they can’t keep the bombs inside their extermination camp.

They believe it because that’s what people have been told to believe.

It should be glaringly obvious that trump’s implied policy that he will let Israel “finish the job” is far worse than the dems poor attempts at negotiating cease-fires or any other moderation on Israel’s aggression.

All the propaganda has focused on the democrat (in)action regarding Israel. Zero on trump’s plans.

That’s what the propaganda machine has been pushing.

I’ll offer that this seems to be (somewhat?) true in Canada as well. The pic on the menu was pretty much exactly what I received on my plate. I was surprised because I’m used to the usual “glamor shots” you get on US menus, the perfectly plated dish vs the whatever you actually get. The menu photo seems much more realistic in Canada.