What the hell is even going on at this point?

Trump always comes out of meetings agreeing with the last person he talked to. He has no mind if his own any more, if he ever had one to begin with.

Why don't all of the left leaning politicians then make it a point to just continually schedule 1 on 1 meetings with him?
- The stench probably.
- A lot of people really, really don't know how to read others and how to manage a character like Trump.
  For Mamdani it was a fucking dog-walk, because he knows people, he's emotionally intelligent, he's very, very crafty too. Don't let the sometimes goofy charm fool you, he's extremely focused and sharp and careful about everything he says. He just has it down so it looks natural.
  Not saying he's not a genuine person, but he also knows the game like he was born to it.
  For the rest of the Dems? I mean... there are a few people who have a lot of spirit and fire, but that's not how to make Trump bend the knee, you have to really understand his buttons and you can't meet his obstinance and stupidity with force.
- Trump was a Democrat back when he was handing out BJ's. Probably got his anger from a scorned lover situation.
  Anyway, I think Republicans all have a carry card that says "Trump meeting rules: 1: kiss his ass. 2: tell him to never meet alone with cheating Democrats"
  Over the years he forgot that cheating was about his male lover and thinks it's about elections.
- Trump's handlers are usually a little better at keeping the lid on him
- Their constituents would slaughter them for appearing to cooperate with Trump.
- I think his cabinet knows this fact about him and tries to control who he meets with so they can keep this power for themselves.
It depends if it is about his talk or his actions.
Yes, what he says is largely influenced who he saw last, but what he does is quite consistent, especially if it involves Russia.

Simple, Mamdani probably just knows how to handle a narcissist. All you gotta do is stroke their ego, and it's not too difficult to get them on your side; the hardest part making them think that your ideas were their own, but even that's not too difficult because in typical narcissistic fashion, they'll just steal your ideas and then claim them as their own.

It's been 9 years since he started politics and I never understood why anyone ever backed him.

Its been way longer than 9 years. He ran for president when I was in the 7th grade. I'm almost 30.
He matches their hateful energy.
They believe he will hurt the right people (to them); marginalized people.
They are largely happy that he is, and many are completely willing to accept massive sacrifice to get this.
- They believe he will hurt the right people (to them); marginalized people.
  This is incorrect.
  People backed Donald in 2016 because, at that time, they'd had enough of the disappointment and impoverishment brought to them by Obama's politics and the promise that those politics would continue under Clinton. It was the same under Biden/Harris, where consumers watched their basic needs double and triple in cost and their response was 'just be joyful about it'.
  Donald, in both cases, was the change candidate, and the majority wanted change more than anything else.
  There is a smaller contingent that, yes, did back him because of his hateful energy, but not the majority. The majority just want to be able to pay their bills without having to work 100 hours a week.
Populism. He convinced everyone he was a billionaire outsider not beholden to anyone. The whole thing started from a fake rally to help him gain ratings for The Apprentice.
- But like, his credibility is (and always was) total shit. How can there be 75 million people that gullible? To me, it couldn't have been more obvious he was lying if his pants had literally been on fire.
Some people are way more racist than we can even imagine.
That's the scary part to me. Even though lots of conservatives are currently shitting on Trump, they still like the underlying policies and vote for politicians like Pierre Poilievre, Doug Ford, or François Legault. It's not just a Trump thing. People can hate him for multiple reasons, but where I live, they still vote for politicians that are shitting on immigrants, say they want to help the poor but favour the rich, are being protectionist, nationalist, and promise pretty much the same shit than Trump. And it's spreading worldwide.

That's.... Actually a good look for him.

I absolutely hate saying anything nice about him, but yeah... That look kinda works for him.

its probably because the way he wears his suit, its always look like its choking him, because he wants to hide the folds of his necks.

Imagine having such an eroded sense of self you cling to what you deem is a strong man and have to emulate him. All While being the president of the US

I still get amazed at how absolutely stupid MAGA are.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder in a nutshell.

The face paint looks a bit lighter also

He's had an epiphany. He's going to come out as bi any day now and defect to the Greens and by executive order make the stripes in the US flag rainbow coloured and he's going to rule as a just, benevolent dictator.
- Oh a benevolent dictator? Well, that's just great! Benevolent dictators get the guillotines with a cushion on them.
I'm genuinely starting to below eve at this point his fake tan and makeup are meant to hide how sickly pale he's become. The old asshole is definitely facing some brain melting disease and heart issues.
- That and/or for hiding liver spots. (Lots of hours under the sun, golfing.)
The hair us pretty white too
he wanted to look good for mamdani.

Mamdani cast Charm Person, and even though Trump was rolling with advantage, his WIS score was poor even in his best years. Hasn't worn off yet.

It helps that Mamdani is hella charismatic too. I remember being astounded by this when I first saw him talking about his policies in a campaign video (I had read a lot about him, and already was rooting for him, but not seen him speak up before then).
- I hope that Mamdani is the Ronald Reagan of socialism.

He's like water, he takes the shape of what container he's in.

This is also true of cats. He might be a cat
- His brain was transplanted into a cat in the 80s.
  #
- That would explain so much. Thank God cats don't talk.

He really need to be in prison asap.

Indeed, an orange suit with a glass of orange Kool-Aid or Tang.
- He doesn't deserve Tang. Give him Flavor-Aid lol
He should just go there voluntarily, he clearly already got the dick sucking part down

“Oh, hellooooo…”

He looks like JJ Abrams tried to create a new villain for Star Wars (that serves on the Jedi council) but when he looks in the mirror, he secretly cackles.

star trek villian, a lazy trek villian with barely any makeup or costumes, much like kurtzman trek, who is his successor.

Fuck he almost looks human

The sad part is, I actually pity him. I have seen that look, I have seen it on my father's face. And I pitied him too. Doesn't excuse their actions. Mine neither, let that be for the record. But this got fucking dark. I'll go home now.

I'd say it looks good but this fuck doesn't deserve it.

He’s basically cosplaying as Senator Palpatine. We all know what comes next.

The attempt on his life did leave him scarred and deformed.
- Nah, he looked like that before too.
Unlimited power?
Or more wrinkles than a cold ballsack?
So that's what he's hiding under all that makeup.
His face gets burned up, which turns out to be an improvement in his case?

Borderline personality disorder is what

Literally this. My dad had all the symptoms of BPD and was almost a clone of Trump, but an alcoholic version.
He was also a flagship example of "Last Person He Talked To" syndrome like Trump, where if he met someone who charmed him, he would fawn all over that person and even start talking like them for days or weeks after. It just betrays a deep sense of insecurity about one's own identity.
The flip side of this is if Trump meets with someone else with an opposing viewpoint or condemnation for Mamdani even a day later, it will flip back the opposite direction, because in the mind of someone like this, social approval is more valuable than idolizing someone and feelings change like the weather and dictate the entire narrative.
- Sounds more like a Narcissist to me. Was he ever diagnosed?
*Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The two are often conflated.
Narcissists emulate others and steal their personalities because they don't have an identity of their own.
Borderlines can cycle rapidly back and forth between fawning and animosity, but they rarely "steal" an entire personality. Or continue to mirror once the person has left.
Wait, does borderline personality mean you're always on the borderline of someone else's personality? I thought it was similar to Bipolar.
- There's a lot of copying and adapting traits from whoever comes off as confident, successful, etc because they have no confidence in their own identity

Trump is doing a bit, he knows the fix is in to destroy Mamdani, but doesn't want to take the heat for it. He's making it look like he really likes Zohran, but he knows Zohran's life is about to become a living hell. Trump and his millionaire and billionaire allies in New York are planning to discredit socialism as an ideology, by making it look publicly like he had no hand in meddling with Mamdani's administration.

I don't doubt that there's going to be a big effort to discredit Mamdani, but why would Trump care if he looks clean? He's never cared before about that kind of thing.
- Because it has to look like socialism failed completely on its own, because of policy, or else it will create some sort of backlash. If socialism is seen to fail without public meddling from his admin then they can say, "well that's socialism, it always fails," the implication being on its own.
  It also makes Mamdani look bad to certain crank liberals and certain crank radical leftists if Trump is seen approving of Mamdani. As a member of DSA I can't overstate the effect of his win, we went from 80k to 85k members in one day.
  Making socialism look bad to all those people in the middle to whose opinion of socialism and social democratic policies is starting to trend much more positive, has always been a top priority for the ruling capitalist class. If you're seen fighting something that people think is good and practical, you look like a villain, which angers people into wanting to act.
  Unfortunately a lot of those people in the middle are under the influence of illusions about capitalism. Maintaining those illusions is a multi-trillion dollar industry. Even when middle class people have positive opinions, they aren't doing practical organizing. Basically they are more split on these issues than a lot of polling suggests. Keeping those people in a state where they will believe that the status quo is still better for them than the struggle for democratic socialism and liberation, is the ur-policy of the ruling class, and has been since FDR.
My money's on this. But: tldr; if city workers know he's trying to do good, and find out old money is fucking with him, his support will strengthen in a way we've not seen in a long time.
So, having worked for the city years ago, I also know it's a system full of people he was directly talking to with affordability. They're on-board with him, if he starts delivering the goods in a public way. Ways to get good food for cheap for everyone, raising wages, getting a cap on crime and helping the homeless. That's all people want.
With that in mind, if it is revealed that even a couple of billionaires is working to trash those efforts in a coordinated manner, suddenly the people of NYC have both a guy trying to do right by them, and a powerful enemy to rally against. There aren't enough cops to deal with people dropping bricks off rooftops, every street becomes a potential 'interaction'.. think a version of "the warriors", but it's regular folks vs the recognized billionaires. Heh, one can dream, anyway.
What'll happen, ultimately? I dunno. But the ingredients for something special are in place.
- You've eloquently captured why I, a random chick who is on the other side of the world, is super excited by Mamdani's win. It might not end up amounting to much, but there's real cause for hope.
  In my country (the UK), Labour (the largest party by far) keep pandering to the right in a manner that is just yielding more of the discursive battleground to the right wing bigotry of the Reform party, and it drives me mad to see them shoot themselves in the foot like this. It reminds me of how in the 2010 election, Labour presented themselves as pro-austerity, but not as severely as the Tories. By accepting the Tories' premise that austerity was good and necessary for reducing the deficit (and that eliminating the deficit was necessary for the UK's economic wellness), Labour simultaneously disappointed people who wanted an alternative to austerity, and weren't appealing to people who were pro austerity (why vote for Tory-lite, when you can just vote Tory instead?). Now they're doing the same with immigration rhetoric instead of investing in our systems. Most people aren't actually pissed off at immigrants, but at the fact that it's increasingly difficult for normal people to afford basic living costs. The best antidote to fascism are policies that speak to the way that people are suffering.
  Mamdani's campaign (and his subsequent victory) showed that he understands this, and it could set a precedent for places far beyond the US. I'm tentatively hopeful.
- Bingo
Mamdani doesn't have one policy that is socialist. His policies are center right at best if you evaluate them on a non americanoid political scale.
- Socialism isn't a set of static policies, it is the real struggle for the liberation of all people from the oppression of a few. That struggle has taken many different forms and character throughout history. It isn't a set of policy goals we suddenly reach and then we are socialist. The struggle never ends, even when we reach that point, we will still struggle to make sure the liberation we win doesn't harden into some soulless bureaucracy that develops and sustains power for itself.
  It is possible to look at Mamdani's history as an organizer, his historic win for mayor and say that he is someone who is struggling for socialism. We can be critically supportive of him, and unfortunately there already is much to be critical about. But there is also much to support.
  But categorical objectivism, which you are espousing, is not socialist either. Identity is not static, socialism defies categorization since it represents a historically contingent dynamic relation between the masses of people, the means of production, political power, cultural development, and much more. Anything that delivers verifiable, material, sustained improvement in the lives of the growing mass of people is socialist.
  Zohran isnt even mayor yet and he has grown our movement by a considerable amount.
  If Mamdani is able to deliver on any of his promises that will be a kind of socialism. But in order to be successful he will need support from not just New Yorkers but from all of us in the struggle, all over the country and the world.
  Distilling socialism into a set of policies rather than an active practical movement of the working class organizing for our best interests commits the same dehumanizing contextualizing as any soulless neoliberal. Stop thinking statically and start thinking dynamically so you can join our movement rather than sitting on the sidelines poo-pooing actual progress.
You would think Trump would want to take credit for that.
- He will, with the people in the know, the only people he might actually care about: rich assholes of the capitalist ruling class. The rest of us are all just rubes and fools to be manipulated and dispensed with.
  It is a strategic calculation, and whether it will work or not has yet to be seen. But Trump has enough power that negative consequences don't quite stick to him, especially when negative perception is drawn to him. The fact that this is so out of character for him should be a sign of how serious this is.
  Our job as socialists and progressives is to wipe that fucking smile off his stupid orange face

Even his nussy looks looser

it actually hides neckussy better than his suit, which know he tightens his tie so tight it strangling him.

I think he’s dying. He’s probably at least losing (what little he had of) his mind.

It will always be a mystery to me why US citizens always place so much importance on appearances instead of focusing on the important things.

Here's an example from the last election campaign: the Democrats were somehow more successful in portraying Trump as "old and strange" than in portraying him as how he really is: corrupt and criminal.

Well, now organized crime rules the US – but somehow it's still all about how Trump dresses, how he is old and weird. Yes, that's true, I mean, the guy has been orange since the 90s, but it's by no means the biggest problem with this administration — not even close.

I have a family member that liked what Bernie had to say back in 2015 but said they couldn't get past his teeth. I had no response.
- That's tough. I don't know what I would have said either. Probably that the family member should vote for Sanders so that dental treatment remains affordable for as many people as possible. But I probably wouldn't have thought of that in that situation.
Because no one cares that he's a criminal, for some reason.
Also, this is a single post, it's ridiculous to pretend like this is some mainstream criticism.
- Yes, obviously, but why?
  Edit: Can't you see how little this is in your interest? How you are being distracted from the important things? And so easily: Things really went downhill for US citizens under Reagan—and he was an actor, and not even a good one at that. Instead of this straw man, citizens could have voted for Carter. Then the reality in the US today would most likely be quite different.

Neckussy

I miss being more ignorant about the world, about politics. Life would be so much nicer.

Not to be an asshole but uh, that is what got us into this mess. Maybe not you specifically, but uninformed ignorant people who never took the time to learn and voted cause they saw that orange idiot on tv and he claimed he too was a racist fuck who was going to clean up the swamp.
- Well from a socio-political standpoint, propaganda just plain works.
  When you take a strong mix of continual white-washing of rhetoric and policy across American radio and television, a good forty years of right-wing political maneuvering towards further local focus in messaging and turn-out, as well as a continual lack of ease for most Americans to even spend the time to get politically informed, nevermind exposed to new points of thought; you end up having a vast swath of the population that can't even afford the time to vote, those that do have a wide margin that either aren't able to, or are so socially entrenched they dont want to hear about non-republican major talking points, and you end up with the general basis of where we are now.
  That doesn't nearly cover the whole scene, but I'd recommend looking through some of Pew Research publications on elections to get a little better idea of the way turnout ends up.
  Tldr; its complicated as hell lol.
Happiness is just one lobotomy away

So fucking weird to see him not oranged up

The orange make up is bad. His suits are bad. The only things I can think of that he would look good in are a noose, or a guillotine. That's it.
- He'd look amazing in a wood chipper.

I’m starting to see shades of a relative I have in trump. Mind you, this person is very nice and I’m not trying to disparage them at all. They’re ADHD and probably in the early stages of dementia. They eat like shit. Using hocus-pocus dietary supplements because they know they eat like shit and think these are a fix. Constantly shifting what the latest great thing is - doesn’t matter what it is, food, clothing, a bit of tech, supplements, a media source… and thanks to their declining mental state it’s like the worst aspects are amplified. Wide emotional swings. Focusing on anything difficult like logical steps to return a purchased item via mail are super difficult.

While my relative’s swings are anti-trump if the subject comes up and the anger is focused on trump’s and the reich wing’s stupidity, it sure mirrors trump’s wild swings on everything, his raging about whatever, and his focus on what the latest interest is. Fixing anything like the Economy is too hard and too many steps, so he relies on whatever clueless mumbo-jumbo others tell him. Even the hocus-pocus health fix by using a snake oil salesman like Kennedy.

Do you like magic tricks? The magician doesn't actually know how to do magic. He shoves his one fist up the ass of a dumb looking muppet and waves it in your face while screaming obscenities and racial slurs, while he masturbates you with the other.

That's what this is.

I wish I never read this comment.
- And I wish we weren't living in this political reality, yet here we are.

Is there a source for this image? Looking a bit shopped.

There are multiple pictures from multiple sources that day.
- Check out Mamdani's clothes between those two otherwise exact same photos. WTF media.
- It makes him look fatter than usual. But his neck looks skinny. It’s an interesting look. Kind of Kim Jong Un meets Hilary Clinton. Is he trying to hide some medical condition? Is he not wearing a tie and not saying thank you? Did Obama’s tan suit guy slip this into the wardrobe?
Don't think there's one source. It's been all over the internet for the last two days. Here's an article not even mentioning the outfit, featuring a different shot and a video clip: https://www.rawstory.com/backlash-emerges-after-trump-criticizes-marjorie-taylor-greene-online/