Remember that Trump's real purpose in continuously needling and threatening to annex Canada, Greenland, and Panama is so he'll have something to regurgitate whenever he needs a distraction and wants the media to focus on something other than one of his many damaging scandals or authoritarian power grabs, or just when he feels the media isn't focused on him and he feels a need to be the center of attention again.

Because there are enough of them to win elections.

EDIT: Downvotes don't change reality, people. There are enough people who support these efforts to sway elections. It's why Republicans refuse to stand up to Trump in the first place -- standing up to him is political suicide in many of these areas. You can continue to not care about their opinions, but all that will do is leave you wondering why you keep losing to them.

If you want to combat this, you need to figure out what they believe and why they believe it. Then you need to figure out which ones are just party-line MAGA to the end and are unreachable, and which ones have concerns that can be addressed and negotiated on, and try to work on those. But continuing to not care about their opinions while trying to force an agenda that they already said in 2024 that they don't want is a great way to ensure that you keep losing.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. If you're trying to win an election, and 51% of the people you need to vote for you are concerned about monkeys flying out of your ass, you had better come up with a plan to address the flying monkey problem. You can try to appeal to logic and reason by saying that there are obviously no monkeys flying out of your ass, but you'll be doing it during your concession speech.

He had no intention of being dignified. He does what he does because it gets him the attention he seeks. If he showed up dignified, he wouldn't be the center of attention.

For the record, there are 195 recognized countries on the planet, including the US.

That means he'd have struck a deal with literally every country on earth, including countries like North Korea that we never had trade deals with in the first place, and six that don't exist. Maybe he made a deal with those penguins?

This was not an accident. First, it gets him to stand out from the crowd, draw all the attention to himself, and make it all about him which is what he lives and breathes for. Second, it gets the media to focus on something other than him eliminating due process, having judges arrested, using the DOJ to attack perceived enemies, deporting US citizens, and completely ignoring court rulings while those who have the power to stop it sit back and either do nothing or actively support it.

Trump will continue to not care.

The Supreme Court has already declared him immune. WTF does anyone think he cares about contempt charges?

As the song from Rush goes, if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice.

You chose to sit this out, knowing it was a de-facto vote for Trump. Take responsibility for your own choices instead of blaming others.

So again, your solution was to .... elect a different senile pedo that was campaigning on funding and weaponizing a genocide?

You don't stop shooting yourself in the foot by aiming the gun at your own head instead.

The same could be said about a million other things, but this is where he draws the line?

Good. And you should take that filthy little nosepicker out of the oval office at the same time. Oh, and the kid as well.

So the solution to a politician who is "condoning genocide" is to instead elect a person who was actively campaigning on genociding harder, seizing the land, and turning Gaza into beachfront property for the rich?

Democrats didn't point a gun to your head and tell you to stay home. The Democrat nominee wasn't God-tier-perfect, so you pulled a temper tantrum. If you opted to sit the election out, that was a decision you made. You made the active choice to help return the man you're supposed to be dead set against back to office. Don't go around blaming "Democrats" or anybody else for the choices you made.

These were your choices. Own them.

Maybe next time you'll learn that you don't stop yourself from shooting yourself in the foot by aiming the gun at your own head instead.

You guys want to take all the credit for getting Trump re-elected. Go cry to him.

And when you die, the media will be sure to memorialize you by reminding everybody that you were an illegal immigrant in possession of an illegal firearm that murdered a law enforcement agent, reinforcing the stereotype that immigrants are just armed, violent gang members that need to be deported before they kill even more people and giving Trump yet another opportunity to shore up support for all of this by standing in the White House and using the incident as evidence that he was right and you were nothing but a violent cop killer. I'm sure that'll help a lot.

Look, you're just flat out wrong here. This isn't the movies. What do you think's gonna happen? They come in, see that the guy is strapped, and say "aw, shucks!" and move on to the next house? Oh fucking no. At best, they're going to come back with enough backup, weapons, and armor to make a Call of Duty game look like a snowball fight. At worst, they're going to riddle your house with about 975 bullets and then remove the splattermark that used to be you off the wall with a squeegee. There are exactly zero situations where arming yourself is going to protect you from ICE agents while remaining alive and safe in your home.

I don't claim to have any of the answers and I'll fully admit that even my own opinion offers little to help. Something has to be done. What that is, I have no idea. How to get there? Also, no idea. But something is going to end up having to be done because the current situation is not sustainable.

Podunk is on the right path that some kind of organization is going to have to take place. People can't be expected to shack up in their homes forever, fearful of stepping outside because their skin is a little too brown and fearing that the next knock on the door is going to be half a dozen masked ICE agents offering them an involuntary tropical vacation. All that leads to is fear, paranoia, distrust, and despair and that helps nobody. What kind of organization that is that would actually be helpful and effective, I don't know.

But what Podunk said would happen is exactly what will happen if immigrants start taking your advice. Despite the US's lax gun control legislation, it's still nigh-on impossible for someone here illegally to get a gun. And if they're found with a gun, they're suddenly subject to the very same charges that would warrant legitimate deportation that they're trying to avoid. They would be validating the Trump narrative that illegals are armed and will shoot to kill. It wouldn't lead to masked ICE agents no longer trying to round up brown people. It would lead to masked ICE agents with AK-47s and body armor rounding up whatever brown people don't die in the process. It wouldn't lead to less ICE agents knocking on your door to pull you out. It would lead to more ICE agents bashing down your door at 3 in the morning when you're sleeping and just rounding up everybody in the house, probably unloading a clip into anyone who happened to be snoring too loud.

Again, this isn't the movies. You're not a one-man army. ICE agents aren't going to say "aw shucks" and give up just because you've got a gun. They've got more than you do, and there's a lot more of them.

I understand that reference!

Well you see, normally she would fall on the "Okay" side. But she's a woman. And she's an immigration lawyer helping those on the "Not Okay" side, so she gets penalized two shades.

At least the guy is still alive and healthy. For now.

Bukele still refuses to release him because fuck him in particular, but at least he's still confirmed alive.

My original prediction was that we'd see a US citizen somehow "accidentally" end up in El Salvador by the end of the month, which is 13 days away.

I said the same thing myself about 2 days ago.

We've still got 13 days to go. US citizens are being detained, and white people are already being served with deportation orders despite being US citizens. I stand by my prediction: A US citizen will end up in El Salvador by the end of the month, and it could even be a white person.

This is no longer about immigration. The brown people that Trump hates so much aren't the target any more. They're just another pawn in the game. Trump is making his authoritarian power grab and this is the line in the sand. The new message isn't "Get rid of the brown people." It's now "Get rid of anyone I don't like.", and he will have no problems making an example out of a white person if it thinks it will further erode resistance.