Asked by the BBC on board Air Force One about his relationship with Sir Keir, Trump said, “I get along with him well. I like him a lot. He’s liberal, which is a little bit different from me, but I think he’s a very good person and I think he’s done a very good job thus far.”
The US president also noted that Starmer has “represented his country in terms of his philosophy.” While Trump admitted he does not share Starmer’s political views, he emphasised their positive relationship, saying, “I may not agree with his philosophy, but I have a very good relationship with him.”
The picture isn’t from the scene of the comments, or we might have seen the other side of the flight menu in Trump’s hand as he was reading.
But he still has some marbles left:
“However, areas of contention remain, including the UK’s proposed deal to cede sovereignty over the Chagos Islands and the nomination of Lord Peter Mandelson as the British ambassador to Washington, which has drawn criticism from some in Trump’s circle.”
Right. And it didn’t take long to go from “phew, he ended the war” to him calling for the ethnic cleansing of 1 million Palestinians from Gaza, and handing the West Bank over to Israel.
No doubt Jared is rubbing his hands at the thought of all the beachfront property about to come his way.
Plus, I don’t really know what is going on between Trump giving Kid-starver the thumbs up, while Musk is nazi saluting his support for Tommy Robinson.
Well Biden did the cleansing, Trump’s in to do the hoovering! And drop the brochures…
They are trash in any moral sense, of course. There can be no good billionaires; sometimes they get in each other’s way and by impeding something bad, one seems better than the other for a while. It’s probably a mistake to discuss them individually; all you have to go on is their reactions and reflected appearance relative to each other.
To be fair I expect real leftists are still pointing this out to their cats and dogs (now completely starved of media attention), but in my view they are way behind the science-tech curve.
Job security might be the main lever over most people, paying little attention to science and technology other than resulting employment prospects. Fodder for the sales teams…
The US election was/is quite an opportunity to have debate over the real political necessities - the actual problem is not the difference between tweedledum and tweedledee but the absence of choice and the reasons for it.
It goes back to the media and the corporate stranglehold over it, IMO. There’s no oxygen for anything useful to the public, except for what’s permitted to keep up the necessary illusions.
(Sorry if I strayed too far from your post @admin)
100% agree ED. The whole lot of em are toxic for the rest of us and the planet we live on. You are spot on about the absence of choice and the reasons for it. We don’t have to travel far to experience that…
This was interesting. What did you mean by being behind the science-tech curve?
Me too messages are so lame but hey: I wanted to also endorse those comments by @Evvy_dense. The headline will have given Surkeef a frisson but I think what Trump means is that the British state can be relied upon to go along with whatever adventures he has planned. And maybe initiate a few too. Vile reptilians the lot of then.
Hm, might be trickier to expand than I thought without writing an essay…I think it’s going to have to be a “or something like that”
Covid showed that despite phenomenal Pharma profits in the offing, main left figures were unprepared to challenge capitalism on unfamiliar territory, and instead took as a baseline whatever “science” (Science - RG) seemed to say. The covid responses that seemed to draw on community - masks, ‘hygeine’, distancing, universal vaccines, not to mention the inerent untreatability of covid - were accepted as science, and thereby specialist. More often than not, many platformed and well-pedigreed left writers turned their fire on critics of the science, and a critical lesson was lost; that moment is almost past as far as warnings about the present and future are concerned; small mobile/computer devices, mRNA vaccines, GM, other biotech and AI are not seen as the Trojan horses that they are. While CBDC, the WEF, the WHO, One Health, and all the mad coercive billionaire plans that the right calls socialism and communism aren’t being discussed, as the old gap between right and left continues to be played for all it is - or rather was - worth. The power of the ‘Trump’ tag is a repellant for serious discussion and criticism of these issues. The people who regard Trump taking the US out of the WHO automatically as a retrograde step, for example, are unaware not only of of the harm that organisation has done to the public but also of its nature as a capitalist front with a socialist sounding name. Its not the left who were warning of Biden’s presidential commitments to CBDC and biotech investment solutions (it wasn’t me either, but what I saw was frightening, might be able to get a link if there’s interest); partly because of the polaristion due to covid, that and related areas of concern are ‘right’ territory. That’s just one example but there’s a bit of a frenzy among schemers, and investors not only about fantastical biotech products but the means of imposing them and the accompanying agenda on the whole population, but the opposition with the knowledge base to challenge all this is largely all on the right.
Loads of very important and serious points raised there. I do agree with most of it, and what I disagree with I’m not sure about… So I’ll mull it over further. As far as I get your main thrust, though, I agree that left or let’s say liberal leaning folks are naive about how science is being used contrary to their interests. Leftists who believe in collective rights over individual liberties are easy prey in this regard.
You could add climate science into the general framework of “left” (who are they today? Sir Keef?) vs “right” (at least fascists today still looking like fascists). I was very impressed by the heart centric, compassionate approach favoured by Jem Bendell on both COVID and climate. His approach seems the most reasonable to me… But he is in a minority position.
The biggest problem I have with these mashups of science and politics is that the actual science tends to get lost in the noise. Take the current flap about the COVID origin debate (assuming one believes that viruses are actually a thing to begin with…). Big debate about lab-leak (righty) vs wet market (lefty). Lots of finger pointing and gain -of-function corruption accusations.
Very few people, however, now remember that COVID was discovered in Italy 6 months before the outbreak in Wuhan, and in Spain 9 months before. And that there was a strange outbreak of a new (and as yet undisclosed) virus in care homes in Washington state around a similar time period.
That screws up the righteous indignation that each side in the debate has towards the other, so expect that fact to be buried.
Science in service to political agenda is pure BS. Even the climate science that I’ve spent so many years going over…
