I don't see why this is newsworthy. The guy has a 26,000-word Wikipedia article just about his lies only. I don't see why every one of his insane utterances must dominate the front page of every English-speaking news site. His detractors, and his supporters all agree that this is the way he is. Did any trend change, compared to his past? If not, then let's move on.
Because there exists a real, nonzero chance that this is the piece of evidence that will convince some of his followers to finally admit he is either insane, shockingly stupid, or incompetent due to dementia.
He should know though shouldn't he, as acting president of the US he should aim to learn and know these things as part of his service to the country.
Like when he's unaware of certain bills or important procedings, maybe he legitimately doesn't know, but he should. It's part of his job to know.
Of course the ignorance could be a lie, which is worse, but neither option is good. So in some ways it doesn't really matter, it's already a bad outcome.
If you watch any video of politicians being confronted to something bad they did, they will almost always say "I don't know anything about it". It's a bad faith strategy but it works if they're never held accountable of anything.
At least in Germany they do it when they have done something that's potentially illegal. You can't fuck up by saying you don't remember and nobody can prove otherwise.
Oliver North had famously poor memory during the Iran-contra hearings. But it was amazingly effective at deflecting accountability, he still appears as a 'expert' on fox news to this day.
I loathe Orange Man but the power to arbitrarily pardon any federal crimes for any reason is one of the powers of his office and Americans haven't ever seen fit to limit it. Trump is flagrantly corrupt and tries to flout the law at every turn, but he's also exposing the degree to which the American system has always just run on gentlemans' agreements and pinky swears.
Persistently bad behavior can be anticipated and accounted for, random actions cannot. Importer have as much issue with the tariffs as they have with the unpredictability of those tariffs.
In theory, you try to limit the influence of a persistently bad actor, but it seems the U.S. didn't get the memo.
Corruption is basically the operating principle of this administration, as on pretty clear display with the meeting with the president of Indonesia https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8nCxSBA4JsI
"Trump also discussed his support for cryptocurrencies and said that the US had to make sure it was a leader in the industry or risk China and its rivals gaining an advantage in the emerging technology."
China is anti-crypto and has no interest being a leader in it. It's very painful reading any sort of interview with trump.
I think, in general, it's possible to get a view of how an Executive Order is signed by looking at the example of the H-1B $100k fee signing (which we now understand to be far more constrained than it first appeared). Here's a video https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1969157504211808579 where President Trump's "we need more workers" is contrasted with his aides' statements.
It would appear the these things are less an act of the President as a fully informed person making decisions and more of the final rubber stamp on something that staff that he's picked have decided on.
Given that, I wouldn't expect him to personally know what he is signing. If, as I suspect, these pardons are pay-to-play deals, it's someone else managing the operation under his guidance and he's just the guy with the pen so to speak.
Trump's personal, newfound multi-billion dollar crypto fortune is hosted by Zhao.
I don't mean to be breaking any etiquette her by re-indicating this, but it's I think it's unreasonable to suggest that Trump could not know who this person is.
This is Trump's new 'personal banker' , who doesn't have to play be the constrained rules of $USD denominated financial regulations.
Being openly hypocritical and doing the very things you criticize (and/or punish) others for doing is show of dominance. It's also a outcome of Wilhoit's law.
What a trash tier human he is. He is basically saying that he can do whatever to the reporters and no one can or want to do anything with him. He can take any any bribes, corrupt whole branches of government and it is business as usual. Pathetic really.
The dude is far from being behind Binance. He is behind many of the largest exchanges (ie: ByBit, Okx, Coinex, etc.). Maybe dozens (hundreds?) of them. If you used any of these exchanges, you'll notice they have roughly the same layout, front-end and probably back-end. They are all, also, run by Chinese. Some of them (like Coinex) require no KYC whatsoever and enable P2P trading.
Not that all of this matter, anyway, since trading now is moving to DEX where KYC is not really a thing. You still need to on/off-ramp crypto but it seems like the US is about to allow that no questions asked.
America has never been concerned about anything other than America. They literally couldn't care less that they have threaten to take over Canada... Potentially Greenland and Panama militarily.
That's just blatantly false. American power derives not only from raw power, but from alliances. It will be apparent, that it's really hard to get things done when your former allies start slowrolling all your requests.
Unless you mean it like, "countries have no friends", but that's not a very interesting observation.
American power today stems from its power, military and fiscally (which is also backed militarily).
Most countries in the world today are allied to the US out of economic, trade and defense necessity and co-dependence, because all other alternatives are worse for them due to the immense asimetric power disparity.
This might shock you but most countries in the world don't like the US government and its policies, especially after their illegal invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, but have no way to push back without negative repercussions to their economy, so they have to play along as allies whether they like it or not for their own good.
Feel free to down vote all you want, but I'm not revealing anything new or controversial here but it's the truth as all countries, kingdoms and empires throughout history have had alliances with others they didn't like, out of sheer necessity. Same how we in the liberal west have also been trading and having economic ties with the CCP, post-Crimean invasion Russia, Erdogan's Turkey and middle eastern countries that assassinate our journalists, as capitalism post-USSR collapse has prioritized monetary enrichment over fighting for upholding a western ideology.
Define "better". Currently no county, even China can't replace the US as a trading partner in terms of how much the US consumer base buys from us(the European export base I mean) and the kind of technology the US provides back in return. Until China's consumer purchasing power comes close, we're stuck with the US as our main pay piggy.
Plus, I don't think replacing the US with China, a dictatorship that's running slave labor camps, has no human rights or freedom of speech, no freedom of religion, etc, as the main world superpower, is the best idea.
So, how people can promote cozying up to the CCP as some sort of win just to stick it to Trump, is beyond me. It's as narrow minded as the people who were promoting Russian gas dependency as some sort of political victory, until it bit them in the ass and is now costing us through the nose. Why don't people learn from history that cutting your nose to spite your face is not a wise long term strategy?
As bad as Trump is he's only got 3 more years in power until next elections while the CCP is a forever evil pretending to be your friend playing the Embrace Extend Extinguish long game.
> As bad as Trump is he's only got 3 more years in power until next elections
And even in the "best case" scenario where trump does not win that next election, what are you left with then?
A new reality where potentially the office of the president has widely increased powers. Depending on what the supreme court says on wednesday the president will now be able to raise tarrifs at will, send the army into domestic cities at will, have the army kill foreign civil citizens we are not at war with at will and a massively expanded ICE agency which will be really hard to downsize for later administrations.
What are you on about? Trump isn't part of the next elections.
And everything you just said after that, China is 100x worse at those things. So this isn't the "US bad, China better partner" gotcha you were hoping to be.
If you remember the last time Trump lost an election there was a violent coup. I do not hold out any hope that there will be an orderly transfer of power.
Also, I wasn't comparing the US to anyone, I don't care what China is doing. I was just listing the direction that the US democracy is heading in under Trump. And that direction is a systemic extension of presidential powers that go largely unchecked. The Wednesday ruling of the Supreme Court will be a watershed moment in this case, if they will not check his overreach on tariffs, I doubt that they will check anything that Trump is doing.
>If you remember the last time Trump lost an election there was a violent coup
What did that coup accomplish for him? Last time I checked those people went to jail for a while and he was still not president till the next election.
> I do not hold out any hope that there will be an orderly transfer of power.
Kind of like how Antifa with the aid of blue city leadership has been burning down Teslas and assaulting Federal agents for a year now, just because Democrats lost the election and can't accept it?
You mean that kind of "peaceful" transfer of power?
Now, I believe two wrongs don't make a right, but clearly democrats aren't innocent angels in the politics game, but are using every dirty trick in in the book and outside the book to upset the election results while playing the victims.
> Now, I believe two wrongs don't make a right, but clearly democrats aren't innocent angels in the politics game, but are using every dirty trick in in the book and outside the book to upset the election results while playing the victims.
This is exactly what I am talking about. Trump is right now shifting what is within a Presidents power. He is eroding the checks and balances which were set up to keep we the people in power, not a foreign government or a single person ruling in their own interest; We the People. And as you say, even if there is an orderly transfer of power, I do not see the state of the US democracy changing afterwards. You now have a position which is more powerful than ever, and a single person can do more than ever to bend the people to their will. Why consider other positions and opinions of your People, when you can just send the Army to silence them?
Doesn't matter if they wear a blue tie or a red tie.
And yet you couldn't even capture and hold a shitty backwater like Afghanistan.
The last US military action widely regarded as a success was the first Gulf war but, I didn't know about you, but I like my successful military actions to come without a part II.
In the context of trade, you might get a different answer to in the context of arts, life and culture. If you get to stay in the NL and its only visible impacts in your economy of trade, that's entirely different to "where do I want to live"
I probably wouldn't consider China a "better" country than the US, but at least it's more consistent, and you can mostly rely on it not to cut off its nose to spite its face...
I think you greatly underestimate the impact of the recent US administration on global opinion. If some Dutch people changed their mind about the US, so can diplomats and politicians.
How do you believe a country can maintain its hegemonic position if it does its utmost to reverse a hundred years of propaganda and cultural status?
> Trump added that he did not recall meeting Zhao and had "no idea who he is", only that he had been told that the businessman was a victim of a "witch hunt" by the administration of former US president Joe Biden.
This sums up this administration quite well. Too often no idea what they're doing but doing it out of spite nonetheless.
In other cases that might be true, but in this case, I seriously doubt that Trump really has no idea who the founder of the platform that is deeply involved in his cryptocurrency dealings is. So, either he's lying, or everyone (including his family) is doing everything behind his back. Or his dementia is worse than everyone thinks...
> On March 13th, it was reported that representatives of President Trump’s family were in talks to acquire a financial stake in Binance. Soon after, on March 25th, the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial (WLF), announced that it would launch a new stablecoin, USD1, and the former Binance CEO posted on X welcoming them to its platform.
The US President and his family's newfound crypto fortune, worth billions, managed by himself, his sons and 'Steve Witkoff' (his business partner who is 'negotiating' deals in the Middle East and Russia, and whereupon 100's of Millions of $ is coming unto World Liberty backed coins) is called 'World Liberty Financial' ...
... and is hosted by Binance which is the crypto platform owned by Zhao.
Zhao was found guilty of ignoring oversight regulations allowing nefarious actors (ISIS, Cartels, sex traffickers) to transact on his platform.
There's no way in high heaven that the President could be unaware of the fact that Zhao is the CEO who of the platform that hosts almost all of Trump's wealth.
Moreover, this man is convicted specifically for ignoring the lighter oversight regulations, with operations in parts of the world that are out of reach of US investigators and justice system.
The usual dementia jokes aside... of all the things surrounding this administration, this is amongst the most harmless.
It may be a "presidential" power to pardon on paper, but the reality is that unless the President (or in other countries with powers of clemency to the head of state, whoever wields that power) intervenes personally for whatever reason, petitions for clemency pass through layers of bureaucracy, reviews and meetings. And sometimes, that also includes that candidates get inserted into the process by influential aides - something that has been the case for a lot of Presidents on either side of the aisle.
Of course, the issue gets a bit more spicy given Trump's derogatory nickname of "Autopen" Biden, but leaving that aside it's no surprise to me that a US President isn't involved in dealing with clemency petitions all that much.
There are lots of layers on pardons before they get to Presidents, but Presidents have traditionally taken a hard look at pardons before providing them. There's been a couple of "mass pardons" where maybe you wouldn't expect them to know each person; otherwise, you'd expect it, if for not other reason than that they don't get caught flat footed like this.
> if for not other reason than that they don't get caught flat footed like this
The Trump administration doesn't care any more if they get caught red handed. They don't need to. Most of the media has been bought off in Orban style and subsequently silenced (e.g. WaPo) or subjected to lawfare (see the recent broadcast TV scandals), and the hardcore voter base doesn't care about anything any more, as long as "their side" is perceived as "winning".
To the contrary, this is possibly an extremely dangerous and corrupt action (I'm saying 'possible' here).
Zhao manages Binance upon which Trump's nefarious crypto operation - World Liberty Financial is hosted.
Zhao is guilty of wilfully ignoring a lot of very bad and illegal activity by all sorts of bad actors.
World Liberty Financial is receiving $100's of millions inbound, coincident with 'deals' made by US and Middle East actors etc..
WLF is co-managed by Steve Witkoff, the 'real estate magnate' who has been charged with Middle Easter nand Russia negotiations (who by the ay has absolutely no diplomatic background, historical context or understanding of this situations and is deeply unqualified) and who notably has been entering into negotiations and discussion with foreign parties without any US State Dept personnel. Sometimes not even translators.
Subsequent to those 'deals' with Qatar etc. which the Administration indicated there would be up to $1T invested in the US ... Qatar and other regimes have been flushing massive amounts of noney into WLF, hosted on Binance, overseen by Zhao.
The potentiality fore corruption is hard to overstate.
I'm not sure we can differentiate like that. If WLF and Witkoff are corrupt, that means all the big "peace talks" are crypto shakedowns behind closed doors, and suddenly we are back at "Geopolitical Level Corrupt".
> World Liberty Financial is receiving $100's of millions inbound, coincident with 'deals' made by US and Middle East actors etc..
The thing is, in the corruption surrounding the President, that's still small fish. $TRUMP alone was worth 13 billion dollars, $MELANIA was at 1.7 billion dollars. And that's just these two meme coins, not going into all the other shenanigans - he and his family are expected to have made 3 billion dollars since the election [1] in personal wealth gain.
Considering Trump getting rich of crypto grifting and Trump making sure crypto is as unregulated as possible, this particular pardon is perfectly consistent with Trump policies.
Like when he's unaware of certain bills or important procedings, maybe he legitimately doesn't know, but he should. It's part of his job to know.
Of course the ignorance could be a lie, which is worse, but neither option is good. So in some ways it doesn't really matter, it's already a bad outcome.
No, they don't "all do this". No, it's not normal.
I loathe Orange Man but the power to arbitrarily pardon any federal crimes for any reason is one of the powers of his office and Americans haven't ever seen fit to limit it. Trump is flagrantly corrupt and tries to flout the law at every turn, but he's also exposing the degree to which the American system has always just run on gentlemans' agreements and pinky swears.
Why would it be worse?
If he knows, at least he has a plan, whether that plan is good or bad.
If he doesn’t know at all, then literally even more random shit can occur than what’s already happening.
In theory, you try to limit the influence of a persistently bad actor, but it seems the U.S. didn't get the memo.
Corruption is basically the operating principle of this administration, as on pretty clear display with the meeting with the president of Indonesia https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8nCxSBA4JsI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DelF6zEHXpE
Or he's so dementia ridden that he did know who he was, but no longer, in which case why is he in office?
China is anti-crypto and has no interest being a leader in it. It's very painful reading any sort of interview with trump.
It would appear the these things are less an act of the President as a fully informed person making decisions and more of the final rubber stamp on something that staff that he's picked have decided on.
Given that, I wouldn't expect him to personally know what he is signing. If, as I suspect, these pardons are pay-to-play deals, it's someone else managing the operation under his guidance and he's just the guy with the pen so to speak.
I don't mean to be breaking any etiquette her by re-indicating this, but it's I think it's unreasonable to suggest that Trump could not know who this person is.
This is Trump's new 'personal banker' , who doesn't have to play be the constrained rules of $USD denominated financial regulations.
To be clear, I'm not "Just saying" – I'm actually saying.
- Trump is lying so that he doesn't have to explain a quid-pro-quo pardon
- Trump is dement and already forgot about the pardon
- Trump wasn't the one actually pardoning him and his administration just did it
The last one would be particularly ironic given the obsession with Joe Biden's Autopen.
Not that all of this matter, anyway, since trading now is moving to DEX where KYC is not really a thing. You still need to on/off-ramp crypto but it seems like the US is about to allow that no questions asked.
The outcome of that discussion should worry Americans.
Unless you mean it like, "countries have no friends", but that's not a very interesting observation.
American power today stems from its power, military and fiscally (which is also backed militarily).
Most countries in the world today are allied to the US out of economic, trade and defense necessity and co-dependence, because all other alternatives are worse for them due to the immense asimetric power disparity.
This might shock you but most countries in the world don't like the US government and its policies, especially after their illegal invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, but have no way to push back without negative repercussions to their economy, so they have to play along as allies whether they like it or not for their own good.
Feel free to down vote all you want, but I'm not revealing anything new or controversial here but it's the truth as all countries, kingdoms and empires throughout history have had alliances with others they didn't like, out of sheer necessity. Same how we in the liberal west have also been trading and having economic ties with the CCP, post-Crimean invasion Russia, Erdogan's Turkey and middle eastern countries that assassinate our journalists, as capitalism post-USSR collapse has prioritized monetary enrichment over fighting for upholding a western ideology.
Canada is making deals with China. That's an incredible own goal by the US.
Plus, I don't think replacing the US with China, a dictatorship that's running slave labor camps, has no human rights or freedom of speech, no freedom of religion, etc, as the main world superpower, is the best idea.
So, how people can promote cozying up to the CCP as some sort of win just to stick it to Trump, is beyond me. It's as narrow minded as the people who were promoting Russian gas dependency as some sort of political victory, until it bit them in the ass and is now costing us through the nose. Why don't people learn from history that cutting your nose to spite your face is not a wise long term strategy?
As bad as Trump is he's only got 3 more years in power until next elections while the CCP is a forever evil pretending to be your friend playing the Embrace Extend Extinguish long game.
And even in the "best case" scenario where trump does not win that next election, what are you left with then?
A new reality where potentially the office of the president has widely increased powers. Depending on what the supreme court says on wednesday the president will now be able to raise tarrifs at will, send the army into domestic cities at will, have the army kill foreign civil citizens we are not at war with at will and a massively expanded ICE agency which will be really hard to downsize for later administrations.
And everything you just said after that, China is 100x worse at those things. So this isn't the "US bad, China better partner" gotcha you were hoping to be.
Also, I wasn't comparing the US to anyone, I don't care what China is doing. I was just listing the direction that the US democracy is heading in under Trump. And that direction is a systemic extension of presidential powers that go largely unchecked. The Wednesday ruling of the Supreme Court will be a watershed moment in this case, if they will not check his overreach on tariffs, I doubt that they will check anything that Trump is doing.
What did that coup accomplish for him? Last time I checked those people went to jail for a while and he was still not president till the next election.
> I do not hold out any hope that there will be an orderly transfer of power.
Kind of like how Antifa with the aid of blue city leadership has been burning down Teslas and assaulting Federal agents for a year now, just because Democrats lost the election and can't accept it?
You mean that kind of "peaceful" transfer of power?
Now, I believe two wrongs don't make a right, but clearly democrats aren't innocent angels in the politics game, but are using every dirty trick in in the book and outside the book to upset the election results while playing the victims.
This is exactly what I am talking about. Trump is right now shifting what is within a Presidents power. He is eroding the checks and balances which were set up to keep we the people in power, not a foreign government or a single person ruling in their own interest; We the People. And as you say, even if there is an orderly transfer of power, I do not see the state of the US democracy changing afterwards. You now have a position which is more powerful than ever, and a single person can do more than ever to bend the people to their will. Why consider other positions and opinions of your People, when you can just send the Army to silence them?
Doesn't matter if they wear a blue tie or a red tie.
And the majority of the voting American people have decided at the elections they want and support Trump's policies.
It doesn't get more democratic than that.
Alliances form out of fear.
Fear of being crushed by the US military.
The largest Air Force in the world? US Air Force.
Second largest Air Force? US navy.
The last US military action widely regarded as a success was the first Gulf war but, I didn't know about you, but I like my successful military actions to come without a part II.
Afghanistan is extremely difficult to control and has been for thousands of years.
this negative-space begs-the-question story-telling that is popular lately feels weird.
"And you know what he said Tommy?"
If you want to tell us about public sentiment towards Americans then just do it -- don't pawn the social liability off on your Dutch friends.
But let me take a guess : they really liked us and were in-tune with social policies and hopeful for the future. ...Right?
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-countries-with-the-b...
And hey, I grew up in a culture that loved the USA. There are lots of countries where that's the opposite.
Which country do those Dutch people think is the better one?
How do you believe a country can maintain its hegemonic position if it does its utmost to reverse a hundred years of propaganda and cultural status?
Can you define 'perception' and why it matters, especially on a global level?
This sums up this administration quite well. Too often no idea what they're doing but doing it out of spite nonetheless.
> On March 13th, it was reported that representatives of President Trump’s family were in talks to acquire a financial stake in Binance. Soon after, on March 25th, the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial (WLF), announced that it would launch a new stablecoin, USD1, and the former Binance CEO posted on X welcoming them to its platform.
(https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/minority/forwarding-...)
... and is hosted by Binance which is the crypto platform owned by Zhao.
Zhao was found guilty of ignoring oversight regulations allowing nefarious actors (ISIS, Cartels, sex traffickers) to transact on his platform.
There's no way in high heaven that the President could be unaware of the fact that Zhao is the CEO who of the platform that hosts almost all of Trump's wealth.
Moreover, this man is convicted specifically for ignoring the lighter oversight regulations, with operations in parts of the world that are out of reach of US investigators and justice system.
It may be a "presidential" power to pardon on paper, but the reality is that unless the President (or in other countries with powers of clemency to the head of state, whoever wields that power) intervenes personally for whatever reason, petitions for clemency pass through layers of bureaucracy, reviews and meetings. And sometimes, that also includes that candidates get inserted into the process by influential aides - something that has been the case for a lot of Presidents on either side of the aisle.
Of course, the issue gets a bit more spicy given Trump's derogatory nickname of "Autopen" Biden, but leaving that aside it's no surprise to me that a US President isn't involved in dealing with clemency petitions all that much.
The Trump administration doesn't care any more if they get caught red handed. They don't need to. Most of the media has been bought off in Orban style and subsequently silenced (e.g. WaPo) or subjected to lawfare (see the recent broadcast TV scandals), and the hardcore voter base doesn't care about anything any more, as long as "their side" is perceived as "winning".
Zhao manages Binance upon which Trump's nefarious crypto operation - World Liberty Financial is hosted.
Zhao is guilty of wilfully ignoring a lot of very bad and illegal activity by all sorts of bad actors.
World Liberty Financial is receiving $100's of millions inbound, coincident with 'deals' made by US and Middle East actors etc..
WLF is co-managed by Steve Witkoff, the 'real estate magnate' who has been charged with Middle Easter nand Russia negotiations (who by the ay has absolutely no diplomatic background, historical context or understanding of this situations and is deeply unqualified) and who notably has been entering into negotiations and discussion with foreign parties without any US State Dept personnel. Sometimes not even translators.
Subsequent to those 'deals' with Qatar etc. which the Administration indicated there would be up to $1T invested in the US ... Qatar and other regimes have been flushing massive amounts of noney into WLF, hosted on Binance, overseen by Zhao.
The potentiality fore corruption is hard to overstate.
> this is possibly an extremely dangerous and corrupt action
Sadly it appears we live in that insane timeline where both sentences can be true.
The thing is, in the corruption surrounding the President, that's still small fish. $TRUMP alone was worth 13 billion dollars, $MELANIA was at 1.7 billion dollars. And that's just these two meme coins, not going into all the other shenanigans - he and his family are expected to have made 3 billion dollars since the election [1] in personal wealth gain.
[1] https://qz.com/donald-trump-net-worth-presidency-business-co...