Start calling it what it is, a razzia.

It’s a weird sensation to stick to this as someone so far away, but I feel plain proud of all the Ukrainian forces that made this happen so successfully.

The money is not their main driving goal, they know, or realize that Trump can shaft them on the payments.

What they do think they’ll gain is to be seen as a legal force to be reckoned with.

It does not matter if their legal strategy is a twisted mess of lies and wrong assumptions, they see trump controlling the courts and any win he is given by a corrupt judge reflects on them as a pure win on the case. And that is something they can wear as a badge while he is in office.

They also just bet on this regime sticking around for a long time so they can clutch to their status for quite a while, perhaps it leads to some lucrative advisory contracts down the line.

The thing is, the few more liberal elite are already afraid of the top kicking downwards so they will not stick out their necks… the rest of the elite is trying to join the plundering of the loot.

And the plebs? They’re being kept preoccupied by the lies and fake conflicts, and overwhelmed by their financial situation that traps them in a cycle of working as many jobs they can to keep a roof over their heads…

Until mass layoffs cause a plebian army with plenty of time on their hands no uprising will gain traction.

I am leaning a bit towards it being smoke and mirrors…
Musk needs a way out to save his tesla stocks, in his political doge role he was so unpopular that it torched his Tesla value, his chance to become the first trillionaire is diminished …

So, being visibly critical of, and exiting doge over, a new tax bill might give him some brownie points in the eyes of the public (or so he hopes) and he’ll launch some propaganda how Tesla is so good for the environment again to get people back on board.

But besides that, he already accomplished what he set out to do, used doge to dig up all sorta of data, twist systems where needed for trumps later goals/plans, and with his help and the stolen data elon made sure lawsuits against him and his companies were silenced. This was his slightly subtle plan to do.

Whatever the doge department was supposed to stand/work for was not important at all, just look at the real numbers of its accomplishments… All in all just about zero, since current contracts just run out their time and or get paid out anyway, they just won’t get renewed. So they’re basically shouting “doge saved 50million now by not signing a new contract in 2 years time” Which isn’t really a current saving at all, is it?

Meanwhile he’ll be chummy with Trump, if only to make sure “people won’t ever need to vote again”, but that role does not require public appearances from elon.

You’re right … but I think it currently is the wrong argument to make that it’s been going on so long…
The (extreme) situational corruption of this sitting ruler is what needs to be halted now and make it the final drop to setup regulations against what happened for 40 years.

$2 billion to Trump Academy 2.0 … $1 billion in a jar somewhere that no one remembers and is slowly being siphoned off into trumps personal slush fund.

It’s so strange, Trump goes there as President Of The United States … and returns only with personal gifts, planes & contracts to build Trump golf centers over there and whatever else …
But is empty handed when needing to show what his trip achieved specifically for the USA…

He needs as much propaganda (read lies) to stay standing…
For example when he decides to nuke Ukraine because he can’t conquer it, he must have the Russian population convinced it was because of defending/retribution for a nuclear attack by the west. The only way to do that is to minimize information coming from outside.

Look at random interviews with Russian people on the countryside and some in the cities, they are deeply brainwashed and indoctrinated from only hearing state messaging about how the west is outright evil. Those people are unable to revolt.

“The tax cuts alone would pile on the nation’s $36 trillion debt”
…So we will destroy beneficial programs and do the tax cuts anyway.

It reads as:
“I stabbed myself in the stomach with a huge knife, but I realize that was not quite a good thing to do so I will shoot off my own knees to make it hurt somewhere else”.