Actually, it’s fairly likely that the UK is getting the better end of this deal.

First off, the UK is a net importer from the US already. So there’s no reason for Trump to even be chasing after them for a deal in the first place. This whole thing is supposed to be about wiping out the US’ trade deficits, but the US already runs a surplus with the UK. So why is this their first big “success”?

Second, the UK have been desparately trying to write new free trade agreements since 2016 and Brexit. They’ve been trying to hammer something out with the US for years, but neither side could agree on terms.

It’s very likely that what happened here is Trump needed a win, heard that the UK were eager to make a deal, and just told his underlings to get it done (this idiot can’t make it through a security briefing unless they break out the crayons, there’s no way he actually reads these deals), and with the sudden urgency from the White House the UK were able to get through some terms the US had previously resisted.

Of course, it’s possible the UK got ripped here as well. Like I said, they’re badly in need of new trade partners after they fucked their sweet deal with the EU. But the fact that they haven’t signed anything with the US previously, despite the urgency, strongly suggests that what they were being offered before wasn’t good enough.

It’s weird, I could have sworn we negotiated a trade deal with the US back in the nineties, and then renegotiated that same deal about eight years back. Who was the president back then? Oh, right…

An invasion of Greenland, or Canada, wouldn’t necessarily be unlawful.

Remember 9/11? Remember George Bush asking Congress to approve his use of military force to hunt down the suspects?

Well that Authorization for the Use of Military Force, unlike any prior which had clearly defined limitations, was simply against “terror” and set to expire “never.”

One member of Congress refused to vote for this, precisely because she understood that Congress was effectively forever giving up its ability to determine when and how the President was allowed to deploy the military. She got death threats. She was right.

All Trump has to do is “find” a terrorist threat in a country, and he’s allowed to send US troops there. Remember how he recently decided that fentanyl is a weapon of mass destruction? Yeah.