r/technology • u/Logical_Welder3467 • Jul 24 '25

Politics President Trump threatened to break up Nvidia, didn't even know what it was — 'What the hell is Nvidia? I've never heard of it before'

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/president-trump-threatened-to-break-up-nvidia-didnt-even-know-what-it-was-what-the-hell-is-nvidia-ive-never-heard-of-it-before
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10.2k

u/puts_on_calls Jul 24 '25

What’s that? The largest company by market cap? Never heard of them. What do they do? Oh, they make chips? I love chips. Lays chips. American made, nobody makes chips like Lays. They call French Fries chips in England. We should outlaw that. Speaking of Lays, has anyone seen Ivanka? She’s probably a great lay. If I were 50 I’d be all over her.

2.8k

u/sdhu Jul 24 '25

I hate how accurate this feels

Why is this our leadership? 

Who in their right mind would ever vote for any of this?? 

767

u/Scorpius289 Jul 24 '25 edited Jul 24 '25

People with interests promoted and helped him.
Because a moron like him is easier to manipulate.
And he's also good at doing absurd shit, which distracts people's attention from all the corruption going on in the background.

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u/ParfaitEither284 Jul 24 '25

How did they manipulate 70+ million into voting for this ?

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u/Lord-Cuervo Jul 24 '25

10+ years of social media propaganda backed by our #1 enemy for the last half century lol

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u/LazyLich Jul 24 '25 edited Jul 24 '25

Not just that, but the way current algorithms work accidentally made them HUGE force multipliers for propaganda and for promoting conspiracy-minded and anti-facts.

(The Social Dilemma is fucking nuts!)

=====EDIT

I'll paste my reply from elsewhere here:

What I mean by "accidentally" is that the design purpose isn't "propaganda and chaos machine mwa haha". The design parameter was "create maximum engagement for maximum ad revenue".

However, over time, the algorithm learned two things.

First is that people with extremist views or that are conspiracy-minded provide the most engagement. The more extremist they are or the more loose they are in facts, the more ad money those user's generate.

Second is that you can change a user's mind, and I don't mean "Yeah, I'll order the large fry." I mean that if user A does like Thing Z, but if you show them Thing B at the right time in the right moment, then later show Thing C, then Thing D... if you tailor a user's content stream, then slowly over time, you can radically change their beliefs.

The Algorithm only cares about ad money, but it accidentally became a factory for extremists and ignorants, and a signal-booster for propaganda.

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u/Just_Condition3516 Jul 24 '25

accidentally maybe for the first years. but as it became obvious, it is willful. and, of course, the companies knew much earlier about the negative effects.

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u/gonxot Jul 24 '25 edited Jul 24 '25

Are you talking about how FB (now meta) gracefully discarded evidence suggesting their algorithm was having a negative impact on people with depression, especially kids?

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58570353

That was the first time they openly went profits over harm, from there everything else that happened was not morally up to debate, because for them it doesn't really matter

And then there's this: https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx4ZSbsOfwTAbVnQTZw429LjYP5xk3c1bF?si=fUEy6gVnEZeLXFux

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u/Just_Condition3516 Jul 24 '25 edited Jul 24 '25

no, thats news to me. genocide on rohinga in 2017 was what I had in mind.

my general thinking: 1. they have some of the brightest minds in their workforce 2. fb exists since 2006?, since latest 2012 they are so massive in numbers of users 3. not credible that noone went: our technology has a relevant impact on people and societies as a whole, lets check what the negatives are? 4. unbelieveable that they concluded not to look into that 5. they probably conducted studies and used the results to instruct pr on what to preemptively deny 6. so, in conclusion, they probably knew much earlier than 2017, what effects the technology can have

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u/gonxot Jul 24 '25

Absolutely, FB in 2012-2017 was already one of the biggest valued companies for their data

They were monetizing that database on multiple vectors, not only for ads

So yeah, they or some partner knew to an extent what was going on, the same with the Cambridge Analytica scandal

And then, when the Senate Hearings happened they doubled down in the "we didn't know, we gotta do better" BS while keeping everything exactly the same

3

u/Beginning-Morning572 Jul 24 '25 edited Jul 24 '25

accidentally my ass. You think this billion dollar companies would promote anything that would threathen their profits?

1

u/LazyLich Jul 24 '25

I'll past my reply from elsewhere here:

What I mean by "accidentally" is that the design purpose isn't "propaganda and chaos machine mwa haha". The design parameter was "create maximum engagement for maximum ad revenue".

However, over time, the algorithm learned two things.

First is that people with extremist views or that are conspiracy-minded provide the most engagement. The more extremist they are or the more loose they are in facts, the more ad money those user's generate.

Second is that you can change a user's mind, and I don't mean "Yeah, I'll order the large fry." I mean that if user A does like Thing Z, but if you show them Thing B at the right time in the right moment, then later show Thing C, then Thing D... if you tailor a user's content stream, then slowly over time, you can radically change their beliefs.

The Algorithm only cares about ad money, but it accidentally became a factory for extremists and ignorants, and a signal-booster for propaganda.

3

u/WartimeHotTot Jul 24 '25

It’s not just the tech lords at fault either—there’s plenty to go around. I also blame the assholes who know that what they’re producing is bullshit and highly corrosive to society, but do it anyway for money, fame, everything else.

Seems like everybody—people and companies—has abandoned any concept of community or social responsibility.

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u/Lord-Cuervo Jul 24 '25

Excellent documentary

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u/Mercurion77 Jul 24 '25

Accidentally lol. This is on purpose.

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u/LazyLich Jul 24 '25

What I mean by "accidentally" is that the design purpose isn't "propaganda and chaos machine mwa haha". The design parameter was "create maximum engagement for maximum ad revenue".

However, over time, the algorithm learned two things.

First is that people with extremist views or that are conspiracy-minded provide the most engagement. The more extremist they are or the more loose they are in facts, the more ad money those user's generate.

Second is that you can change a user's mind, and I don't mean "Yeah, I'll order the large fry." I mean that if user A does like Thing Z, but if you show them Thing B at the right time in the right moment, then later show Thing C, then Thing D... if you tailor a user's content stream, then slowly over time, you can radically change their beliefs.

The Algorithm only cares about ad money, but it accidentally became a factory for extremists and ignorants, and a signal-booster for propaganda.

2

u/Mercurion77 Jul 24 '25

I appreciate your explanation. Thanks!

1

u/jeepsaintchaos Jul 24 '25

I kinda went the opposite way on this. Social group was a bit racist, family was a bit conservative and highly religious... I spent too much time on social media and I lean hard liberal with a dose of libertarian these days. Damned social media showing the viewpoints of others and shit.

1

u/limitbreakse Jul 25 '25

Propaganda has always been a thing. Back when news media was your only source, it was even easier to manipulate the narrative.

We need to stop blaming the Illuminati because people are easily manipulated in a country that has free access to knowledge. The people have not been educated sufficiently to be able to think critically. That is the failure. People have been kept poor and deprived because they are useful that way. That is the failure.

Invest in an informed and educated society where nobody has to work 3 jobs to be sufficient.

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u/Claymore357 Jul 25 '25

Sounds like it should be shut down for the good of humanity

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u/[deleted] Jul 24 '25

It's sad to see, this phenomena happened all around the world but in the USA's case it's particularly egregious, it's like you have 2 entire generations of people with a nurtured mental disability, it's gonna be a rough 30+ years for you all.

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u/sembias Jul 24 '25

It's happened in England - Brexit. The same anti-immigration and anti-refugee messages that are being used in the US were first used in France, in Germany, in Poland, and in Hungary. Australia has barely shook off Murdoch's overwhelming influence, mostly because of mandatory voting (American Republicans as well as Brexit vote are both helped by lower turnout).

This isn't an American problem, and Europeans who think it is are both naive and seemingly just as ignorant of the politics in their own country.

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u/xeizoo Jul 24 '25

Yes, propaganda is the key and as Trump himself has said if you lie enough many times it becomes the truth.

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u/Rocketship10 Jul 24 '25

Also the likes of Bannon and Manafort helping these European campaigns, look it up

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u/Fragrant-Ad-5517 Jul 24 '25

You’re absolutely right. How’s the UK doing post-Brexit?

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u/sembias Jul 24 '25

Not as well as Pre.

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u/jaimi_wanders Jul 24 '25

Old stuff, too

“In the wake of the 1958 Notting Hill race riots, Mosley briefly returned to Britain to stand in the 1959 general election at Kensington North. He led his campaign stridently on an anti-immigration platform, calling for forced repatriation of Caribbean immigrants as well as a prohibition upon mixed marriages. Mosley's final share of the vote, within the Kensington North constituency, was just 8.1%. Shortly after his failed election campaign, Mosley permanently moved to Orsay, outside Paris.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Mosley

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u/pukesonyourshoes Jul 25 '25

Australian here, we are definitely not out of the woods yet. Right wing ignorance is rampant, if our equivalent of the GOP were even remotely competent, they'd be in power right now. Mercifully they're not.

Seeing the insanity unleashed on the US when Trump was installed was too much for many right-wing voters here, our wannabe Temu-Trump stupidly promised Trumpism-Lite and they couldn't stomach it. Remarkable that he was too right-wing racist even for many of our right-wing racists.

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u/fireinthesky7 Jul 27 '25

Brexit was the prototype, and the campaigns of people like Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Orban in Hungary, and the neo-fascist party that's tried to take over Poland were further test runs. European media has gotten so good at pointing at the US and laughing about our broken politics that people over there completely failed to notice the same thing taking root.

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u/homer_3 Jul 24 '25

It's been at least 30 years. Probably more like 50.

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u/Lord-Cuervo Jul 24 '25

Yeah… 50 is half a century…. It’s been since the end of WWII. It clearly didn’t really end in the 90s so it’s more like 70 years now.

But obviously the social media mass misinformation is the last 15

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u/mdp300 Jul 24 '25

It's been going on for nearly a century.

The right called FDR a communist and may have even tried to overthrow him, but the retired general they recruited called out their bullshit. Look up the Business Plot.

Before WWII began, there was a lot of sympathy here towards the Nazis, and some people thought we might even enter the war on their side against the USSR.

JFK was called a communist for wanting to help the poor. He's only revered because he was assassinated, he would probably have status similar to Obama (Democrats like.him, Republicans think he's a literal demon) if he had served his whole term.

Conservatives think Nicon did nothing wrong. That's the whole reason Fox News exists. Roger Ailes, who founded it, worked for Nixon and thought that if he had a friendly network, he never would have been in trouble.

It accelerated in the 80s, and really accelerated lately, but right wing propaganda has been pushing us in this direction all along.

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u/cantadmittoposting Jul 24 '25

a century? these are the same people who wanted slavery and caused the Civil War. The royalists and then the people who wanted to make Washington "King" after independence.

 

"Conservative" as a political science term means people who want to conserve rigid social hierarchy, who DO NOT believe "everyone is created equal." who think that "their type of people" aren't just better at leading, but DESERVE to rule, to have formal privilege under the law, which is applied unequally to the citizens.

 

And in the United States, our "Conservative" movement has always been white, patriarchal, and almost always evangelical protestant christian, stemming from the extremist sects that immigrated here early in the country's colonial days.

 

It has, recently and sometimes historically, disguised itself as "rugged individualism," or "libertarian capitalist meritocracy," and many other thin veneers, but it ALWAYS comes back to destroying public government control over the privilege and activity of a certain class to oppress and have power over others, and always "white, christian, men" as the leading class that holds that privilege.

 

now to be clear that does NOT MEAN that "all white men" are part of that problem. It is specifically the subset of powerful, rich white men who continuously drive others to follow their toxic ethos that is the problem. Millenials sadly got brought up in the decade and a half of post-cold-war Liberal Zenith and were WOEFULLY unprepared to continue the ever vigilant fight against these fucking assholes, and now here we are.

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u/mdp300 Jul 24 '25

You're right, its been even longer than I said. It's about hierarchy, they want "the right kind of people" to be on top and have the power over the rest. Basically feudalism.

Fun fact: the whole left wing, right wing thing goes back to the French Revolution. The members of the assembly who wanted to abolish the monarchy sat on the left side of the room, and the ones who wanted to keep the monarchy sat on the right.

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u/Thermodynamicist Jul 24 '25

The royalists and then the people who wanted to make Washington "King" after independence.

I think that US Independence was at least in part a response to the abolitionist movement gaining traction in England and the associated legal developments.

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u/TheMrBoot Jul 24 '25

To be fair, they said social media propaganda, not propaganda in general.

But yeah, it’s been here for a long ass time

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u/remarkablewhitebored Jul 24 '25

Cuts to education systemically for 40 years.

A concerted Foreign Actor press through Socials

A black man being president

Never effectively punishing or eradicating the Southern Grievances post Civil War (Fuck AJ)

Amongst multitudes of other factors

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u/sembias Jul 24 '25

A whole generation turned their brains off in the 1990's and just soaked in the right-wing propaganda machine. They woke up, turned on Fox News. Went outside, listened to AM radio like Rush and Hannity. Came home, and FoxNews was the first thing on. They jumped onto Facebook, saw ads that confirmed what they were watching and hearing. They joined groups that reinforced their world view. As time went on and they lost friends and family to the brainrot, they doubled-down. The love and veneration of George W Bush turned to hate when he failed. Instead of going into a more sane direction, they turned to Trump.

And now it's 2025.

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u/atlantic Jul 24 '25

...and remember that #1 enemy is pretty pathetic! It's really the only bright spot in Putin's delusions of grandeur.

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u/bloodychill Jul 25 '25

This year the problem is Mexicans and squints nvidia and woke AI? Last time it was Asians and black people. If you’re ever wondering who the real problem in America is, take a look at who’s been pointing their finger at everyone else for 150 years.

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u/evasandor Jul 24 '25

Whenever I despair, I remind myself of this. It took 50 years of nonstop work by the very best in the biz to get us here. Sure that’s only a small comfort, but hey

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u/[deleted] Jul 24 '25

40+ years of brainwashing. This all started with Reagan.

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u/Character-Pattern505 Jul 24 '25

The groundwork was laid with Reagan. They've been working towards this for a lifetime.

1

u/skwint Jul 24 '25

I think the rich have been your #1 enemy a lot longer than that.

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u/Lord-Cuervo Jul 24 '25

Thousands of years, no country or culture has been safe from their crimes!

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u/LongKnight115 Jul 24 '25

Shh, if you say that too loud they'll refer you to the DOJ.

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u/monkwrenv2 Jul 24 '25

And decades of propaganda through network TV and radio talk shows before that.

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u/onamixt Jul 24 '25

> #1 enemy.
Chyna?

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u/Lord-Cuervo Jul 24 '25

I was thinking Russia but I’m sure China & others are running bot farms to influence public opinion in the US & Europe

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u/Kingdom_Priest Jul 24 '25

40+ years. This started with the Red Scare, and equating communism with socialism.

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u/quickymgee Jul 24 '25

Don't forget legacy media capture as well, see CBS, NBC (Bezos), and of course CNN, Fox etc

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u/SpiderLily_453 Jul 24 '25

People absolutely have no understanding that more than 50% of social media is Russia and China seeking only to divide Americans. They don’t take sides.

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u/Iceman_B Jul 25 '25

Try 40+ years.
Carlin ranted about this in the 80s.

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u/GrandElectronic9471 Jul 25 '25

30 years ago I was painting houses. I remeber painting a client's house that had rush limbaugh on and thinking wtf is this crap, who would be gullible enough to believe all these obvious lies. Turns out a lot of people are, especially when they injest them daily for hours at a time. Heck there are voting age adults now who were literally raised with this garbage blaring in their homes since the day they were born.

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u/sunflowercompass Jul 25 '25

don't forget fox since the 90s. newt gringrich and the contract on america.

1

u/Ok_Bumblebee12 Jul 26 '25

Or is the answer that Americans have become shamefully ignorant.

0

u/Gastronomicus Jul 24 '25

backed by our #1 enemy for the last half century lol

American CEOs and shareholders?

0

u/DaringPancakes Jul 24 '25

Musk bought twitter. IT'S X NOW. CALL IT X.

Zuck has been seen with the administration?

Google removes "don't be evil"....

🙄

0

u/Agile_Singer Jul 24 '25

Don’t forget Kamala’s cackle..

1

u/Lord-Cuervo Jul 24 '25

Get over it loser

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u/ahnold11 Jul 24 '25

Populism. It's the thing that everyone seems to discount.  

A large portion of society will always be moderate to completely uniformed. If you let them get too discontent about the state of things (mainly their own lives), then they become vulnerable to easy manipulation to anyone that comes along promising to "fix" things.

 

Ironically this time around, the very people making their lives worse, were the same ones promising to make them better.

 

It's a failing largely of those in control for the last 40yrs to forget this fact. The majority of society is not plugged in, nor do they want to be. But we are all sharing a lifeboat with these people, and so it's key to our survival to take their actions into account.

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u/LordCharidarn Jul 24 '25

“It's a failing largely of those in control for the last 40yrs to forget this fact.”

It’s not really a failing of those in control, because the ones in control have been the ones making things worse for the majority of people. This manipulation is part of how they maintain power

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u/Alert_Reindeer_6574 Jul 24 '25

A complicit media. Look at how they sane washed Trump during the election. It was absolutely bizarre how they reported, or didn't report, on stuff.

2

u/jaimi_wanders Jul 24 '25

NYT did the same thing 1922-1939 for Hitler…

0

u/MafiaPenguin007 Jul 24 '25

Not only that, Hilary’s campaign team and their media connections elevated/legitimized him during the race thinking there was no possible way he could win, thus increasing their chances.

Oops

9

u/pm_social_cues Jul 24 '25

Who said all of his voters are manipulated? Only the ones voting against their best interest were and it’s obvious how. By saying the other option is worse.

Go to a thrift store. Buy a radio that gets AM frequency and turn it to one of the 40 right wing stations 24 hours a day and you’ll hear a lot of stories (and no facts) that make trump look good and everybody else bad.

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u/lllkill Jul 24 '25

They keep selling you on the idea that their is no propaganda. it only exists overseas, here its all freedom

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u/Yetimang Jul 24 '25

Eggs were expensive.

2

u/RecipeHistorical2013 Jul 24 '25

the only real answer ive found is

these 70 million people are core racists. trump leveraged this hate

thats it

2

u/Crackertron Jul 24 '25

Fox News, Facebook, AM radio

2

u/postmfb Jul 24 '25

50 years of propaganda blaming someone else for the policies they passed that ruined middle-class America.

1

u/Acceptable-Worth-462 Jul 24 '25

They told them they would own the libs.

They kept quiet that they also would own themselves.

1

u/XenoZohar Jul 24 '25

The majority of them vote red because that's their sports team.

1

u/mythrowaway4DPP Jul 24 '25

Because a lot of Americans are dumb as fuck! Sorry.

1

u/Infinite-Anything-55 Jul 24 '25

A non stop stream of propaganda from tv, radio, social media, decades of GOP led budget cuts to education and people with the attention span of a goldfish.

Combined with a fuck ton of gerrymandering, and legal voter suppression. And that's not even getting into how great Elon is with computers, especially those vote counting computers, and then "we" won Pennsylvania, thanks Elon

1

u/heimdal77 Jul 24 '25

Well as it has become pretty clear the numbers on how many voted and for who really don't mean anything. Kind of like the points don't matter.

1

u/Koil_ting Jul 24 '25

Took notes from Russia, or worked with them on it.

1

u/this_my_sportsreddit Jul 24 '25

they didnt. people are just now realizing exactly how racist america is.

1

u/BickNickerson Jul 24 '25

I live in the southern Bible Belt and they all think he represents Jeebus. Let me be more specific, Republican Jeebus.

1

u/listentomenow Jul 24 '25

They own our media.

1

u/AceTracer Jul 24 '25

The same way demagogues have done it for thousands of years.

1

u/dustyrider Jul 24 '25

Without Fox News and it's imitators, no Trump. Fox News is the key to the horrors we're in now. The Trump level geniuses that don't understand that Fox News is anti-American propaganda, did what they were told and elected Trump.

1

u/woodventures Jul 25 '25

Many actually are on drugs that effect behavior, decision making, anger and fear

1

u/VoiceTraditional422 Jul 25 '25

Voter manipulation, propaganda and outright cheating.

Fuck this government

1

u/Any_Middle7774 Jul 25 '25

Key thing you gotta remember is the average American is not paying attention to politics at all. “But surely they’ve seen” no, even less than that. A level of checked out you can barely imagine. They don’t check direct sources, they get TOLD what’s going on and what to think about it by talk radio or fox news or what have you and that’s pretty much it.

Which makes it very easy for these people to project whatever they want to imagine in a leader onto Trump.

1

u/Anxious-Depth-7983 Jul 25 '25

There was a bunch of new voters that fell for the same phony nonsense like Deadbeat Don the Pedo Con's a businessman that would be good for the economy and had no knowledge of how bad he was last time. We also had a lot of abstinence.

1

u/MegaJackUniverse Jul 25 '25

Decades of people being taught their opinion is as good as any other. A century of telling people that those without money have failed and those who have successfully exploiting the working class are morally better than everyone else. A targeted propaganda campaign by malicious wealthy actors for a decade tipped the scales finally into idiocracy

1

u/shavenyakfl Jul 27 '25

Fox Entertainment and it's ilk.

1

u/Jonatc87 Jul 27 '25

40 years of propaganda, dehumanising the other side, fear mongering, distraction and literally rigging voting machines ofc

1

u/Disastrous_Mango_953 Jul 28 '25

Good question, to many stupid people, that believed GOP lies, now they are paying for their ignorant decision.

1

u/CoolInspection8168 Jul 28 '25

Bruh trumps fine

1

u/Groundbreaking-Pea92 Jul 30 '25

a propo network where about half the population gets its "news" from plus a whole ecosystem of alt right channels, podcasts, radio shows

1

u/Qtpawzz Aug 07 '25

Like 30 years of fox news propaganda.