> Trump has been doing nothing but consolidating his power since he took office.

Every president does that, Trump was just very inexperienced during his first term, failed to do so and trusted the GOP too much.

And while past Presidents could rely on the agencies working faithfully with them, Trump was sabotaged at every step along the way.

- The DoJ putting their feet up and refusing to do just about anything

- the military lieing to him about the ongoing occupation of Syria

- the federal reserve constantly pushing up the interest rate from the moment Trump was elected, despite keeping it constant for the entirety of both of Obama's terms

- Never having the majority in any of Congress' houses because of seversl Republicans refusing to work with him and when the voters tried to replace those, other establishment candidates pretended to support the issues the voters wanted, only to do a 180 once in office (e.g. eyepatch McCain)

- The CDC, FDA and CMS colluding with each other to kill early Corona testing. At the end of January hundreds of laboratories all over the US had millions of tests ready, but were ordered by the CDC to not proceed without FDA authorization first and the CMS ordering laboratory oversights too immediately report any laboratory conducting unauthorized testing. And the few independent testing campaigns going on at that time were ordered by the CDC to immediately stop all testing and to destroy already obtained results. Then the FDA simply put its feet up and told the laboratories that they're working on the authorization process. It "took" them more than a month until Feb 29, to finally come out and allow applications, stating that it'll take about 15 days to process the application. It wasn't until March 10th that testing could slowly begin.

- The constant barrage of activist judges, forcing the Trump admin to slowly fight each case in the higher courts. It wasnt until Biden telling the courts to go and pound sand, when he wanted to redistribute wealth from the working class to doctors, lawyers and engineers, that Trump realized, that as the head of the executive he could have simply ignored the courts' orders until their decisions were overturned by the upper courts.

and many many more. And now Trump is simply making sure that during his second term he's actually in control of the executive branch, as is his duty, and not facing each agency going rogue on its own.

> He is now passing economic policies without congress.

Many things qualify as economic policy, many of these within the President's authority.

Overall only about 10% of the policies acumulated by past Presidents have any backing in law. Trump would have a very questionable sanity if he simply stopped playing by the rules past Presidents have established.

> The supreme court declared him quite literally above the law.

They did not. The law simply applies very differently to the highest elected office. Everyone knew that already, but for some reason keeps now pretending that it's big news.

What do you think would happen to you if you simply started drone striking people all over the world? Yet neither Bush nor Obama are sitting in jail. The latter even got himself a shiny nobel peace prize. Preemptively.

The SC simply tossed out an absolutely ridiculous decision by the lower courts. They even explicitly left the door open for the lower courts and prosecution to overturn the SC's ruling. If they can show how the executive branch can function without the President making decisions within his constitutionally enumerated powers, they've got a case.

The fact that this case ever went anywhere, yet alone sitting SC judges dissenting just shows how beyond partisan the judicial system has become.

> How is that making things less centralized?

The right understands centralization of power as the government body "which holds the decision making power over a certain range of issues" being organized with other such bodies under a single entity.

This can mean assuming entirely new powers or appropriating them from other entities like the states.

Trump has done neither of these, infact always quite the opposite: Constantly eliminating assumed powers by removing regulations and a few times returning federal powers back to the states, like famously with Roe v. Wade.

Of course there are exceptions, too:

Like the Federal Reserve. It is a 4th branch of government, established by Congress but neither subject to executive or congressional oversight and the only branch of government Congress has no budget authority over.

The members of its governing board are appointed to ridiculous 14 year terms, they audit themselves completely independently with no disclosure requirements and have only very minor reporting duties towards Congress.

It's been a HUGE PitA for the fiscally conservative Republicans for a long time. And Musk is a huge fan of some of them, like Ron and Rand Paul. Musk is probably trying to convince Trump to do something about it.

So I wouldn't be surprised if Trump just assumed executive oversight authority over the FR. And yes, that'd be a huge violation of law. So if it's going to happen, then probably towards the end of his term to avoid being impeached on the spot.

> Less authoritarian?

If you have less powers, you can exercise less influence, which is in the eye of the right less authoritarian.

The fault lies with those, who have aquired these powers in the first place. All Presidents have made use of these powers, it's just that each and everyone was part of the establishment, so the media never called it out. And Trump is the first President in a LONG time who thinks the government has grown significantly too large and doesn't like every spending bill he's seen.

> And now [Sanders] is too old.

Nah, quite a few people become up to 110 years old, some even beyond 200.

He's finally starting to grow a spine. And his head seems too remain functional, too. If only he hadn't suddenly gained a beach front house after endorsing the BodyCount Queen (and sadly I dont mean this sexually), he might have remained well respected.

Not that it matters, but I might consider him again if he

- adopts an affirmative stance on deregulation

- stops advocating for immigration to keep the wages of the working class low

- adopts a strict 0 tolerance stance on illegal immigration to defeat the slave trade over the southern border

- leaves the Democrat party or the Democrat party reforms

> If I am wrong and America truly enters a golden age, I'll change my mind, as I hope you too will if it does go south

Sure, but I'm looking more towards Argentina and El Salvador.

The US has a $36T problem, which it'll pay $1T in interest on every year. And the US budget deficit has surpassed $2T per year. Just the automatic refinancing of the current debt will blow yearly interests beyond $1.6T this year, making it the single largest expense of the US, double of what the US is spending on its military.

And that is under the assumption that the Federal Reserve will surpress interest rates. If they don't the US will pay about $1.8T in interest just on the existing and already budgeted debt.

.

In other words:

DOGE has to wipe $2.6T off the federal budget in 2025 and another $350B in 2026 just to stop the snowball from rolling.

*That is 45% of the US federal budget just to keep the situation from getting any worse*

.

If we assume no cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and Veterans

*THE US HAS ONLY $100B LEFT TO OPERATE ITS ENTIRE GOVERNMENT, INCLUDING THE MILITARY*

And again:

*THATS JUST TO KEEP THE SITUATION FROM GETTING ANY WORSE*

.

Argentina is in deep s--t, too, but at least their numbers are not quite as absurd. What might break their necks is the even higher 155% debt to GDP ratio, compared to the US 122% one.

That leaves pretty much only El Salvador among the right-wing countries, who haven't inherited a giant s--t pile.

Russia and China are laughing their behinds off right now, because unless Trump figures out how to run the entire US on the budget of Italy, the US goes belly up.

*AND IF TRUMP INTENDS TO IMPROVE THIS SITUATION BY JUST 1% AT THE END OF HIS SECOND TERM, HE'LL HAVE TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO RUN THE ENTIRE US ON THE BUDGET OF ROMANIA!*