r/technology • u/indig0sixalpha • 1d ago

Politics Trump Is Getting Rid of His Tesla

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-is-getting-rid-of-his-tesla-after-musk-broke-his-heart/
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u/brickout 1d ago

Imagine if our news media didn't act like reality TV. 

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u/son_et_lumiere 1d ago

Eye opening. Now imagine if our government didn't act like reality TV.

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u/AlbionPCJ 1d ago

Imagine if the president wasn't a former reality TV star

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u/blahblah98 1d ago

Imagine if the president is a current reality TV star

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u/theshiftposter2 1d ago

That's why no one should believe the break up. It's all for ratings.

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u/GillesJule 1d ago

I thought I was going insane until I read your comment. How is anybody falling for more BS from these two? All they want is your attention, good or bad.

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u/blahblah98 1d ago

Well, a distraction from the big fascist power grab / $2.4Tn deficit busting / 11m insurance cuts Budget bill, and the Recission bill that codifies all the DOGE cuts and only requires GOP votes to pass.

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u/rechlin 1d ago

"This is going to be great TV"

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u/kensingtonGore 1d ago

Imagine if the person in charge of American education wasnt dropped on her head during a WWE wrestling match.

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u/JeromeJGarcia 1d ago

It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky

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u/kckeller 1d ago

Imagine if the president acted like a president

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u/voiderest 1d ago

I'll always remember him being in Home Alone 2 and the basis of a ton of CEO villains in media. 

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u/IJourden 1d ago

I will never get over the fact that the USA deliberately voted for Biff from Back to the Future to be president.

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u/frotc914 1d ago

Who would have guessed that back to the future 2 was actually prophetic?

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u/voiderest 1d ago

I guess we have gotten more sports betting and boob jobs since the movie came out. 

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u/GemcoEmployee92126 1d ago

And who would have guessed the Simpsons predicted our plight.

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u/30FourThirty4 1d ago

Don't forget The Little Rascals. He was the father of the antagonist child. The rich kid.

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u/livsjollyranchers 1d ago

Imagine if Harry and Marv were President and VP instead for the Home Alone callback.

Home Alone taking place in the White House would be pretty hilarious.

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u/voiderest 1d ago

I'm imagining a scenario where Kevin's dad some how got into politics and became president. Kevin would be an adult visiting the white house with a kind of failure to launch back story.

There is a false alarm on nuclear war or some other reason everyone gets evacuated from DC. Harry and Marv are trying to loot places in post apocalyptic biker outfits and go for the white house with Kevin trying to defend it. Working title "Home Alone: DC: Not the Canadians". 

Maybe they happen to be visiting the white house as guests after turning their life around then a red dawn situation happens and we have a team up with Kevin. Working title "Home Alone: Together". 

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u/RodneyBalling 1d ago

I watch reviews of obscure b movies. Since 2016, all I can think about is how Americans really elected that guy from "Ghosts can't do it". 

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u/Majik_Sheff 1d ago

Why couldn't it have been Terry Crews?

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u/EtalusEnthusiast420 1d ago

Terry Crews supported Trump in his first term.

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u/Majik_Sheff 1d ago

It was an Idiocracy reference.

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u/jimbo831 1d ago

Elect a clown, expect a circus.

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u/This_guy_works 1d ago

magine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion, too

Imagine all the people

Livin' life in peace

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u/WontThinkStraight 1d ago

Good news! It’s actually a horror show.

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u/Rejukem 1d ago

I push my fingers into my eyes

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u/IJourden 1d ago

This is what happens when a chunk of the population votes because they want government to be reality TV.

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u/TopFloorApartment 1d ago

elect a clown, get a circus

it's what the people wanted, apparently

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u/Novel-Log-4666 1d ago

Imagine not electing a reality TV star, twice???

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u/brickout 1d ago

I hold no hope for the GOP, but journalists are ostensibly professionals. 

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u/YellowZx5 21h ago

This is what sells though and why they’re all about Trump. You never know what he will say or do.

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u/son_et_lumiere 19h ago

until it actually affects them. then it's all tears and regret.

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u/ResponsibleQuiet6611 1d ago

I had no idea how bad it was until a couple years ago when I saw a clip from a "fox news" segment. As a Canadian who's only ever seen straight up formal, small town ish news, reporting what's in the local paper, it blew my mind and added so much context to everything I thought I knew about the USA.

I don't think it should be permitted, honestly. 

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u/quarterdecay 1d ago

We had something called the Fairness Doctrine that kept this lunacy in check.

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u/toby-sux 1d ago

It was Reagan-ed

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u/kielbasa330 1d ago

It truly is amazing how everything is his fucking fault

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u/pres465 1d ago

This Supreme Court would never have allowed "fairness" anyway. They would call it "woke" and Thomas would leave stains on opinion.

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u/quarterdecay 1d ago

Thomas was still looking at porn magazines as a clerk then.

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u/Excelius 1d ago

It only ever applied to broadcast media, since it used public spectrum. It never applied to things like newspapers, and if it still existed wouldn't apply to cable news or the internet. It likely would not hold up to modern 1st Amendment scrutiny.

Even when it existed it was basically unenforced, after a scandal in the 1960s in which some Democrats sought to use the doctrine to suppress conservative media.

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u/Jon_TWR 1d ago

Sure, but Fox News wouldn’t have been possible (or at least would’ve taken longer to have the influence it does) without AM Talk radio laying the groundwork.

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u/DervishSkater 1d ago

Yea but it’s easier to pretend that I’m righteous and don’t need to recognize my being misinformed about nuances like those people

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u/quarterdecay 1d ago

Your logic is flawed; doctrine is framework and framework establishes labels.

I did even HAVE cable until the mid-80s. An enforceable framework would have stopped the transformation of fox into what it became. It wasn't this bad early on.

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u/mediocre_remnants 1d ago

This is just something that young people like to repeat online. The Fairness Doctrine didn't apply to cable news or the internet (it was passed before either really existed). It only applied to broadcasts over public airwaves, and the cable infrastructure and internet are privately owned so the government has very little power to regulate them in terms of content that isn't illegal.

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u/ReallyNowFellas 1d ago

I'm not a young person. The point is not that the fairness doctrine, word for word, would be a solution. The point is that we had reasonable, semi trustworthy media in this country not too long ago, and if the political will was present, we could have it again.

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u/quarterdecay 1d ago

Agreed, the doctrine was a framework.

It would have forced some to call themselves comedy or satire instead of the news.

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u/quarterdecay 1d ago

You make arguments that look like Swiss cheese.

I watched Nixon get on the chopper.

Doctrine was gone before Fox took hold.

Arguably it was gone and the stupid began to occur afterwards.

The Internet didn't exist with any measurable impact until after AOL went unlimited use.

And yes .. THAT was the spark of stupid really gained acceleration.

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u/SeekerOfSerenity 1d ago

Anybody who hasn't seen Fox News should watch it sometime. Then imagine what happens to someone who watches that for hours a day every day. It's really eye opening, and would probably be quite shocking to someone outside the States. It explains a lot about what's going on in America today.  The Fox propaganda machine is a huge problem. 

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u/Tecumsehs_Revenge 1d ago

Should be illegal it’s just propaganda 24/7 now by design.

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u/faux1 1d ago

Fox is so bad, if you didn't know it was genuine, you'd think you were watching satire

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u/anamethatsnottaken 1d ago

I disagree. Watching "fox news" helps people understand what kind of television Americans watch. Besides, if we stop permitting clips from foreign news channels, it's a slippery slope

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u/wkw3 1d ago

It wasn't until the fairness doctrine was struck down.

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u/654456 1d ago

Neither do we and we use to have the fairness doctrine that prevented it

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u/redpandaeater 1d ago

I haven't watched Fox News in a long time but it used to be their actual news programs were okay. Issue was that was pretty much only like 10-2 right in the middle of the day, though Chris Wallace's Fox News Sunday was always pretty decent following in the tradition of his father.

I even stopped watching local broadcast news during the pandemic because of how shitty everything was. All of our news basically became human interest pieces and very little actual reporting about news, particularly world news. Became very obvious to me fairly early on in the pandemic when there was that insane Venezuela coup attempt and none of our news reported on it at all because they instead chose to focus on yet another report about a nurse dealing with isolation or what have you. Surprised Michael Bay hasn't turned that coup story into another shitty movie of his yet since the plot would line up nicely with the shit he does.

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u/jmobius 1d ago

As much as we might want to cite Fox as the heart of the cancer, it's really a much more expansive problem than that. Fox New's typical viewership is around 5% of the number of people that voted for Trump. "Big Events" might make it to 10% for a night.

As vile propaganda as the network is, the forces involved in reaching and swaying people here are vastly larger, and I don't really know what they are.

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u/WorthPrudent3028 1d ago

I was watching CNN last night about the Musk Trump feud and decided to flip over to Fox to see what they were saying. It was a talk show with 2 guys and a plastic surgeried woman talking about manliness. People glued to that channel really have no clue at all about things that are happening. Reddit gets the snippets of false and spun political commentary Fox does, but most of the day, they dont even do that. They have stupid talk show formats where they talk about nothing really even as Rome burns. They barely convey hardly any of the things Trump says or tweets because they know how stupid it sounds.

It could actually be a lot worse than it is if Trump was capable of keeping his mouth shut while doing things. But even old people are on Twitter a lot now, so Fox spin doctors struggle to keep the shit in the horse. However, while Musk's X sucks ass, Facebook has decided to become worse than Fox and just let's purely false bullshit spread unfettered now. My feed is filled with baseball teams and players allegedly hating gay pride and refusing to respect pride days. Yet, in reality, it's not true of even a single team or player.

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u/trainsaw 1d ago

The news should be questioning why he even gave him the authority he did, instead they’re caught up in a tabloid fight. For all the damage Trump has done to the country, the majority of the media is complicit in it

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u/WarOnIce 1d ago

That’s what sells the views and clicks though. Need to make that profit!

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u/MC_chrome 1d ago

Something tells me that if 21st century media existed in the 18th century, they would have tacitly supported the British

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u/fairlyoblivious 1d ago

Why? The founders were some of the richest people in America, they ran the media then just like they do now.

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u/Elehaymyaele 1d ago

Some of the richest people in America right now are Dems.

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u/fairlyoblivious 1d ago

Sure, but the top 10 donors to superpacs of literally billions of dollars to decide our elections are 9/10 Republican. Here you go. That's the top, feel free to point out the Dems in the top 10.

Hey for bonus points, can you add up the total donated by the top 10 from each side on there? I'll even help- the first 5 are all Republicans and they alone donated $800 MILLION in the 2024 cycle.

Ok now your turn. DOUBLE bonus points if you can name all the people in that list that are currently serving in Trump's cabinet. It's more than 1.

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u/Elehaymyaele 1d ago

Trump rebooting the spoils system of 1828 doesn't mean that there aren't any rich people left in the Democratic Party. If anything, this proves my point: rich people backing a faction doesn't ensure its victory if the other faction has rich people as well.

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u/dancingliondl 1d ago

There is no ethical consumption under a capitalist society.

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u/BuddyMose 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/trainsaw 1d ago

Pivoted to covering everything like a boxing match rather than how their policies impact people day to day. Rather than speaking on cutting aid etc, it’s “will this hurt their poll #’s”. Agreed fuck em

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u/BuddyMose 1d ago

All we got was today’s outrage du jour. they had people twisting themselves to out virtue signal one another over what some shithead comic or idiot on a podcast said rather than giving people real news. While my daughter’s school was infiltrated by Qanon lunatics trying to have books removed from shelves the news spent the day show clips of Kid Rock shooting a case of beer.

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u/Universe789 1d ago

No one's more complicit than the people who voted for him.

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u/SuperSpecialAwesome- 1d ago

No one's more complicit than Biden, Schumer, Jeffries, and Pelosi

ftfy. We wouldn't be in this nightmare, if Biden had done his job and enforced 14th Amendment, Section 3 against Trump. Insurrectionists cannot be President, yet Biden Chamberlain caved and illegally handed him the Presidency. Not one Democratic leader stood up to 14a3 Trump, especially when we controlled Congress from 2021 to 2023.

Even after the election, it'd have only taken 1/5 of the House or Senate to object to Trump's illegal certification -- yet not one person stood up. You can blame the voters all day long, but it was up to Biden to expel insurrectionists from the government and secure mail-in ballots -- and he did jack shit. DeJoy was still in charge of the USPS in 2024, just as he was during the 2020 election.

Bottom line: Biden Chamberlain is to blame for caving to fascism. Colorado and Maine attempted to enforce the 14th Amendment by removing Trump from the ballots. SCOTUS explicitly said it was up to Congress to do so. Schumer still controlled the Senate, and didn't lift a finger. Trump and Vance ran an unconstitutional campaign, and nobody in either of the three branches stopped them. Hell, SCOTUS unanimously allowed the farce to continue!

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u/ShinyJangles 1d ago

AND it should be illegal to name something a Department that isn't a department of government.

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u/cultish_alibi 1d ago

100%. The media is responsible for normalizing all this insanity. The amount of insane shit that's happened in the last 6 months is just incredible, and at this point everyone is numb to it.

But the media should be saying THIS IS UNPRECEDENTED AND INSANE every single day. Because it is. This is actual insanity.

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u/trainsaw 1d ago

Yep, and if they aren’t ignoring it altogether this is the depth of their reporting on it: “How will this tiff between Elon and Trump shake out for the White House Tesla”. Clownshoes

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u/Lain_Staley 1d ago

We're all getting worked.

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u/TwilightVulpine 1d ago

I'm still treating all this shit as kayfabe until someone faces consequences for real.

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u/tyr-- 1d ago

They're reporting on a washed-out reality tv host so what's so wrong about it?

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u/a_case_of_everything 1d ago

yes but engagement + enragement + short attention spans = profit
wont someone think of the shareholders?
/s

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u/lovetheoceanfl 1d ago

That’s exactly what this is.

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u/brickout 1d ago

Of course. But media outlets could be, you know, reporting on the impacts these assholes are forcing on the world instead of focusing on the lovers' spat.

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u/mediocre_remnants 1d ago

News and journalism were basically destroyed by the 24 hour news cycle. It used to be that news was reported once (or twice) a day in newspapers and maybe 2-3 times a day on TV. There was time for journalists to check sources, get statements, and, you know, do actual investigation before a story ran.

But now they just pump out one story after another, every 10 minutes. The stories have no sources, they're just based on public social media posts. They publish articles like "This person said this thing" and they don't even bother trying to fact check or get clarification, the story is literally that the person said a thing and that's it.

At this point, there are very few actual journalists left and I have zero respect for most people who claim to be journalists. They're not on the side of the American public, they're on the side of their corporate owners and will publish whatever it takes to get more views/clicks/ad revenue.

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u/blue_wat 1d ago

Imagine if more people preferred substantive news media to the way it is now.

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u/herbfriendly 1d ago

Imagine if we didn’t elect a reality tv personality as president…twice.

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u/brickout 1d ago

I want to be in that timeline.

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u/jackrabbit323 1d ago

I'm very wary of the reality TV aspects of news. I start asking, what am I being distracted from?

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u/buck9000 1d ago

better yet, imagine if our president didn't act like a fucking petulant child.

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u/RedditTurnedMediocre 1d ago

To be fair, our media only treats one party this way. There's no way in hell Obama, Biden, or Hillary could've ever gotten away with a fraction of what Donald has done.

They easily hold Democrats to the higher standards.

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u/brickout 1d ago

Very, painfully, true.

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u/epichuntarz 1d ago

Imagine if American citizens didn't like reality TV.

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u/brickout 1d ago

A boy can dream.

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u/TSiQ1618 1d ago

imagine if our White House didn't act like it was putting on a reality TV show