!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
Perhaps Bibi has something on him?...
The thing about people like Trump, is that they always do worse than the most vile speculations about them.
I’m sure over his life he has been blackmailed several times, starting when he was a teenager.
Why stop now? Nothing in his ordinary business stopped now, and I assume the question is not who is currently trying, but which agencies and people are not.
Probably, but given that there are reams of files telling us the sort of things he's done, and nobody does a damn thing about it, you have to ask yourself why would he care?
No. Of course it's possible, but if the only evidence is that he's doing everything Israel wants, then does Israel also have something on the vast majority of Congress? Did they have something on Biden, Obama, Bush, etc?
The simpler and more likely explanation is that all these politicians support Israel for other reasons, because Israel serves as an unsinkable aircraft carrier for the US and a staging ground to conduct it's campaigns of terror and conquest across the MENA region. Look at how many countries in that region the US has destabilized: Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Iran, and of course the Israelis themselves are attacking Palestine and Lebanon. Virtually every country that isn't already in the US sphere of influence. This is a consistent campaign of conquest that goes across decades of different administrations.
You don't have to blackmail US politicians to get them to bomb brown kids in the Middle East, it's what they all want to do anyway.
The only thing is that the US hasn't really used Israel as a staging area for expeditionary action in the Middle East.
Both the Gulf and Iraq Wars used Saudi Arabia as a staging ground. Afghanistan was too far away for the US to use Israel. If anything, the US usually excludes Israel from any overt military action given the political blowback from using Israel in the region.
Even if that's true, they are still in the US sphere of influence just like Saudi Arabia, and that's all that US politicians care about. They will happily overlook Israeli crimes just as they overlook Saudi crimes, and I don't see people suggesting the Saudis have blackmail material.
What do people mean by saying the US does whatever Israel wants? Sending them weapons to kill brown kids in Palestine, Lebanon, etc? The US wants to do that. Bombing Iran? The US wants to do that. Either you have to take the theory further and say that the whole reason the US wants to dominate the region is for Israel's sake (I don't know why they can't just want to dominate it for their own sake), or you have to ignore all the conflicts the US has gotten involved in in the region that aren't directly related to Israel, brushing them off as coincidence.
Either way, the simplest explanation is that the US is simply a militaristic state hellbent on domination and expansion through conquest, motivated by the same things that have always motivated imperial conquest, from Rome to Britain.
Likely not. However, if Trump is being blackmailed, it would explain why Vance is leading the Iranian peace negotiations.
Absolutely.
His ego is way too big to be putting up with Israel's antics with Iran and Lebanon otherwise. Israel is making him look like a clown and he normally wouldn't stand it without at least 1 massive meltdown on social media about it.
What makes you think he's being blackmailed? War is a business, they don't care about people, they are fine with what israel is doing and supporting it, being able to blame someone for it is a bonus point.
Blackmailed yes, stupid yes, a pedophile yes, a Russian spy yes.
No, that’s giving Trump too much credit. He’s shown us over and over that he’s interested in personal gain, easily manipulated, and is fine with outright bribery. Blackmail seems like the hard way of getting things done
Absolutely no doubt about it he is or was being blackmailed to some degree. But now he's acting like he isn't. It's entirely possible that counter intelligence retrieved the blackmail that israel had on trump? Which would be easy to do ~~under the~~ ~~cover~~ with the chaos of iran war.
During the earlier portion of this conflict trump did several off again on again, changing his mind rapidly, kind of things. I find this very indicative of being blackmailed or coerced
Eh, I'd say he was being blackmailed, but its hard to imagine him giving a shit, or being cogent enough to give a shit now.
A) Trump's dementia is well known at this point; his positions literally always align either perfectly with or against the last person he speaks to. Man's brain is soup. His flipflopping on Iran comes down to whether he last spoke with Lindsay Graham, Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, Benjamin Netanyahu, or JD Vance. Graham walks in, graham walks out, we're at war. Hegseth walks in then out, now we're bombing kids. Rubio walks in then out, now we're open to negotiations (and invading Cuba). Netanyahu, back to bombing kids. Vance, now we're surrendering. Graham again, now we're threatening to kill diplomats.
B) For as soup as he is, I think he gets that no one he cares about gives a shit what he's done. Everyone already knows he's a pedophile, his supporters just don't care enough to grapple with it, and any meaningful opposition isn't capable of or willing to do a damn thing. Honestly I'm surprised he doesn't brag about it at this point.
Honestly I’m surprised he doesn’t brag about it at this point.
He probably insists to his close family that he isn't - none of them would like to think their dad, cousin, husband or uncke was a pedo. Deep denial there. Maybe his son donald junior knows and hence didn't invite him to his wedding.
Also, i think being attracted to minors is embarassing even for a glamour-pedo like Trump. Epstein files indicate they boast to one another, but they can't boast to general society, and on some level will feel bad for not having normal attraction.
Didn't someone have kompromat on him from like 2015 where he was pissing on escorts in a bed Obama slept in at a hotel or some petty, childish shit like that?
It was Putin, and it wasn’t trump pissing on escorts, it was trump ordering underage girls to piss on the bed Obama slept in as he watched. Reportedly, it didn’t stop there.
Trump was staying at a hotel in Moscow, and Putin, being ex-KGB, had cameras everywhere, and he provided the girls. Putin has video of trump raping girls in Moscow.
Looks like israel has compromising material. Also russia. Also that absurd iran deal? Likely they bought intel on him.
It depends how you use the word, i see it as people being forced to do something they don't want to do, you don't say "I blackmailed you into buying a better product", in same way i don't say "Trump was blackmailed to be corrupt and make a fortune out of market manipulation"
No. I think he's just the most visible psychopath in the room.
The true horror of Trump is not just the things he's done. Its that everyone now knows what he's done - and seemingly quite a lot of people don't really care.
Mark my words, when the fever dream breaks there will be a lot of cultist suicides.
The way blackmailing works is, the blakmailer threatens the blackmailee to reveal their secrets.
Trump's secrets are already out there: he's a convicted rapist and his name appears more than a million times in the unredacted Epstein files - i.e. if he's not a fucking pedo, I'm the King of England. No blackmailer has anything on him that everybody doesn't already know.
So no.
You don't think there's maybe Israeli or Russian ... or even CIA dossiers on Epstein/Trump, that include say, very explicit and direct photos or videos of Trump doing extremely illegal things to children...
... you know, the kind of things its Kash Patel's job to censor and deny?
Epstein was basically into 'triple agent' territory, where he had so many allegiances and connections that he essentially had to start playing the intel game for himself, as himself.
To me it seems highly likely that much of the information on/around Epstein exists within Mossad, the FSB... they probably have a lot of the same stuff as what the FBI has, but of course, they have their own decision making process for what they would or would not publicize, deny, censor, etc.
If you’re being blackmailed you also need to be worried about the consequences of the information being revealed, like legal consequences.
Trump dgaf about any of that, nobody's prosecuting him for the existing things he’s done.
Do you not realize, that there could be worse things out there of him? Unreleased and unredacted.
So far he’s shown no sense of shame or even that his victims are people, and his followers don’t seem to care
Yeah, there's a fair chance that he might be a murderer also. That's also out there.
And not a single voter will care.
i think if theres actual footage of him doing these things, tides turn quickly.
I think the problem is that the fraction of people you're referring to absolutely would care had they not been basically trained to reflexively dismiss claims of wrongdoing against "daddy" as "fake news". History is probably going to say trump was probably the most effective con man the world has ever seen.
I don’t think so. Trump is undoubtedly a con man. However, I think it’s going to be studies about the media and misinformation channels that dominate history books. Trump doesn’t have psychological insight. He acts on impulse and is a compulsive liar and narcissist. It’s how he was portrayed and how social media, in particular “engagement” driving views and clicks that will be studied. Obviously, the owners of these channels realised the power of the algorithm, just like previous oligarchs realised the value of newspapers and tv stations. It just became more hidden and personalised how we were being manipulated.
Do you not realize that anyone who doesn't care about everything we already know, is just going to continue to not care?
Do you not realize that there were so many pages redacted, and it wasn't just the victims?
Trump voters dont care if they are redacted or not. He is a cult leader. They will drink the kool aid because theyre narcissistics
Oh, I'm sure of it. The people who are going to care, already do, his sycophants will continue to support him NO MATTER WHAT.
True, evil people with money and money talks apparently.
Trump’s secrets are already out there: he’s a convicted rapist and his name appears more than a million times in the unredacted Epstein files
They have pictures and videos of him raping and torturing small children. Possibly even eating them, if some rumors are true.
Not many people with first hand knowledge and nobody prominent has revealed incontrovertible facts though. Anyone with half a brain who isn't obsessed with his pumpkin-painted dumb face knows he is guilty, of course, considering he said he was "best friends" with JE during JE's most unrestrained period. But still millions of people think there's no evidence, and the admin is still suppressing over 3 million documents and redacted the rest to hell.
Well, like I said previously, since it's just about impossible for ordinary folks to get the Epstein files released in full, we should all default to assuming all those mentioned in it are guilty - and since all those fuckers are rich and powerful and they can get the files released, if they want their names cleared, they can jolly well demand the release of the exculpatory evidence themselves.
And what's blindingly obvious, starting with the one pedo who's most mentioned in the files, is that they're not exactly rushing to demand the truth set free...
I think he might be too narcissistic (and stupid) for blackmail. First off, he’d lie to the blackmailers and regardless, he’d tell somebody else about it. He is the proverbial chess pigeon.
I thought at first that he was likely being blackmailed by Israel - it's near certain that the Israeli government has at least as much evidence of his serial child rape as the US government does.
Mostly based on the way the whole war played out though, I tend more toward a different theory now.
I think Bibi convinced him that overthrowing Iran would be a cake walk - that just like Venezuela, they could go in fast and bomb the shit out of things and get rid of the Ayatollah and take over, and then Trump could get Narges Mohammadi out of prison and she'd be so thankful that she'd give him her Nobel medal, and then he'd be the bestest President ever in the history of ever because he'd have two Nobels (well - technically, he'd only have two Nobel medals, and claiming that he has a Nobel because he has a medal is sort of like claiming he's a Super Bowl champion because he has a ring, but he's too stupid to realize that).
And everything played out just as intended, right up to the point that Iran didn't collapse and instead just calmly set about replacing the Ayatollah and systematically bombing American bases and property all around the Middle East while closing down the Strait of Hormuz. And he's been desperately flailing around and throwing tantrums ever since, because that wasn't what Bibi promised.
I agree with you but I really wish people would stop calling him 'Bibi'. He's not our buddy, or some boisterous but quirky and lovable uncle figure from reality TV. He's a war criminal responsible for genocide, aided and abetted by other politicians who have been so close to him for so long that they have an affectionate nickname for him.
Both of these possibilities could be true, of course.
The latter theory also is how I believe Trump was persuaded to start military action against Iran. But I think it is also highly likely that the Israelis have dirt on Trump via Epstein, who had ties with Mossad and frequently fraternized with top-ranking Israeli officials.
However, to leak this information publicly could cause some major blowback, particulaly given how unpredictable a cornered Trump would be. It wouldn't be hard to imagine him going on a live newsfeed and start throwing all kinds of people under the busof he thought he had nothing left to lose.
I think he's being blackmailed and has been blackmaled.
How do you blackmail a person who feels no shame? Could only be about his money. And I don't see any angle, say, the Russians or the Israeli government has there to make him worried. So even if they are sitting on solid evidence of him eating babies on the island that won't be nearly enough to put pressure on him. Unless it's scientific evidence that his hands are too small. And he'll just fake-news-stonewall that until he'll cover the Lincoln Memorial in gold or something, just to move the media cycle along.
47 thinks he's smart but he is at best NYC realtor smart. With a touch of the mob, maybe. He's severely undereducated as a president. More so than W by a factor of 1000. But he Peter principled himself into positions where he is unimpeachable or people are afraid to tell him when he's wrong. He shows a persistent pattern of parroting the opinion of the last man he spoke with. He is larping the Emperor's New Clothes fairy tale with an ego that needs constant praise, his own in a pinch. You don't need to blackmail a person like that. Praise him, flatter him, promise him money and good headlines and he happily will kill a minimum of two of his children.
Netanyahu sent him down the garden path on Iran. And now he'll get a deal that's worse than the Obama one he derided. Which I'm sure he never read. Because he only absorbs about one page of content if it's nicely spaced and contains pictures. Per week.
I mean, does it even matter? If Americans havent banded together and gotten rid of him by now with everything that has happened with this and outside of this - then its just a drop of water in the ocean
Epstein was literally on the payroll of Israeli intelligence.
That's one reason why Trump (and a bunch of others in the US government) always do exactly what Israel wants.
I think it's tacit. He knows who could blackmail him.
Repeatedly
Pray tell, what would you actually blackmail him for? Combining his crimes as a private citizen with his crimes committed as the President of 
(e.g. enabling the Gaza genocide), he's basically done at least a little bit of every crime. Like there is literally nothing his followers won't look past, and there is literally nothing the Demonrats in power are willing to hold him accountable for because if he went to prison, every other POTUS would have to go to prison too.
Itd just make him look weaker and more pathetic.