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Notes -
The alternative is not the President politely requesting X in a diplomatic communique and then sitting around, especially if the thing is clearly something people are not inclined to do. It's some mixture of messaging combined with arm-twisting and maybe even tariffs, just without the weird deficit/tariff calculations, the erratic behavior or the opacity or inconsistency in the messaging.
It's not as if this is even unknown in the Trump administration: it is quite clear what his beef was with the Colombian president and why it would end and what he would do if it didn't.
WhiningCoil feels like they're being psyopped by the debate, I feel similar. The debate forces you into arguing about whether the American president is incapable of coercing nations or manufacturing crises for them without this level of uncertainty or incompetence.
People literally cannot say what Trump's goal is for sure, but we're all forced to play this game.
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