• CosmicTurtle0 [he/him]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    8 months ago
    1. France was (and I’m using past tense here because relations are strained due to…gestures generally) one of USA’s first allies. They provided political, navel, and monetary assistance during the revolutionary war. They were one of the first counties to acknowledge us as an independent country once the war was over.

    2. The statue was commissioned as a gift to the US, not to the president. It doesn’t have any listening equipment and it sits as a tourist attraction, along with information about our long standing alliance.

    3. It wasn’t a fucking bribe!!!

    • Katana314@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Something that provides a whole lot of modern context is realizing that America was France’s early “Proxy war”. They wanted to give Britain a hard time, and so they gave colonials weapons to do it. Both of us won out from that exchange.

      The key part here is that France didn’t keep an iron stranglehold of us. It was enough to win us our freedom that we would want to be their buddies without being forced. Fun story for anyone who insists the US wants to control the Ukrainian government.

      • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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        8 months ago

        Both of us won out from that exchange.

        You might want to look into what happened to the French government and its leadership shortly after funding that little proxy war. Let me give you a quick rundown, because I enjoy history:

        The American Revolution was incredibly expensive and put France into an extreme financial crisis. Of course, the court’s extravagent personal spending didn’t help things (and made for better revolutionary propaganda), but in reality it was about 6% of total government expenditure, while loan payments, mostly from the war, represented around 50%. Even with very high taxes, it was impossible to balance the budget. A report from March 1788 estimated a deficit of 20% of expenditures, which could only be made up by more borrowing

        This financial crisis led to the king calling the Estates General, something that hadn’t been done in hundreds of years, to bring representatives of the three estates (nobility, clergy, and everyone else) together to work out a solution. When an agreement could not be reached, the representatives of the third estate left the Estates General and declared that they were creating a “National Assembly,” which claimed to represent the popular democratic will, and started work on a new constitution. The royal family ended up declared traitors and got their heads chopped off. And the rest is history. (My source for this is an old book I own called The Coming of the French Revolution by Georges Lefebvre)

        So, dumping a bunch of money on a proxy war in a bid to raise their geopolitical status and undermine their rival didn’t really work out so well for France. They were so focused on playing geopolitics against Britain, but by failing to address declining conditions at home, they created a much more dangerous domestic threat which brought about the government’s downfall.

    • LilB0kChoy@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      I think autocorrect got you, unless there was a secret bellybutton supply we don’t know about?

    • Mog_fanatic@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      He said not long ago that they were looking at it as a feature because it consistently kept correcting him and calling him out lol. It was one of his (many) dumb ass tweets where he just said “investigating” or “looking into this” or some crap. I would not be surprised at all if it’s changed or removed very shortly.

      • BossDj@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        I’d also accept that nobody left they’re knows how to remove it

    • ClamDrinker@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Most likely because if he would, it would remove one of the last barriers Twitter has to being sanctioned even harder by eg. the EU.

  • Lukas Murch@thelemmy.club
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    8 months ago

    Ann Coulter is an odd bird. She seems to be running interference for Trump on this one. Sometimes she’s not afraid to buck Trumpism. I know she’s awful, but if she could pick a lane, I’d appreciate it.

    • snooggums@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      She has a lane and it is called “What is in the best interest of Ann Coulter right now?”

  • AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space
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    8 months ago

    Though if a congressional vote was held on the Qatari golden airliner, it’d pass along party lines, as no Republicans want to incur the wrath of the King. A few may hem and haw and express how troubled they are by the, ahem, highly irregular nature of this deal, but would ultimately wave it through. (Bonus: a handful of Democrats may vote to approve, out of an instinctual desire to reach across the aisle and build bridges or whatever.)

    • Revan343@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      Bonus: a handful of Democrats may vote to approve, out of an instinctual desire to reach across the aisle and build bridges or whatever lick boot

    • uuldika@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      not so fun fact: Ann Coulter wanted to sleep with my dad when he was in college, and once invited him to her house for the weekend, but he turned her down. I thank my lucky stars everyday that Ann Coulter isn’t my mom.

  • vordalack@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    Imagine not having a job, just sitting all day, and still getting shit wrong. Being BTFO’d by the community notes, on X of all places, is embarrassing for a conservative, or whatever she is.

    • SoleInvictus
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      8 months ago

      Haha, I was coming here to ask who gave her a blood meal. If 80s movies taught me anything, it was some suspiciously mature looking “teens” that went to party in her tomb.

  • Darkard@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    And that’s how we ended up with a Cleveland Tower in Paris and Grove-a-Lago just outside Nice.