For Joe Reeve, the midterm afterglow faded fast.
The London startup founder was among the wave around the Trump-weary world awakening to the stunning news that Americans had sharply rejected President Donald Trump’s fist-in-the-eye stewardship of the United States that had started a war with Iran, forged no peace in Ukraine or the Mideast and made gas and food so expensive.
Voters, Reeve saw online, had flipped control of both houses of Congress, handing the power to check the president to his rival Democrats. American democracy, 250 years on, had survived the Trump era.
But a deep and profound distrust of the United States had survived the vote, too. And from national leaders to aspiring American immigrants, no one seemed confident that change was afoot.
Why would anyone trust us? We elected Trump, elected someone else, and elected Trump again. We’ve already demonstrated that a good election or two is no reason to trust us. Gotta wait until we’re actually rid of the rot
What are they even talking about? Tariffs are still there, EU passed laws that force countries to buy European weapons, they are finalizing a deal with Canada. Foreign policy is like a container ship, not a sports car. It took a lot of time to turn it around and it will not turn again anytime soon. The world is not going to just “trust America again”. It will take years to sign new deals and pass new laws and it will start only when US shows they are willing to seat at the table and talk which won’t happen in the next 2 years.
Also what has America done to gain trust? Votingnin blue is not even a beginning because it looks like they’ll just maintain the status quo.
If gas were cheap right now the Republicans would still have won more seats. The average voter has a 1 month attention span and until that changes it’s a coinflip of if America will be evil or not. We just have to hope the cards fall right for gas prices to be cheap when the dems are in I guess 🤷
Can relate, don’t trust the us and I live here.
Americans really only care about domestic stuff. We do not give a fuck about the rest of the world or our relationship to it. Do not trust us.
Sad but true. The average American could care less about anything outside their state for the most part, let alone outside the US. Even though, their vote affects what happens all over the world.
Yes, Americans are much more likely to be bothered that we are spending money abroad than that we are killing and starving children abroad.
The mainstream argument against the Israeli genocide isn’t “we shouldn’t be supporting a genocide”, it’s “we shouldn’t be sending $4 billion to Israel”. The former wins a Democratic primary (only as of 2026), the latter wins a general election.
If this were true, we would have healthcare. Unfortunately our government cares about international issues that we don’t care about because its profitable.
Novus Ordo Seclorum
Wrong. We just care about domestic stuff more than international stuff.
Just like your country… and every other country.
Oh, it’s the drunk guy from tenforward with the hot takes.
Then how about America stops sticking their nose in the entire world’s business.
Oh, and fuck off funding fascist parties in Europe.
Trump’s still there.
If the democrats don’t prosecute him and every single one of his cronies, there is no reason to trust America ever again.
The people who voted for Trump are still there. That’s all that actually matters.
They will vote for someone like him again. It’s only a matter of when.
Nixon was never prosecuted why would Trump be? The us doesn’t really do consequences for rich white men
Nixon was a bad precedent and never should have been pardoned.
See also: Bush.
They won’t, so there is no reason to trust America again. Trump’s a tool, he’s not the boss. He can’t even clean his ass.
Maybe the world can tell that both US political parties are in the pockets of the same people.
Please for the love of all that is good do not ever just trust us.
Make us fucking earn that trust, if you even want to entertain the idea.
Stop treating us like we are special, don’t enable us… it will help us recover from this crippling ‘American Exceptionalism’ we have suffered from for so very long.
Nor should they. Not until we’ve shown real, sustained change. Trump is still in charge and like 30-40% of the country are apparently irredeemably awful.
Don’t.
Not yet.
Let us earn a spot at the table by showing we can prosecute criminals and hold the corrupt and powerful to account.
You’d have to be a fool to trust the US again based on this. Getting the democrats to actually make progress on anything is not usually a winning bet.
You’d be a fool to trust the US again for generations, regardless of appearances.
Good, they elected a known child-rapist and 37-time convicted felon, ffs.
Nah, mate, this isn’t enough, not even when you vote out Trump. You guys gotta clean up your corruption, actually punish the violators, and restore the institutions and policies they have destroyed, along with restitution to the victims, including the foreign ones.
Otherwise, why would we trust you not to do it all again?
Agreed. And I’m an American. It’s not the government. It’s the huge amount of people who have been MAGA, tea party, Reaganites, McCarthyists voting for it. This shit has been going on for decades.
Just because the midterms didn’t go Trump’s way doesn’t mean US citizens have changed.
Most people who voted Republican in 2024 and Democratic in this year’s midterms did so for economic reasons, not because the Republicans in power are fascists, not because they disagree with what Trump has said over the last two years.
Trump is not a disease that has befallen the US and everything is fine if it’s removed. US citizens voted for him. They wanted what he promised: to make America great again and let someone else pay the price.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-news-exit-polls-2026-midterms-democrats/
Oh, it’s going to take years, if not decades, to repair the damage dumbfuck has done.
It’ll never be repaired. Schedule F, gutting of all government agencies and mass exodus of career SMEs (various disciplines)…
There is no recourse for an “organization”. Turning civil servants into political appointees will never go back to the way it was with a simple regime change.
We are very much still fucked albeit, slightly less fucked.
Never is a long time. Germany systematically murdered thirteen million people in the forties. Obviously that does come up, but Germany largely rehabilitated its image by the 90s. Maybe earlier if we’re just talking West Germany.
I’m not saying with any certainty that the US will ever be as comfortable in the world as it previously was. But if people can get over the Holocaust in fifty years, I think the US has a puncher’s chance to sort things out.
The tricky part is that Germany was beaten in a war and had external forces standing over them forcing them to clean house. That’s not going to happen to the US, so there’s not going to be that sort of house-cleaning happening.
Yup. America hasn’t even started the work to regain trust, yet here they are thinking their redemption arc has already started after one midterm election.
Prosecute, update your laws, spend a few more election cycles voting for people that care about their impact on something besides the wallets of themselves and their billionaire friends, and maybe in 10-15 years, we can start to talk about trust
Yeah. This is the abusive drunk standing outside the door declaring “I haven’t had a drink all day, I’ve changed, baby!” And begging to be let back in.
Good on you for spending the day sober. I hope it’s the start of a new life and fervently wish you well. Still not letting you back in.
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Very tricky. It’s a difficult road back to international accord, or at least what most Americans and Europeans thought of as international accord even though it was pretty spicy for everybody else.
But I think people in this thread are overestimating how long people’s memories are. Tricky doesn’t have to be long. I’m not convinced the Democrats have the momentum or frankly savvy to fully fix things, but I could be wrong. If in ten years people in the US and Europe look back and say “Damn, those were crazy times, but I’m glad we got that tariff thing sorted out,” I’m not going to be shocked.
I do think the Republicans getting taken behind the woodshed is important not just because the Democrats are more globalist (which they are) but because it’s proving that as crazy as things get, the US still has to play by the rules with regard to democratic elections, which have here sort of acted as a final safety valve.
I do think it’s nearly impossible that the US will ever have the sort of military power it formerly had as Europe continues to weigh its options, which… good.
Germany was lucky. The rest of the world came over and gave it an attitude adjustment. This probably won’t happen for the US.
Definitely decades
I don’t think anyone born before 2015 will live to see an America that has fully recovered from all the damage Trump and his millions of fascists (mostly boomer) supporters have done to this country.
He appointed rather young folks to the Supreme Court. I figure we’ve got 40 years of every case that goes before them being decided for conservatives, the wealthy, and just our of sheer cruelty. We have rapists on the Supreme Court. Maybe not adjudicated in court, but proven being reasonable doubt in testimony before Congress. We will never remove that stain until he dies.
Quite right. It was bad enough when Biden pushed through the approval of Clarence Thomas by refusing to hear his victim’s testimony. The Trump appointees were way worse. You get the impression that Kavanaugh being a rapist is a big part of why Trump liked him.
If the Democrats wanted to set things right, they would expand the size of the court and dilute the votes of the corrupt and partisan, conservative justices. They could also impeach the most blatently corrupt ones, but that would take 2/3 of the senate while changing the size of the court could be done with a simple majority. I think they could also , with a simple majority, change it from a life appointnent to some reasonable term, like 8 or 10 years, but i could be wrong about that. Will they actually have the balls to make things right? Will their donors allow them to fix our very broken supreme court? 🤷🏾
I didn’t trust the US government even before trump
I certainly wouldn’t trust US quite yet.
